Katie

My friend Katie has a blog, you should read it.

Katie used to eat alone wearing a Le Tigre shirt in the cafeteria. I wanted to be her friend so badly. I saw her and imagined what it would be like to be friends with a girl like that. Sometimes I would see her eating with a few other people. But, never in a large group. I almost always ate alone, reading a book.

I can't remember how we started to talk. It might have been I saw her profile on Make Out Club. I wish it was a better story than that. Maybe because my memory is so shaky, I could make one up. I think Katie would like that.

Katie was the one who told me to read Sylvia Plath. She would read over my poems and I would read over her poems. Her poems were beautiful and covered with a simple imagery. She never force fed you a line, each one came as easy and soundless, breathless, as the next. We both really liked the Robert Hass (He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl-she must have swept the corners of her studio-was full of dead bees.

Sometimes we would sit in the PS section of Waldo library and look at books. I switched my major from English-Teaching to Creative Writing. I knew I wanted to do nothing else, and Katie encouraged me. She has always been a poet that I knew I liked. I knew made sense to me. I looked up to her a lot then, and I still do now, especially as she starts applying to the twenty-something different graduate schools. She seems stronger now. We both do. There was one summer I went a little crazy, and we both ended up dating the same boy, only I dated him after she did, and she didn't even get too angry with me. I sort of can't believe it.

I don't think I ever feel bored

but I usually feel unproductive and antsy.

I feel like this is very heavily influenced by the videos of Zachary German and Ellen Kennedy, whose blogs I check on a daily basis. I sometimes feel guilty when I check Ellen Kennedy's blog because I don't really know her, and I feel like I should only read the blogs of people I know. Like, I wouldn't want to invade their personal space or something. I made one of these videos and you could see my cat's tail, but it didn't turn out the way I wanted.



ps: I really loved Kendra's last few poems she has posted on her blog. Especially the newest one.

secret #1

I always really wanted to be a dancer. I still wish it could have been something I pursued. Since I have moved to New York, I have been asked several times if I was a dancer. I felt really excited that I might look like a dancer. I guess, really, I wouldn't want to rely so heavily on my body to do what I loved to do. I feel like if something happened to your body and you couldn't dance anymore, life would be really confusing. You would also probably walk around really aware of your body, probably too aware, because you would have to be conscious of movement. I think, for me, writing is escaping so you can continue living. Lynda Barry talks about this. Other writers have talked about this. I think even in that Philip Glass documentary, Glass talks about this. I like the idea of being able to leave the physical realm. But maybe, when a dancer is really dancing, they leave the physical realm just like a writer does. They enter some other space, yet are still able to operate their body somehow. I don't know. I'd like to hear a dancer talk about dancing, I guess.

guest comic

Recently, my friend Mike asked me to do a guest comic for his website.

I was perplexed about what to write about and thought about all of the other guest webcomics I have seen in my life. I thought I wasn't going to be able to give Mike something worthy of himself, but, luckily, I was able to do it.

There is a little section from me about the process of making the comic, and the fact that I really felt nervous about making it, and having it on the internet for everyone to see. Mike has been so wonderful and encouraging. Also, his comics are really really funny and unlike other readers of his site, I never thought his word bubbles looked like little wangs. But, it is because of him that I get really impatient for Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Also, Octopus Pie doesn't help this situation, but he told me about that, so I can still blame him for making me hate weekends. TGIM, I guess.

Also, there are two pictures of me where I look completely different in both of them. I forgot I ever even had a Vagina Monologues shirt. I really used to love that play (?). I have seen it quite a few times. I read a part from it to my class last semester. They clapped. Also, I've been trying to figure out what band shirt I'm wearing in the second, but kind of glad it doesn't say. I have a feeling it might embarrass me.

the something

an unmentionable something came into mind and it seemed easier to have a something rather than a nothing, or a nothing rather than a something because it made relationships seem easier. to have nothing or something. a binary transaction with emotions. and I so much want things to be easier. to be able to say "oh, i don't know. they just have a something" unexplainable but still reliable. people trust it. people will trust things you say more often when it comes to love.

I am a mammal.

Hot blooded
and burning
for a little attention.



I am reading a book and it explains that the difference between mammals and reptiles, is that mammals care about things (their young, their mates) while reptiles could really care less. Mammals then created language to alert when they want more or less attention, or, in the case of the young, are in distress. Birds also have a language. Vultures have a language, I am pretty sure. This has not been covered. They have not said anything about vultures in this book yet.

watch out.

don't worry, it is just friendly fire.

Perpetual change.

Every now and then I move something in my room to a place I wouldn't think to look for it, until I begin to look for it there, then I move it again.


Every time I misplace my keys, I sort of think about how that is something people have always been frustrated with me over. That, and how messy I keep my room. Yet, I haven't changed these things. If I had to find my keys right now, I probably couldn't. I even bought a carabiner, but that hasn't helped at all, really. One time, after breaking up with someone, he came over to my new apartment. I think just to see it. It was a small one bedroom on Locust Street in Kalamazoo. I could touch the ceilings when I reached up and the whole place was covered in books and clothes. He hugged me and said it was nice to see my place so messy, because it reminded him of me. I think about that scene a lot, and have no idea why.

I also think about a story my friend told me. He was real sad, hanging out with some girl he hardly knew, and she was really depressed as well. So they both decided to give each other tattoos. He didn't say what they gave each other, and I don't think it matters really. I just really appreciate that sort of sad desperation. He was going to give me one when I saw him last, a boat, but I'm really glad I didn't do it. I'm working on better decision making skills, but not really working on finding my keys or cleaning my room.

There is a magic to science that can replace the magic of things like fate, love, and God. I am not sure if one is better or worse than the other, I just know I really do need to have a sense of magic. A sense of the unknown intermingled with a sense of the known. A sense of stability in instability, otherwise stability would not seem so precious. So magical. Sometimes my brain goes dormant. I feel a bit more awake, but that my mind is almost out of control, and I am unsure of which new thought to try to process first. Perhaps I should just pick one, and let that be the path.




I watched what the bleep do we know. I feel like my mind is "blown" right now.

repeat

Today I have listened to the same song seven, or possibly eight times. I listened to it three or four times yesterday. I get rather obsessive sometimes. But the words are so perfect. And then the piano, like you could almost miss it the first few times.


The stage is set
Someone's going to do something someone else will regret
I speak in smoke signals and you answer in code
The fuse will have to run out sometime
Something here will eventually have to explode
Have to explode

I sat in the kitchen with my roommate until four a.m. It never feels like babbling. We laughed at mistakes made earlier this year, when summer seemed so possible and we wanted something to happen, so we forced nothing into something, but I think the difference is more clear now.

I tried, but could never get into Soophie Nun Squad

I re-read Nate Powell's "Tiny Giants" today. There is always something new to catch. New to miss. I love how complex his work can get, like you could get stuck trying to figure out why he moved the frames the way he did, and never actually get to the words. The stories. The stories sort of bully you in a very emotional way, at least to me, they seem to point directly at me and ask what I'm going to do about all of this. It is easy to feel debilitated because you are confused, or because words are "so obscenely one sided." I always wanted to be an artist, but couldn't really draw. Just wasn't that good. So I took to words to try to re-create and re-format the images that came about in my head. But, I feel like words lack so much, and not that pictures don't have their own faults, but they speak in a way words can't. I just wonder if I had been able to draw, how I would feel about pictures and how I would feel about words.

finished

I read this book recently. Mary Ruefle's "The Most of It."
Please tell me about poetry books like this. I am having a hard time tolerating poetry these days. This worries me, mostly because I used to be able to appreciate poetry more, maybe I am just too picky. This was amazing and I think everyone should read it. "Perfection" is the best word. Sort of like Lydia Davis, but even shorter.

Pacific, Atlantic, Indian, Artic

I imagined your death this morning, and it isn't that I meant to imagine a thing like that; but, I could hear your roommate answering the phone. I could see myself picking through, sorting emotions. Pairing them up. Seeing how it made me feel to see two emotions tied together.

It was because of the dream I had about you last night. It was so foggy, everything misty, like you could see yourself push through the air. It was almost like a real memory of you. I could remember details, but couldn't remember what we had actually said to each other. You asked me to sit in your lap, an intimate gesture, a trust. I held your head in my hands and looked at you. I followed you when you asked. It seemed so real, because I know I am very capable of following you.

After I woke up, I walked into the kitchen and cried. Mostly, because I missed you, and your death was just too much, and I couldn't handle your mortality.

Handling my own mortality is easy. Or at least I can say it is. I thought about my plans for the beach, and hoped the sun could dry me, get rid of the water weight

But, as I floated in the ocean I couldn't help but think of you snorkeling in your Atlantic. Probably so much different than mine. I could see you there, below the water, solitary and observant. It made sense for you to like something like that.

I didn't want to cry, not there, so I swam really fast until I couldn't keep my breath. How loud living can be. We are made mostly of air and water. I thought, we are the ocean. Expansive, salty, prone to unpredictable undertow.

I called you on my way to work. To make sure. You answered and I felt charged by your voice, the pensive "hello", even though you knew it was me, there, on the other line, a really really long way away.