sex or a conversation

on tuesday, in the span of 3 hours, i managed to spill a bottle of sparkling water in my bed, step squarely into my tv dinner, and lock myself out of my room in my towel. also, when i tried to pick up a prescription, the pharmacy told me i was no longer covered under my health insurance. yes, when i let my thoughts paddle furiously upstream, my tangible world tends to fall apart too. and these events snowballed nicely into a full-blown anxiety attack that included treats such as uncontrollable crying, tightening of the chest, and nausea. luckily, it was eventually mellowed out by an obscene amount of olympia genuine draft, the honeyed vocals of sharon jones, and the oddly encouraging words of a friend:

you've got to make your shit work for you.

shit's not working for me at work. the beige file cabinets, the cliched shiny friday donuts, the sheer number of black slacks in the office on any give day, have become too much to take. i've also learned that wills, trusts, collections, leases, prenuptial agreements—they're all the glorified pushing of money from one person to another, and ultimately one and the same. i imagine the attorneys schlepping wheelbarrows overflowing with gold bricks and rubber-banded stacks of cash around the office. everything is transactional, even our verbal exchanges: how-are-you-good-how-are-you.

i got weepy as i explained all of this to an old professor of mine over pumpkin spice lattes. she doesn't think i'm unreasonable for being unable to find redeeming qualities in working at a law firm. (sidenote: she says she often tells her students about her unwavering idealist. that's me!) she also thinks my temptations to go back to the city would be running in the wrong direction; she sees me out in the county. and she's right. for what i care about, i am right now in the perfect place.

and tonight on my walk home from a pizza date, i kind of fell in love with bellingham all over again. as i walked past that big welcome to bellingham sign on state street, i remembered how i used to watch the bay from cold storage's webcam when i lived in seattle, and how i missed the slightly brighter colors, the slightly colder winters, and the exponentially higher quality of life.

"busy-ness is poison to creativity, and poison to spirituality, and poison to living a full life. i am one of the most prolific serious writers alive today, and part of the reason is that i spent so much of my twenties doing not much of anything, if you look at it from a production standpoint, but doing a lot, if you look at it from the perspective of trying to find out who i am and what i love. getting grounded. and that took a lot of time, a lot of time spent sitting by a river reading, or taking walks, or sometimes watching baseball."

yes.

you made a metaphor about your own hands and calluses and i was proud like a mother watching her son hit a homerun in little league. but now i'm thinking what happened was the phenomenon of shakespeare and monkeys. you talk a lot and once in a while your lexicon is bound to catch up with poetry. you told me you were disinterested. dis.interested. this is a whole new idea of like attracting like. we both have to be the one that leaves first. so all that's left standing is a baseball and a bobbypin in the corner of the floor. the thing is you have to believe in the details to be that something inside it. and you are so logical, so statistics-driven, but when i ask why the oceans don't fall off the earth, don't peel back like a sheet, you scoff at me. if i was to attempt to be literal i would say something like this: you make it easy for me to smile at the boys in boundary bay.

at midnight, the tang of broken berries, stirred-up gravel, and even a bit of baby shampoo hangs in the air on state street. it smelled like camping, like god behind the ears, like the sweet release of the city. it was quiet. i counted six cars (and one train) that passed during my half-hour shuffle home. and i couldn't help but do a little dance around the bend when the trees parted and the ocean and stars gleamed through. yes, this is the city of shiny things and shiny people. as if everything's polished by something intrinsic and invisible. this is the city where people lean in closely: pedestrians talking to drivers at stoplights, canvassers resting their heads against the co-op, me, over the balcony, peering out to see the herons in the morning. this is god's country. and i've come home.

if melancholy were a song, it would be iron and wine's passing afternoon.


goodnight, goodnight.

you're the type of people who can sit on benches with beat-up suitcases, wear grandfatherly shoes, and have it be dapper. but i picture myself doing and wearing such dandy things, and it feels too carefully considered. and what does it mean if i like the decemberists? that my toes are curled around the edge of the first day day of my life. the smallest things can make want to try on the practical one last time. like the too-tight pants i keep in my closet that only take up space. i don't have the capacity for it, and i sure don't have the taste. in 1967, raoul vaneigem wrote, nowadays, ambition and the love of a job well done are the indelible mark of defeat and of the most mindless submission. i couldn't agree more. my sweet little anarchist heart is beating louder these days, and quickens upon hearing pro-leisure and anti-work sentiments alike. hipsterly, it goes gaga over what bob dylan has to say about poets, that they don't necessarily write words on paper. but still,

weialala leia
wallala leialala

i suppose i should play this like a chess piece, be happy it makes it easier to leave, but it still stings that to you, i’ve been demoted to a two-day piece of fish on the first day. or whatever that saying is. i didn’t mean to invade, perhaps i’ve made myself too at home in you. by anne lamott’s definition of home (where when you show up, they have to let you in) i guess you obliged, but do not worry, i will not ask again.

i’m on the train. rushing by water and boxcars alike. at the station, there was a group of seniors headed for vancouver. one perky old woman in a fanny pack was talking about a friend of hers whose husband was in the hospital for a heart attack. the friend is behind in house payments because she doesn’t know how to write a check. that fragile, egg-like kind of dependency is such a foreign antibody. to trust that someone will forever show up, keep the ball smooth and rolling, and sign, sign, sign the checks (or for that matter, even keep breathing) is well, kind of like living in a constant state of jumping off the dock—exhilarating with when it works out with maybe a little saltwater in the mouth, but definitely no barnacle scrapes to the feet.

i bought a harmonica at the skagit valley co-op. because it felt right and because baby, the times they are a-changin'. i like the feeling of holding cold metal between my lips. and it's instant gratification at its best. now i just need to remember to move the harmonica and not my mouth. and the farmer's market was a big patchwork within itself, with no skinny jeans anywhere. everyone stood around making music and reaching and pushing tangles back behind their ears. you told me bellingham missed me, but i really think you made yourself into a city. i think we'd be good together. we both like the smell of campfires, and well, what else do two wanders really need?

oh, and universe? i'd like to order one of these, please! :

if god offers to every mind its choice between truth and repose, the colors of your soul are eggshell, slate, and calamine. what i remember about that night, is that magic is not only possible, but probable. and that you will have intimacies that i can only observe from the roadside. like a lonely nebraskan selling pies on the interstate watching car after car drive by. yet i know you are not my jordan catalano. you will never celebrate the summer solstice or grow your own peas. you will never be disheveled enough, never be satisfied by anything not bathed in glamour. so why am I so happy? why do I keep breathing in the white of the sky and swallowing stars? why is the world the auditory equivalent of the caramelized light that pours from a lit up church steeple on a rainy night?

i'm starting to think those ecstatic persian poets were not faking their glitter-dipped declarations. i've been feeling an energizing cool, and what's more: it's been semi-consistent! i've made peace with leaving. now i know for sure that that different expressions can come from the same core (like pink ladies and red delicious. you can be pink lady). and that's okay. we thrive in different climates. but i love you as much as when we shared the same tree. i'm looking forward to having a span where i can throw time as hard as i can without it hitting a proverbial monday. three beers today, if that tells you anything. it tasted like old books, like delilah sipping secrets from subterranean mud. lovelovelove.

bob dylan, sylvia plath, the treesitter, ginsberg—they’re all off my walls and packed, ready for bellingham. oh, and let’s not forget joan baez. she’s tucked away in a box too, next to bobbie, leaning over her guitar to touch the back his hand. he can feel her breath on his ear, but he still can’t see her. still won’t let her love him. and me? i’m ready for bellingham, too. and it let’s me love it. i remember feeling its breath on my ear in the park. i can tell even the the hackysackers won’t exasperate me anymore—they are so much more forgivable than the hipsters around here. at least their dirt is born from a lack of communing with the capitalists, as opposed to a wayward fashion statement that will never make sense to me. ah well, my walls are bare except for the ballerinas above my head. everything is gravitating north. everything’s making the cold, hard crawl across this town.

and i will be more like her. having crazy tangles. pressing one palm onto the back of it's matching hand. wrinkling my ruffles. i will dress like a dirty anthropologist who balances practicality and pretty like a checkbook. i'll re-taste the boys i kissed under the pale ale sun. yes, i’ll always remember what you wrote: i must confess a day has not gone by that our dip in the ocean hasn’t crossed my mind.

oh, universe!

you fancy yourself having an elementary
school-like quality; the shoes, the mixed
tapes, i fall for it. i bet your boyfriends
can taste the eighties on your tongue.
i imagine you with little purple ponies
at your feet. they smell like plastic
pool toys, like jelly shoes. like a yellow slip
‘n slide, warm from the sun. and you have me
trapped in the play yard, baby, waiting
for the day i’ll be your bestest again.

it’s plain. it’s basic. it’s a white t-shirt and jeans; james dean. i found it at the goodwill, classic as a grey cat. the cashier was vietnamese and diligent in his duties. he rang me up carefully, applying pressure on the panels, testing for solidness. i imagined him pressing a stethoscope up to the wood, checking vitals, making sure the dresser was without defect, that it would make it home. now it sits to my right as i sleep, the drawers i’ve reserved for shoes remain empty. but having these basic things is comforting. this is my dresser. this is my desk. these are my dishes. i have these things. they’re a solid collection of American necessities, non-indulgent indulgences. these are my things that begin with the letter d.

i can't sleep. i keep thinking about new years eve two years ago, the one i spent lovesick, crying in your bathroom. i never did remember how i said it. i really think alcohol has a way of blocking out what your soul can't handle. i can only hope i said it poetically. or at least elloquently. god, you were so beautiful to me that summer. i'm a little worried about this new year's. i'm lying here with a heating pad, two lidocane patches, and a pillow under my legs. i've been feeling extra-ouchie lately. i'm having a hard time vibrating my way out of this one. going to bed early and avoiding alcohol helps. but i HATE feel boring and disappointing people with my early departures. you're worried about using up all of your "she-loves-me-no-matter-what" passes? well, i hope i have a infinite number of "you-love-me-even-though-i-go-home-at-the-stroke-of-midnight" passes. i'm just a regular old cinderella (ella).

despite all of this, i'm excited! babe, i feel like you're just around the corner!

seattle's finally starting to get good. but this makes perfect sense because only in the past few months have i truly been open to it being good. it's like not wanting to get over somebody because if you do, you have to admit that they could be forgetting about you, too. but funny things happen when you just follow good-feeling thoughts, without analyzing or assessing them. my bellingham people would be so weirded out if they knew i've been reading glamour magazine and liking it. i've been doing what anne lamott does: lifting myself off the sharp, shiny hook of my own self-judgement. and it's relieving. reviving. also like a an ex-lover, i have a tendency to remember only the beautiful parts about bellingham. i sometimes forget that it can feel like a pressure-cooker. all of the isms are so amplified. i think it's a college-town thing, with everyone wanting to save, save, save the wales/earth/world. i admit, sometimes it feels so good to read celebrity gossip or to toss a soda can in the trash, two things i would never, ever do in that town. sometimes i feel so un-wholesome. but deep down i know true wholesomeness comes from the heart. and my hearting is leading me this way.

today i woke up looking for my life as if it were a necklace that snapped on the dance floor and the beads had rolled under the feet of strangers. it is everywhere, rolling under furniture, and i know I’ll be coming back tomorrow when the dancers have danced on with their lives.

this is to say, i miss Bellingham. i’m craving apartment 312, boundary bay, the jared leto boy, the white pizza from wild buffalo, and smart people able to recognize red hot truth. i don't have time for anything else: i'm almost 24.

that article about you in the paper was great. too bad you said the same thing about your art a year ago when my shirt was off and your tongue was in my mouth. i'm still not sure what to make of march 2006, i'm just glad i don't think about it anymore. except about how somehow the fact that i saw you naked took the power out of the aftermath. like i cracked you with flash and canvas, and having seen your insides, i knew there was nothing special about you. you're amazing, yes. but nothing special.

i miss going on childhood trips. i miss thinking plane rides were significant world events. i remember thinking there were very few flights a day, like five or ten, or some other small, but satisfying number. and i miss the childlike self-centeredness that ensued, miss thinking that everyone on the california-bound flight was on vacation, and everyone on the seattle-bound flight was going home.

sometimes, i wish i could contain my desires like gumballs in a machine, place them behind a plate of glass so i can see their sum, measure their volume, and dispense them in single servings for pocket change. they are stalking me, these internal urgencies, and they creep up to my windows at night, fogging up the glass from the outside. i just don't know where to start, don't know which hound to release first. yesterday, i did not do my best to make the best of it. so life handed me dropped calls and incompetent bookstore clerks. i was only passing through, but the familiar scruffiness of that optimistic city was comforting- it's still intact if i decide dirtiness is godliness after all. still, i saw three fellow english majors working at village books, and i realized i'm sitting kinda pretty on a stack of potential just waiting for me to take hold. not that i'm ready to grab on just yet. for now i want to focus of plucking the simple, intense pleasures of my world/city/room/body.

everything is ripe, waiting to fall.

there's cotton candy in the trees these days. and yesterday, the humidity caught in my throat like a net. and i saw the people at pike place market differently than i saw them the day before. they are becoming as familiar as the amethyst squares of glass in the sidewalks. i see my own shiny face in theirs, and we bounce off each other, passing glances like wagers: we all have our cards on the table. and i admit, yesterday was a little much. all this talk about babies and birthdays and writing my professional bio for  work, scares me. i don't want to rush. i've noticed that so many people see beauty as something sacrificial, something to be cast off in the name of facing facts, as if facts are something more than practiced opinion. but if you love working so much, you should take care of me and i'll stay home and bake you pies and organize your closets. put mints on your pillow. sweep the dust out from under your dark places. 

i want to love you like that.