Thursday, July 12, 2012

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

51

we climbed down through some tall grass to climb over a fence that said "NO TRESPASSING" to get to the place in the picture. the last time I was here I was with the same person but it was several years ago, and it was nighttime in the summer and the stars were somehow gorgeously immune to the light pollution from the university

now it was daytime and very nice outside and it was perhaps a little more trespass-y to be here, since it seemed to have been developed a bit. there were important trucks in the distance and they had been doing things to the sand, and the bowl in the earth had changed but it was still lovely and large, too large to capture with my phone camera

we sat in the sand bowl in the earth and kicked sand and rocks down the steep slopes, creating small noises that were the only ones present besides the voices of the birds. I talked about how you could do a lot of fun things in the sand bowl: hide and seek, bikes, a big camping trip

I said "I've never successfully meditated"

he said "do you want to meditate?"

I said okay and we sat overlooking the sand bowl and he talked me through it, or explained to me the ways in which he was succeeding in meditating so that I might do the same. he said things about focusing on your breathing and then something about a feeling in the stomach that I couldn't find. that's why I've always felt like I'm bad at meditating: I don't feel air or oxygen spreading through my body like other successful meditators do. I know that in the past I have claimed to feel this moving energy but I have always been lying to myself in the hopes that the lie would turn true. I am missing out on a crucial sensation that, if felt, might act as a momentary salve. but even though I didn't feel that particular sensation, I did feel very good with my eyes closed

the birds were very vocal and I could sense that there were many of them and my pulse slowed and I thought "here is a group of animals that I greatly admire." I felt very positive that these birds were happy while being simultaneously aware that this perception existed inside of me, a member of a species that has very specific ideas about happiness. but I didn't pay this awareness much attention and it felt very nice to feel positive about something, and about something such as the state of mind of a group of birds

I opened my eyes and watched them, and he was watching them too. there were two hawks circling the sand bowl, above the smaller birds that were flying around in circles for apparently no other reason than to sing at interesting altitudes. there seemed to be no reason for their behavior other than enjoyment. there were a few small drops of water from the sky that never actually turned into a lot of rain

because my eyes had been closed for a while I had strange orbs floating in my vision. they would bounce around to adjust to wherever I was focusing, and as I watched the birds fly back and forth the phosphenes followed them, and they were synchronized without even knowing it. I thought about the niceness of unknowingly being synchronized with the phosphenes that exist in the eyes of a person you care about. I thought about how you could portray phosphenes in a film. I've been thinking about this for years

he said "try to hear the sounds without classifying them"
"try to look at the things without classifying them"

I said "when I was a kid I used to stare at my face in the mirror until my eyes would unfocus and my face would lose context and become something weird, until it was too scary to look at"

we decided to leave. right before the fence he found a raspberry bush with tiny raspberries. he ate two and I said "are you sure those are raspberries." he said yes. I ate one. I went to work covered in dirt and nobody said anything about it to my face




Tuesday, July 10, 2012

50

we were in brooklyn at a café. I was dating him for the twelfth month or so. we were eating breakfast before I was to embark on the bus ride home. it was a very hip café and everyone at the café was attractive and eating breakfast or drinking coffee. I just wanted water. I didn’t start drinking coffee until this year, 2012. I had sat in this café alone the day before, doing women’s studies homework while my boyfriend was at work. ryan gosling had walked by the café the day before and the baristas were talking about it and I felt annoyed that I hadn’t seen him, and I also felt annoyed by the fact that I felt annoyed that I hadn’t seen him.

I walked up to the counter and said “hi, can I just have a cup of water?” and the girl pointed to the bar behind me and said there was water there. I turned around and there was a stack of cups and a tall, skinny glass bottle with a long, thin pouring nozzle. I thought “this is a weird bottle of water. I guess this is a hip bottle of water.” I began to pour the water into the cup. it was taking an unusually long amount of time to fill the cup because the pouring nozzle was long and thin and not a lot of liquid could pass through it at once.

“these fucking hipsters,” I complained in my mind. “choosing a slightly more inconvenient and difficult water container just so it looks cool in their fucking hipster café. just so everyone can stare at me at the bar just a little bit longer, pouring this here water.”

I finished pouring my cup of water and went in for a big gulp.

it was liquid sugar.

I started laughing so that if anyone was watching and waiting for my reaction they would think I handled it well, but my initial instinct was to tell my boyfriend  “we have to leave immediately.” I ate my breakfast feeling deeply embarrassed and then I rode on a bus for four hours, with variants of "I'm not a city girl" and "the city is bad" looping in my thoughts, I'm sure.

Monday, July 9, 2012

49

I was trying to get some sleep because I had to work
and you were kissing my face anyway
and I half-woke to that
and was half-dreaming that we were in a courtroom
and in my mind I just kept thinking
“the judge, the judge, the judge, somewhere in my room”
“is this awkward for the judge”

as you kissed my mostly sleeping face
I tried to distinguish the niceness of it
from the reality of some poor bored judge
loitering in a pile of clothes probably
and waiting to decide some shit
and from the niceness I attempted to distinguish
even more sub-emotions that were on a limited spectrum called
"What Is Going On Here"
I was multitasking
it was weird

additionally, I had the very disorienting sensation
that I was the judge
I was both the judge and the most concerned unconscious witness
to the emotions of the judge
I'm not sure what it would mean for you to take that personally
don't tell me what it means
if you do take it personally




Friday, July 6, 2012

48

I am going to hire a person to split the rent with me
other responsibilities include reminding me daily that the world is not so profound
on sticky notes, on dry erase boards, in spoken words while we cook together
I am going to hire someone to remind me that dogs eat their own shit
and maybe after being reminded so many times,
I can finally relax
I can pour myself into the face
from which I have felt alienated
in the absence of this rented person

I am going to hire a person to be my favorite animal
we will feel many things
many of them will not be special
together we will solve for ways
to become less aware of our hands
if that seems to have been a problem in the past

together we will concede that we live in a world
of facts that coexist like strange birds on a sidewalk:
dogs eat their own shit, but also
love is a nice alternative to anything else

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

46

her: were you named after hillary clinton
me: no, i was named after a soap opera character in the seventies. my mom liked the name

*she puts the needle in my arm*

her: i wonder what soap opera it was. i used to watch general hospital in the eighties, but i don't know what soap operas were around in the seventies
me: it was probably 'days of our lives.' that show's been on forever
her: yeah, i used to watch that at my grandmother's house when i was a kid now that i think of it. she was ninety. that was definitely on in the seventies
me: yeah. i used to watch 'passions' in high school
her: i've never seen that one
me: it was pretty ridiculous. lots of supernatural stuff, and drama. always drama on those shows
her: yeah. and the people you always want to be together are never together
me: yepp
her: my favorite soap opera used to be (i forget the name of it now). have you heard of it? for so many years i wanted ___ to be with ___, and then they finally got together and got married. then, they divorced and she died. but that's life, you know?
me: yepp

*pulls needle out of arm*

*hands me plastic cup*

her: you have to pee in a cup. do you know where the bathroom is
me: yes

Monday, July 2, 2012

45

[draft]

a lady came through my line today
wearing the same perfume my mother wore on the boat
she ran her credit card through the machine and i instantly felt sea sick
for a kind of lost love, dense
in my throat
like i wanted to be thrown overboard
from a boat i do not occupy
but only so i can admire it
as it sails away

and for some reason when i smelled the woman
i had the distinct feeling
that it was early december
that a new weather was happening outside
that the old weather had disappeared graciously

i imagined the boat going in circles around me
i imagined feeling extremely good

Sunday, July 1, 2012

43

yes I am being treated for depression
and I woke up early because of the heat
it does not help to be naked
there are many windows and my skin feels like the thickest blanket of all
very much like a barrier to some sort of imaginary relief

I’m in a dress instead
I have been laying sloppily on my couch
like a pale octopus
it helps to not have bones on a hot day
they only hold you back
structure enables exertion
and that is a bad idea for a fourth of the year

for an entire season I will pretend I have no bones
and I will admit this on the disability application

“sorry, no bones”
“please send check asap”

and I will brag about being a small pile in a dress
and if I make love it will not be very good

I’ve been drinking a lot of water and reading this book
and when something makes me laugh
I reread it out loud and I laugh loudly into the big empty room
and the dress is up around my waist
my underwear have flowers on them and they are old and unsexy

and when something in the book makes me feel good
it is because it resonates with parts of me that feel bad
and I feel good via feeling like someone else has felt something
resembling that badness
and I reread it out loud and
I do it again
until my bones reconstitute
quietly

I drove to the drug store today to pick up three orange tubes
I have had a crush on the pharmacist for two years
I want to be her friend mostly
I want to hang out with her today but she is working
I want to hang out with her today but she is working in a long white coat
I wonder if she needs a drink
I wonder if she ever puts her hair up
she is less like a crush and more like a consistent person in my life

this is the dress I wore to graduation

I took the long way home from the pharmacy
there is a flower memorial by the side of the highway
where dan last existed in a physical realm
the flowers look new and I feel something
I remember a voicemail
and shaking
lots of shaking at the kitchen table
a solid month of shaking, really

on the drive home I thought
“too intelligent to be treated for depression”
“too awake to be treated for depression”
“I hate this very mentality”
“as if I have arrived at a truth”
“and yet here it is”

I often disagree with and hate an idea while I believe it
it seems like these ideas have bones
I practice carving away at them
I practice dismantling both the idea and its terrible bones
how does a thing like that evolve to have bones
it seems like ideas acquire bones when they exist unchecked
for long amounts of time
I am desperately trying now to identify ideas
that don't deserve bones later
it seems like the bones remain even after the idea dies
and the spirit of the idea can resurrect around the bones
every so often

the bones make it possible to feel again
ideas I worked so hard to dismantle 

it is nice to have a partner in the summer if only for the naps
in high school I sculpted my ideas of love
from the naps and the half hearted sex
that followed the tiring of selves 

we would swim or walk and go back to my bed
the sun would get inside of us and render us useless except to each other 
sometimes we would tire ourselves in the bed and then go to bed
because we were tired from being silly in the bed

we were frequently horizontal
and we would doze at 4
and wake into a cooler evening