extraterrestrial experience

I suddenly had an extraterrestrial experience in which I was able to see, much like an astronaut taking cellphone shots from outer space, all of the earth and its peoples all at once. What struck me most is how many people were sitting or standing inside or outside, by themselves or with others, screaming at and shaming the few brave people on this planet who try to do something.

Dear Diary

Dear Diary
Big news: Last night I ate some salmon with mashed potatoes, and this morning I was able to eat scrambled eggs on a gluten-free waffle. It's about time. After two weeks of consuming nothing but chicken broth and dairy-free protein shakes I can see bones between my breasts. That's not really the look I'm going for these days.





Better friends
You read about what happened to Gram Parsons' body and you feel like maybe you should find yourself some better friends.






In need of convincing
These feelings that I'm feeling complicate my mind. I am not exactly sure what I want, which is further complicated by the fact that I am also not entirely sure what I need. Some days it seems I have convinced myself one way, only to discover a few days or a week or, perhaps, even a month or several months later that I have convinced myself the other way. Some days I feel sure, but then I start to question whether I am actually sure or if I am trying to believe that I am sure because feeling sure is much less complicated than not feeling sure, and, in wondering these things, I realize that I must not really be sure. Other days I feel that I am positively sure, but the obstacles to embodying that sureness are very high, and so I start to wonder if I am really sure enough to justify confronting those obstacles and, in wondering this, I begin to convince myself that perhaps I am not as positively sure as I had originally thought. This has gone on for some time now, and, as you can imagine, it all feels rather complicated.







Ice cube
The cat has learned to associate the sound of the freezer door opening with the possibility that he might be given an ice cube or several. He loves to play with ice cubes. He baps them all over the kitchen, down the hallway and into the living room, and occasionally he'll knock them down the stairs and watch them fall all the way to the bottom. If an ice cube fails to fall the whole way down the stairwell, and instead stops on one of the wooden stairs, he will run down to where the ice cube has interrupted its downward trajectory and knock it, once again, off the edge. At times he will bap ice cubes underneath the brown couch in the living room, and then he will sit beside the couch waiting, and hoping, for an ice cube to leap out so that he can bap it back underneath the couch again. He enjoys these games so much that now, whenever I open the freezer door, he will come running into the kitchen, no matter where he was in the apartment prior to hearing the freezer door open, or what he was doing.

I don't give a damn what the history books say about me

Upon consideration
I've had some time to think about it and I have decided that I am pro compost and anti mucus, only as I think about it further, as I am obliged to do while writing this pro compost/anti mucus declaration, it occurs to me that mucus provides some really valuable services and, despite the time that went into thinking it, I may need to rescind my original statement.




Reassurances
This evening I discovered that at some point in the seven years or so that I've used this phone, I saved the following text to my drafts:

"I don't give a damn what the history books say about me because they're probably going to be wrong." 

I cannot speak for the state or the mindset I was in when I wrote this, nor where nor when. I have no memory of punching these words into the keypad. It seems a bit presumptuous of me, to assume that I will end up in history books in the first place. My life is remarkable but only in the sense that all of life is remarkable; not the kind of remarkable that gets written into history books. Perhaps I meant it more as a rallying cry: "Dance like nobody's watching," and all that. Don't worry about what other people think because they don't know you anyway, and all that. Was I drunk? The statement seems to imply a certain level of defensiveness, which I find unnecessary, because I believe there is nothing to defend. Or perhaps somewhere I read something about myself in a history book after all, and I found the contents upsetting, and I was trying to comfort myself, because even if nobody else was or ever would be aware of it, I myself knew that the inaccurate content was wrong.






Lit Reading
I didn't go to the lit reading tonight after all. At first I felt fine about it, because I was hungry, and staying home meant that I would have time to eat. I was also quite looking forward to taking a bath, and I thought I might do some writing afterward. Now I have eaten and laid in the tub reading for close to an hour. I am wearing clean pajamas and writing on my laptop while Wilson sleeps on my lap on the white chair in the living room. It is a peaceful, uneventful evening, except for the occasional, piercing bouts of regret that I feel for not having attended the lit reading tonight after all.






Trying to explain
There is a cut on the middle finger of my right hand. In addition I have a dozen or so small, dried cuts spread across my knees, the result of Wilson bapping me for attention as I sit at my desk. I have tried to explain to him that I am not covered in nearly as much fur as he is, and consequently what would feel like an inconsequential bap to him, for me quite stings and tears my flesh. So far I do not think he has understood this lesson.





Running inside
Today it was cold enough that I decided to run inside, at the gym, instead of outside, which is where I usually run.






Healing 
The wounds in the left side of my cheek are healing quite well but the wound in the right side of my cheek, where they sewed in a few stitches (I opened my eyes, for the first and only time, right as the surgeon was pulling the thread through the wound and up out of my mouth), looks like a relatively large, black hole, and I cannot see into it nor determine where the hole ends. For all I know, if I drop a grain of rice in there it will fall out somewhere near my right pinky toe.






Placeholder
What Lydia Davis was trying to say, I think, is that you can tell two entirely different stories with the exact same words.

I need to buy a new toothbrush.

There is so much to see. This used to make me anxious: How will I ever see it all in this lifetime? Now, I think, I find this liberating. There is no way I will ever see it all in this lifetime.


Suddenly and inexplicably I am overcome with the urge to write banana.

I didn't mean to sound so callous. I'm not here to break hearts.

compilations

The subject lines come pouring in. Project Update #26. Meeting reminder -- this Sunday 4-6 pm. Your blog or Medium? New assignment. Session #8. Top 5 double-decker bus conversions. Poem of the day. Everything that is made beautiful and fair. Is Adele sticking up for chickens?


I care about a lot of things in life, including the wellbeing of chickens. But I cannot fathom caring less about whether or not Adele is sticking up for them.



It occurs to me that nobody writes about suburbia with any kind of romance. It's all urban undergrounds or cabins out in the middle of nowhere, perhaps filled with violent secrets. Well I spent the first eighteen years of my life in suburbia and it was probably way more influential than the year I spent riding the subways of New York, even though that's where all the cool kids go to write meaningful things. I sure do like cabins, though.



Tell me again why I need to have "the whitest teeth."
Oh really, you've found another body part of which I should feel ashamed?
Thank goodness you're here!




I play the word game on my friend's smartphone.
I avoid words liked "glued" and "stuck."
We're fighting again, and it's my fault, I'm sick of this.

I am so fucking thirsty.



This would make a great opening for a short story:
"For reasons of public decency, women convicted of high treason were instead burned at the stake."



 
Have you ever attempted to assemble a puzzle with a cat in the room? It will not end well for anyone, including the puzzle pieces.



I think we need a signal of some kind. Here, you go by Mac and I'll be Honeybee. Say the code words and we'll meet by the bridge. Bring some water and gluten-free sandwiches. I have fresh air in my tires. Please don't give up on me.

Growing up makes me sick

Pity January 31, consigned to half of a box on the calendar.


All this growing up makes me sick. Bills and IRAs and calmly resolving conflicts and being direct and polite all the time. I know I'm healthier but I also miss the days of living like an animal, gut instincts, the scent of come and blood and courage and longing and fear. My heart was in palpitations for years and let me tell you something there's nothing like a beating heart to let you know you're alive.

Whiskey and honey are a health food right. I almost forgot to put on pants before going outside to move my car. I mean who does that: forget to put on pants when it's 23 degrees outside and a blizzard is coming. I mean my coat is long enough no one would have seen my skivvies.

Richard Manuel why did you kill yourself. Could I have helped you, pressed your sweaty forehead to my palms, my lips, my chest. Could I have helped if I told you you were a shining bright light, if I told you you were loved.


I know.

Do you ever get the desire to burn all your possessions and get the hell out of dodge. Do you ever feel like you can't breathe and not just because of the bum lung. Do you ever wonder if you are even capable of feeling better.

Frankly I've been thinking that what I want from life is not more but less. Less societal bullshit, less 'growing up' in the sickening sense of the term, so that there is more room for meandering and wondering and beauty and joy. I don't think there's more to life. I know there is, and all I want is the freedom to enjoy-embrace-embody it.



I'm pretty loaded now. Wilson's chin is healing thank god. His ears are one of the most amazing things I've ever seen.

Remember when we hopped in that beater car in DC, blazed a bowl while I drank in the backseat on the way to Philadelphia, climbed a tree and spent the night with you clothed in bed. The next morning I found the subway, rode disheveled to that dilapidated gas station, there were my friends in that loyal beater car. We stopped in Baltimore on the way back and I thought people were staring because of our smeared mascara but perhaps it's because we were happy.

Thank goodness for Vader

Thank goodness for Vader. His breath pushes hot and heavy against the walls of the tent.

I won't even tell you about my dreams of late. Okay, here's something. They've been horrifying.


I was sitting on the toilet when I told him. It took me a few moments to realize that I was crying as I reached for the toilet paper.

After I said it I felt lighter. We had sex anyway. The next morning I wrote in my journal, perhaps all that's left is to say it out loud. 


The you that was has been transmogrified into the you that is now. Or perhaps not changed but split, like a cell dividing.

In either case I feel a renewed depth of tenderness as your face cries in front of my face.



At this point I suppose it's hurting me more to repress it than it is to fess up. My name is June V., and he did not treat me well. I run too much and I work too much but I'm trying to sit still more often.
 

This is a year for adventure. In a few minutes I am traveling to the other side of the world.



I will not put so much pressure on myself. I spend hours in front of the computer, reading the town calendar and clicking through images.

Perhaps already my uterus carries it--pregnant not with human DNA but with longing.    


You've come a long way, baby, toward the hope of yourself. 

Early morning
On a wilderness river
Through the fog
I thought, for an instant
That I saw an eagle fishing.

Seconds later, through the fog
I heard an eagle scream
I thought.

    - Rod MacIver