Oooh, Girl

I am in trou-ble.

It hot last night at the movie show

I haven't worn white since my wedding.

I want to marry Eugene Hutz and spend the rest of my life listening to his broken English.

And as the boy scouts learn to read between the lines
The silver rabbits hop between their fathers' lies
And boy scouts ask "Where? Where do they go?"
They go to the country that they only know

Today is a good fucking day.

It's True

I've tried to be dutiful to the lovers we could have been.

It sure does break my heart to say this

But I think it's time to head South.

This is how I used to feel. And I cannot decide the fact that I no longer feel like this is empowering or doubly heartbreaking.


Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

Thank you, W.H. Auden

Actual Text Message Exchange With My Little Sister That I Do Not Recall

3:14 AM (sister): FMOSS 3*, get it?
3:14 AM (moi): Yes!! Fmoss 3*! Ohh, Kevin.
3:15 AM (sister): YES!!!!!




*For those of you who are unschooled and less nerdy than the sisters Long, this is a Daria reference. From the episode where they take a field trip to an epic shopping center and the football player Kevin attempts to remember their parking location by making a word out of "f" "moss" and "3." Fmoss 3. Of course. Ahem.

Just So You Know

This is the face I will make behind your back when you bring in cherry chip cupcakes to the office. Judas!

Things You Should Know About Me

When I was 12, I wrote a very harrowing and dramatic short story about a redheaded young woman named Chloe who fell in love with an African man named Bala. This short story was largely inspired by Christopher Pike's "Spellbound."

Seriously, Guys?

This is what you leave your wife for? I just..look. My heart is healing and my gait is strong. BUT COME ON.

A Warm Welcome

Jaw bone, it's good to see you again.

Just So You Know

This is my mother's face.

Just So You Know

This is the series of faces I make when you sext (yes, I said it) me that you want to dehumanize me.

Clearly, sir, you have never worked in publishing.

Just So You Know

Wellbutrin is a hell of a drug. I feel like I'm fucking IN LOVE. With MYSELF. Look at the face! Look at the stupor of serenity! Give me a puddle to jump in!

give it to me easy

You know those kinds of days where the air is really clean-feeling and you step outside and think that the ensuing day might end up being wonderful or a tiny bit dangerous or just...epic? Like, you have your best shoes on and your hair looks good and it's go time.

Man! I kind of miss that. Never knowing if you are going to meet someone or have an adventure.

Maybe those days are just gone. It's this weather. It's just warm enough to keep me from shivering, but not hot enough to sweat. Once I break a sweat, the spell will be broken. Until them, I'll be dreaming of all of you.

never for money, always for love

I heard birds this morning and it was so oddly nice. I feel buoyant today, and mildly sad. I'm craving the late 90s. I want to rock out in my Corsica with friends from high school and sleep in a twin bed in that decrepit farmhouse I grew up in and all of it.

was it love or fear of the cold?

I soaked my feet in a puddle outside my apartment today and the air smelled crispy, kind of like celery but not as spicy. Good things are coming, but they are are coming slow. I get jealous a lot lately. I want a baby and a man and to live in Brazil and to have clothes that my cats haven't peed on. I sure do want a lot, for someone who has so much.

And my boobs are getting sad because I'm losing weight. I'll miss you, friends.

don't tell me anything at all

Choosing to stand and deliver is hard. And scary. I could have left or moved into my parent's attic or just disappeared. But I stayed and built a new life, got another job. I made new traditions. And sometimes I am fucking sad, and I don't wash my hair and yeah, my boots are beat to shit. But I have chosen to stand and deliver. With each month, the debt recedes and my life gets a little more real. I'm still the best. My will will launch a thousand ships, still and yet. I will take what's mine, in my own time.

like a ship at ocean, like a ship at sea

I know how most things will end, even if I am not sure how they will begin.

Just So You Know

My heart is broken and I am doing the best that I can.

Just So You Know

I don't know what you look like anymore.

Also? My purse smelled like my grammy's house last night and I thought maybe I was dying.

These Days

I don't much feel like a real person. I fall through the days, is all.

Things About You

There is this thing called the Johari Window. I am both ashamed and proud to say that the Johari Window is one of the very few things I remember clearly from college. It was created in 1955 by two social scientists as a way to explain interpersonal interactions to the people in them.

The Johari Window, like most windows, has four panes. They have fancyish names for the panes, but this is my breakdown:

Panel #1 - Things you know about yourself that everyone else knows, too.
Panel #2 - Things that you know about yourself that no one else knows.
Panel #3 - Things about you that you don't know about yourself, but that everyone else knows.
Panel #4 - Things about you that no one knows - not you, not anyone else.

Your Johari window evolves over time and depending on the person you are facing. It's my personal opinion that we have a Johari window for every person in our lives, from the most insignificant on up.

I love this construct. I adore it, and I think about it all the time. All of our mysteries laid out in four quadrants - it seems not only manageable but...rational. This is what we come down to. You have four boxes. The things in them - some of it is up to you, some of it you were born with, and most of it was inflicted on you like a wound. But there it is!

It's that fourth pane, though, that plagues me. Things about me that no one knows. I am sorrowful for these things.

I Crack Myself Up

So I was going through some very old e-mails today and I found one that I sent to my (now) ex-husband:


Hey handsome. I just wanted to let you know that I am here in Madrid
safely. It is a huge, busy city full of grafiti. Pretty awesome. I
am a little intimidated, but trying to mask it. I just paid 7 dollars
for a cup of coffee, too. Tried not to freak. Failed. Also had to
have Coca Light out of mini bar, as I was on the brink of death. Cold/
sinus infection/SARS almost gone. Camel toe count: 1, but a very
solid 1. Will keep track for you. Love you and miss you desperately
already.


Love,

A. Bug


Seriously, how funny am I? I am so funny I can barely stand it. It is worth nothing that in all the e-mails we exchanged while I was in Europe, he never said "love" once. That should bother me, right, but mostly I am just smiling.

The Heavy Dream

When I was a little girl, I had this dream I called the Heavy Dream. It came a lot, mostly in the middle of the night. I could hear it crawl in my room - a very crackly sound - and my heart would start to beat really, really fast. Then I would feel the heavy dream climb on top of me and it was this enormous invisible weigh that I (for some reason) associated with Disney films. Mostly Cinderella and Snow White. What I felt was extreme panic, but I guess I probably didn't have the word for that then. I was frantic and scared. And pinned. The Heavy Dream was exhausting and I dreaded it.

It wasn't until I started seeing a therapist that I realized the Heavy Dream was actually a panic attack and that I had been having them since..well, since I was a self-aware being. I still get them every once in a while. Sometimes at night, when the sound of my hair on my pillow makes me want to shave my goddamn head and burn down the entire building and maybe all the buildings. Sometimes, during the day at my desk, when music I love makes me feel disjointed and cracked out and things will never, ever be quiet again ever in the history of ever.

I am getting better at avoiding them. Good sleep, not too much caffeine, whole foods, taking those crazy pills on time. Even though I am a grown up and I know better, the Heavy Dream still scares me. I still dread it.

Against My Better Judgment

I am putting this out in the Universe. I like you. I am smitten. I love talking to you, and I want to bake for you and smell your shoulders. And it's totally freaking me out.

Just Leave What's Left

Twenty eight years ago, I was born in the hallway of a hospital. I've been on the run ever since.

Even though I'm a little too old for this, I ask my parents to describe the day I was born every year. It was cold and dark, and they had to drive from Scotville to Albion because I came early. I know my Dad stopped on the way for smokes and that I was born in the hallway while he was putting on scrubs. I couldn't wait. They didn't tell me until I was 18 that he wasn't there to see me born, but I don't think it's such of a much. I spent my first night out of the hospital in a hotel room, and I slept in a drawer.

I parse over this story and try to find some lasting clues about my life. I so urgently came into this world. That has to mean something, right? Did I know then what I was supposed to do or be, and I forgot?

The last two years have been the hardest of my life, even harder than my deranged childhood. I have felt lonely and pierced. Today, I still feel like I walk on the edges of real life, but I am getting closer and closer to something...genuine.

Can't Stand Being Home

And I can't stand being gone.

Lately, all I want to do is sit alone in my filthy apartment and listen to the quiet. I feel kind of hemmed in by the cold and my own accumulating inertia. I think I am my best when I am alone, but I know that's not true. I am best when I am around people I love and that love can reflect all around the room. This secret side of me is not working. I feel torn between the part of me that believes hard work is the measure of life and the part of me that just wants more. More money, more time, nicer towels. But my heart is still joyful and I am still pretty fucking stoked to be alive.

So

Who wants to go halfsies on a farm with me? I'm thinking chickens, tomatoes, whatever. It all depends on the soil and the location. I just don't think I can keep the pace with a life where I cry in the bathroom at work and have no connection to anything with roots.

I grew up in the dirt. I didn't have jam from the store until I was in middle school. I've planted corn, weeded it, and run through the resulting field with my sisters. People act like living off the land is this great new thing, and I'm like, hello. That's called being poor. Did it. Done it.

And that's what I want, again. Not necessarily to be poor, although I am kind of poor in the money way. I just want to be far away from the world and live in the dirt and be so tired at the end of the night. I don't understand the world. If my divorce has taught me anything, it's that. I'm different. Maybe it's my parents fault, and their love of corporal punishment. Maybe it's my shitty neurons or the offbeat of my heart. But I don't get most people and it hurts. I just want to be alone with the people I love on a farm, where we can grow our destiny.