ANAPHORA!!!

i like it in brazilian
i like it in french
i like it english
i like it hyphy
i like it in korean
and i like it in japanese
i like it in silence
and i like it with hand claps
i like it in spanish
with a brass section
i like it without words
i like it with words only
i like it messy

My Friend Without a Name

He had told himself a while back that this problem would resolve itself. That was at least eight years ago. It hadn't. He knew that it was eight years and not five or six or seven years, because that was the year he had found a gray hair and solemnly extracted it from it's hold out above his right eye the way old ladies pull out weeds. That was also the same year his white ford sedan got totaled on the interstate, and the year his older sister graduated from law school. His mom had died that year. His dad had been dead for fifteen. It was the year he moved into his first real apartment and the year he finally found a job, acquired a taste for whiskey, and learned how to play poker. It was the year he had turned twenty-four. He was thirty-two now. Or at least he should be.
He had never been a fan of time. Calculating it. Pondering it. When he was younger, much younger--he was blond at this point, he remembered because he liked to stare at the sun through his hair and it would glint as though passing through dandelion puff balls--he suffered from the shakes. The shakes were what his mom called his hypoglycemic episodes. It was something that he would eventually grow out of when he was done growing, but at that time, any day was the perfect day to progress through the shakes. First he was hungry, but sometimes he wouldn't notice at all until he was also banging his fists on the wooden door of his older's sister's room or holding himself tightly as he rolled on his bed, banging his head every so often against the bedside table his dad had made before he was born and which got put in his room because his mom couldn't bare to keep it in the living room but he couldn't bare to see her throw away something of his father's.
Usually at this point, the banging noise emanating from his room would sound off an alarm, and his mother would be rushing up the stairs with a glass of orange juice to extinguish the shakes. Sometimes, though, no one heard him. And alone in his room the shakes would progress to the literal shakes. His heart rate would vibrate in his chest like steam off a tea kettle. He forgot the feeling of his wrists and the backs of his legs on his blue flannel sheets. Vision almost failed, not sure of what to look at, not sure anymore on how to focus. The poster above his dresser, a magic eye that was supposed to turn into a crescent moon, would instead only evaporate.
It wasn't just a physical attribute, though. If that was all that it was, the rocking and the yelling, it would have been a funny quirk. An interesting, though easily fixed, pathology. It wouldn't be as terrifying as he still remembers it. The Shakes. Not the shakes.
No one thought could stay in focus for very long when he was in the final stages of the shakes. But while it was there, he examined the thought from every angle. Rarely did he remember what he had thought about during these times, but he knew that they were very smart things to be thinking. Occasionally he would get out of the shakes feeling energized. Usually the shakes left him in a morbid mood that he wouldn't be able to shake for the rest of the day.
He still remembers playing in a blow up pool outside his house at midday when the shakes descended like an unapologetic, apocalyptic god. He tried very hard, squeezing the sides of the pool with his skinny white arms, to lift himself out and onto the grass where he could army crawl to the porch and maybe to the back door, where he might get his mother's attention through the screen door. But he kept sliding back down, trapped in a polyethylene bubble filled up with summer shimmering blue water and a panicked child with a sunburn forming on the tip of his nose and dilated pupils pushing the hazel out of his eyes.
In the unknown moments he spent sitting upright, he came to a conclusion to nothing in particular: Time was always happening but nobody knew what it meant and he'd been alive for times that he didn't remember and the pictures in his house of him he had no idea that was who he was but it looked like him but it couldn't have been him and there was a time when he had known his father but then his father had died and he no longer existed but his memories of him still did and if he was going to die like his father had maybe it would be best to die now and not add to the confusion of tricking people into thinking you're alive when you're really dead or be alive when you should be dead or why does it take forever to die anyway? why do you have to live an entire life before it's over. what if it were to die now. what would happen then? i don't want to die i don't want to die but that's all there is there will be one day when i'm dead and then there will be more time but i won't really be a part of it i'll just be in memories but i'll be dead and what is being dead? like sleeping only not because you won't dream? and there could be a heaven but no, unlikey. mom says that when you die they bury you. dad may be in heaven but he's probably just dead. why?

Eventually he was saved from the pool, his mom had gotten soaked when she had pulled him out and almost choked him trying to pour the orange juice down his non-compliant throat. But he never got over that thought.
One day, when he was twenty-four, he lost the ability to hide from that thought. Now he was clinically depressed, and he had been given something for it. But he stopped refilling his prescriptions after a while. He didn't think it was worth the $25 a month to take something that made you feel better but couldn't make you forget what had made you feel bad in the first place.

and... okay?

Today I'm sad because I think it's more enjoyable to be sad than to be happy. Or at least it's more realistic. I'm not capable of denial. I'm hardly capable of white lying and ego driving. I don't think that latter phrase actually exists, but if it did, it would mean: bragging. I'm a rhetoric minor/major, I should be able to establish whatever kind of phrases I like.

Also, it's kind of funny to hover over yourself when your life gets a little ridiculous, though I suppose it has limitations. If I were truly sad, I wouldn't find summer boyfriend calls lasting greater than one hour ironic, for reasons I can't explain. (I'm probably not using ironic correctly here, dammit all to ice cream...) I wouldn't find a 4/15 on a problem set I finished in class just. I'd be horrified.

(in-text appendix: i'm listening to iron & wine and it's making me even sadder. who sings songs this slowly?)

Even spilling concentrated sodium bicarbonate on my hands and freaking out as it began to tingle looks funny if you remove yourself from you. (It's only baking soda and water, hindsight 20/20 tells you. and then you giggle).

Not being able to sleep for more than 7 hours anymore, when 8 hours used to never be enough, is taxing, but exciting. Did something serious happen to my metabolism?

My hair is falling out, my nails are breaking, and I can no longer see quite as clearly as I used to, when I could identify people across the quad (now I can't tell the differences between people I know even if they're 50 meters away.

This is sad. This is so sad. But it's funny in that I'm not crying. I'm not throwing a hissy fit. True, I have actively sabotaged my legs in such a way as to cause my body to slam against doors and jar my stubbornly stiff shoulder--just to teach it a lesson.

I couldn't tell you why I find sadness amusing. Maybe because it's so insignificant. Yes. I can't recall one good thing I've done all weekend (except throw an amazing party for a friend... that should have gotten me karma points, right?) Wrong, but laughing at myself is nearly as funny. I've laughed more today than I usually do. I wonder why? Potentially I'm lying to myself. Potentially I'm laughing to cover up crying. Probably not though. I'm not a crier. And that's not denial.

When I cry, I stop caring; I get over it.
But you shouldn't stop caring about life.
Hmmm... what to do what to do?

This really has no point.

Not life, really. Life has a point if you can make one up.

This blog really serves no purpose. But they're not supposed to, really.

I miss reading newspapers.

And yea, that's about it.

Snob Foolery

He was a snob. What’s a snob? Someone who lives in a box, or in his case, a three story house with shutter boards framing every window like bangs, isolated from the diverse experiences of what the majority of people believe is the real world. But the snob would not know this, never know this, through its own fault and perhaps the way other people treat such a snob. After you see someone hit a psychotic break, there’s not much reason… and just for fun, even if you tried, the snob is a master of denial. The world doesn’t revolve around people who understand it.

Venus Supremus

The distance between the moon and Venus is always important to me. Some nights Venus is so close it looks like a belly button piercing. Sometimes it’s far away, and hides under the horizon. Of course, no matter how they look in the sky, they’ll always be trillions of miles away from each other—or some other inconceivably large number that will make absolutely no sense when rattled off to a lay person just because they’re being guided around the Adler Planetarium. Sometimes the moon will swell, threatening and large, bruised he same shade of orange as Halloween pumpkins; a visual trick caused by the diffraction of the molecules that make up air. Whenever the moon decides to expand, it eclipses Venus, and no matter how hard one tries, no one can find her. Or maybe that’s due to the sense of apocalypse one feels, wondering why now, the moon, small like a dime and shiny like polished platinum, is now glaring red and dangerously close to the horizon line. Can the moon crash into the earth? It should be possible, you assume, but you don’t really know. No one else you walk past seems to worry about it like you do, so maybe you’re just going crazy. Maybe the moon is just jealous. Maybe it was tired of always looking exactly the same, appearing in the same general place, night after night. Yea sure, it wanes, it waxes, but after a while, even ancient peoples understood its behavior so completely they were setting up mathematical equations to find out when it would eclipse the sun, another example of contemptuous behavior.
But Venus. Now there’s a little more surprise. It’s 22 times bigger than the moon, but from the vantage point of earth it’s a speck; a bright speck, the brightest speck in the sky. But it’s still just a little dot. Even though it’s a planet, almost the size of earth, it still carries a common name around with it: the evening star.

Kodachromatic

I'm not quite sure why I'm so sad today. Sometimes there's a clear source. But today it diffused so slow I couldn't calculate it. I woke up late. That could have been it. Days seem wasted when you leave your bed as the sun's already starting to make it's way back below the horizon.

Sundays are lonely days anyway. Even as a child, the seventh day was a day of rest. Not for me. Silly rules didn't apply to my secular lifestyle. But I didn't operate in a vacuum. So Sundays were dull; no play dates or anything.

Now with classes, Sundays are spent in observance of the coming week's homework. A brief tour in the library demonstrated this phenomena. Students crammed into work spaces. I myself went wanting for a computer to print out 32 informative pages of stem cell knowledge. I had to continue walking up the hill, the thin layer of lotion I had glossed over my limbs now trapping in the sweat waiting to pour downwards. Comfortable in the shade, the climb was devoid of trees. And along the way I saw no one I knew.

Or perhaps it was looking through my phone, noticing songs I had written down from a month ago, right out of the middle of summer. There had been the comfort of consistencies. I knew who to call. I knew what to do (even if what to do was simply do nothing). I knew how to make one chore last an entire day. I knew that it would always be warm; even if it was cold, it was still pleasant enough to swim. I knew that tomorrow morning I would wake up, and go through these processes all again. And in that I was happy. Actually, happier than I'd ever been. If mental homeostasis was possible, my summer produced it.

My desk has transported junk to me. A broken clock. Recently prescribed behind the counter drugs. A discovered pen, sitting in one of father's favorite hiding spots. Testaments to the way life could be. I knew, even at it's beginning, it wouldn't last. Expectant of heartbreak, I stumbled into sadness. Harder to fight. I still have a few photos. But I always avoid looking at them, even if I did tape them to my desk a week ago.

Freckles

As a child I had always been fascinated by freckles. The discoloration that many befreckled people detested, I wanted more than anything. It seemed that the more striking the freckles, the more attractive a person could potentially be. In grade school there was one girl who was as white as powdered sugar, but who had the deepest brown dots splattered across her face with the most divine inexactness. And she was by far, the cutest girl on the playground, everyday. Sunny or overcast, raining or snowing, she persistently appeared jovial due to her multiple marks of distinction. She complained. Any mention of them and she'd go off on a rant, and I would counter. Like straight haired girls who want curls, and frizzy haired girls who want control over their locks, we fought about birthmarks. And I wanted some.

But I had none. Well, not entirely true--I had none on my face. I had three dots on my body. One was high up on my right thigh, only visible if I was wearing a swimming suit, or if I hiked my shorts up, practically revealing my day of the week underwear to anyone who cared to know that yes, I did have at least one freckle. The other two were in a conspicuous location, symmetrically placed on my right and left hands, near my thin wrists.

I used to spend my bored minutes in class trying to align them, seeing how I might have placed my hands in vivo so that the one birthmark on my left hand, darker in appearance, could have rubbed off on my right hand. The positioning was relatively awkward, almost as if I was in shackles, and I found it hard to believe I would have maintained that position for any long stretch of time, never mind 9 months.

My circular face, devoid at this point from any imperfections, was far less interesting. There was not one spot on my face. Except maybe in my eye. Now and then people show surprise that there is a dark spot to the right of my right pupil. But that was not a freckle in the conventional sense, so I did not care (also my dad had a dot in his eye, and he had, despite the need for glasses, no irregular seeing problems). I was vocally upset to anyone who would listen, that my older sister had gotten what my mom gushed over--a beauty mark. In the perfect location for a beauty mark, on the right side of her face, near the edge of her cheek bone ridge. She could have been a model. I, however, had no distinguishing features except long lanky arms and a bushel full of hair that nobody, not even my own mother, knew how to control.

Fever Walking and Other Peculiar Sports

I had deduced over the years that something vital was missing from my life. It was as if there had been something on my mind that I had forgotten for the last two years, but was sure I'd remember it--if I thought just a little harder. But no amount of time staring off into space, laying in bed, eyes pacing the imperceivable ceiling of a dark room, would allow me closure. Something remained unfinished. But what it was, I couldn't tell you.
It was sometime in June when I finally slipped out of my house, around 7, feeling an abundance of energy surging through my hands and feet. The air was unseasonally chilled-the weatherman, a rather rotund character unfit for the morning news, had miscalculated the weekly hi and lows so poorly that I couldn't help but think he wanted to get fired. That seemed like a favorable decision, especially if it is true that cameras add 10 pounds to any figure. Still, in spite of the weather, I was wearing a t-shirt with some banal design, and denim short-shorts. I would likely freeze before I arrived at the bar I had suddenly felt compelled to go too. Usually I can't stand being frozen to the point of developing goosebumps-my skin had always been smooth, protruding bumps pushing out tiny bleached hairs affected any attractiveness to my arms-but tonight was different. I felt on fire-not feverish, but supercharged. I hadn't felt this rush since I was a teenager, hopping into a car that wasn't mine and speeding away after bedtime under headlamps that ticked off the distance travelled in a pointless journey around the neighborhood. But a lot of things had changed in the interim between sixteen year old and adult. My mind wandered into a heart numbing reverie, too reflectant on the way I used to be, mistake-riddled, but oh so charmingly innocent, smiling, always showing perfect teeth.
So reflectant that I completely missed the street I should have turned right on. I stopped underneath a street lamp completing a trinity with an overflowing garbage can and a graffitied newspaper box. Or would it be vendor? That didn't matter much. I slipped my phone out from my front jean pocket, left hand twirling it like a small, rectangular baton until it faced upwards. It was ten. Unsure of how I had spent the last three hours walking but not remembering any of it, I proceeded to believe that it must not really be ten at all-though the sun had set and across the way a group of kids were walking hurriedly up the street, one of them yelling this and that about a curfew. Which was at 10. I strained my eyes to the nearest street sign: Davidson. I was clearly more than an hours walk away from my apartment, I was an expenive cab ride away from my home. To my left were a series of white apartment building, impeccable two story dwellings with a grandeur not spared even on their stoops. Spiraling columns and gothic address letterings cut into limestone blocks clued me into the precise location of the neighboorhood I had dream walked into and was now surrounded by. Somewhere around here one would start finding the high end retail stores and the expensive restaurants that signified the wealth of it's occupants.
I put my cell phone back into my jeans, reluctant to call any one of the people who had cars and could pick me up. My skin still felt aflame, itching almost for me to do something, but having no idea what that something was. I sat down on the steps of 1128 and waited for myself to make a decision. It took sometime, and I found that my eyes had a peculiar way of finding there way to the same staring spot-the alley way behind a Starbucks up the street. Something about the multiple wires that hung above a green dumpster pushed up against a pale brick wall seemed so iconic in my mind that I couldn't look away.
My phone vibrated. I got excited, like a Pavlov dog hearing a bell. Was this a text? I opened my phone to find that it was just an email. A 94-point wine for only $7.99! 3 days only!, it yelled, a little too desperate for my prolonged interest. I don't even know why I sign up for those things. I put the phone back, miffed that no one I actually knew was trying to communicate with me, and went back to analyzing the alley way across the street. It was then that the door elevated behind me starting making the unmistakable noise of locks being unlocked. My instincts told me I should move to avoid any social taboos about using a strangers property as a resting place, but I felt no motivation to fly off the stairs. I was too calm, as if all the energy I had felt earlier was fleeing, leaving me lifeless in the middle of midtown.
Somebody began walking down the steps. I turned my head softly to the left making sure no one would stumble over me. A man wearing a yellow shirt and placing his keys back into his pocket clearly noticed me and changed his pathway as to not collide with me. As he passed he nodded and said, "hey", the way people do when they feel like uncomfortably greeting another human being; a coworker in the bathroom or an ex in an elevator. He passed on down to the street, falling almost with a type of youthful fluidity. Deja vu stirred in me.
"Hey," I shouted a bit, it echoed unknowingly off the brick wall across the street. He turned around to look at me, startled. I realized that my yelp might have sounded too acosting, so I repeated hey again, this time softer so that it didn't fling across the street and down that alley to who knows where. "Do you know me?" He took a couple steps back to where I was still sitting, squinting slightly. "No," he said after a pause, hesitantly as if he had answered wrong. "I don't think so. Should I know you?"
I thought about that for a while, recognizing that I was inconveniencing him by really not knowing him and just being a dumb stranger breaking the laws of strangerdom. "No. I guess not." He laughed. Usually laughter calms me, takes everything and dumps it out as not important enough to worry about. But his laugh put me on edge. The fever came back and I was suddenly on my feet, walking down to stand next to him, underneath a street light, a garbage can, and a newspaper dispenser. Or box.
"I feel like I know you..." I felt crazed and I couldn't control it, even though I wish I might, because I was scaring him. His smile evaporated and he shrugged, "maybe..."
"How old are you?" here hoping we were roughly the same age and therefore might have a greater chance running into each other doing age appropriate things.
"26?"
"Where did you grow up?" here hoping that we had actually grown up together
"Detroit"
"What's your name?" here praying that he was a second cousin or someone famous, to account for me feeling oddly connected to somebody I didn't know.
"Ian MacAlaster".
Dammit, I realized that there was nothing obvious about him which would explain this. I wasn't attracted to him either, and I certaintly wasn't drunk, two things that usually make me approach individuals for no good reason. I was 24, I grew up definitely not in Detroit ( I loathed Michigan and the incompetense of drivers with cars displaying the states license plate), and I was not, in any way, related to any scots.
"Whats your name?" I rambled it off to him, thinking not of my name but of why I felt compelled to yell after a random man. "I'm sorry," I laughed a little bit, faked of course, but I didn't want to seem crazed. "I just had this weird feeling that I knew you. Deja vu, you know?" he nodded knowingly, still eyeing me a bit suspiciously. "I've had the weirdest night. I started walking to a bar from my aparment over on the west side of lake ave, but I spaced out and kept walking for like, three hours."
"What bar were you walking to?"
"Some kitschy 50s place. I don't know why, either. I wasn't going there with any of my friends."
He nodded as if that happened to him all the time. "Come on, you can follow me. I am heading over to a bar, not a "kitschy 50s" place" he pantomimed quotation marks in the air, fascinated by my description of what seemed to be a below par bar, "and Im meeting a couple of friends. Some of who live on the west side. They could probably drive you home." That seemed, almost, too nice, to the point of uncomfortability. Still, I had to know why I had arrived out here, outside his house, with an implacable feeling I'd been here before. "Are you sure?" I asked as we took off down the street. "Yea, no problem. I'm usually not this nice to people I don't know, but you don't seem harmful."
I took that as a compliment as I followed him through the streets of the part of town I rarely frequented to a bar I'd never been to. But the fever relaxed a bit, and I felt eased, almost content.

love and like synonyms

Attachment can be a dangerous thing. It's near impossible to completely trust anyone, so, one asks, why even try? If humans were pre-programmed, non-auto automatons, trust would be easy because one would be able to easily predict others thoughts and actions. There would be no unforeseeable behavior that causes people to recoil into reassessment over how much they really know about a cultivated relationship. But yet people do trust other people, allowing people to love other people. Trust is probably the single most important part of any and all relationships. Can I trust my parents to feed me? Can I trust my girlfriend to tell me exactly what she wants from me? Can I firmly believe that Spot the family dog will no longer defecate in the living room because we had him properly trained?

Without trust acting as a mindful restraint, the selfishness inherent in all humans lashes out. There ceases to be any consideration for other people, having been dropped into the harsh terrain of uncertainty, a human is conditioned to fight solely for it's survival: I will get what I deserve, myself, everyone else beware. Existing in an environment devoid of love is to be exposed to all the troubling thoughts that circulate through any sane persons mind without any sort of protection. A thunderstorm is just a thunderstorm to a child laying in it's parent's bed. But a thunderstorm to a person with no one on which to rely could be a host of things, all of which are apocalyptic in scale and horror.
That's why taking the time to truly know a person before becoming too involved is crucial. Ideally this can be accomplished by the brain in a matter of moments. The ability to read people is a gift that can be corruptible (see stereotyping, jane austen's pride & prejudice, your interaction with goth teenagers). But sometimes our brains read wrong. If you're an optimist, a romantic, you look always for the best parts of people, but certain personalities portray themselves innaccurately. In these cases, "I love you", a short verbal phrase covering a deep emotional attachment, is wasted on someone little better than a 68% air-filled Twinkie, a husk of a very real person you've conjectured in your mind and have now projected on a living, breathing thing. Yet still a thing who could never love you back satisfactorily, pushing you off the stable grounds of selfless saneness.
Which is why I am thankful for the people in my life now, who find exactly the right words I want to hear without any pressuring on my part. Who hold onto you exactly when you're ready to leave, to book it, to run away because you've lost hope in them.
Who, thank god, care about me more than I can care about myself, when selfishness and insanity have me delving into depression.
Whom I love, more than I could say in words, or in person, or through a telephone.
It may not be love. But it's trust that makes my heart go numb when it realizes, in it's sanguined chamber, that for once in it's life it can be passionate and not worry about getting carried away. Knowing that there's little it could make me say or do that would turn one away.
That's love. And a dash of respect to keep me interested, and caring about you so the relationship is symmetrical.
It's love. Not being fearful of doing the wrong thing, knowing you'll always care.
It's love. A slow pause before filling a conversation with everything, knowing it won't overload you.
It's love. A hug after hyperventilating from a panic attack caused by lifes uncertainties, suddenly filled with the certainty that you exist.
It's love. Trust me.

Nothing Doing

"I'm not weak am I?"

I was debating whether or not I should ask while we drove around silently. I didn't like being the passenger of a car being driven by someone who wasn't very happy with me at the moment--someone whom I had recently let down, someone who I should've done better by. We had started driving some forty minutes ago, and after rambling for a while we just fell into silence as the car hummed along the highway. I pondered whether or not I'd start crying. I felt awful. I felt like I had been gutted then left to die on a street in an abandoned city. But I didn't feel emotional--there wasn't anything to push me into tears. I could've attempted it anyway, but it wouldn't have been easy. Maybe I was dehydrated. I took my eyes off the road and pulled down the visor and stuck my tongue out. It looked pretty pale underneath the flourescent lights guarding the highway. The driver looked at me. I didn't look back at her.

I know you're angry at me. Listen--I wish I made better choices too. I'd like to say it's partly you're fault. Not that you'll accept blame. It's hard to accept you're not perfect; you're given one life and it's like you fuck up every fifteen minutes. Just don't make the same mistake twice, they say, but you'll always make similar mistakes for the rest of your life because you're just a little crazy and everybody knows it. Or they would know it, if they knew you. But no one cares about you. No one cares about me. Because everyone has their own little problems that slowly gnaw them away to either acceptable madness or past that and then they die, kill themselves or put themselves in situations they can't survive. Okay, but enough philosophy.

I wish I made better choices. I don't know why you made me think that you can find happiness in other people. You can't. When you can individually overcome the things in yourself and in life that bother you most, that's when you'll be happy. But that's hard to do. Look at me. My life hasn't even been that hard. Do I wish I had been loved more as a child? Yes. Do I think it's odd that every four or five years, starting at age 8, I find myself in these moods that can't be calmed by logic or counseling? That I go out and do crazy, crazy shit to try and compensate for these impulsive feelings that keep pushing against my brainstem, controlling me as I could never control myself.

It's death. You know that. I'm scared. And I still have a long time left. But it's the waiting I can't stand. I think that's what drives those moods. When nothings doing for a while and you realize that you can't count on anyone to care about you, that your life is so dull as dishwasher unmemorable, that you might as well end it. What do I dream about? I dream about adventures. I dream about doing things. I dream about saving lives. I dream about falling in love. Then I wake up. And it's this monotone existence that makes me speed on a crowded highway, sled down high inclined, tree covered hills, and lie in bed all day. When you cry when you wake up in the morning because you realize that you're waking into reality, that's when you know it's time.

But that's entirely not the point. We didn't start driving so we could talk about the extreme. I won't ever kill myself--intentionally. I know I could eat better, I could take better care of my health, I could actually exercise for once. Decision making. And I suck at it. I know. I'm sorry. Maybe if I had chosen a better friend... No. Let's not go there.

I love you okay? I want you to love me too-but unconditionally. And I want us to go on adventures. And I want to be happy. For once. Please. Help.

"Can we go home now?"

I got off at the next exit, turned on the radio. I didn't know what my preset station 4 was playing, but I was too comatose to change it. In the dark this place kind of felt like home. I got back on the highway going north. Tears started forming on the surface of my eyes. I didn't care. The road was empty. So was my car.

For the Thousandth Time, A Dress Rehearsal

How tangible is reality as opposed to the imagined thoughts passing through working memory in the moments before sleep? If I think of kissing you a thousand times is it any less real than never kissing you, waiting, watching, knowing full well that nothing more than this may ever happen at all? Why is it that when a kiss transpires through the waking world it can never compare with the real thing? Maybe there's a breakdown in the way I'm hardwired--the pleasure pathway's broken from excessive dreaming. Or maybe the imagines in my head are more true to the way I feel about you than anything we could ever really accomplish in at least this reality. How tangible indeed.


Explanation: I think a lot. I think that ruins things, because whenever something happens, no matter how important, earth-shaking, or monumentous, it's already been carefully crafted in imagination.

Scaring Boys

"I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world
I'd go the whole wide world just to find her"¹

1R3G4RD13$
begin entry here

When I was in sixth grade I came to school with my hair... down. You could call it that. That's how white people refer to their hair when it isn't tied back with a ponytail holder. It was more a misshapen blob of healthy tendrils that looked something like this²:

I was understandably hesitant to go to school with my hair fizzing all over the place, but a few girl friends were relentless on the topic. So I thought, maybe just once, near the end of the school year, I'll show up without taming it, give them a taste of au natural.

My girl friends, indeed, were excited. African hair is exotic. It was many things that their hair would never be.

My guy friends, however, were shocked.

I believe one kid actually ran away from me. 12 year old boys are not people I like.

This began a long tradition of me scaring (or scarring) boys.

Needless to say, I never went back to school with my hair down/up/in an afro. Recently I cut most of my hair off. And then I straightened it 'til my head scabbed. And now, despite the Xtreme dandruff, I look professional, put together, daresay attractive.

But I still miss my crazy hair. I just wish I lived in a society that didn't put so much emphasis on hair. Currently I'm waiting for my head to heal so I can dye my hair red. Red heads have more sex. I thought I should get on that before I turn 20. Or not. Maybe I'll just let my hair grow out and continue to scare boys.

1. Song lyrics from Wreckless Eric
2. My little sister has more hair, and more courage, than I.