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.