19th ave and northern

On 19^th ave and Northern, just a mile from my two bedroom apartment, there’s a woman with faux red hair, working Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday evenings. And on some of these very same days there’s a man, with a mushroom tattoo on his forearm, and an affinity for video games, thinking about her likely dyed hair. He complimented her hair – she’s glad he noticed the change. She’s nervous that they cut it too short but he thinks it looks just great. She likes his mushroom tattoo and told him. Too bad, he thinks, I’ll never ask her out. One day, he thinks. And for every future Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday evening he thinks he may just get another game.

That same day, at a Great Clips in Central Phoenix, a man with freshly cut hair pays for his 10 dollar trim. Maybe he turned for a moment when the bell above the door rings, or he could have caught her reflection in the mirror behind the checkout counter as she walks in and sits down in a chair. “Just a little off the top,” she says. And he thinks about her all the way home, and whether the fact that she slightly resembles Tom Selleck is telling about him in any way.

Way over in Mesa a woman in the express lane watches a man with 4 cartons of eggs explain to the cashier that he really needs all these eggs, he promises. He never says why, but that smile forgives it all. Prank, she thinks. She's sure, in fact. Or a party, maybe, the brunch kind? She didn't have the nerves to ask, not with the cashier watching and all. Maybe he heard her laugh? What was she buying?

It's with a sort of religious zealotry that i pour through these posts, alone in my two bedroom apartment. I'm keenly aware of the potential implications that would inevitably come if anyone searched through my browser history to find thousands of impressions on craigslist missed connections. And in all my self-produced nervousness I think, naturally, how often am i looking for me? I scan the location before anything else. 19th ave and northern, phoenix center for the arts, driving on i-17, taste of tops. All spaces that i know or have frequented. Next, the description. Latina in White, she dropped your lemon, you gave me a discount, Kari from friday night. Next 100 posts, Next 100 posts, and hundreds upon hundreds more from ann arbor and buenos aires and austin and wilmington and san francisco and seattle and phoenix. All evenly distributed - w4m, m4m, mw4w - whatever catches my eye. But it's the location that gets me most every time and drives me to edges of divine revelation or steady emotional disintegration. That just a mile from my two bedroom apartment, on 19th ave and northern, there's a man so taken by a woman with faux red hair, on tuesdays, thursdays, or perhaps sundays, that there's nothing he can do but buy his game and leave.

drunken, eeek, no second read allowed

you read like salinger scripted your moves, every word directly from franny and zooey. i hear your intention burst through the eye skirting and the nostalgic moments of remembering - it's all clouded through cigarette smoke and tub water and late night catharsis. can I hear anything beyond the godamns and the decoratively painted commentary though i was never truly there? I hold most everyone up to your narrative you know, which is a hard standard even for salinger to handle. so they let me down; how could they not? just wanted to let you know, you always spoke like someone outside of you scripted it before you exhaled and entered. and i jumped suit. thank god we never spoke without scripting on our own. i wish, more than ever, that you'd do that thing that you always seemed to do, and contact me now. but salinger never would allow it. it simply wouldnt be literary, because it's been my move for a while now, i guess. i just can't seem to move.

Fleetwood Mac Rumours on repeat

Don't you dare tuck me into a poem, i'm running away with all our memories. Don't narrate a word of this, you didn't earn it, never deserved it. Don't spin me into a lesson - yours were always too trite anyways - so what have we learned? Expression finds those who live it, seek it, form it, fill it... Fuck It, after this you'll have nothing to express: i'm robbing you of your thoughts on the matter. I'm plotting the worlds largest heist, stealing back all the conversations we ever had. And, my dear, I'm setting some of them on fire like the catalyst i had always wanted, ripping some to shreds in the way i always needed to be spread, eating sections of some to give me back that insight that i was so severely lacking, handing the more bizarre ones out in quarter-page fliers on campus streets to unsuspecting students, washing the uncomfortable ones in a load of darks, heavy duty to get them to bend or fade where necessary. You don't get them. This is your alimony, these are my winnings. A fools winnings, and i'll be damned if i don't fritter them away as i so foolishly please. So go on, expressionless, empty, unaffected, unresponsive, because i'm ridding you of that pesky pseudo-guilt-inducing burden that is meant to come with endings. No need to rationalize this to yourself. No need to excuse things done or said. No need to question all that was left undone or that had gone unspoken - you are hereby pardoned of all these obligatory steps towards "moving on". Because i'm stealing all our memories, and they have no place in your fucking poems.

I wish i could write, but i've been listening intensely to this fucking silence for weeks on end now, long before any of this incompatibility and derailing was well earned. Unfortunately, nothing comes out when you yell into a vacuum, but all the better, because i'm sure it would be shit content-wise if at all audible. Found this unpublished entry from many a moon ago, when things were flowing...

A letter to the many women I have known and further fictionalized:

I write a pleading pardon for the thousands of thoughts hinted at but never actually uttered, the self-righteous claims of bold and balled courage, scarves and gloves and matching hats fashioned of faux bravery, I stay darkly cloaked in false security even on the sunniest, muggiest, sweatiest of humid summer situations. I write out all my worry for all that was miscommunicated, most of which I never actually said but - like a story that you hear enough times to insert yourself in as the protagonist - simply convinced myself of saying. This suspended circus act of eye-defying self-exposure flies perfectly fine from thousands of miles away and even more so when poured into thousands of cyber particles sloppily assembled, but wears quickly thin when I’m actually asked to go back and re-read.

As I hyperbolize myself into a surrealist conception of love and truth and bone-baring honesty, life comes tramping in, all horns of reality, clamoring and running amok. It knocks books off shelves, shatters picture frames, tears up essays graded and stained. It turns stereos to full blast playing all the songs that you - the very women to whom this letter is addressed - had sent me in days passed. Songs that may very well have been charged with that same, steaming, shameless intention that I have in all of my avoidance. It's stupid and drunken, all with the hope that these tunes might slip into my ears and slide deep into the crevices of my mind late at night and be the last thought - that sexy resounding ultimate note, that launching pad for 6 more hours of dream play. But they all play too loudly and simultaneously, not even allowing me those vital moments of narcissism assuring myself that you are reminded of me when you hear them too.

Do I miss or resent all the distance? It ripped us apart in the very moment that we had what my skewed measuring stick might mark as potential. And it kept us separated from getting to know each other, from moving past electric moments of eyes meeting, bodies touching, jokes made and laughed at. It stole loads of nerves like fistfuls of jewels and left us poor and confused at how quickly things end. But maybe this was also the basis of all the potential in the first place. That distance could very well have been the throbbing heart of everything we ever had together. Not just physical distance but also personal distance. It gave me the chance to make you up as I have – the less I know the more I fill in on my own. It wraps everything in glossy surprise, all under the pretense that one day you will be there and undo everything I have transposed onto you. And that distance allowed me to keep every one of you, dear women, separate, innocuous, living in functional harmony.

Dear women, I’m sorry for all of the rash decisions I’ve made, and even more sorry for those I those that I did not. I’m sorry for everything I never said aloud but continue to imagine saying. I’m sorry for scripting rather than speaking because it lets me dramatize both you and me and we’re played by sexy celebrities while thousands of people are watching. I never even gave you the chance to say what I know to be true, which is that you don’t and never felt the way I pretend you do in my head. I darken the outer edges so the plotline seems to thicken. In doing so, then I never have to admit that I may very well have already been forgotten.

academic solipsism and the intellectual jerkoff

Ruth Behar's work The Vulnerable Observer has got me thinking about the state of academia and its self-indulgent properties. She has received both astounding praise and harsh criticism for her (some say daring and other call it exhibitionist) tactics to approach ethnography, not just exposing herself as a part of the story-telling, but in fact inserting her own story as part of the work (check out her last chapter of Translated Woman). In sifting through review after review either building a scholastic pedestal for Behar or hammering this pedestal into the ground, I feel that academics all over are missing a larger looming point: all of academia is self-indulgent.

As an undergraduate senior at UofM trying to write a premature and overeager thesis, i find that the only thing to pull me out of my dark and wildly convoluted mind is to remind myself that this process is entirely masturbatory. My work and all its prefacing research (all of which should be encased multiple sets of mocking air-quotation-marks mind you) is for me to hear myself think through surface-level concepts that i've never quite been able to break into. These are all part of the genre of "theory" that i'v been spoon-fed for at least the past 4 years. And fine. Great. There is nothing like a good ole solo session to clear the mind of all that disturbing white noise of expectations. However, just like self-sex, writing and reading these works from our higher educators gets me thinking about the more legitimately respected types of sexual exploration. Writing pieces to be published, is quite like hoppin in the sack with two or three or thousands of others for a night of intellectual ecstasy - an academic orgy of individuals all searching for self-fulfillment potentially through the fulfillment of others. What we all know and are not saying is that there are times (for some of us, this is more often than not) when we fake it - act like we're more turned on than we are, play into the roles we have set for ourselves or those that others are hoping to see us act out. So how are critics like Daphne Patai or the "vulnerable observers" like Behar much different than the rest of us partaking in this massive group-sex scenario? I maintain that they aren't. So what, if Behar wants to scream her name louder and more often than she does her partners'? And so what if Patai's pissed because Behar's yelling is making her lose her hard on? I'm bored of the culture of peer-criticism because in the realm of academia it is strictly denouncing rather than constructive. Lets call a spade a spade - this is a university dating site, the cultured equivalent to Craigslist casual encounters. The publishing industry is like a massive intellectual brothel, one that privileges the universities as the better pimps, the faculty as the high-class hookers, and scoffs on us streetwalking types who dabble in our self-indulgent writing from time to time, both for us and in the constant pursuit of making a living. If academia isnt a socially acceptable way of letting out those inner-kinks for the most sex-starved individuals, i dont know what is. This is why kids who got laid in high school are stereotyped as being burnouts: they already found their outlet. Maybe the rest of us in higher-education just needed to get our freak on at an earlier age.

The PC culture of sex and education translates just as easily. Some are proponents for rationalizing social norms, others hope to unleash all taboos on their institutional partners and wait with a sadist/exhibitionist's smile for the reaction of the unsuspecting. I admittedly am not as kinky in either realm as i'd like to proclaim, and while i support the process of letting the fetish out of the proverbial closet, let us all take a moment to remember that the items hangin in there dont necessarily fit everyone just as nicely. I look particularly stupid in a number of outfits, and that being said, try to tailor my clothing appropriately. Same goes with sex and writing. Plus, we see that some situations allow themselves for different get-ups - its far too cold in Michigan to wear that strap-up lingerie outside of my house (but we see sorority types braving the chill every night, so you see, its all subjective in the end). So while i spend my time talking the talk, i hardly walk into an academic setting spewing my blogger bullshit into the linoleum-tiled florescent lighting of the classroom, because i would like these particular partners of mine to giveafuck. This, my friends and fellow internet voyeurs, is material reserved for the tiny blinking cursor within a blogspot box, and i'll be damned if i dont look fucking fly in it right now.

Tuesday

Tuesday, fucking tuesday, there's something vile and rotten, sour tasting about this particular one. A tuesday that has been sitting in our broken fridge for a month and some past its expiration date. Label reads: this tuesday best by friday, september 30th 2011. It's been a tuesday that is stuck in monday's hangover clothing, a particularly wrinkled tuedsday with a pad thai stain on its left sleeve, a tuesday that wednesday regrets to be sitting next to in our weekly seminar. Fucking tuesday, tumbling in and out of bedspreads, a tuesday that listens to too much music and has temporarily lost its sense of sound. Talking too loud and too much, sloshing 2009 malbec over the side of its inappropriately chosen champagne glass, a tuesday that hasnt done the dishes since the tuesday before. I'm sure there is and should be more to come, but that's a thursday-friday task not ideally suited for a tuesday such as this

2:13 in just-laying time

I've had dreams of insects pouring out of unexpected places, like the tips of my fingers and those unimaginably deep holes in my three cushioned couch. They invade, armies of them, and like Enders Game alien forces weave elaborate formations around my body, but never bite nor do they sting. Aha, so just threat with no painful consequence you're inner Jungian shouts as he flips through his leather bound journals and puffs an extended breath from his pipe. It's always fear of the future or unresolved issues of the past. But as i took a break to lay, just lay, in the university grass today, i felt the ants begin to crawl up my left leg, scamper across my midsection, hide themselves in the crevices of my shirt. For 20 minutes in just-laying time (which is about 4 minutes of normal functioning future-driven time, for reference sake) i continued to smack sections of my body attuned to the tingling sensation of something foreign, thinking i could warn them off, scare the critters and hope they tell their friends. How disturbing is it to hope to lay, just lay, and be continually bothered by other beings' agendas. Or is it me disturbing myself with the slapping and kicking and constant notice of their presence. Maybe it's time to learn to let the creatures crawl as they may, nestle in my present shorts if need be, for a moment of shelter from this october's Indian Summer sun, because in a couple of just-laying hours i'll be on the go again, and they will have taken to the force of gravity and movement, eventually shaken off.

The woman and the washboard

The man with the harmonica is perched as a symbol of all the good and bad and beautiful in all of my relationships. As his hand moves up and down clickity clackiting my thoughts out on a worn out washboard, glasses perched atop his bridge, dirty jean hat countering the many rumors and projections of his supposed "professorship" or "research position". No one gets an interview, no one gets a word, but we all have forged quite the relationship with this man, thinking, egotistically, that it is only ours. I watch as students morph into momentary cartoons as their feet lift a little higher, arms swing a little harder, smiles stretch a little wider for that 30 by 30 foot square of university pavement. I let my delusion get the best of me, thinking that he values me as much as I him. I dance, you see, every time, without fail, and he nods, and his eyes smile (mouth still busy harmonicing of course) and we prolong our moment as best we can, me to the beat of my shoulder swings and bouncing hair, him to the humming and strumming, complementing each others' art. I think, "yes, now. this is the time. this is the time when i should finally stop, and talk, and break the routine we've established, push it further, find out something new." But my feet have shuffled and sidestepped me on, and suddenly, out of the direct line of his magical influence, it seems so silly, so farfetched, so i keep on walking. I could talk, you see, clarify his role, tell him i like it, point at his importance. But such risk running is not actually part of the confidence i exude. What ifs come shooting to the surface - what if he doesnt in fact notice that im the one dancing for and because of him, that smile just the reaction of a self-involved man? what if he has many other boppers, millions of boppers, counting me as just another number? what if he's not the man behind the music that i expect him to be? and mostly, what if it's in the not talking that everything exciting and mysterious lies? There are no expectations, not even projections, that come to mind. Just speculation based on past smiles and head nods, the extended relationship, the fact that we built it all on top of a teetering jenga set, and one wrong pull may bring it all crashing down. Such is the game. Tense and fun and full of potential for disaster, which is, in the end, the final expectation. I still can't get myself to stop, change routes, or walk straight on through. Still, i'm increasingly disappointed on the many a days that he's not there. Such is the game.

DPS crime alert: good mood mugged by naturopathic sleeping pills

i sense the blinking light on recent personal developments. from the edge of my covers i see tissues and papers, garbage and empty grocery bags, pant leg after pant leg entwining in a form surely to be scolded by the school principal catching kids at prom, and if the next episode of the west wing weren't taunting me so i'd give it all a good stern talking to. pause, for everything. its gotta be biological, an unwarranted and unpredictable sexual and mental hiatus, although completely self-piloted, has got all sides of my instinctual body worn to threads, thinking and fucking passed out in their respective corners of the ring. It's been great, still in the quivering moments of total lacking. It's been a thrill, despite however i communicate it. It's still groundbreaking, even if over half comes from my untuned computer speakers. And as i etc. etc. etc. i keep in the meat freezer of my mind this reminder: It's 9 more days i got overstaying my welcome here.

g'mornin

Car horns sound and shoes scuff the pavement and people shout and life stays in motion as i slip under the scratchy grey blanket and stare up at my tiny barred window in this rented room. Gently placing my computer over my growling stomach, i let my hunger and the hardrive fans battle it out, winner determines my next set of actions. something is looming, hovering, dangling above me like a miny mobile of potential responsibility. I'm surprisingly soothed, as a baby should be, to the twisting and turning of test dates, flight dates, conversation dates, inscription dates. They dance to the car horns and the scuffing of shoes and the shouting and the rush of life through this city. Huddled deeper now in a pile of blankets, i think i should get dressed, join the honking and scuffing and shouting. And i would too if it were not for the unexpected hardrive fan victory, i hear it hum violently in celebration as my stomach growls the occasional whine of a sore loser.

i reach into my pocket of my jeans spawled like a murder scene from last night's debauchery. My phone pops out along with a crumpled peice of pink paper, the tail ends of girlish curling handwriting peeks out from the corner and i'm transported back into that eternal drunk-bitch conversation. its always the same, this one may wear the long droopy mc hammer pants of porteña style, but its got the same build, the same animated insides. "y me llamás? porque me gustás mucho! y tenemos que salir juntas, ay que suerte que nos encontramos acá, vamos a ser amigas, no? así que me llamás!" and theres shoulder pushing and hair tossing and we both flit off (because flitting is absolutely necessary in times like these) to other ends of the bar. I cant figure out why this number, with its curly-q's and light pink backing, exhausts me so, still shouting at me from across a noisy bar. Pull blankets tighter and twist to let the remnants of alcohol drain down my system. My stomach starts to growl with newly revived passion, and though i turn up the volume on my speakers to drown out reality with a catchy french tune, the mobile of to-dos whips rapidly around my head and the honking and scuffing and shouting and growling all wag their fingers and nag, "get the fuck up".

Do you remember your grand entrance? The scaled seats fill with town members into that theater, you wait behind red velvet, and suddenly like all theater majors nightmares realize you cant remember your lines? Thats probably why babies cry upon entering this world. They just werent readily prepared. Oh, but weve all heard the story. I was born of a mother sensitivity and a father sarcasm. Weaned on defensive humor and washed in nervous laughter, i began to embody my character. The plot develops: i played in a sanbox stocked from the beaches of ambiguity where the shores bearn no marker in particular and the constant whispers of an ocean tide seems to mutter your name. The worms i ate were imported from a monestary in indonesia, and there i devoured my silence. They wore soot robes and bowed their heads (or was it their tails?), spending all day inching in parrallel form, converting my one person playpen into a kempt zen garden. Thus i grew, with certain detatchment, anxious habits, an excess of words and too few spaces to stoe time. My ubringing surges to the tips of my persona the further i move away from it. With this continual restructuring of my internal feng shuei, some of the staples get pushed into a back room or kept in storage, for the time being.

¿sos una chica debil¿ his question was hardly spiteful, its genuine nature dances around his bluegrey iris, the opening act with an extended curtain call for a show ive caught snippits of, but only from back stage. He stared, posed, lids refusing to shut even for the slightest of moments until they sense my response. Si, puede ser, the audience claps. I feel dizzy, not the thrilling version of the sense but the kind that makes you nauseated and give you the shits. Its a dizzy pepto bismal could extinguish, or a dizzy missing its partner and with a few shots of whiskey would dance a dizzying pomerade around my feet. Dizzy not from my own spinning, absolved of all volition, but yanked by my big toes and tossed into the air, i tuck into fetal position and bounce across the hands of thousands crowded at the now rock concert. No, its not weakness, but the constant sensation, or perhaps reminder, that i belong to everyone else. Theirs to watch, to welcome, to whisper, to harrass. Their to touch, to shove, to fondle, to fight. Theirs to call chiquita, amorcita, mona, nena. And theirs to have, to hold, to know. In a week and a half i morph from one object to the next: a memory, a roof, a notch on a belt buckle, a miror, a love scene from a 1920s flick where no matter how cold hearted i inevitably wilt into the arms of my savior, a philosophy article to be digested and reintepreted, a new experience. So i decided to probe said weakness, take a scaple to its pulsing limb, peel its layers like string cheese, letting each one dangle alone and vulnerable before its consumed. Ahh, this piece is burnt, a flavor of lingering tobacco on a dive bars upholstered seats. This one spoiled, for it sat too long in the sun. Mmm, this section tender and young, fresh enough to be picked but lacking in profundity like a cheap wine. Part by part i tear and swallow, noting where the weakness stikes my pallate, sound humming off my teeth, my molars sing baratone. And the weakness twangs and wanes in achord and it strips itself bear until the curtain rises and it stands, knock-kneed and naked on that broadway theater stage. Lights hit, front and center, and the audience gasps in unison as all sensitivity, weakness, vulnerability, and feel seeps out and files into the pores of the observers. Y? Bueno? Soy debil? Who isnt.

Dear Candice,

Disclaimer: this is a complilation of just the tips of my sensations on overdrive. make sure your computer has a working cooling system and that youre feeling plenty empathetic to my clichés. Also, pardon the lack of apopstrophies... i have yet to master a spanish keyboard.

The Boeing 1640 hums quite a different tune when ascending, particularly when the passengers have mentally prepared for arrival. Like the hook of any great top 40, it lead astounding well into the string of indiscernable spanish swear words the foul mouthed middle aged woman seated next to me spit without hesitation. A nice pick up to surprise the crowd, we felt our organs push down against our lower intestine as we lifted again. Just as well im sure. I hardly feel ready to disembark into my utter lack of preparation. I switched on my music, eyeing the flight attendant to make sure i wasnt spotted, i had already felt the heat of his beedy glare. We recircled and i felt my the weight of my thoughts push back against their cranial cage, like ideas on a tilt-o-whirl. Hard they not been so tightly buckled, i assure you theyde still be recircling at a cruising altitude, passing on that heafty responsibility of adjustment, acceptance, and acknowledgement to my most instinctive of readtions. I gues the most rational, or maybe responsible, or all questions to ask for the time being would be WHY? Ah, but it seems so redundant, and yet exceptional, even phonetically speaking. The wh rolling its eyes at me, as if i didnt know it was everso cliché to begin with. A cliché so typical it needs no voicing but i decide to tattoo it on my tongue. And then the y lingering at the end, nervous and self-consciously shuffling its feet. Oh the burden that the y carries, but only sometimes. For such an occasional letter it sure has a lot to uphold. Why to too many circumstances, so ill start with the most immediate, as always, and hope to answer or rationalize at the very leasy the more more groundbreaking at a later date. Why chronical, journal, detail, explain, evade, or simply annote what im doing? is it more for now or maybe later? to fill the time (and abounding amounts of it mind you), give it some purpose, or give off some aparent purpose to tohers? Maybe its to empyt out the rogue words clogging the ancient brainage drainage so that the original issues clogging the system have a fight chance of surfacing and passing through. Have i ever stuck my toe into that enigmatic pool of so-called writing, the kind that drips ink on concrete after i take a dip into its fridgid waters? or do i just present myself as such? Im afraid im simply too afraid, because we are beings accustomed to the idea-editing culture. When your utensil is topped with a cap instead of eraser, well, what comes out? at this point, nothing truly significant. But im sure it requires practice, as all challenging sports do, so i desperately scribble, quite cognizant of the chance that only the first 10th or this book will be filled, and the contents are just as precarious. But in the spirit of all good intentions, new years resolutions, or intellectual epiphanies, i write, and commit, and i title it Day 1.

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.