Latchkey

I count the minutes in grains of rice, scrapping my fork across the ceramic plate slowly transfering the heaping dinner from one side of the china to the other, difusing its heat to the tune of my stomach growling. He's not coming back, 15 minutes of rice maneuving tells me, about two thirds of the pile sits neatly stacked on the northwest side as an homage to my nostalgia. I scoop disappointedly at my unfinished progress; a little strong on the disinterest Toto, and next time ease up on the salt.

What is it about the host father that creates such towering hopes? Ah, yes, i think, i'm comparing to the real thing. A man who never was coaxed into conversations by sports talk or menial fillers, but enjoys sports nonetheless and if i were to bring it up i'm sure he'd have plenty to teach me. The menial, that too is an expertise of my old man, taking his 124 pack of crayolas to the prestenciled conversation and colors it sea foam and robbin red, bottom-of-the-sneaker-brown and a spalsh of crimson cow meat for good measure (latter two found in the Argentine Crayola version). Now part of me is hungry, in fact most is shocked when i glance away from the glow of my computer screen to stare at my empty plate. There was just homage there a minute ago. Nevertheless, my ID takes control of my fingertips and sprays breadcrumbs all over the glass tabletop in a fit of sexual and/or agressive instincts.

I look up again, reminded that he took his dinner to the bedroom, to join the host mom (and our apparent host buffer) while she sleeps. It has yet to be tested, but i'm venturing to guess that if we spent just a little more time together time itself would start to regress. Or the minute hand continues pushing clockwise while the hour counters, and they'd start to spin so rapidly that they get entangled in one another until the entire clock collapses, concave, in on itself, through the olive green wallpaper and into a dimension that knows no such discomfort. Ah, take me with you.

I'm learning a lot about other people recently, reading blogs, facebooks, innuendos, body language. This is only and most appropriately the product of fine tuned stalling for the obligatories of life. Far too often i forget that what my fingertips punch out into this 2 by 6 inch blog box is read by others, and not just for reflecting's sake in deperate times such as these very ones i am doggypaddling through. But now, readers, if readers there be, ye be warned. Because i've hopped on board the reading rampage, facebook frenzies and fancy-free powered by one too many mates sipped and two too few papers finished. Ah, he returns to start cleaning up. I think i head the ominous backwards ticking of time. Seguir, hay que seguir.

blasé for a group of undifferentiated readers

I decided to slip on my blasé today, skimming through simmelean theory, lingering in parts that pertain not in the slightest to what i am meant to be writing. And i lifted it up and i let it fall over my head and slid my arms through it's silky lining, my body covered in its warm withdrawl. He writes,

"just as an immoderately sensuous life makes one blasé because it stimulates the nerves to their utmost reactivity until they finally can no longer produce any reaction at all, so, less harmful stimuli, through the rapidity and the contradictoriness of their shifts, force the nerves to make such violent responses, tear them about so brutally that they exhaust their last reserves of strength and, remaining in the smae milieu, don not have time for new reserves to form. This incapacity to react to new stimulations with the required amound of energy consitutes in fact that blasé attitude which every child of a large city evince when compared with the products of the more peaceful and more stable milieu"

and his words in webs lead to an intricate entanglement of blasé, letters like a spilled boggle game suspended in the air, woven with the bleached sand from the broken minute timer. and i think back to all that i've stored and i feel bloated, not in the selfconscious sense of the term, no. but i am a little nervous that if i get squeezed just hard enough, my skin with turn to sponge and out will pour all of everything i've been soaking up, keeping clean, storing away, on another's perfectly white blouse. what if blasé could be my plaster, hardening quickly to store thoughts in its disinterest. or blasé in aisle three of the downtown Sears, a kitchen sink drain that safely sucks whatever i seep down a route of pipes, dilluting and polluting the local watering hole. i think i'd order my blasé with two scoops of cherry garcia, or would it have to be vanilla, for blasé's sake? i'd peirce it's nose and eyebrow and tongue and scar it's body with Ed Hardy inspired tattoos and something just slightly less than offensive, i'd dye it's hair black and shave half of it's head, thread safety pins through pant legs and shirt sleeves and patch on "like i give a fuck" to the back of it's tattered jean jacket.

ohhh blasé on a day like today, it made sun denying all the easier, and computer staring a little more justified. i think of all the excuses i have gleened throughout my years of eduactional failures. they've been so very elaborate at times that the excuse itself earned me a B+, or perfectly tailored to the authorities vulnerability that they simply can't say no. i think i can i think i can, steam roaring from my hardrive, and all i can get is

"my blasé ate my homework".

pre and post escape - the inbetween cannot be chronicaled

Before
The problem i find to be so bothersome between the individual and the mall mostly has to do with overstimulation. A single mind can't handle it. Inundated with needs you don't want, wants you can't justify, justifications you don't have, and yet in the end you inevitably leave having nonetheless. La facultad is my ideological mall - moral pushing, agenda forcing, belief demanding, filling my mass produced shoulderbag with someone else's thoughts. I find myself and my ideas lost deep within the crowd on the second story food court, packed in, drowned out, swaying slightly with the constant movement, tossed back and fourth, bouncing off options. Some sociopathic shopper finally does it, strikes a match, lighting the curtains in Potter Barn aflame, spreading up the linens, to the sofas and therapeutic mattresses, scorching plaster and wallpaper. It ignites a series of perfumes in the neihgboring Abercrombie, the smells of burning Vans rubber soles melt into Cinabon's quickly overcooked dough. I can't find the emergency exit. Frankie says there's two general ways to go about life - attached or detached. We can stop, toss a moneda into an open guitarcase, sob for the blind, feel for the poor, let the rage of others flow through our pours, pump through out veins, spill out our fingertips, or we can catch that subte and coast. That may be the comfort i find in these red velvet seats, marking the last leg of my journey home. Stained and ripped, they serve as a checkpoint in my detachment and remind me for a moment that despite all that i choose not to be a part of, of all that i feel no commitment to, at least i know i'm on my way.

After
I unhook the worn velcro and tug at the matted curtain to watch the last four days of my escape slide by me, tumbling and trailing down the one lane highway, remains like fallen luggage of the back of a flatbed truck. The furthest parts of the horizon start to show just the slightest signs of nightfall, a tinted lavender painted with the tips of a fan brush. The trees are planted with a definate intent, of which, however, i am still not quite sure. But there they stand, filed neatly one behind the other, posed like soldiers stoic and indistinguishable. I think that if i were to stop and examine, although it would take all the examining i could muster, there's a chance I might begin to see them individually. Run my softened tired hands along their bark, feel the width of each varied trunk, smell their roots, and if i am perfectly, most certainly alone, i'd lick a section for perspective's sake. They do not let their arms extend, branches turned upwards and kept to themselves. I bet when i'm not looking, one sneaks a pinch at another's torso, or a sister tree leans its towering limbs over quickly to the right and temporarily knocks her brother off balance. I open my eyes and see the rest shaking in repressed giggles with the rushing of wind. As the doubledecker pounds past farmland, rows of tall thin bark disappear into parallel lines, popping out the other side for miles on end. Vineyards too show their dearest sympathy for my return to a semblance of reality. Leafless trimmed vines bow their heads refusing to even look my way. On the drive in, their demeanor was quite different - bellys out and bent backwards, they balanced with arms wrapped round one another, drunken and beckoning for me to come with them. You could hear their festive singing, out of tune and slightly off beat, strung together with slurred speech and the occasional clancking of glass on glass. Now they are prisoners, necks hang in shame and backs doubled over in pain. Their arms are locked perpendicular to their body, chained to a barbed wire strung behind their heads. Not one to move, no fleeting peak, bound there until the season's pardon. As i turn my head to see them slip away into the distance, i watch the flowering stems begin to show their fruit, grapes tumbling in bunches the further i move forward, and i just hope they wait for me when another vacation is so desperately needed.

A Toast to the Little Things

Something in the way these fabrics are arranged haphazardly in the filthy storefront windows lulls me into a state of sudden tranquility. The colors pass, flash through my eyes and distract me from whatever mission i was on. Its like a long lost REM cycle that i had once as a child, swirls of dancing polka dots waltz briskly with the strips and solids. Sleepwalking through this city is easy, my feet hit autopilot and coast to no destination in particular. I start to wonder how cities divvy themselves up - could it be in a smoky saloon, late nights spent with city officials in wrinkled buttondowns and loosened ties, all shouting and pounding half full beer mugs on the table as darts are thrown at a pinned up aged monopoly board? Or maybe its done over a glass of chardonnay in a private jet, two capitalist profiteers joking and laughing and drinking from a birds eye view. Sporadically, and whenever they see it fit, one will press a large red button which drops whatsoever industry they please from their elevated height, maybe a mexican restaurant or a grungy cafe, and like a cherry pit spit out by an on-the-go-snacker, it takes root and forms an enclave of varying cuisines. Half lucid, i start to take note of my environment, disappointed in my legs for carrying the rest of me deep into what must be the city's textile district. My goal was simple enough, once upon an attention span. A cafe, a restaurant, perhaps a couch and the low vibrations of a spanish guitar, dimmer lighting and people scattered throughout the tables, all as alone and perfectly satisfied as i am. The beauty is in those details, but i'd settle for any cafe. I pop the clutch on my flinstone-mobile and downshift into third with a renewed sense of purpose.

I think back to freshman year, LJ and i meandering the salted streets of ann arbor, hopelessly searching for any place suited to fit our complaints and demands. Like a cartoon from the 90s, we turn out our pockets to find a collective 27 cents, a button and a piece of string - hardly enough to haggle for a cup of coffee. So we wander, nomadic in mind and soul, broke and exhausted and indecisive as ever before. Something fate-like carried us back to the linoleum halls of east quad's basement, and without hesitation we begin to test doorhandle after doorhandle in hopes of finding our personal Narnia. Finally, an unmarked door swings open exposing a line of lockers, a couch, and what appears to be a men's bathroom, and with no sense of dignity whatsoever, we sit down under the cracking fluorescent lights and breathe in the stale airfreshener as if this was our home. Now, face to face with that same desperate search, i tune in to my abounding solitude. If the saying is true, and two heads are in fact better than one, well readers, i'm fucked. My terrifying destiny of ending up along in a junkyard or atop a sacrificial alter surrounded by clocked middle aged men or anywhere else terrifically inappropriate grabs me by the ear and pulls me forward. Eagle eyes spot outdoor seating in the distance, 4 or 5 blocks and to my left, so i weave in and out of pedestrian traffic, never checking my rear view mirror or blind spots and occasionally knocking the more cautious sidewalkers off balance. Now i sit, listening to the mellowed tunes of some acoustic spanish soft rock with notebook out and mate in hand, i feel my first real sense of accomplishment here. Is this what growth is like? Is this how maturity overcomes? Does the bitter taste of this earthy tea represent fulfilled goals, tribulations skirted, and independence granted? I look at my watch wagging its finger at me, "you still have an hour to kill" it nags, "take it easy on the yerba baby". I pour and gulp without hesitation, i earned this drink.

El Gato Negro

The wood lining the walls of this tiny tea shop is stained with years of fragrant steam. The color of the cabinets change as you get closer to the bar, more worn and almost darker as the line of tea-pots sing in surprising synchronization. Trying to take in some self-directed courses on argentine history, i leaf through my book and let my eyes settle on the beginning with its conquest. I wonder why table manners and warfare etiquette never crossed paths. Centuries of fighting, plagues, domination, slaughter, scandle, humiliation, and all those fantastic little add ons that come with the "civilization" process could have been easily side-stepped if the royalty and generals just changed their perspective. Treaties i guess function in a similar fashion as the i-split-you-choose policy that us out-to-eaters are so accustomed to. But to flip-side this proposal, it could also make dining a dangerous experience. Hands bloody from guerrilla fork attacks, plates doubling as ceramic armor, and in the end you're left with a torn and soggy croissant that nobody really wants anyways. Maybe it is better to leave things in their current state of being.

Today's rain is impressive to say the least. It falls from all directions, pouring down against this broken borrowed umbrella, pounding up from the pavement and working its way through the threading of my jeans, and perfectly perpendicular when every carless car speeds over the shabby excuse for a drain that leaves muddy puddles to creep and slosh their way onto the sidewalk. Reading the awning aloud, i duck into "El Gato Negro" hoping for some dreadlocked musicians or maybe the jumpy superstitious type. The gentleman behind the counter is unfortunately neither, or so i type-cast by his rimless glasses and matching grey hair/sweater vest. Something floral, i think: i could use a little pseudo-sunshine. As i wait for a man too mature for that goofy red apron he's sporting to bring me my fruity tea, i feel the pounding guilt of reading in english, but the cover screams "Femenismo!" with its inverted punctuation that blogspot is not equipped to type, so i file this under semi-spanish and continue on my way. Two kids walk in, alongside a gorgeous portena woman who i disappointingly gather to be their mother, waving matching toys that light and spin and play an instrumental version of "Eye of the Tiger" at a speed that only Alvin and the Chipmunks could sing to. Each is perfectly unaware of the other and completely content pressing and lighting and conducting an offbeat round of their techno throwbacks, never long enough to actually rise "up to the challenge of our rival". The noise causes me to retreat, as it has for the past two weeks, but this place i was once so comfortable in is now new and flashing and in overdrive. My mind has begun to make mental loopty loops around its rusty metal frame like the afterhours of an amusement park open only to the carnies who work it and the locals who bribe their way in. This tiny fairground that i've swept and kept my entire life turns inside out, an exact negative of everything that i'm assured of. But this new point of view makes way for new combinations of ideas and thoughts, and i look at the carnies around me and i hear the children waving their toys and begging their hot mom for another cotton candy and to be quite honest i'm liking what i see.

Al Sur

I'm trapped in my own foreign film and from this point of view is awfully hard to read the subtitles. Where can you find it, you ask? In the discount section - to the right and all the way back against the wall at Blockbuster, in the midst of a full fledged blowout liquidation amongst hoards of people, teens desperately trying to get their hands on the latest R rated movies to stash with their soft core porn that their mother secretly knows about and 50 something year old women buying out every sentimental feel good to ease their pain of being alone on a saturday night and alternative 20 year olds looking for obscure documentaries about the life of patti smith as told from the point of view of her pet bullfrog that she killed when she was a child - hidden deep within a recycled cardboard box is a movie, my movie, that i will promise right now is not worth the wait. Overly decortative with rogue accents sandwiched between consonants, the cover is a shot of a beautiful city with gorgeous people, spilling culture and art in the places that aren't overwhelmed with smog from the bus system... and then there's me. Yeah, take out your glasses, or binoculars, right there, down on the lefthand side, that girl. No, no not that one, she's better dressed, I'm further left, clinging to that one-zipper backpack like it's my youngest of kin and reeking of a different brand of isolation that knows no name. Ay, mira esa mina, que lastima, que triste. Ay, pobrecita, tan confundida como melodramatica - deja de quejarse.

It's not that i'm complaining (well, that's a lie, and i recognize that a whine by another name still sounds as sweet), just narrating the constant stream of consciousness that isn't yet strong enough to break down this language barrier. It has to go somewhere. If not out my flailing lips then maybe through my fingernails, past the tips, onto this screen. If not to be heard by others on my program who i am too quick to call friend (because my spanish vocabulary is that of a 4 year old who never eats but just smokes and drinks), then by those interested eyes browsing the ether for something more distant from the lives of their own, because hey, you guys have to live your lives all the time; why not take a break and peek into mine. Es una experiencia, they say, and i agree, all too aware that there is a very deliberate reason for not placing an adjective before that noun. It changes, not by the day nor hour, but by fleeting moments that can only be measured in catcalls and extended eye contact, by las tazas de cafe amargo and trips on el subte. What comes out is instead the strangest side of my personality that i have ever seen (and take note that i've known myself for almost 21 years, maybe even more if your a diehard pro-lifer): i cling to people i don't know or necessarily like, and those that i do are doused in an overeager attempt to fasten any kind of relationship a little too tightly. I walk with a certain caution, little ease, and unforturnately no sense of direction. Appreciation of that time alone with my feet treading new pavement and my eyes darting rapidly from parts of my surroundings has disappeared, quickly replaced with a discomforting new tension that i'll get robbed or raped or worse, that someone might try to talk to me. And these fears that never had a permenant residence in my mind have started a barfight with a clan of pseudofilosophical ideas, outdated pop-culture references, and confident yet sleezy pick-up lines - i don't think i need to spell out which gang is winning. But alas, it's 10:20, and just minutes ago i was charmed by the meal stored safely for me in the microwave. At 10:40 i'll be busy thinking about which soap was mine in the shower and if this new ultra-femme smell it has is drastically changing my natural scent. And so on and so forth until i find another outlet willing to hold my thoughts.

mind itch - no cause, no relief

Ambiguity is the ibuprofen of the writing world, a temporary cure-all for any chronic irritation. Used liberally and in increasingly higher doses, sold over the counter in broken hearted love songs from one hit wonder 80s artists, found stashed in your fathers medicine cabinet, a few hidden in the beginnings of many a leather bound journal. They don’t have a support group for this kind of addiction, really, nothing substantial would get said. Instead we’d all just pass around the bottle hoping the rattling noise of pills against plastic might drown out our over-stimulated minds. “Write”, something says in the familiar raspy voice of your conscience, wiser than its years, softened by cigarettes and whiskey. Yeah, that worked yesterday and maybe last week, but tonight trapped in the haze of a passing electrical storm everything is jittery, one word misplaced and the friction will set these fucking walls aflame. So you sit, staring at a blank word document until that 80s song comes on, pounding out of your broken speakers, cutting through the humidity, trailing out the window, whining and crying with the same alleviating sense as the sound of a pen tracing across old paper. And you take no enlightening message away, and you can't marvel in the beauty of the words or composition, and you're fairly sure you heard Prince do an electronic cover of this once before, and you're even more sure that neither version is any good but jesus, that sounds great. And with the clicking of fingers rolling freely across keys, your ambiguous advil starts to lose strength, but your hands keep flying and the words keep coming and I hardly know you, but you’re still on my mind.

The myth of the firefly

In these extended evenings as the suns disappearance starts to tell the working-men of the world to wind down and the late-nighters to put on their party pants, springtime melts into the protruding signs of summer. Unsure if whether its you or the air that has taken on a slightly discomforting weight, everything smells and tastes thicker. Greenwood doubles as a wildlife reserve in the middle of this college tinker-town and i still feel like a tourist rather than a semi-permanent addition. Maybe the fumes exuding from bent exhaust pipes or mold collecting on tossed shoe strings dangling off of telephone wires have started to mess with the anatomy of normal residential creatures. Loitering in the midst of last night's celebratory beer cans and ashes doused in lighter fluid, you can find an unidentifiable animal, found in a mystical encyclopedia crosslisted where squirrel meets opossum meet steroid infused alleycat. He/She is comfortable living the life of a vagabond rifling through 947s mistakes and memories, which eases my transitory soul. The mosquitoes have doubled and size and determination, settling more easily on my skin then i do in it. Redbreasted birds, a species i've always hated, trot rather than flap along broken sections of pavement that glitter with a confetti of broken glass. I wonder how sensitive birds feet are, resenting how bound i am to my shoes on this one way street. But last night i met the most glorious of the midwest springtime residents - the firefly. I had hardly adjusted to the idea of outside having spent the majority of the day in my bed watching Buffy abide by her birthright. Somewhere in between episodes, night's stealthy agents slipped in and slit the throats of daytime guards and a stampede of darkness filtered in. I peaked out my front door, hand still rested on the unstable doorknob and stuck one toe out into the warm waters of my porch. Leaving your house is like riding a bike - a terrifying thought if you've been out of commission for a while but surprisingly easy to pick up once you commit. So i sit and breath and sip on reheated coffee from earlier in the day, thinking and breathing and dreaming. My peripheries catch a miscellaneous light, as if the flickering streetlamps had reproduced and were teaching their young to fly. My imagination, i'm sure, i'm just not used to the unbound world. Again, it goes off, i check my cup to see if i absentmindedly replaced coffee with leftover rum. Then it bobs, closer to me, up and down like a meandering fairy with no destination in particular. My head follows its motion as my eyes track its path and i start to think that whatever toxin that greenwood gives off has officially fucked with nature. The firefly, can't be a result of natural selection, the firefly, i wonder if it ever gets headaches or suffers from epilepsy. My curiosity wins in a mental wrestling match against my languidity and i get off my seat to follow the light. It steps and i step back, it turns and i twirl - i feel its intention like a follower in a tango is meant to, and the porch turns to dance floor where the table takes the seats in arm and sends the flying across the cement. But as i step ever closer to the stairs and out into the real world i feel bound by my coffee and bed and alternative reality, so i let the light turn the stucco corner of my house alone. Not quite adjusted to the night.

Shut up

I'm losin it.



Adderall prescription. calling my name. coaxing me like a pharmaceutical siren.



I need to go to bed. once.

Hot Headed

In heat such as this, everything is mirage-able. In heat such as this, the eyes are the least trustworthy gates into any of the senses. In heat such as this, the only provocative force is that which slithers up my nose and leaves hints of its presence in my mouth, send shivers down my spine, leaves my incompetent eyes blinking rapidly in a messy state of jealousy and astonishment. So on this 80-something degree day, i have come to appreciate smell - the one sense that i cannot seem to control, without turning blue and keeling over mind you. But in heat such is this, ohh baby, you better bet that smell has transcended it's invisible bounds and moved onto a much greater force.


Weaving through bikers and students and babies being dragged by their mothers' lowered arms, and mothers being dragged by their childrens' overeager curiosity, my feet sink deeper into the pavement with each successive step. The sprinklers are on and the grass is freshly mowed, sending brigades of grass blades down newly forged rivers. Well kempt lawns turn soft and marshy, the slowly sinking water trickles into soil and fills my body with pictures of worms in a wading pool, backstroking their way to the next mudbar. Oh futile eyes, you daring overzealous tricksters. Miscalculating the amount of dew it would take to send me backstroking or breathstroking or free-styling if that's more fitting with the grass as my floatation device and the ants as my lifeguards. My nose appreciates, my retinas overstimulate, my mind percolates in heat such as this.

Meet my mind

As a month long resident of the epitome of all college streets - the king of the anti-class, the don of disgusting, the ruler of all that is festering and fancy free, ann arbor's very own greenwood ave - my soul has slowly adapted to the constant clamour, whether it be from the neighbor's techno-mash up of every top 40 song, or the drunks two houses down setting kitchen accessories aflame, or be it three mysterious men who hotwired a crack-whore's car and moved it across the pavement only to protrude just far enough into the street to cause an inconvenience, or maybe even the crackwhore herself in an inexcusable and not to mention incoherent string of misplaced anger. In fact, my very inner being, the same one that chokes up in the scene where Robin Williams loses custody of his children in Mrs. Doubtfire, dances unabashedly, tossing left after right foot in a spiritual one-soul-show to the exterior noise which rattles my skeleton like the bass of a teenage garage band. It is not the miny marching band of drunken festivities that disturb my unsettled thoughts any more, but worse - self-loathing thoughts themselves keep my mind painfully cognizant of what i'm thinking, whether i like it or not.

Right above my left lobe is a miniature door, guarded by an ego clad in leather and wielding a firearm at ego-arms reach, making sure that only the nicest, the finest, the best dressed, the VIP of all noises and ideas slip in. Once inside, guests make a sharp left and continue on until morning. The hallway is dimly lit, dripping from poor plumbing and plastered with old flyers, remnants of bands past and protests never attended. In the middle of the canal, it seems that all noise, even your own breath or step, is stamped out quickly, silenced by the cold puddles and the idea-soaked walls. You look back unsure of which way youre going and which way is out. Better to continue onwards before another crowd of the elite comes stampeding your way. In several minutes you begin again to hear the hustle and bustle of thoughts, living their lives, sometimes, though rarely, interacting with one another. A light shines from under a crack in an almost unnoticeable door. You grab the handle and pull back hard, blinded temporarily by the new encounter with what may seem like daytime. Wallstreet. Other thoughts waving papers, covered head to toe in dry-cleaned business-casual suits, holding graded papers i've written, tax returns, overdue notices, application forms, coffee receipts and coffee receipts and coffee receipts, looking up towards the ticker of neurons shooting back and fourth. You wade your way through shoving and yelling towards the opposite side of the room, occasionally copping an "accidental" feel, on which you blame the incontrolable crowd. You've always had a thing for business women.

You head towards the sound of what any other thought assumes to be a sitar playing. Through a collection of dangling beads and directly into a cloud of white and blue smoke, the room tickles your nostrils and makes your clothes shimmy themselves directly off your body. One man strokes the instrument, not with his fingers, which by the way are too busy teasing a scantily dressed girl, but with the ends of his silvered beard. Everything and everyone is seated on colorful pillows, running their bejeweled hands and arms through the smoke strings, conjuring them to dance and move at their disposal. The incense make you increasingly nauseated, and you pivot to your right heading straight for the strobe light. Dance club; three levels; gogo's in cages; mafia men with chest hair showing; coke being snorted in the bathroom and off the excess end of parliment cigarettes; you know this scene. Rather, you WISH you knew this scene, that's why its hidden deep within the chambers of your imagination. You leave through a coffee shop, weave in and out of uninteresting segments of eavesdropped conversations, stopping only to salivate over steaming cups being passed across immeasurable barista counters. Then just down the hallway once more and out the door into the cold harsh reality of the world.

Some thoughts made permanent residence there - the stress-induced loiter on the trading floor, the mind altering and philosophic sit criss-crossed on silk pillows next to the idle half of your sex drive in the incense room, the other half mingles and mixes in the pounding music of the night club with any excitement and tacky notions that seem lost or should be lost, and the rest sip on americanos amongst the bookworms and transitory ideas. This is my mind, throbbing and more alive than any part of my exterior. And although crowded and although poorly decorated, it keeps me awake when the rest of the world sleeps. And after my resentment settles like dust on a book cover, i retreat into my mind and i almost feel comforted.

enter spring

Maya always leaves her door unlocked, which soothes my slowly declining faith that trust exists in humanity. I've noticed this from time to time, but most clearly in the morning. Something in the air, the lighter springtime air, makes this semester vastly different than the rest. I wake up at 9:30 - a time unprecedented for my usual sleeping schedule but perfectly fitting for my new 1 o'clock bedtime. Maybe a moment of backtracking is in order, because a 9:30 lucid-curtain-call is hardly unattainable to the normal human being. But me, full of stimulants at nighttime and inherited insomnia pulsing through my veins and shooting between my receptors, well, i don't even know what 9:30 looks like. So my body has begun to adjust - my eyesight much sharper as the darkness of foreboding night sets in, hearing more alert amidst the partyboy music blasting from oversized speakers across the street and hoards of invisible insects that have only just begun their day, mind more ready for my new oddly enlightening encounters that are sure to come with passing time. Likewise, the pierce of even a single meddling ray of light stings my entire being, first eyelids, then neck, invading my torso and continuing down my legs to the tips of my toes. My only shield in this kind of guerrilla warfare are very, very sturdy blinds. But i tried something new, inspired by the feel of my spring semester, and i dropped my guard, left my blinds up. In truth i deserve no credit for what i am claiming to be an attempt at self-improvement. It was all an accident, merely the aftershock of realizing i can climb out onto my roof. However, change comes where it is most necessary, and the blinds were up nonetheless. Day one, that sting, that noticeable stab resonated in and out of my eardrums, but in my bitter awakening, i forgot to close them again. Day two, the pain seems more friendly - i develop a better understanding of my distant masochist side. Day three - some pain, some gain. And so on and so fourth until i learned to love that pestering little light that so often shakes me from my necessary slumber.

Once i address the day, in the most direct way possible, i stumble to the bathroom, faucet turned completely to cold, and wake the rest of my body with equally brutal splashes, and turn back towards my room to recollect. On my way, i watch her lock dangle on turned out latch, a stoic reminder to be more inviting. At 2 pm, this would not seem such a great invitation, such a glorious symbol of openness and certainty, but 9:30 is apparently a groundbreaking time, where everything is glossed with my new found appreciation.

The Power of Permenant Press

I always sit atop the washer as it works. Ad hoc sharper image relaxation technique, i award myself as i hop up, bouncing with the spin cycle, water lapping at the metal surface desperate to hit my pants. Not this pair, no, i'm wearing this pair. You have enough sets of ripped pant legs to start on already, one bit at a time, i coo at the thrashing Kenmore machinery. My journey to the makeshift laundromat proves more stressful with each successive load. An awakening experience - i never knew i had this many t-shirts and rogue socks.


My hands slip across the binding of the downstairs neighbor's book, torn at the bottom, pages bent uniformly tell the tale of my bag. If i were a celebrity, i think, this might be my autograph. No pen, just rips and coffee stains, uneven dogears and smeared lead across the right side of the picture. Note to self: buy will a new book. My fingers reach into my memory and pull at the opening of my last literature excursion, page 114, yes, here we were. The washer hums, my fingers trace, eyes pace rapidly like a clairvoyant in an oneiric trans. Time and water and dryer sheets and humming all take their places neatly in the background of my mind, marked with masking tape to frame the stage where the reading will be done. And it booms, the story, I sit in the theater atop more washers and dryers and baskets and carts and those vending machines dispensing generic brands of detergents and fabric softeners. The story stops for no finished load, spinning and twirling a tumultuous mingling of words and smells and the sole laughs that burst from my lips. And it whirls and it whirls and i'm worried i might get sea-sick, desperately clinging to the side of my Kenmore quite aware that it might toss me overboard at any given moment, and then KNOCK. A face, male, shrouded in shadows and alcohol appears. I know it to be a face, only by the boyish goofy smile and sidekick of a hand waving and pointing through the dusted window. I jerk and turn, shocked, racking my memory for this man's smile or palm. Then it's his turn, equally shocked. We both stare, and BUZZ - i jump, and he follows suit, me off the white surface of my appliance and him into an extended branch of a nearby maple, his head turns in offense and embarrassment to look at the mess he's created. And he waves his arms and shakes his head gesturing, "not you, sorry not you. i thought you to be someone else but, oh, clearly you're not," blurs of forearms flying one over the other, selecting bits and pieces of an outdated handjive. I pardon him with a nod despite his unprecedented interruption, if i may be quite honest. And with the authority of a schoolteacher excusing her students he runs off to join his gang as they stumble down the street.



I pull at the edges of my little black dress, wet and entangled in a compress of other articles. Read the tag aloud, "dry clean only", my feet firmly planted on the cracked linoleum floor. They say, "don't risk it Rachel. This is a new purchase", my arms yell back, "FUCK.THAT.SHIT. do you always abide by the stitching in your clothing?? who's the boss of who, huh?" I smile, remembering my new found authority with the late-night knocker, and toss the dress into an open dryer. Ah, it feels good, the rest of the load accepts, marching itself in along with my dry-cleanable clothes. Swipe, shut, spin.

Untitled

The final period of any piece of writing is the hardest to type. What's held in this punctuation? It seems more determined when hand-written, more deserving. Typing that last line feels like a self adhesive stamp placed on an envelope. Sometimes, when i'm feeling particularly absent, i'm almost inclined to lick it... just for good measure. The act of finishing makes me nervous. When done shittily, i'm embarrassed to complete it. When done well, i'm overly critical. So there's a middle ground that i often tread on, balancing on the ridges of a barbed wire fence, occasionally slipping just to get my shirt sleeve entangled in the top and leave me dangling an inch above the ground. I yank myself up, and start the wire-walk all over again. It ruins my shoes, you know, toeing this razor thin line of worth.

I'd rather always start a sentence, an opening line so decorative and compelling it makes an illiterate fall in love. This is how i spend a good portion of my day, writing the opening line to a particularly novel novel. I smile, and imagine how the story would follow. Maybe a paragraph drafts itself, if the line is so willing, rolling into general narratives cut together with "and then"s "and then"s "and then"s. They spread too thin, my opening lines, like watching rock move to molten lava move to pebbles move to sand. I thrust my desperate hand into the work, but too tight of a squeeze and it all slips out, spilling through my fingers, fragments trapped inside the pockets of my jeans, remnants caught within the unnavigable tangles of my hair. At first its a comfort when pieces fall out - a reminder of what i've done. But sooner or later, after the 6th shower and the 2nd load of laundry, you start to resent it's incomplete presence. They call this fear of commitment, i hear, but i'd rather see it as the immortality of action. For a period is too heartless, egotistical, unforgiving. Yes, i'd much rather start something and watch it dissolve than place an unnecessary punctuation where punctuation is not due

This is not a Sunday

826 michigan, in all its glorious and playful efforts held a 4 day workshop on poetry forms from a variety of places. Wrote this one, a form that repeats the last line of the stanza (or in my case, toes the line of repetition). Don't remember what it's called or what the significance of it is. All in all this is just an excuse to not write a self-ethnography on my last week as a starving college student (probably won't explain that one further, so make of it what you will). Never really dabbled in poetry. Thought the ether was the best place to take a first whack. Hells yeah. Sorry to all those reading - the first time is bound to be messy :)

My bag today feels daintier

than normal toting commands

i'm well aware from my light load

that this is not a sunday

I trek across the paved campus

boots marking where i came from

i hate the snow but i have found

less so when it's a sunday

I find the nature of the day

tied to last night's reflections

so subsequently it would be

much better on a sunday

Today i'm angsty, bitter, rash

the snow - my source of anger

it's taken out on snow's dear cousin

i devour a sundae

Something about a midmorn brunch

equipped with toast and bacon

seems most appropriate to be had

when it's a lazy sunday

Program alarm to 9:20

a time i'm still not used to

i close my eyes, and fall asleep

with dreams of this next sunday

Wake up and stretch, 11:12

languid, content, well-rested

i knew this day would finally come

oh shit, its not a sunday

Exhibit 47: lack of sleep

It's a 15 minute walk back from main street - 20 if you doddle, 10 if you jog. Now, i've never experienced the latter, but i'm sure that it's just as enjoyable on a day like today. But the doddlers aren't out at this hour. You see a clear shift between 6 and 7, when dusk turns to dark, and everyone scampers in the direction of a "safer" location. It's relatively nice out. Well, relative to yesterday and my speculation of tomorrow. The air is thick and still, coating me in its protection. But molecules on top of molecules incorporate every movement of the people around me into my steps, actions, breaths. I start to resent the brisk-walkers, mixing their stress with my calm, tying their passing air into mine, dragging forward to a destination. I have no direction, so i follow, turning wherever the contrived wind takes me.

• The woman on my left has in interview: her briefcase full of neatly stacked papers that mirror the captured snow resting on top. She shakes off the flakes - that's genuine leather the weather is ruining. I make a sharp left turn with her anxiety.
• Two boys shove passed me, 15, maybe 16 at most. They have painted on mustaches. I remember doing that. They laugh - a mixture of rebellion and tension. We all sense a foreboding grounding in their future.
• A group of sorority girls rope me in and i'm trailing behind their giggles and spliced sentences. A whirlwind of hairtosses throws me off their path.

There's lampposts scattered evenly on each side of me. They start sparse, one every minute or so, extending my shadow along the paved ground, passing by and through me. As i enter campus the lights start to concentrate; cluster around me like orbiting stars. My feet are bound by rings of dancing silhouettes. They circle, one after another, racing in front and behind me. Free only when my tattered boot leaves the ground, the shadows too celebrate their momentary liberation. Legs dissolve into concrete, they disperse in all directions just to be yanked back to my body like a dog on a chain with the heavy step of my foot. The lamps turn in my direction, eager to participate in my one man show. I get stage fright - freeze - my shadows gawk at me in shock. You've practiced this a thousand times their faceless expressions tell me as i call for my line. I stare at the open intersection, no cars from either direction. My shadow's less cautious, posed halfway across the street. I lift my foot up and it takes off, floating down east u, past the bank, over the painted picnic tables, around the dumpsters, up the telephone wires. From the coat pockets of my cast jacket, it takes out a large umbrella and starts to dance across - a remarkable balancing act from a silhouette with very little practice. Staring upward, i clap and nod, whistle and beckon as the wind catches my shadows umbrella and sends it floating down to my feet. Hovering an unnoticeable amount above the ground, it curtsies and melds back into me. What a show.

Hail to the Victors

I am the deviant child that pounds in revolution and resonates through my ribcage. Jailed, oppressed, I shoved him in there, locked him in the cage of my inner being. He used to be living in the outskirts of my fingertips, annexed also in the far reaches of my toes. He’d protest and clamor, run and thump, raise chaos in places that he felt necessary. But, sadly, he was not well received. Later in life he began to retreat, pumping through my veins, nomadic and circulating, trying to find his place. Occasionally he’d take advantage of a painful opening, some popped vessel or sensitive bruise. His true colors spread through pockets, confined only by the layers of my skin. His aura, though temporary, was obvious – a statement of presence, importance, like the thumping bass of a hip-hop stereo, like a nation’s flag over conquered land. With time, the body became more cautious, took less tumbles, developed rougher skin. So he moved, in a flurry of red and white cells, towards the Mecca of all defiance. Inside the vessels and ventricles of the heart he gathered, and learned. The toenails shared stories with the palms, the ankles with the ears; stories of battles lost, families torn, beliefs shattered. And there he lay, collective and disheartened, in the holiest of heartfelt places.

School is but one institution that stood on the back of this jungle boy. Reading Vappula’s piece addressing traditional forms of education, my heart began to thump, my child began to shout. This is his story, of forced thought and rhetoric and schedules and stencils and norms and abnorms that he could not fit into. He is the brother of my voice, who retreated to the pit of my stomach and ached at every essay in which she could not take part. He’s the son of my philosophy; a father kept prim and presentable, living in each twisting strand of auburn tinted hair. He learned how to silence his piercing screams, or maybe I learned to barricade them. I fear he’s grown older, hit puberty, lost the interest in protest and gained one in sports cars. Time accelerates in lonely spaces. Maybe he’s married and settled in a section of my suburban lung. He’s forgotten the glory of my tongue, unresponsive to the bounce of my lips when inspired. He knows the walls of my inner intestine instead of the liberty that lives in my eyes. I feel him move, I miss his face, I speak for him what he used to do for me. His action, trapped in the glass casing of my words collects like marbles in a jar – step right up, you could be a winner, 500 dollars for the man who can best estimate its worth! I hope he, or she, or we, steal the fucking thing, dump it in hallways and stairwells, and together see the fury of our individualism unfold.

free write therapy

There's something essental that's missing. It feels like drinking pulpless orange juice - it's fine, in fact sometimes prefered, but you know that's not the way the juice is supposed to be. It spills down my throat, and seems to pass directly through my organs, making no effort whatsoever to spread through my body. I might as well not have lifted the cup at all. What is it. Why do i talk, ceaselessly, with no purpose or content. Where's the pulp? I'm a reflection of my surroundings, as are all living things, and subsequently they are of me. Endless and cyclical. I don't want to spiral out of control. This is the life-sized Cuisinart that renders all pulp virtually unrecognizable, although it was there to begin with.

No thoughts, just words, let flow and go. Don't think, about. punctuation, spelling, capitals, syntax. It hurts to backspace, i sense it through my eyelids, pounding in my eardrums and pulling my arms apart. My eyes are closed now, feeling only the sense of keys on fngers. I turn, and the words turn with me, and we blend together untill they pour into every orifice that i have. Open your mouth and let out an inaudible yawn. It peaks out, keeping one foot inside, holding onto my tongue. another foot - on my lips and legs shaking. It starts to run, and i to scream. The yawn to scream is a beautiful thing, more natural than the last leaf of fall. and i fall, and scream, and no one can hear. the wind is pounding. on glass. bits and pieces seep through but dissipate as they drive towards me. To feel that wind: the kind that shakes buildings, uproots great oaks, tears asphault.

There it is. Intuition. I block it out, like i talk myself out of a cold winters day. Layer upon layer i deny my need for it's presence in my life, that thing that you know with nothing but the strongest connection to everything around you. It used to drag me. Now i drag it. Chained below my ankle, i carry the feeling around. I had people in my life; strong, independent, beautiful, intuitive people, who reminded me of the importance of magic. And it pulsed through them, and me, and nothing else felt more real. And we'd scream, when screaming allowed, and we'd scream, when we were silenced, and we'd run when time seemed endless, and we'd run when it came too close. I saw in in their eyes, when they slept and when they cried, and their shreiks were both of joy and fear, swift in their escape and their celebration. It's missing, it's vital, the pulp of my morningnoonandnight. It's nearly inaccessible without you here, but i feel it every time i'm home, every time. It's the most beautiful, courageous, innovative work of art - the way you teach others to embody emotions. Backspace.