drunker than a poet who just got paid

oh good, i'm still alive

2006-10-01T15:57:00.000-05:00

people keep saying things like "well, if you'd had some bizarre black-out thingy while driving down 280 doing 60, then you would have slammed into one of those large walls of rock, and then you would have died". or "if you had been doing 80 miles an hour down 65..." blahblahblah.

i would feel better if i had driven into a bunch of rocks. or a very large truck. instead, i'm alive and my back hurts and my fucking entire life is a disaster. the one fucking moment in my life i'm not being self-absorbed and am actually thinking of the well-being of someone else, that's when i fuck up. not driving down highway 90 at sunrise full of martinis, or going 90 down the interstate still rolling from the night before.

of all the dumb shit i've done in my life....

the last one home

2006-09-07T10:02:00.000-05:00

sooner or later it had to happen. if only out of spite... dr.l-the-hottie said i was bipolar2. um, no-- i very clearly recall being awake for 5 days, playing 2 lucinda williams cd's over and over the whole time, sitting on the roof smoking, and sleeping one hour in 5 or 6 days on the back porch while talking on the phone.
bipoalr 2, indeed.
she Does have a nice ass, as well as perky 39-year old boobies. but, a lesser classification of crazy just because i don't go totally nuts multiple times a year? i think not.

now i shall shower and change panties and pretend i'm suited for going to work.

i ain't about to go straight/ it's too late

2006-09-07T04:41:00.000-05:00

i wonder why no one other than me has discovered that st.john's wort makes bipolars manic? even at the damn dirty hippie store where i worked for a brief and tantalizing moment.
is it just me? it can't be. i refuse to believe i'm that special.
and i've only taken 1/2 doses for 2 damn days.. of course, this comes from a person who takes xanax to get a ruch and be hyper, so i may not be the best test subject.

speaking of such things, though, whomever happens to be handy when i drop dead must absolutely have my brain sent to johns hopkins. i think it will do highly trained neuro-psychologists much more good than it has ever done me.

alright. which blog should i focus on, this or the myspace? i like this one, but i'm in no emotional state to make a decision of any kind.

in a few days i'll be hugging my very very bestest friends... and will still be sad. (MOVE TO DELAWARE.) i've said alot of goodbyes that were also good-riddances; the ones that are more bye than good, though; those still hurt alot.

see you soon, lovelies.

step away from the computer

2006-08-17T22:31:00.000-05:00

say there was this person i used to be all insane about (and i'm not using that word loosely) and he for some reason wanted to be on my myspace friends list so i let him and then one night when i was drunk i looked at his profile and saw this comment from his vapid little girlfriend and say she was talking about it being their anniversary of however many years and the thought passed my mind that i ought to message her and tell her how many times i fucked her boyfriend before i moved away (which was alot. in three different residences, in fact)... would that make me a bad person?

of course, i didn't do that, as it would have only led to some kind of interaction with people i need not interact with ever again, and also i was busy (once sober) with being a big girl and having a husband and doing the dishes and all. but for that one split second... sometimes i just want retribution. the saying "living well is the best revenge" is quite true, i know it is. but i can get kinda ativistic and malevolent when i'm drunk at four in the morning and nobody's around to disrtact me. five years ago she made me cry, and i wanted to make her cry. then i remembered who she was devoting her life to, and i laughed, and i laughed some more, and figured she was already torturing herself more than i ever could.

fucking myspace. do not mix alcohol and xanax with the computer! bad kristyn...

silly eve

2006-08-13T23:36:00.000-05:00

they say that one bad apple can spoil the whole barrel. i didn't inspect the barrel this one came from, but i'm pretty sure they didn't look like that.
that looks like george bush's heart.

i'll be torn open, so that every word i say is true...

2006-08-13T23:08:00.000-05:00

well. last weekend i was in the woods with my family, and this afternoon i found a little souvenir: about 3/4 of a 10mg valium hiding among the change in my purse. it was like salvation from some god i don't worship: got me through my shift without my now perpetual black rain-cloud hovering over me, made it so i could atleast drive while i was crying when my voicemail told me brandon ships out in a week. alleviated the guilt when i came home, needing consolation, and found bryan in bed already because he worked two jobs today and has to be back at one of them at five in the morning...

that makes me feel worse about myself than anything i've ever done. even compared to using people for drugs/booze/rides/concert tickets, to smoking after my mother gives me a lecture on my grandmother's oxygen tubey thingy, for not calling a.m. when it could have been my chance to say goodbye... i've actually done too many selfish, greedy, tantrum-throwing things to even remember, i just know there's a layer of them under my skin, everywhere. more than all of the bad i've made in the world, the fact that my husband who has a fatal disease is working two jobs and my lazy, whiny little ass can barely drag myself into the one i have makes me feel totally and officially useless. when i was writing my book i atleast had purpose. now i'm just watching him work himself, possibly literally to death, while i lay under the covers, immobile, scared shitless of what might happen if i get out of bed.

i feel guilty about that, too; the book. it was just flying out of me, and then one day i had to take a step back because i was too involved, it was the only thing i thought about. and now i get dizzy with fear and a lack of talent every time i open the file. and i have to write that book. it's not even about me , but promises and the need for the story to exist in more minds than it does now. it's important, and it may damn well be the only truly important thing i ever do. so why can i not look at it?

anyone who leaves me some kind of comforting or consoling comment will be making me cry while doing so, so... let's just not have any of that. i should be told to stop whining and to pull my head out of my ass and to stop spending so much goddamn time on myspace (which i both hate and cannot stop). no sympathy.

"i guess that makes me the jerk with the heartache, here to sing to you how i've been done wrong..." ani

announcing

2006-08-12T16:26:00.000-05:00

"i'm not in the best shape that i've ever been in, but i know where i'm going, and it ain't where i've been."

yeah, that's right. new ani. and it's fucking fabulous.

recovering

2006-08-07T15:19:00.000-05:00

debauchery. drunkenness and crying and pill-popping and rampant use of profanity... what else can one expect from a sherman family reunion? this is why we don't check into some cheesey hotel like normal families-- we must be isolated in the middle of the woods miles from the nearest vestige of civilization so that we don't harm the people around us.

there is now a series of photographs featuring me slapping the ass of my uncle's girlfriend. which is what the world needed, i feel, some semi-incestuous ass-smacking photography.

i can't help it. for one thing, i love the eastern european girls. two, we were in mississippi. we were shoeless and intoxicated! recipe for disaster, buddy. that's what that is.

testicles

2006-07-20T23:02:00.000-05:00

did jesus believe in "titty-fucking"? i wonder. i've heard of the tap-dancing, not so much on the other.

not that i've been working for the past fucking forever, but that damned infuriating agent has yet to return my email. at this point my annoyance is the only evidence i have that i care. about him, not the book, of course. i think probably the brooklyn pirate could sell the thing better than some cock-twizzling mountainbrookian.

on the subject of delaware there still are no dates. no feeling of solid ground, instead we have corporate beaurocracy and limbo. at some point bryan has to train-- in florida, for some reason-- but we don't know if he's going to orlando before we move to wilmington or after. we think after would not be a great plan, what with the 10,000 miles and the medication-tampering and craziness and all. (and if you think i'm whining now, just wait till i get 10,000 miles away from brad and shanna and am left alone in a strange place. i'll show you whining. probably snivelling as well.)

there are plans being drawn up for october, in new york. that amuses me greatly. does anyone think my meeting up with jared in new york is a bad idea? 'cause we've always been so well behaved and all... oh, i know, and ben could be my chaperone... yes, i think that's what we'll do.

mad skills

2006-07-19T18:15:00.000-05:00

i'm a professional misser. i'm so good at missing people that i can now do it even before i've gone away from them. i can get all teary and feel my heart expand and contract when i look at pictures even months before the pictures have to be packed up.

that's talent, there. not just anyone can inflict hurt upon herself with so little effort.

"it's easier to leave than to be left behind..." r.e.m.

to gain some reciprocity

2006-07-16T23:47:00.000-05:00

yep. drink a few beers, light up a cigarette and play the old lauryn hill song... and it's six years ago, and i'm all raw and feeling discarded and misunderstood, like everything in the world is dangerous. and it's two in the morning, i'm driving down highway 90 from bay st.louis with the windows down, singing and almost crying; a little angry, a little unstable, really really hurt.

but not in a bad way. there's always been a little voice inside my head-- nearly drowned by all the other voices-- that says "shut up, you'll be fine" and it's always right. thinking back to that time and how up/down everything was, how sure i was that i'd never recover, i can compare it with my current apprehension and know it's all alirght in the end.

having a place i know i can fall is a necessity.

there's some kind of weirdness with my ipod-- maybe i'm contagious? i could now have the ultimate, divinely perfect soundtrack to my life, but yet again i'm foiled by machines.

i wish i never had to know what time it was.

"'cause no one's hurt me more than you, and no one ever will..." l. h.

namaste

2006-07-10T14:21:00.000-05:00

why be just another white american when you can be "the whitest nepali girl ever"-- which is apparently my name now.

i am very hungover, very tired, and i think most of my digestive tract was melted away by curry. "you can eat this," they say. "this isn't spicy," i'm told. whatever. i no longer have a tongue. and i damn near destroyed my hindu-girl makeup job by turning bright red and sweating. not hot. sure.

putting on a sari takes twenty minutes. (if it's a simple one and you're not getting dressed for some formal occasion.) peeing while wearing a sari takes about fifteen tries before you figure out what you're doing. in the u.s., they cost about a hundred dollars-- the normal ones. some of them are covered in gold thread and glass beads and they're goddamn gorgeous-- they weight 20 pounds and cost more than i make in a week, but damn do those girls look hot.

bryan and i can never go to kathmandu. baxter does not ship dialysis supplies to nepal in a timely manner, and transplant patients can't expose themselves to malaria, typhoid fever and leprosy. fucking leprosy. that shit's scary.

anyway, when sarita goes home i'm going to crawl inside her suitcase. i need to buy many things in nepali markets.

i need a nap, as well.

"all i'm sayin, pretty baby"

2006-07-04T02:17:00.000-05:00

this is not what i was thinking of when i said i was going to get drunk and write tonight.

not one bit, and i feel kind of bad about myself.. i mean, as bad as you can feel about yourself when your ass is this cute.

i need to be doing so many things other than dicking around on the goddamn internet. editing. writing. re-reading. but, no... internet. endless, mindless piles of crap i don't need to know... mmm, crap.

i'm missing people. not in the "i miss you, so i shall visit you and stay on your couch for three days" sense, but in the "it hurts that i don't see you every day and 'i feel so uninspired', how do i know my life's real if i'm not sharing it with you and whay don't you know every little tiny thing like you used to" kind of way. which i've actually just invented.

it just sucks. certain movies come out and of course we'll all see them and later discuss, cd's come out that we'll all listen to, but not at the same time. not in the same place. and that
s my fault. i'm the one who disrupted everything. and, yeah, i did leave because i hated that place and was suicidally depressed, but still... in the words of the be good tanyas, "i broke my home"...

i miss you so much!!!! i hate it, i'm tired of it.

but there isn't anything i can do.

i miss the little, tiny things. songs on repeat. pacifiers. mustard and turkey and tuna sandiwiches. daily shit that made up lives and cemented friendships. being woken up with loud strumming and snapping at each other when i was doing something stupid and wanted you to pretend i wasn't; red and blue keys and pink picks and x-men trivia and kinky sex stories.

everything. every single little thing that makes up shared lives and friendships that matter and experiences that are profound or stupid or wasted. i miss everything.

"nothin seems to change, you'll come back i know... so blue, why don't you stay behind?" the jayhawks

sacroiliac joints, etc.

2006-06-22T13:39:00.000-05:00

there are fewer than ten people in the world i want to talk to on the phone for any length of time. so you, who should know who i'm talking to, are just going to have to wait until i get drunk or truly manic and feel like jabbering into the phone for an hour. (hm... yeah, i count 8.)

i'm quickly running out of magazines to chop up. i made shanna a painting/collage last time i was drunk and never seemed to satiate the desire for cutting and sticking. generally that's the first sign of mania-- in this case it's a side effect of pain medication.

the doctor who ruthlessly stabs me in my back-joints and shoulders with sharp objects and caresses me during examinations decided to take a month-long vacation. he's been fucking skiiing and i've been whimpering in pain every time i have to get some bitch a highchair or move a fucking table-- or, you know, stand, sit or walk. just slightly inconvenient. he had an appointment open today, having gotten back in town yesterday. but bryan was getting fixed today and that's more important. i'd rather be in pain than pregnant. (i'd rather be dead than pregnant.)
since i'm not able to see him until the fucking 29th and am a whiney baby, he called in some pain meds for me a few days ago. well, he assumed that 110 pound little girls should be given only 5mg lortabs. he's incorrect there. but i can't very well tell him how many pills i take and what is my level of tolerance, or he won't give me shit. such a conundrum. (is that correct?)
bryan has 10mg pills and a prescription for 7.5's, which are my favorite. i will be appropriating those.
what's annoying is thinking of all the times i had large staches of pills and was not in pain. now i'm hurting from being on the computer for half an hour. i can't write, can't really work... it's terrible. and he's not going to call shit in for me, i know he won't.

just 'cause i'm a pill popper doesn't mean i don't have an actual pain problem, you know. why can't i find one of those crooked doctors you see on the news?

lazy middle-class intellectual

2006-06-20T13:16:00.000-05:00

prompted by jung's acausal connecting theory, i re-emailed him last night. he has the chapter, has begun reading the chapter, and is going to call me "in a few weeks to discuss".
i assume he thinks it's less detrimental to my perilous grip on almost-sanity to tell me he hates my book through the phone instead of one of those lovely little pink-stationery rejection letters i seem to see awfully often. well, he's wrong. the only good, safe way to reject me is after buying me five beers at base camp. having paid the nepali girls to dance around in saris and henna. other than that, i prefer letter to phone call-- i don't need any more witnesses to my tantrums than there already are.

bryan had wisdom teeth out today. at 36. the doctor told me why it's better to have them out when you're young; i've always heard that and it never really made sense. being told that the teeth were sunken into the bone deeper after 30 years than 18 made me feel kinda stupid. i quickly recovered... after seeing the religious pamphlet he passes out with the discharge instructions, the opinion he held on my common sense ceased to matter. I had the sense to have a jewish doctor perform my surgery-- and, sure, he left shards of teeth embedded in my mouth, and he did break his drill bit on one of my teeth, have to re-sedate me after i woke up while he was drilling me, yes-- but he didn't say a single solitary word about jesus. that's something i need in a doctor. a pronounced lack of jesus.

not that i'm anti-jesus or anything. i'm sure he was a great guy, all laid back and all. but his worshippers are fucking annoying.

ah, the familiar feeling of revulsion and rage. such a nice buzz...

bryan was given LT10's. it's "a banner fucking year at the bender household".

sincere dislike

2006-06-18T15:48:00.000-05:00

i don't want to go on the cart!

that agent is out to destroy me. he said 3-4 weeks. i've given him 4 1/2 and now i'm freaking out, damnit.
i know he's the incredible sitting man-- that guy thinks he's all literary, he obviously works for himself, he lives in mt. brook. (i hate that i've sent my sample chapter to a man from the anus, but what choice did i have? it fell in my lap.)
if it turns out that the agent (should he ever respond to my chapter) is indeed the incredible sitting man i think i'll have a breakdown.

like i like badgers

2006-06-14T17:11:00.000-05:00

at some point over the last 16 years i've come to understand that when i have writer's block it does not mean that i'm never going to write again, or that i'm wrong about the purpose for my life (if indeed i believe in life-purposes, which i may not)-- also that rejection letters are because poetry editors are douches with bad taste who can lick my taint.

anyway. there's some comfort in knowing that sooner or later i'll go back to my book and it will be written. and it will be fabulous. but in the meantime i'm not writing my book and i can't focus and i'm disgusted.

sober, as well. disgusted and sober.

bad television!

2006-06-05T23:48:00.000-05:00

the television gods are evil.

i am angry at them. them, and also hbo. but mostly the television gods.

it's just not fair that just as the brain-chewing addiction sets in and i've begun gripping people's forearms, squirming, begging them to tell me what happens next, after i've given that stupid machine hours and hours of my life, all that time not learning or producing or anything, just lying there, mesmerized, enchanted by the dirty people on the television-- just as i've gotten to that point, i unknowingly watch the last episode of carnivale.

i don't know whose fault it is that i get no more episodes, but i hope he/she gets a nasty full-body strain of herpes. also i hope her/his mother calls one night just to say "i wish i'd never inflicted you on the world. i hate you." because that is what they deserve. and worse, much worse things that i can't think of yet because i'm still in shock.

fuckers.

see, this is exactly why i didn't watch this goddamn show in the first place. i knew this was coming. i've done it to myself. now i must be punished.

why i will never stop smoking. ever.

2006-06-03T14:51:00.000-05:00

i worked 8 shifts in a row-- the last four crazy busy and super annoying. i have to go back to that hell-hole in a few hours. and i get a half-day off tomorrow, because i'm on call and i know one of those bastards isn't going to show up.
i can't write because i'm so frazzled and tired when i get home that i can't concentrate-- i lack the focusing ability to write a coherent email, i can't touch the book in this state.
it's horrible.
i fell useless and guilty and lazy and stupid.
in a few days i get to see the new shrink and be re-medicated. he ought to have his hands full. i don't like those people anymore. not any of them. weirdos. with their "24-hour notice" policy. when did crazy people become responsible and aware enough to know 24 hours before they flake out on an appointment. huh? when did that happen. 'cause i didn't get that particular bulletin. and neither did any of the people who live in my head.

whores and agents and crazy girls

2006-05-30T15:30:00.000-05:00

the lady who gave me the info for the agent said he takes forever to write people back and not to be frustrated. and the agent himself told me that after he got the chapter he would take 3-4 weeks to give me an answer. it's now been 16 days. does that stop me from holding my breath when i open my inbox, or being sad when there's not an email from him, or from fatalistically producing premonitions of rejection and binge-drinking? it does not. bryan is this guy: "well, honey, everybody who's read it thinks it's great, so how could he reject it?" that doesn't matter! everybody likes my poetry, too, except 9 out of 10 editors of lit rags and writing contests, who think i should shove my head in the oven.

some whore bryan works with has a crush on him. she's told people about it. he finds it amusing. and i did, too, until the bitch decided to call him the other day to "ask how those tabs were, because she was about to take her." really. that's not a rational reason to call anyone. that's an i'm a dirty whore and want to touch your peppy reason to call someone. he made me promise not to say anything to her. well, i think we all know how durable that promise is. (if i stab her in the throat without speaking, does that count?) actually, if it comes down to it i'll send sarita up there. she's way scarier than i am.
what really annoys me is not that the whore called him, because i call people-- i call bj and curse at him for not getting drunk with me, for instance. but i know bj's girlfriend and she doesn't care at all. what annoys me is that he not only answered the phone, but spoke to her, as well. and he doesn't talk to people. he hates everyone. except, apparently, for whore waitresses.
i hate this. i'm disgusted and ashamed that i'm even capable of these thoughts. jealous? that's embarassing. and it's pointless because i know he isn't going to touch her. it just pisses me off that she thinks it's acceptable to try and whore herself out to my husband. mine. also, when i first suggested that he get tea from the bartender, he was all "no, i can't get stuff like that from an employee, blah blah." but get tabs from the whore? oh, yeah, that's fine.
what's ironic here is that i know the whore is flirting with him because i have been that girl, i've been the slut at work making out with a married man in the office with the door locked. and i know perfectly damn well what you say and do in that situation. so he can't tell me she's not a whore.
not that i'm going to say anything to him about it. 'cause i sound paranoid and deranged and it's so horribly embarassing and 10th grade. i hate posessiveness in other people and i certainly don't like it in me.

the real problem is that i need so much more therapy than i can afford.

um, congratulations?

2006-05-28T20:35:00.000-05:00

so the nepalis are having some kind of a celebration tonight. (as far as i can tell, someone's brother has done something for which he should be congratulated. someone i don't know, and a brother i've never heard of. regardless... i was invited.) all i can do right now is force my eyes to stay open and keep myself away from the bed. i know that once i put the dress on, soap up my hands so those goddamn tiny bangles will go on, and give myself spider-eyes with my ghetto mascara, i will feel festive. i willl be cute and want people to tell me so. i will be overjoyed to go get free ethnic foods and beer. at this exact second, however, i want to take the kitties into the bed, turn off all the lights and curl up into a ball under the covers.

this is a movement toward the down section of the bipolar graph, if anyone happens to be charting.

the bridge

2006-05-23T22:59:00.000-05:00

this is it. the catalyst. mdot blew up the two ends, so between the ground off the road and the first part of the bridge's road there's about a two foot space where you can look down and see the river. as far as i can tell the stuff piled up in front of it is crap someone cut out of their yard and piled up there. also, some of it is quite sharp. (god bless you, mr. neosporin.) presumably the trailer dwellers who live 50 feet from the bridge were attempting to keep their 17 kids from playing on the bridge. the other side is more accessible, but good luck trying to find that motherfucker.
i wonder who wants to make me a painting of this for the cover of the book?

small time cops can suck my labia

2006-05-23T22:44:00.000-05:00

so the guy at the highway patrol office, who was probably only nice to me 'cause he'd been checking out my ass when i walked in, went out of his way to look up a phone number and tell me who his friend at the mississippi bureau of investigation was and when to call him. he also asked me questions about the case and the angela freeman case-- 'cause apparently i now know more than the police do about the insane things that happen at that bridge.
on the other end of the small-town-law-enforcement spectrum there was the perry county sheriff's department. the sheriff always manages to not be in the office when i show up or call him. (oh yeah. i'm tenacious.) he fucked up back in 1995, lost alot of evidence for the prosecution's case by not securing the crime scene, which i think is what you learn on the first day of cop class, if not from two episodes of law & order. the fat ass corn-fed gomer pyle looking mother fucker who was the underling of the incompetent sheriff looked marginally surprised that we had begun teaching girls to read. i'm sure my having spoken in complete sentences and not addressing the room as "y'all" threw him into a panic. "i'm pertty shurr he ain't gonna let you see none a that." well, motherfucker, i have two lawyers in my family and i'm calling both of them. i'm pissed. i've written letters. yeah. i went that far. i was just about to pull up the site that says, in lawyer speak, people can see shit from closed cases, but i'm not sure that the perry county sheriff's office has a computer system. or pens and paper. more of a chalk and block of concrete operation down there. fuck them. i don't even need the file to finish my book, and i honestly don't really want to see it because i think it will traumatize me. but i'll see that motherfucker now. fucking fat ass mississippi cops.
oh, just wait. i'll have them sueing me for slander when the book comes out. once oprah talks about it while they're watching her in the trailer park, 'cause god knows they won't be reading a book.
fucking perry county. you know the "town" of new augusta, which is the main place in that hellhole, has literally two intersections? big time police work going on around there, buddy. maybe some meth labs... and i hope one of them blows up.
i'm really very pissed off about this. and that slim fast needed son of a bitch is going to be highly annoyed next time i see him.

eulogy

2006-05-18T03:51:00.000-05:00

everyone knows who the first book owes its existence to.

but,
it will also be for
kitty genovese, matthew shepard, brandon teena, robbie bond and william hatcher, angela lee freeman, robin and lisa kerry, and so many others who died before their time because of a society who punishes violence too forgivingly.

no one is forgotten.

organ bank

2006-04-09T22:13:00.000-05:00

i offered to let bryan impregnate me so we could have some embryonic stem cells for some south american lab rat to grow a kidney out of, and he thought that was an unreasonable suggestion. some people. it's my womb. if i want to use it as a parts wherehouse, i think i should be able to. and how pissed would pat robertson be? he'd doubtlessly ask jesus for my head on a platter. oh, how i hate that man.

why would you want to live here?

2006-03-21T14:12:00.000-06:00

i once found myself in a nepali bar at midnight discussing middle eastern semantics with a gigantic pakistani guy, having just been hugged so hard my back popped by a senegalese waiter. now, i'm not saying that this kind of thing doesn't happen in many places on a regular basis-- i'm only saying i wouldn't have expected it from alabama.

"and they were just fireflies to the untrained eye, but i could always tell..." l.m.

laughing last

2006-03-15T22:32:00.000-06:00

my ghetto ass neighbors like to make my teeth rattle with their bass. well, it's on... and by it i mean melissa etheridge and dolly parton on crossroads.

now what, bitch?

notes

2006-03-14T14:07:00.000-06:00

i stand by my statement.

also, i am in need of an address for a stephanie. any stephanie that happens to be lying around out there, not receiving enough mail...

thank you for the goodies, mand-o-lin. it made me smile.

dildo-- in a tacky way

2006-03-07T23:10:00.000-06:00

there's this person called seth taylor who teaches english at sdsu. he's a dildo.

heroin tastes like icecream

2006-03-01T21:11:00.000-06:00

ahem:

"i understood then why crazy people smoke cigarettes, why they consume them raggedly and unceasingly, leaving a fine blizzard of ashes wherever they go: there was something in nicotine like the arms of an old killer... i made a pact with those cigarettes. i said: "you get me through the long days, and i'll let you kill me." -poe ballantine

it's a shame it's a shame it's a shame

2006-02-22T23:58:00.000-06:00

they are dead to me; but, were they not, i would fart in their general direction. (is it good or bad that i am now impervious to rejection letters? i didn't so much as reach for the percosett bottle when i got that last one... just went right back to sarita's homework.)

on the homework front, anup didn't bring me the assignment until yesterday, and yet all that remains is the compiling of crap into essay form. that means, kiddies, that i read much ado about nothing, tartuffe and the first half of othello in two days. pausing once of course to refresh myself with a jco short story, lest my eyes rot out of my head. i think i can say that i haven't lost all my faculties yet. now comes the fun part-- turning the copious notes and convoluted theses into something that sounds vaguely like something an english-as-third-language nursing student/former nepali lawyer might write. (if you've never done this, by the way, i highly recommend it. fun stuff.)

oh, and let's just gloss over the events that have transpired since my last post. jcsb a bastard, sharp teeth, pastuerella, blah blah emergency room, surgery and another surgery, blah blah, runny yellow stuff and puffy finger and iv antibiotics, blah blah blah... it seems to be alright now so i'll leave it alone. it just bore mentioning.

"those whose hearts are truly pure and lowly
don't make a flashy show of being holy."
(moliere)

nose thumbing

2006-01-24T16:11:00.000-06:00

the bellevue literary review is starting to piss me off. they get one more chance. one. and then will they not only be denied me for the rest of eternity, but i may sick brent on them. we'll see how they like that. trying to harsh my fucking buzz...

what the fuck does the nyu school of medicine know about poetry, anyway? i bet they like maya angelou.

the big bucks

2006-01-22T23:52:00.000-06:00

yes, it's just twenty-five dollars. but it's mine. for seven lines of poetry. so, i'm gonna have to say nyah nyah nyah nyah. (and as per my vow, part of it goes for a donation. *buying a fellow starving artist beer*)

the green side of the prozac

2006-01-22T23:19:00.000-06:00

last week i was paid for a poem. the last time i got drunk i was, in fact, drunk as a poet on payday.
the opening of the envelope was comical. i, grimacing in total expectation of a rejection letter, tear open the side and pull out what's inside. a check falls out of the folded paper onto my lap. the sheet of paper is just a page from a shakespeare book. i was like, "they're returning my reading fee? that's nice of them." then... "wait, that's not one of our checks. holy shit..." and there was much rejoicing.
it definitely set the mood for my upcoming trip to the land that the goys are rebuilding.
3rd place in a national competition, all my work for angry poet, copious notes being made for the impending horribly tacky mt.brook-mocking romance novel and a mixed-cd exchange with poe ballantine ... ah, yes, indeed. things are not sucking the light from my soul lately. not a bit.

i bought two joyce carol oates books with my prize money and am going tomorrow for a copy of third coast and tin house-- will which be written off on next year's taxes. as a motherfucking business expense. that's right, bitches. contest fees, lit rag subscriptions, ink, paper and fancy pants pens will be subtracted from my taxes.

on a semi-related note, how funny is sharon olds's letter to cowboy george about why she won't read at the white house? they can't get a poet to step foot in that place. fucking hilarious.

did anybody not know that i got to write about maxx last week on angry poet? how sweet is that? i really like my life right now.

i shouldn't have said that. when i die in a horrible accident tomorrow we'll all know why.

"articulate all that pain, and maybe you'll get paid..." rilo kiley

maddie, monkey, you're my heart

2006-01-16T01:01:00.000-06:00

so i sent an email to jco today. and everything i said was true. and i'm so so very scared. not to be ignored, because i have no name and am therefore frequently ignored, but to be rebuked. fuck; i mean, what would i do, really?
i'm already all full of... something, from brent saying my tone is all wrong. and that's brent. important, yeah, but not joyce carol.

she'll just ignore me.

right?

moron

2006-01-10T20:57:00.000-06:00

question put to me tonight by one of the rich people: "what does 'thai' mean, that it's from india?"

i couldn't have invented a question that stupid if i'd spent the next 20 years trying.

because you "don't read"

2006-01-08T18:09:00.000-06:00

listening to "lit" still gives me goosebumps. years later. i'd have to say, based on the urgent need to repalce the cigarette i just put out and the look of shock on my face that i was not expecting it to be so potent after four and a half years. but, damn. what really impresses me is not the fact that a poem i used to chant as a protective mantra while lying on the bedroom floor drunk and half-sobbing still affects me profoundly, but the fact that it's a slam poem. i mean, i can read "howl" or "elegies for neal cassady" or "addict" (i'll stop that list now) and still feel like it's the first time. but it's unusual for a slam poem to have such power of reverberance. yeah, i said it. i can think of two slam poems that still hurt; the others just make me want cotton balls for my ears, mostly, or are amusing.

i wonder if cristin stopped writing poems about jason? i wonder why memories of why i loved that poem don't me sad anymore, but the poem still does.

i wonder if brent is going to let me make her the voice of the week or if i'm going to have to fly to california and hurt him?

i hate seal

2005-12-30T17:02:00.000-06:00

i'm not one of those "i take pride in myself" kind of people. not that i have any self esteem issues, god knows. it's just that the things we're taught to have pride in, like, oh work or having a clean house are really fucking lame. (i've discovered that good credit, while seemingly lame, would actually be a good thing, but not to the point that i feel bad about myself for mine being atrociously horrible.) but for some reason, i'm really pleased that all of my ebay/half.com comments are positive. i have a 100% user rating. this has no effect on my life. it gets me nowhere. but boy do i feel self-satisfied when i look at my profile.
and i'm pretty sure that means i'm a loser.
atleast i'm a loser with a nice ass. to be a loser with a flatt ass... well, we won't even talk about that.

an open letter

2005-12-27T22:45:00.000-06:00

dear universe,
what the fuck?
it's not that i ever thought you were filled with compassion or anything, but this is getting ridiculous. are you really so filled with sadistic desires that you have to be this much of a bitch? i mean, really. you're such a dick you make me look like shirley fucking temple.
i think you need to put down the charles manson poetry and lighten the fuck up. you're going to turn everyone in existence into a cybil parody. is that what you want?
if one more horrible thing happens this year i'll be forced to believe you're in the employ of dick cheney.

sincerely,
a concerned resident

cold without snow is lame

2005-12-22T21:43:00.000-06:00

when i came in from outside i couldn't feel my fingers. i had to sit on my hands for five minutes before i could respond to emails. it's fucking cold.

and you're right: being depressed does not keep me from being able to push phone buttons. but being asleep does. and you know what happens when i'm depressed. indeed.

now, as much as i would love to regale you with the sordid tales of christmahannuka in the land of the republicans, i'm afraid i have to go wash the sushi rice out of my hair.

happy lurlinemas.

jesusmas

2005-12-05T22:39:00.000-06:00

this makes me happy:

"because if there's one thing jesus cared about, it's semantics." stephen colbert

and i just wanted to share that with everyone.

it wasn't your face so much as it was your words

2005-11-12T15:30:00.000-06:00

"if i had my way i'd be in your town. i might not stay, but atleast i would have been around. 'cause there's something about what happens when we talk." lucinda williams

it's cool and it's been breezey and only the pine trees are green. driving anywhere is a monumental experience-- the landscape shifting outside the car, rolling up and down all gold and red and fourteen shades of brown. (like the ones crayola discontinued in the early '90's. you remember.) i don't even mind how bright it always seems to be.

except that i'm taking detours, going down roads i've never seen and running stop signs because i was thinking about my camera instead of driving. and even as i'm smiling to myself and wondering when i'll get to go farther north, where the hills are mountains and there will be snow later, part of me (that gets bigger and louder) is still pulled back the other way. i don't even like the water and the sand-- certainly not enough to make me forsake a melted-crayon autumn and the way stone feels when the cold seeps in through the butt of my jeans.

i was going to get my hair cut last weekend so i went through photographs looking for an example of sean's work. a lot of photographs. boxes and albums and journals. after awhile of holding the more remarkable ones out to bryan and hearing my verbal captions ending with "that place isn't there anymore" or "we couldn't see if that's still there or not" i got a little disturbed. i don't know why. what i needed from 721 i have, will always have, and the others were just buildings. it just seems wrong for so many places to not exist any more. like the nothing was running around south mississippi with no atreyu in attendence.

i'm tired of never being satisfied anywhere. i hate the coast and i'm not happy when i'm there because it's ugly and too hot and i can't have fallafal at four in the morning. i'm not happy here bcause brad and shanna and bob aren't here-- and mt. brook keeps stubbornly refusing to sink into the earth. i have endless conversation with ben about movning to new york. what would i whine about under those circumstances, i wonder?

"this car hears my confession. i think tonight i'll take the long way..." dashboard confessional

happy buttons

2005-11-10T21:39:00.000-06:00

either brent is a genius, or i'm not quite as dumb as i'd thought i was, 'cause i just edited two pages. as in, edited the code, not proofread them. so, that's something new.

and it didn't even make me throw up. (the forty six times i called ben last week to make him explain these things to me may have made him throw up, but that's neither here nor there.)

bryan just called me to say, "my shrink says we have to do something tomorrow. he says i can't just sit in the house. so we have to do something." welcome to my world, buddy. getting bossed around by the shrink. wait until the motherfucker brings you a book to read. i can only hope it's as fascinating as the one i was given.

when the revolution comes

2005-11-06T22:16:00.000-06:00

i'll tell you a phrase i didn't ever need to learn. "file transfer protocol."
apparently i really didn't ever need to learn it, as apparently no one actually does it anymore, it is some outdated form of whatever it accomplishes, and we should be doing something else. but, no. the editor says ftp, so ftp it is. and now i am faced with not only not knowing what the fuck i'm doing, but also being asked, "why the fuck are you doing that?" when i go crying to bill/ben/whomever to help me. lovely. this is what i get for bitching about the html.
in all honesty it doesn't seem that horrible. of course that was with ben explaining it over the phone and not with me actually trying to do the shit. surely taking a thing from somewhere, altering it and then putting it back can't be that difficult. it's like drinking from the orange juice carton. right? in theory?

i'm going to get fired.

this after two seperate days in the emergency room; one morphine shot, one ativan pill, one demoral iv, one demerol injection and a cat scan, a call to the neurologist... and a nice, conforting, "we have no idea whatsoever what to do with you now. please fuck off." so, let me get this straight-- you can take a heart out of that guy over there and put it into this one here and make it work, but you can't get rid of my fucking headache? and you get paid how much money?

people wonder why i'm bitter and angry and bitchy all the goddamn time. i don't think it's that hard to figure out, really.

the glory of my in box

2005-11-01T21:28:00.000-06:00

someone will be interviewing her favorite new writer this week.

i expect to be worshipped now. bring it.

a newt?

2005-10-31T15:52:00.000-06:00

alright. breathing now.
despite superstition stubbornly punching me in the dominant arm as i attempt to type this, i am about to email poe ballantine's manager. i'm going to request to be acknowledged, if momentarily. even if part of me knows the venture is doomed because both the gods i've been mocking all my life and the ones i've been sacrificing flowers to all despise me. it types the email like it's told or else it's demoted to proofreader. the editor told it so.
sigh.
sometimes... nay, often, i curl up on the carpet and wonder what i've done. my mother never sent me to my room to think about what i'd done when i was a child. thus, actions having consequences never really set in. then there was beer, so, again...
i really do have to write that email, don't i?
or brent will turn me into a toad.

"while you wonder how's this gonna end/ i only want it to begin." ben lee

isangmahol revisited

2005-10-29T18:15:00.000-05:00

so i'm on the way to my car this afternoon-- i'm going to the book store to copy lines out of the beau sia book, as mine was left at the house of a straight girl i had a crush on many moons ago-- and i check my voice mail. and what do i get? (nothing normal, god knows.) "i'm going to jump in the river. hopefully you call me before i get there." and i burst out laughing so loud i drop my bag and the little dirty parking lot children look at each other and scurry off. now, captain brooklyn, you know damn well you can't leave messages like that on my phone.
for one thing, the fact that you have the option of suicide by east river and are considering using it would prompt me to berate you had i been in any condition to operate the phone last night. you know what i have to jump into? a sink, a tub, a toilet (sparkly clean), and the cahaba river. and birmingham is damn near as polluted as nyc, yet not one quarter as cool. but you want to complain. i ought to fly up there and bite you. i'd call bellevue and have them come cart your ass off, but that would also make me jealous. that place from bringing out the dead, that's where your're going. fucker. and anyway, you have computer nonsense to be teaching me.

oh, that's right. i'm meant to learn html. 'cause the angry poet press is really raving goddamn lunatic press. too much isak dineson in his fromative years, my editor had. it's true. he told me. (that was a plea. maxx. i love you. i'll buy you things. shiny things. clothes. shoes. lipstick. courtney love in a box.)

my article is coming along well. i'm about to transfer it onto the screen. off of the wadded up, scratched out, scribbled over mess of paper lying at my feet. i freaked out a few miutes ago, having realized i have no idea what i did with my cd's when i had my "slam is an inferior medium" fit a few years back. i thought i didn't have enough reference material. on beau sia. me. um, journals, kristyn? i'm a fucking idiot sometimes.

hmm. my deadline seems to be in 45 minutes. i should probably stop telling people i'll have things written two days early on halloween weekend, shouldn't i? again, idiot.

"your bright eyes burn through my exploding heart." bright eyes

over-exposure

2005-10-25T04:12:00.000-05:00

i'm afraid i got a little excited earlier with my non-literary husband.
and i got out the collected poems of allen ginsberg 1947 - 1980. but, it was hardly my my fault. i was reading about the howl anniversary. how could i contain myself?
so i read him "elegies for neal cassady" and tried not to cry. but i told him about the first time i read it, when i did cry.

and i missed you guys. so much. then, i wasn't so much concerned with my great literary aspirations as with the fact that i was drunk and missed my friends.

the 50th anniversary of howl? i've got another few moths for that. i pulled off slam nationals and my wedding and countless other things i can't think of right now. why can't i go to san fransisco for just one day, huh?

tell me i can't.

"i have never cried for thinking verona was not mine." jess klein

painted mirror

2005-10-24T22:50:00.000-05:00

ooh girl. no, really.

on the kristyn/obsession front: i'm caught up in a very bizarre catch-22. (all hail joseph heller. he is god.) it's so not scary i'm terrified. i'm totally and completely, not-eating-because-that's-not-as-important obsessed with my writing.
i know, fucking finallly, right? for the last few months it's been building. everyone's been contributing, of course. and now... it's just insane. i looked at bryan tonight at pretty much said, "i hope you know i love you, because you're probably about to doubt it."
it's all about the computer. the notebooks. poets and writers. highlighting journals that are taking submissions. the goddamn log of what i've sent where. my tips? reading fees, yo. no bars with jen or thomas or sean for me. the peruvian halloween party? i doubt i'll go-- my writer's market, 2006 isn't invited.
i've made my second submission to bellevue. i know i'm going to be rejected on the first. i'm fully aware of the mistakes i made-- fine. that just frees up that material for other submissions. i can move on.

this is on par with what i believe was fall of 1999, when brad and shanna bought me vibrator number one. i don't want to do anything else. i want to read and write and submit and compile information on the literary world. and anyone who can get me contact information on poe ballantine gets like... something really good. poe ballantine rocks. not as much as joseph heller, of course, but quite alot.

today was important. i saw little kids having a quidditch match on a library lawn. i made a BLR submission. i finally mailed amanda's package (yes! it's true). the paterson review came in the mail. i started the thing maxx told me to write. i'm not sure where it will go; but it felt good to be talking about it. i revisited my bright eyes cd's and my favorite song and made a raucus bouncing all over the house disturbing the neighbors. being kristyn-like.

"and the story goes on and on and on and on and..." bright eyes

coffee by hopkins

2005-10-24T02:18:00.000-05:00

so, i'm doing bj's essay-- really, i was doing it-- and i'm about to launch into this whole coffee/hopkins/communion symbolism thing when i suddenly remember it's not my paper, not my grade (like that mattered) and hindus... not real big on the catholocism references. but, i think, what if "bj" were to take the gutting of the fish on the log outside the swamp as an offering, and... and i almost got myself into a whole lot of shit, is what i almost did. just write the damn paper, shift tenses somewhere, use the wrong literary stupid whatdoyoucallthatthing and be done with it. don't be all clever. yes, it would be cool if some hindu kid wrote about nick adams flinging fish guts out into the water to honor his fallen comrades-- but that hindu kid is not bj, and you, may i remind you, are a white girl. yes, it's true, you are. and you'll be white in the morning. white, and out of beer, and having to explain to bj why his essay is four times longer than it was supposed to be if you're not careful. focus.

in case anyone wanted to know, my panty-wetting love of ernest hemingway is more of novel kind of thing. more of a bret ashley sort of affair. i'm not so much a nick adams, trout fishing, talking to a grasshopper type of girl.

and this? this was still more fun than the willa cather essay.

and this is still fun. i love it. i'm going to fix the "i wrote these for non-native english speakers" parts of the things i've been doing, and sell them. then i'm going to write about how i do this and how evil of me it is, and sell that to writers' digest. hm. what agent? 12% my ass. if i ever have anything to give a percentage of i will need it, as i will be going around to all the tables at work poking them in the temples with chopsticks, laughing, quoting sylvia: "i am. i am. i am."

(friday i got in trouble. for what? scowling-- and rubbing my temples. apparently my being in pain is offensive. that'll teach me to get a migraine. what an ungrateful bitch i am! after they so graciously allow me to come into their presence and serve them. horrible, bad, naughty kristyn. it's a shame more of their young aren't raped and killed, really. i think i should make that into a bumper sticker.)

my home still isn't. even as i'm so obsessed with him, ernie's not on the walls. i've got him propped unceremoniously on the printer. shameful. not enough candles. the other room needs more unpacking. i need another book shelf. i've actually been...gasp... legitimately busy; writing. not enough, of course. never enough. but more than ever before. i really do want an agent, you know. just not now. not until there's a book. a novel. and fuck knows if i'll ever pull that off. that shit's hard, yo-- once you outgrow being 20 and thinking everybody wants to know about you and your exboyfriend.

right now i'm big into editing my lovely friend's poems. it makes me feel validated and smart. i did it the other day while i had falafel by a fountain, feeding pigeons and bitching that my lunch date was late. i felt superior to passersby. it was quite the lovely experience.

i'm out of beer now. sad.

"i'll get off your back when you get off your knees." sorry about dresden

institutional green

2005-10-23T14:17:00.000-05:00

can someone please tell me why the president has time to meet with bono? i'm not entirely sure why anyone has the time or the inclination to meet with bono-- even when i agree with him i think he ought to shut the fuck up-- but i'm quite sure a man who's supposed to be running a country and a war doesn't have the time to be dicking around with bono.

this has been another effort to avoid doing bj's homework.

no more wire hangers

2005-10-20T21:01:00.000-05:00

overheard in the thrift store this afternoon: david drove the tractor into the lake, and his cell phone went with it... (mumble from companion)... well, you know, he'd been a'drinkin'.
why don't people know that there are some conversations you don't have at the top of your lungs in public places? even for my amusement?
the thrift store god has turned his back. there's no brown corduroy to be found. it's all these goddamned little hipster college kids. smarmy little bastards. i know it's them. i'm going to have to drive to alabaster. i'm not pleased.
what do you think you sacrifice to the thrift store god when it needs appeasing? an old flip flop and a mattress? four mis-matched plates, a bathrobe and a stuffed bear? if i have to go into an actual retail store with bright lights and clean floors that doesn't smell like the free clinic in order to buy a jacket, i'm going to be seriously disillusioned.
what kind of world are we living in when i can't find a goddamn thrift store jacket in a three-week long hunting spree, for the love of christ? and rednecks are driving cell-phone laden tractors into lakes...
i'm going to get drunk.

i mailed that damn essay to the sun today. so i wouldn't have to look at it any more. because i hate it.

query

2005-10-19T23:12:00.000-05:00

of the many asinine bumper stickers i see on a daily basis, the one that caught my attention tonight as i was driving home was an old one. the one that says "rush was right." about what, exactly, was that idiot supposed to have been right? because if they mean gastric bypass, well, then they're correct. but something tells me that's not what they mean.
i hate living in the south.

oh, um, and

2005-10-13T20:26:00.000-05:00

(not that i condone goat sacrifice; or any animal sacrifice, for that matter. animal sacrifice in my opinion is not good. furby sacrifice is fine, but actual live animals, no. )

big red third eye

2005-10-13T03:11:00.000-05:00

dasain. good triumphs over evil. man enters the third epoch. in nepal the blood of goats runs in the streets, to pacify durga. in alabama, a really drunk nepali pukes his guts ups all over 10th avenue before midnight-- apparently the keg was tapped very early.
i was complimented on my nepali curse word prowess tonight. by a stranger, no less. nice.
anup gave me tika. my first time; and i think dasain is a good time-- the biggest festival. i want to go to temple in the morning and get it again, leave an offering... but that's seven hours from now and i've got five beers left so... yeah.
sarita tried to make me dance with her. it was shamefully amusing. there's enough beer to get me that drunk, but it was not located in that house this evening.
alot of the belly dancing this evening was done to some shaggy. that was different. some of the indian stuff, but mostly they were into the american hip-hop crap. and i do mean crap. it could have atleast been good american music. but, no. atelast there were scantily clad, hot foreign girls. bryan looked at me at one point, nodded toward sushila and said, "how old is she? cause i feel very dirty and wrong." i was like, "dude, i told you." (but, it's ok. she's 22.)

so. a dasain party and tika. and bijendra actually said to the host of the party (shaking his head), "she knows more than you do! talk to her about kathmandu." so. my bipolar disorder has never ever served me better. i'm willing to put up with no end of depression for this one spot of luck-- the lucky onset of hypo-mania two days ago in tune with the lunar calendar. pritam says i was a hindu princess in a past life. hmm...

saraswati maya...

home is a feeling i buried in you

2005-10-11T00:54:00.000-05:00

jcsb is chasing a wealth of wadded papers across the carpet tonight. he'll have a massive pile somewhere by morning. i'll be too drunk to notice, but he'll have it, by god.
i've been busy. bellevue. the sun. the grove. dogwood. kalliope. spanish moss. the ledge.
i don't have enough work to conitnue this way. i have to quit submitting and wait for responses (read: little unhappy pink notices that make me get drunk in dark, loud bars) so i can re-submit to places that don't allow simultaneous submissions, and i have to write. the essay for the sun is new, of course, since i haven't written an essay since i was in school. (you know, for that oh so productive english degree. everybody needs one of those. 'cause i'm not quite qualified to be a hostess just yet.) probably if maxx would help me edit, this would all be much easier. yeah, i'm talking about you. you hear me. or, see me. something.
i drinks a bit, you know.

speaking of bobby... i miss you guys. i'm having a small scale war with t-mobile right now and am therefore unable to call anyone. it hurts me greatly. (and, speaking of alice: i need those digits; we never did that.) they obviously don't understand that the future of neo-confessional american chick poetry is on the line here. the bastards.

we're so poor right now we can't afford for me to go get more beer. isn't that sad? i had to call my mummy today on somone else's phone and ask for money. good goddamn thing i have no shame. also, bryan seems to think we "can't afford cigarettes". ok, we can "not afford for me to drive to work" before i'll not smoke. i quit smoking with great difficulty when your doctor told us we had to, and that didn't stick. now you think finance is going to motivate me? yeah. i sometimes wonder if he's met me. he apparently doesn't know how easy i find getting people to lend me money. like, for instance, uncle ricky-- who drives a mercedes and loves me. no cigarettes indeed. didn't i get married so as to avoid being a starving artist? i'm pretty sure that was part of the plan.

this afternoon a doctor gave me a shot in the back. specifically, a shot in one of the joints in my back. i don't recommend such things. i've had 8 tattoos, several touch ups on 7 of those, my belly button pierced mulitple times, depo-provera shots, migraine shots, demoral shots... i actually like needles and this shit made me yell so that they heard me outside in the exam room. and i got no pills. what a fucker. when i go back in three weeks he's getting deluged with tears, if i have to think about dead baby monkeys and euthanised kittens all the way to his office.

"i said good day." jon stewart

this is the sweater of a girl

2005-10-09T16:11:00.000-05:00

i will have you know that today when i went to the mailbox there were two remarkable occurrences. primarily, i was going there to put in two lit journal entries. shaky handed and all, ashing all over the dirty children who were playing amongst the parking lot debris, as dirty little children are wont to do. actually, i very nearly puked on one of them. and these aren't prestigious publications, either. i can't remember how i managed to mail off the bellevue entry. obviously there was some kind of chemical coersion. right now i'm just still hyped up on adrenaline and nicotine and it's not all that pleasant, i don't mind telling you. ah, yes, the point.
i will also have you know that before i made my way out the door for the arduous journey to the metal box of dread and wonder, i was made to dress myself in a fluffy wool thing with long sleeves that i found hiding in the back of my closet. a sheep, i believe you call it. no... um, sweater? yes, that's it. a sweater. because apparently we are actually going to have autumn in october. atleast for a bit. i needed long sleeves yesterday, as well.
and, yes, this is news-worthy. i wore a goddamn sleeveless dress to my rehearsal dinner last year...
sweet monkey christ. i've almost been married for a whole year. wow.

i have to go clean something.

belly dancers

2005-10-06T22:36:00.000-05:00

sami got married two months ago in kathmandu. apparently the gigantic party they had for two days wasn't quite sufficient for them. (these people are insane with their celebrations. dasain lasts for like half the year or something. christian holidays are a fucking joke.) so in december they're having an additional ceremony at the temple here, the one by my house. yay. didn't i just exude delight when i found that out. i get to wear a sari instead of the punjab, which is cute but not all sexy and shit. after the ceremony at the temple they'll have the party... like andri and sushil did last weekend and not everyone has recovered from yet. (cough, bijendra, cough...) how very, very exciting.
it amuses me to no end that what sami really wants is to buy a nice frilly white dress and dress whatdoyoucallhim up in a tux and have an "american" wedding. for what? how boring! maybe we can get an old guy to run on about jesus for awhile, too. or clint black. (yeah, i had to go there.) i'm in the process of finding her a dress from my friend the actress's costume lady so we can take bridal pictures of her. i even got her a photo album for them. nice and wedding-y. and bought her some big ass white candles.
now bring the naan and the belly dancing, damn it!
(fucking goddamn sayed and his goddamn tiny pictures.)

she said courtney was her homegirl

2005-10-05T17:13:00.000-05:00

in ten more years shanna will get two inches taller, my boobs will grow about three sizes and we will be twins. we're morphing.
but that was not the point. the point was that i've printed this out (not this one exactly, but the bigger, color one) and put it on my wall. so i look at it and the more i do the more it pisses me off. 'cause i stomped around in ick and dirt and muddy wetness squinting in the sun trying to make shots turn out just a certain way, and half of them still did not. but maxx? oh, maxx just holds the camera and clicks the button and it's fucking perfectly fine. just goddamn fine and dandy, thank you.
bitch. you and your perfect eyeshadow.
i hate you.

funny but it seems i always

2005-10-04T01:16:00.000-05:00

the important thing to remember when going to tour a disaster area, other than not to do so while the president is going to be there, is to have a tour guide. who drives you around in your car and points things out while you get drunk in the back seat. it makes the whole event so much less stressful. and your out of state tag will make it more understandable for the car to be stopped in the road when people inside the car want to take pictures.
it took more than a day for it to crystalize in my mind, what brad and i were actually stomping around in. kicking beads at each other and playing who can identify what. it was kind of a very surreal carnival-like experience at first. hot and sandy and just not at all right. there should be walls there, there should be a road there, that man with that gun should certainly not be there; and what's up with the razorwire? (we always come back to the razorwire.) maxx pointed out the baby-carrier hanging fifteen feet in the air off of a limb of a tree and it was just another photo opportunity, not a tragedy. it was a walk through dali's tamer daydreams, not something i was actualy doing. it wasn't even something to make poems out of, because i couldn't possibly actually be having the experience.
and the letter brad wrote me? the pictures they took during the storm? ha. i imagined those. hallucinations from my drug addled subconscious.
i was in the middle of it and it was still not concrete.
until halfway to meridian. i rolled down the window to flick out a cogarette butt and as the wind rushed in at me something went... click.
so i was exhausted and had too much in my head and i felt like the sand from those bricks was never going to come out from under my fingernails, but i ran into my bedroom and changed. slid the bangles on and found my sandals. out i went again. because nothing, apparently, will knock the sense back out of you like celebratory hindus. those were some happy, excited motherfuckers. and andri was beautiful, beautiful, beautiful; in red and gold, with actual gold in her hair, barefoot, dressed like a princess. there were gorgeous, dark haired girls belly-dancing in saris. drunk foreign boys singing in other languages (about four of them) at the tops of their lungs. "so much shouting, so much laughter." at one point, i was so happy i just went outside and leaned against the wall and smiled, cried. i was on two planets at once. (four other people should have been there; then it would have been perfect. i thought about you.)
i came home exhausted. i woke up exhausted. i may not ever not be tired. there's no way i'd ever chose to live the last four days of my life any other way.
thank you, everyone involved. for being perfectly what i needed.

"it's not a love it's not a love it's not a love song..." maria taylor

imagine there's no heaven

2005-10-03T04:05:00.000-05:00

navigation was very hard. because, down there, i use landmarks and not street names. buildings and memories and formations of trees. that method wasn't really really acceptable this weekend.
the smell was the most disturbing part. that one block stretch of railroad where it smells like roadkill and there's not really any explantaion, except the one you don't want. that it can't be. the razorwire was bad-- though it was fun to almost get let through, to get to talk with the guards and peek over their shoulders.
i've got so much more to say about that experience. admiration for my survivor friends, and the delayed shock i was dealing with on the way home tonight.
but right now i'm drunk and i've had too much fun with the partying nepalis at their wedding festivities. and it was too good to see andri, too much fun to wear the hindu clothes. i feel too guilty for being so lucky. i have to go to sleep.

and i am not a maiden fair

2005-09-29T16:54:00.000-05:00

"it don't take a weatherman to look around and see the weather; jeb said he'd deliver florida, folks and boy did he ever... and we hold these truths to be self evident, number one, george w. bush is not president..." ani difranco

does anyone listen to that song and not stomp around the house with wet panties and clenched fists wanting to break things and hug people at the same time? it's like... howl? maybe. something. i don't know. but i just hurt my back again.

while bob was here we sat in that dark, dirty bar talking about how i managed to go so long refusing to have political ideals, save that pesky pro-choice stance i took at the ripe old age of, oh, 13. (nothing like disagreeing with a bumper sticker to set you off on a life-long tangent of rage, is there?) he laughed, sort of admiringly, mostly frustrated; he said, "you pulled that shit off for fucking ever. i wanted to strangle you." i just couldn't handle the stress, the hair pulling and the tears and the... hopelessness. and it is. hopeless.
but, jesus christ, people. hopeless or not, you can't just sit idley by while someone as idiotic as w and his band of merry gun-hoarding freaks destroys what's left of civilization. do i think my weblog is going to change the way my dumbass neighbors think about gay marriage? no, i don't. do i think my contibutions to planned parenthood will make the world a safer place for doctors and nurses who staff abortion clinics? no. i also don't think my vote counts or that my bumper stickers are opening minds. but the things i do and say and think and the way i express myself make it possible for me to look in the mirror and not vomit. and i like me, i like to see me. a lack of self-loathing is important to me.
it's not about saving the world. it's about being involved, as much as i think i can be, so that i can continue to live. regardless of where i think we're all headed. (which is straight to a hybrid of everyone's version of hell, if anyone's asking. i turn to the esteemed mr. vonnegut: "i think that the earth's immune system is trying to get rid of us, and should." if we don't have enough sense, as a species (and especially americans as a nation) to protect ourselves from harm, do we deserv any better?)

well. that was a little more twisted than it was meant to be. i blame the bellevue lit review. they're making me wait a very long time for my rejection letter and it's causing great unrest in my belly.

my overly aggravated hyenia

2005-09-26T17:12:00.000-05:00

when i was 13 i had a very good friend named david. david was awesome. he was a little punk ass trouble maker, and he was adorable. i was probably the 13-year old equivalent of in love with him (and the four other guys our age knew; big town, columbus.) anyway, his dad, dr.trotter, was a gynecologist. so one night, at this church lock-in we were all at, 'cause what the fuck else were we gonna be doing? it's like 2 in the morning, we've already exhausted the fun of calling abused children hotlines and pretending to cry while other kids scream in the background, or slam doors or hit things; so, we're just sitting around in a back room somewhere, talking about if we had some cigarettes or if we had some beer or how somebody supposedly had sex once... and david gets this look on his face. and it's no good, this look. and i see him first, and kind of put one hand up to my face to hide my grin, because i don't know what's coming and i'm sort of afraid. and then david goes, "hey, do you guys know what a speculum is?" and i want to say that he had one in his bag. this is not unlikely. but i can't exactly remember, and i'm not in touch with anyone from that time in my life, so i can't just call and have it confirmed or denied, and i do tend toward hyperbole in my retelling of stories. what i can remember is there only being three girls who'd made it through the evening, and at that point we all kind of turned white and clutched each other, gripped by an unholy terror that never really left any of us. we never spoke of it again. i thought about it four years later, in a gulfport exam room while a 90 year old man was lubing up his device asking me how i found the weather to be that afternoon. i'm not really sure how meghan or jenny first encountered the dreaded device. but i'm damn sure they were thinking about david. (the ironic part of the whole speculum adventure is that, as scary a prospect as it was at 13, that motherfucker would have caused a screaming flight from the exam room at 17 had i not been giggling hystericaly, thinking about my dumbass friend from 8th grade.)

that was the thought that leapt out at me from the hedges as i was leaving dr.l's office at 10:30 this morning. maybe it was the sleep deprivation mixing with the back/hip pain and the muscle relaxers. could have been the general aura of insanity. i don't know what it was. but it made me think of a conversation i'd had with katy (katy seto, googlegoolge) , about people googling themselves. and i thought, i'd like to talk to david sometime. just... to see. you know? i heard something about him and louisianna and culinary school, but that was like 1998. from steven, who i also haven't spoken to since then; all i know about him is i tried to invite him to the wedding and his parents no longer live in the cool house by the insurance place. so. in the perhaps pathetic hope that one day people i have idle curiosity about are as filled with ego as i am... these are the handful i'm wondering about.
david c. trotter steven perkins sam meharg meghan wells jenny souffer nathan pennington amanda newell rodrigo bravo kit rainey

also, just since i know beau sia googles his own ass: isang mahol is two words. and it means "one whom i love very much." i've been asking. and i'm terribly, terribly disappointed. i almost got a grammatical mistake tattooed on my body. an indelible typo. can you imagine? honestly.

aha! victory is mine!

2005-09-19T17:30:00.000-05:00

no, as a matter of fact, i did not think anyone else wanted to see that. i didn't want to see it myself. but i had to. and so you have to. so, ha.
he started it.

the tale of the bacteria bathed interloper

2005-09-18T19:56:00.000-05:00

it wasn't a good time for a battle, as i'd just come in from work on my off day, already injured (in the back and shoulder from the great highchair incident of 2005) and was, on top of that, struggling with a disobedient contact lense that was trying its best to suck the last bit of moisture from my body. i walked innocently into my apartment, half blinded by the fingertip i was using to dislodge the offensive piece of plastic, weighted down with a plastic to-go bag of fragrant calamari, my kathmandu purse bulging with books and the mail, dropping my keys. and there it was. the intruder.
the chumji. the saanglo. the minion of hell, sent to wreak havoc on my already fragile mental state, to destroy my peacefeul, quiet night at home, reflecting on the horrors of life on earth and life under the rule of a texan. the very work of the devil himself, attenae waving merrily in the breeze from the open door, it's parked on the crown molding above the couch. waiting for me.
joyce carol sherman brown looked at me. he wanted to be fed. as if he's going to be fed after diserting his post and allowing this thing into my house! he ought to have been shot for deriliction of duty. instead, he was thrown into the spare bedroom in order to spare him from the impending fire of my insectide cannon.
dropping all belongings in the doorway and keeping an eye on the villian above the couch, i hastily made my way into the kitchen to avail myself of the 3-gallon jug of wonderfulness bryan once bought me at lowe's after an incident grossly similar to this.
i set up hq at the computer. my enemy was still toying with me from the crown molding. any sudden movements on my part would cause him to plummet down into the couch. this was a treacherous time-- as the aforementioned plummet would put him in the midst of several pillows, the living room blanket, my copy of "band of brothers", and most of my collage materials; all of which had been left lying carelessly about due to my mistaken assumption that jcsb would defend the house in my absence. clearly, my only course of action was to wait until senor chumji advanced away from the couch, toward the coffee table, then spray him onto the floor. from that point i could launch a massive attack of projectiles and broom bashings that would incapacitate him long enough for me to make my escape to a bar, where i would await bryan's getting off work. at which point he could, of course, go home to remove the corpse.
alas, for all my elaborate planning i am no richard winters. and i was distracted. i took my eyes from the damn dirty beast long enough to type a sentence, and the dreaded fall occurred.
damn.
from that point, obviously, there was nothing to do but call brad. i was then advised to beat the shit out of the couch with the broom. i did so. it never emerged. never! i was forced to take many sedating pills, cover the living room in bug-spray, fling things around with the broom, use kitchen tongs and broom handles to put things into the laundry, and then vaccuum the floor and couch cushions. until almost midnight.
still, it remained hidded.
until jcsb, released from his prison, flushed it out this afternoon. limping and seemingly missing a wing, it came out from a stack of magazines at the cat's prodding. unfortunately, it was being herded back under the couch, as jcsb is an idiot. and i had to imprison it underneath the remote control after i squirted it again.

so. now i'm waiting for patrick. because i'm all out of ideas. and that motherfucker just won't die.

in other words, you guys thought i was getting rather serious and political and all. but, no, i was just , like, distracted.

why has never been good enough

2005-09-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

i used to work here. and sometimes it was hell and i pretty much wanted to make it look like this and other times it was so much fucking fun i laughed until i cried and my whole body hurt for days. either way, there's really nothing left, is there?

"it's kind of funny-- well, i mean, not funny, but, ironic funny-- if you think about it. that god would send a flood to new orleans and the french quarter be relatively fine. 'cause those pictures you showed me of the (restaurant x) there looked pretty good."
excuse me?
i dropped things on the floor of big lots. i broke into a cold sweat. who did what, now? i took the phone away from my ear to make sure i was talking to who i'd thought i was talking to and not the trinity broadcasting network hotline. (or my mother in law.)
my fucking mother has two degrees in sciences. she's a fucking micro-goddamn-biologist. she'd not a single minute before that tripe spewed out said something about "it was just a natural occurence of weather, these homo-phobe, anti-gambling freaks need to settle down." and then...
let me just recap that for you. "god sent a flood to new orleans." jesus did it! not global warming or wetland depletion or, i don't know, the hurricane. god. it was god.
i suppose nostradamus told us it was going to happen, too. i don't see why not.

i can't even express the kind of horror i felt when she made that statement. then she wanted to get into politics so i'd be distracted. talking about blanco. yeah, that's a dumb ho; but my mom lives in mississippi. how are you gonna live in mississippi and insult another state's governor? "there's a bunch a dead people down there, mmmm hmmm." carl from slingblade's running their state. atleast blanco isn't responsible for putting dumb fuck michael brown in charge of fema. she may incompetent but she doesn't have blood on her hands. i say screw blanco anyway. let nagin run shit. between nagin and honore, it's all going to be handled.

i've never given a shout out before, and i've never given anyone props. but, to whomever the guy was who told cheney to fuck himself in gulfport, i'd like to extend my warmest possible shout-out capacity and say: MAD MOTHERFUCKING PROPS. also, if i may, ups, as well. and if possible, i'd like all of that to be "mad." can i do that? i'd like to do that.

oh, and, dick cheney, take that guy's advice. really.

i've made our new holiday

2005-09-11T16:12:00.000-05:00

in the spirit of people magazine (see previous rant), the town of helena has decided to hold a candlelight vigil for the victims of hurricane katrina. but wait-- it's the eleventh of september. that would be tacky. better make it a candlelight vigil for the victims of hurricane katrina and the victims of 9/11 and their families. that way it won't be tacky.
also, polio, ebola, the aids epidemic... no, wait, we don't care about gay people. but, influenza. also, battered wives, paraplegics, people with lower back pain and irritable bowel syndrome. those who were ripped off by used car salesmen or have not saved a bunch of money on car insurnace by switching to geico. atheists and people with excema and amelia earhart. the soldiers who died on d-day. pearl harbor. we'll have a candlelight vigil for 9/11, hurricanes camille, katrina, andrew and ivan, isaac's storm, the 1989 earthquake in san fransisco...

we'll call it "every tragic event in our nation's history-- so that tomorrow we can happily go back to watching the o.c., driving great big cars, and telling ourselves that the rest of the world is just jealous-- day." hallmark won't like putting that many words in just one day; they'll make trouble. but we have home printers and greeting card software-- we don't need them. are you with me?

yeah. yeah, that's a great idea. just as long as it isn't tacky. because if there's one thing we won't stand for in america, and especially in alabama, goddamnit, it's being tacky.

pseudo-journalism and pyschology

2005-09-10T01:24:00.000-05:00

people magazine. new double issue. half of it is about the aftermath of katrina; the price of rebuilding, the human tragedy, who to blame. you know. candid photography and where to donate money. the other half? best and worst dressed of the year. now, i didn't look inside, so i assume they aren't talking about at the superdome, but it is people magazine.
this blog when i'm drunk, half asleep and on xanax contains more wothwhile "journalism" than people magazine.

in other not actual news, i met the new shrink. she was dressed in leprechaun green, and other than that no physical characteristics made it into the memory. i had a migraine brewing and her office building has a killer view so i was distracted. really nice furniture, as well; none of that county mental health center nonsense. there was a couch and two comfy chairs. i had to sit on the couch; half lotus, shoeless, gnawing fingertips. you've seen it. i'd brought my last journal, to leave with her if i liked her, since jana seemed to find it so helpful when i did that. she was eyeing it the whole time. i can only imagine what one of those monstrosities looks like to a shrink. a japanese bath house to freddy kim, i suppose. anyway, i left it there. because her office was devoid of bibles, references to the supreme washington jackass idiot bastard fuckhead, and she didn't try to give me lithium-- although she did mention it; you can't get through a single conversation with one of those fucking people without them bringing up that word. it's like southern baptists and jesus. also, she has a cat.
so she knows who bryan, bob, brad, shanna, and joyce carol sherman brown are. she knows i hate my father, refuse to speak to him, and why. she knows about writing. she knows about nepal. she takes all kind of issue with my mom not noticing when i tried to off myself those times in highschool, which i was kind of over; i'm not really sure how i feel about that. she knows about when uab tried to kill bryan because they are incompetent bastards. (except dr. renton, who i love.) and she knows i hate the rich people, and that i'm all fucked up about katrina for various reasons we have yet to discern, as that is her job and not mine. she also knows jana ran away with her 16 cats and k-k-k-karla and her capri pants took off in the night before getting me visterill so i have bad luck with her kind. she certainly did make me cry alot.
i think she'll do, was the point i was getting at. she sure is like a 50 year old white lady. i'm under the impression that at her house she may have those knitted things you put around the kleenex box. i can't prove that.

"any chimp can play human for a day, use his opposable thumbs to iron his uniform..." rilo kiley

Nagin for President

2005-09-05T18:05:00.000-05:00

i can't imagine what it's like. even for the refugee asleep on the couch behind me, although we hardly talk about anything else.
mostly i worry about malori. that's what i was crying about the other night, cuddled up against the wall in patrick's kitchen, clutching my beer. i can't do anything. can't even see it and say i know. ("cause i don't, yo.")
brad, on the other hand, is easy. requests easily met. desires easily vanquished. what he wanted i'd already been looking for, of course. we've known each other a long time. all kind of shipping gets fucked up in a time like this, you know. the underworld is all in tatters, too.
my poor little shanna needs a bubble bath and some flowers. i'm not sure bob considers roses and lillies part of his emergency courier duties. he ought to.

we're all getting sick around here. from joy; some kind of thai virus. avian flu. bob suggested cholera. all i know is joy did it so when i miss work it's because she breathed on me.

thursday i see my shrink. won't he get an ear full. and an eye or two...

it was only moments ago i was planning my trip to the tv station by vulcan where i was going to hammer my brain out onto the pavement in protest of bush's incompetence. i feel that's the only way i can really get the full force of my feeling across. carrot top could run the country better than that blundering jack ass hillbilly fuck up. (am i allowed to say that? i know if i were on the 700 club i could say whatever the hell i pleased, but am i personally still afforded 1st ammendment rights?) yes, come for me, home land security, i said i hate w. i hate him like i hate a yeast infection after i just watched a nicole kidman movie. and jon stewart was right, we shouldn't compare him to hitler; because hitler was a horrible evil sadist, but that was all they had in common, because atleast hitler was a competent leader. if half of berlin had been nearly obliterated by a natural disaster it wouldn't have been a week before the reich responded.

i'm not afraid of the fbi. ani will save me. i've donated money to amnesty international. and i know michael ide. so there.

"...the right wing was broken long ago by the sling-shot of cointelpro..." ani difranco

pardon our mess

2005-09-03T19:07:00.000-05:00

how many times in my life did i want that to happen?

bob and i were wondering if clear channel was going to instate another ban on "offensive" songs? (or had already done so while we were busy watching actual news.) you know, "when the levee breaks", "new orleans ladies", "house of the rising sun." "buildings and bridges." "rain." you feel me.

i wonder how jamie is? i worry, because he always thought it would cool to experience a hurricane. surely he knows that a cat 5 is not to be trifled with. i've had enough dead friends for the time being. and i'm crazy enough. somebody find out.

everything was beautiful and nothing hurt

2005-09-03T01:39:00.000-05:00

brad called at 10:15 yesterday morning. it was right after i'd hit the snooze, and although the ring and the snooze of my phone sound nothing alike i nearly make a dreadful mistake in my hungover, dazed hatred of noise. then my fractured brain fed information to the forefront in a blaze of naturaldisasterdon'tcharememberdumbass and i said, "oh fuck, how are you?" and he laughed.

it was only a ten minute phone call and that was very much ten minutes i spent hovering with my face near the ceiling. then talking with shanna was... i don't know what any of it was. not being with them is some weird guilt. i liken it to survivor guilt where the other parties are also survivors. i feel guilty for having moved. for not being another desperate, hot hungry mouth in a bad situation. for not being another hysterical, crying child on a bad carnival ride. i know this is irrational. thursday i will be told by a professional that this is irrational but until i'm forgiven by them i'll continue to scold myself.

that's what i carry with me at work. amid the women in the queen of france diamonds stuffing eggrolls and yum yai salad down their over-taut throats jabbering on about "wishing i could do something" and "how terrible for all those people". yeah, but those people aren't your demographic, you laura bush wannabe, they're strangers. you'd never even speak to them on the street. i ought to be there. why do i get to be okay?

(rationally speaking, i know this is all irrational.)

at the end of the conversation that was proof of some grace in the universe shanna and i could only chant mantras. just iloveyouiloveyouiloveyou... and it wasn't hanging up from a cell phone conversation in our respective homes, less than 300 miles away, knowing we'd see each other in a month. it was knowing NASA was about to blast us each into a different galaxy. both us of face-wet and big-eyed and trembly-handed, hugging through sattelite transmissions we don't even understand.

i feel fractured, going through this seperately. bryan, being in possession of human emotion, is himself upset. but, i can't... i don't know. i don't have anything to give. empathy. and i'm buying toys and cards and stickers like a madwoman, for malori; because it hurts me to think that she lost things. that she lost anything, let alone everything. and i can't fix it. i can't even explain it. i don't want anything ever to hurt that child and this is so much more horrible than i was ever prepared to make better for her.

last night, because he felt the impending break down, bryan made the ultra-impressive chicken soup that he makes. and bought me be cool. who can be sad with vince vaugh saying "c-a-raya"? and andre benjamin... come on, now. then i took a couple visterills and went to bed early. right up until the nightmares of being one of the people from henderson point it was a pretty goddamn relaxing night. my baby does good work.

tonight bob went with the red cross to birmingham international to help refugees. i stayed here, having taken off work to hang out, because i had a migraine. it went away about an hour later and i really wanted to go out there. i've donated money, obviously, but that's not enough. but i just can't. i'm about to fall apart now, with very little legitimate cause. adding to it would break me. that's been coming for years and years and i don't want to be taking up hospital space right now. i guess that's my contribution.
that little rationilzation does not make me feel like less of a loser, in case anyone was wondering.

now i'm going to take another xanax and clean something. can't help refugees? vaccuum. dust. it's a trick i learned from mary. works wonders.

"there are dragonflies everywhere, and they're mating." shanna marie yarbrough

like slow spinning redemption

2005-08-31T00:49:00.000-05:00

not that anyone should be remotely worried about how i feel, but

i've never gone this long without talking to brad. i don't think so. not for something serious. not since that weird thanksgiving. and we wanted that stupid pirate ship to get thrown somewhere, but that was all, really. nothing else.
if i didn't have bob here, i don't know what i would do. to not know anything about all three of them? incomprehensible pain. as it is, alone in this apartment now i can't turn on the television. even with xanax and beer and jcsb purring against my feet.
finally i had to give up on the incessant dialing of the cell phone. one can only be told that due to the hurricane in the area one is trying to dial no coverage is available at the time before one's hope is rather crushed. beer-soaked though it may be.
we got nervous, bob and i, sitting in the bar when it dawned on us that the news people bounced merrily back and forth from new orleans to mobile with never a stop in between. no pictures, no messages. no coverage means no access means no es bueno. means i'm a little agitated.
and no phones, can't talk to brad and shanna, or even be told that they're okay or if the house is still standing, means happy fun time getting drunk with bobby and his guitar came to a rather abrupt halt so that i could panic. and call kyle and we could tell each other not to panic.
it certainly does help to have other people in the same position, though thinking so makes me feel like a god-awful sadist.

last night i had some of the more terrible nightmares of recent years. not on the scale of lithium nightmares, but i did have a well-trained husband/comfort-provider beside me. i'm not going to relive them now. later, for brad; but not yet. (i was still crying when i got to work, an hour later. it's possible the additional trauma of driving down 280 induced that; can't be sure.)

anyway, i'm half panicked on the inside. mostly i think i'm kind of okay, coonsidering. because they have to be okay. because i don't believe in god, but there's already sick husband, what kind of universe is going to take away my best friends? (i could answer that for myself, but i choose not to. i choose to get drunk.)
the only reason i'm not insane, stealing patrick's jeep in some deranged plan to go find out for myself what a lack of functioning cell-phone towers can't tell me is that i've got extraordinary reserves of inner strength-- built up, totally unbeknownst to me, from the past seven years of my life. it's a gift.
it's not going to last very long, mind you. but for now, i think i may survive. just for awhile.

for now i'll continue unpacking my apartment, writing letters, drinking and collecting sheep for mary. mary makes me feel better. with her sheeps...

"i am seeing in me now the things you swore you saw yourself..." dashboard confessional

bindi bindi bindi bindi

2005-08-29T03:31:00.000-05:00

lock 'em in the trunk of my car

2005-08-28T15:18:00.000-05:00

so what do i do with you on the cover of a romance novel, benjamin? stick you on a white horse with some fabio hair? you want to be a pirate? actually, my male leads are a doctor and a (big fucking shocker) novelist. and since you're not nepali you'd have to be the writer. you do have brown hair. you can be on the cover of my romance novel sitting at a computer. will that be thrilling enough for you? perhaps i'll have to continue writing romance novels just for money and to entertain you. i don't think my stream of consciouness, how many flashbacks can i use, art novels are going to impress too many people with money. i'll write you a nice pirate/kidnapper flees from justice type romance/adventure book to be on the cover of. doing battle at sea with someone. probably kyle. because that would amuse me. actually, i don't know who that wouldn't amuse.

in other news, what with the flying debris and sinking of towns and whatnot, i'm having a houseguest. bryan's none too pleased, as per usual. he's a bit more chipper than with some, as i squealed in unabashed delightedness when i was notifed and then skipped around the livingroom singing a song; but he's still dangerously close to harshing my buzz. sort of; my herb buzz is pretty damn near un-harshable.
i just don't understand why he he finds having other human beings in the house to be so painfully unpleasant. i can see where it's not the absolute best thing ever, but fuck; it's not oral surgery. we're talking about pat robertson coming to dinner. (though i have some lovely dran-o under the kitchen sink...)
and it's only a fair trade: i'm made to go to church with his family. (i may have mentioned this.) he made me go on christmas, which was bad enough, but i was sort of expecting it ever since i met his mother; i was willing to make the trade 'cause she gave me good presents. then i had to go to his sister's "wedding", which was hours of church during which their names were mentioned about twice. i'm being made to go again. in october-- my favorite month is being tainted, now. two weeks before my anniversary, no less. fucking christians. the small nephew has to be baptized. if his sister's wedding is any indicator, that ought to last about eight hours. and he wants to get grumpy 'cause bob's coming up a few days for the hurricane? i think not. i shall have none of that. absolutely none of it.

harry told me he couldn't remember any of the songs from the 50's that were on those cd's. i asked if if that was because he was a beat and had been too stoned. he laughed and walked away. my mother choked on her champagne. the same way she did this morning when patrick was like, with his cheshire cat face, "yeah, we read that blog, too." and i said," what, when i called you a fucker? 'cause you were being an asshole! you were a fucker." and she thought we were fighting. that was make-up talk. i don't know what family she grew up in.

last night john told a really good story about paul calling a waiter a butthole. when he was two. but it's for the book. so you have to wait.

"delia's gone, one more round, delia's gone..." j.cash

me and sami

2005-08-27T06:00:00.000-05:00

see, i look like shit. but it's all about sami. and she's pretty. that's what matters here.
i wonder if my face could get fatter? maybe i should eat some more bagels. have a couple more fucking snickers bars... damn. somebody should send me some make up.
but sami's cute.

the cat will do as he pleases, most likely

2005-08-27T05:56:00.000-05:00

new band. through the sparks. very much in the saddle creek veign. plus their graphic designer might be into doing my covers. plus the merch guy hooked me up with an extra cd and a tank top 'cause the asshole bar guy wouldn't let me get cash. and i met "demon jodi" the lesbian guitarist whose cd i've been after for over a year; convenient, i feel.

i can't wait until september. i think all of the recent excitement bodes well for the meeting with gayle's friend, mr. pronounced fray-zeeee. surely i'm his next big star. surely there's a reason i'm having so much fun. surely there's a reason i'm here, and having so much fun. that would be sushila's best guess, and she's a smart girl.

tonight i wore a bindi. a red one. i can wear such a thing because i'm married. only another woman or bryan can put it on me. it's like a wedding ring or dog pee, a sign of possession. but a sparkly pretty hindu one. sami brought me a whole package of them back from kathmandu. also a silver statue of shiva and parvati, and 13 red and silver bangles like the ones she wore in her wedding. sami was a nice surpirse. i was in the office rummaging in the shelves for the tip-out from last night and i heard someone say my name from the door way. i look up and over my shoulder, there's sami: new nose ring, three-month's worth of new hair falling over her shoulders, beautiful as always-- possibly more. yay. pretty pretty nepali girls.

i can't wait to go. five years seems like so long. i know it's not, really, in the grand scheme; especially now that bryan's actually into it and it's no longer a battle/fantasy. but i don't want to wait. i could see it in sami's face-- almost smell it on her. i'm jealous of sushila's mango trees and the way bijendra misses his raiksi bars. i want it right now.

"life is not the taj mahal." b.r. subedi

give her the big lines anyway

2005-08-25T01:58:00.000-05:00

not that it would really ease the sting of the impending rejection letter from bellevue, but... next month i'm meeting with a literary agent here in birmingham. he does many things, actually. organizes writing groups and retreats, among other things. he can hook me the fuck up if he likes me. from what gayle told him about me he thinks i'm like all dorothy parker-y. you know, saucy. mouthy. cute. smart in the head and ass. he represents fiction writers so he can handle both my pseudonym's capital driven romance drivel (he's amused by my marketing scheme) as well as my bid for jco-dom. if he wants to. if he likes me. if he thinks i'm worth the time. he's not yet read a single word of any of it.
if it were poetry i wouldn't worry. i don't think i'm ready for bellevue yet because i don't have a name, but i'll hand my poetry portfolio over to anyone for criticism. katy was the last person who will ever make me nervous, and she liked it. (she was a damn good editor, too.) but, prose fiction? i don't know that i've ever said yikes before, but this seems like a damn good place to start. yikes. yikes indeed.
so. novel proposal. treatment chapter. and... what else? what the fuck else? not panicking, i suppose, would be a good third step. i turn to the immortal words of bukowski who said, "just drink beer. more and more beer." bless you, chuck. anybody want to help me here? just don't ask to read it. 'cause i won't let you. none shall pass.

now i have to go back to composing my letter-type essay to anthony bourdain on how he ruined my life by teaching me the word squeasel and how he, thusly, owes me the favor of making shanna his apprentice as penance. which i believe is a sound argument. and since he's as drunk as i am, i think we have a shot. i'm not having any more of this under-paid, not satisfied with the job nonsense. i'll not have it, i say! squeasel.

"i want to keep white roses in their eyes..." n.m.h.

ain't got no crystal ball

2005-08-18T16:02:00.000-05:00

don't tell anybody the secrets i told you

2005-08-14T01:41:00.000-05:00

my gradual descent into a life i never meant

2005-08-13T19:16:00.000-05:00

ah, dreary saturdays. they are indeed underrated.
i have many projects at hand this weekend. too bad i slept until damn near three o'clock. not my fault, i say. i had a migraine. for days, even. not that you can tell by my current behavior, that being drinking beer, listening to very loud music (i'm quite convinced the jump-roping fat man is an ex-jump-roping fat man; at any rate, i dare him to come argue with me.) and smoking many cigarettes. i'm alternately writing, uploading photos to my new snapfish account, cleaning, packing for the in-7-days move, and dancing around like a lunatic. like you do.
and missing. the missing was in no way alleviated by my all too short visit. i was thinking of remaining. you all knew, i suppose, anyway. you always read my mind. but i love him, and i hate it there so much.
thursday i went with bryan to the doctor and it was really bad. i'm not going there right there 'cause it's raining and birmingham is beautiful when it rains. and i love rilo kiley, and "everybody dies", jenny just told me so. and i have beer and marlboro lights and a new t-shirt from carl...
and my computer sucks and i have a desire for bob music suddenly so it seems i'll need to do this later. why does god hate me?
katy says god doesn't hate me. but i don't think she fully understands the situation.

"and this loss isn't good enough for sorrow or inspiration..." rilo kiley

john berryman jumped off a bridge

2005-08-10T01:06:00.000-05:00

sometimes you look at yourself in the mirror and realize you're not happy. and you don't know why, and you've tried to change various things and made plans to change others. and you've done the medication here and there, shrink this, therapist that. still, it's just no good. sometimes you find yourself, on one of these days, curled up crying into the bathroom tile.
sometimes you find yourself getting falling down drunk in some dirty dark bar until it feels better, or atleast you can't see a reflection anymore.
and then, sometimes, there are days when you look into the mirror and say, "i'm not happy. i've done every last thing i know how to do and i'm still here, and i'm still miserable." and, so, you go over to the computer and you ask the peacecorps if they'd like to send you to nepal.

hey, i know fifteen words. and i have a book. this isn't even the most insane thing i've ever done. i got married. poor bryan. it isn't even his fault i'm miserable. i wish it was his fault. that would be so much easier. it's his fault i can't tell him i'm suicidally depressed, since he gets enraged if i go to sleep too early, tells me i neglect him and that he would get the same level of emotional companionship from a pillow. but the initial misery... that's all me, i'm afraid.

"razors pain you..." dorothy parker

the eternal

2005-08-07T06:10:00.000-05:00

so somebody really is fucking fat bitches. or, one anyway. and he wants to marry her. why would you marry liz? honestly.

i'm much too drunk to be doing this. but i want the interaction of the computer. god knows what i will find tomorrow when i bother to look up at what i've typed.

i've had fun. i've been uninhibited. free. kristyn. i'll come away with photographs and gifts (the most touching from shanna, also jewelry from mary), a new and free sanskrit tattoo, and myriad literary challenges from bobby. good times. worth the gas money in triplicate. i miss bryan but i don't want want to go home.

you'll be fucking fat bitches in no time

2005-07-17T00:11:00.000-05:00

so this evening i submitted a manuscript to the bellevue literary review. and how clever of bellevue, by the way, to have one. i also found a photo i'm going to submit to the sun. everyone needs a subscription to the sun, by the way. they're really great. except i was thinking of that as christmas gifts... says the girl with the picture of saraswati on her blog. you know what i mean.
i've decided to get drunk, head be damned. it isn't going well. the "taste perversion" or "taste disruption" or whatever the fuck it is the topamax does to me makes the beer super icky. plus the throbbing, incessant pain. (wow- i really am an old lady. i can out-whine about bodily ailments my grandmother.) (please kill me.) it's going to feel even worse tomorrow.
i found the folder of almost every poem i've written in my life. i'd say literally four out of five of them are here, in some incarnation. and i was supposed to be going through them, typing them, revising, revamping, so on. hence the drinking. i can't be involved in that folder sober. i shudder and retch at the very thought. but now it's late and i don't want to be in the middle of it when bryan comes home because i'll have to stop, which will annoy me, and make me bitchy, and i was bitchy enough yesterday. i just cannot understand why i can't work on anything with him in the house. i could work in the house with brad, shanna, jess, all the cats, and god knows who coming and going at all hours... it was never a problem. maybe i need a closet to get into. maybe it's because he turns on so many goddamn bright lights. i'd blame the television except brad and shanna always had it on, too. (atleast i could get away from it there. here, i'm trapped. it's so close and loud and inescapable. i hate it.)
so my head hurts. and i'm not drunk yet. and i miss bobby and shanna and brad. and i'm scared of the imminent rejection letter. i want xanax.
i wrote a short story. it was fun. it's crap, but it was fun. rewarding, personally, i suppose. but it didn't get me drunk.

running like a criminal

2005-07-16T18:41:00.000-05:00

yesterday i was shot up with demerol. the funny part? the truly "this is how you know it's kristyn we're talking about" part? when i woke up-- headache. yep. i don't remember coming home from the hospital, i was that fucked up, but as soon as i was coherent again, headache. it was just sleeping. and i want to get drunk. that's all. just drunk. is that really so much to ask? well, god, is it?
katy says i can't go around saying i don't believe in god and wearing hindu necklaces at the same time. she says i cannot simultaneously not believe in god and ascribe to a religion that has thousands of them. what i mean by "i don't believe in god" is, mostly, that i don't like christians. i don't believe in christians. i think they're nightmarish hallucinations from all the skanky dirty acid i ate in highschool before i knew better. and i don't know what i'm doing with the hinduism anyway. i think i'm adopting superstition more than anything else. i can't believe in a benevolent god who loves us all and "has a plan" and made heaven; but lord shiva smiting us and bad karma making people die from horrible disease? ok, maybe. more likely, none if it's true, but i sure do like the way the temple smells. and i certainly am moritifed by the idea of eating meat on thursday. if it would let me i'd maybe gnaw on a live cow if it were covered in cheese and lettuce and put onto a bun, but not on thursday. 'cause that would be bad. i think i'm just being ridiculous and difficult, is all, really. i find it quite fulfilling.
so i'm depressed and i'm tired of this apartment but i refuse to leave it. because it's hot outside. and i don't want to go to the bank website and see if i can spend money. and katy is at work. and jen is too spazzy for this mood. and thomas is too huggy. and brent is at work. and patrick is a fucker. anyway, as i may have mentioned, i can't get drunk. because after like two beers i feel like someone kicked me in the face.
you know what the neurologist said? stop drinking cokes. that was his big solution; that's why he makes the big bucks. and "we'll do an mri, but i don't expect to find anything." and to take more of the medicine i already take, that doesn't work. well. thank you so very much for your help, dr. helpful. what would i do without you?
the cocksucking sonofabitch asshole on half.com that i ordered diary from doesn't seem to understand that when i paid for that faster shipping bullshit it was because i wanted the shit to get here in a timely manner. teach me to order things from utah. damn (non-hindu) religious fanatics. i'm pissed. although, the god of small things (by: arundhati roy) is fucking great and i love it and i think everyone everywhere should be made to read it.

This was the trouble with famillies. Like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt... A. Roy

so nobody would sing

2005-07-13T00:38:00.000-05:00

there are things you can't say without sounding like you're trying to ellicit sympathy for yourself. like i'm too tired and i don't believe myself anymore, when i say those things.
but i don't want to be told anything. i just want it to be quiet. i want everything to be quiet.

i hate the television. even music, i can do like four ani cd's, some lori and maybe some jess klein; a few garrison starr songs (shut the fuck up) and a bit of tori. anything else makes my head hurt. most especially the soundtrack for a bangkok whorehouse uncle ricky plays at work. the television makes me want to kill, maim, defile. (bryan wishes it on at all times; there shall be no silence... never ever silence. he is a quietophobic.)

i don't even want to do this. this makes too much noise, this button pressing. i only want to read. and i'm almost out of palahnuik. i ordered diary, but there's no way i can make survivor last another four days. not without coma inducing drugs. what will i do in the interim? i'll get sucked back into the goddamn television, that's what. i know i will. fucking cartoon network and fucking law and goddamn order and blah blah blah blah. fucking slow ass mail.

i hate everything. everything except chuck palahnuik and folky-type chick music.

i can't get drunk because of my head. that's what all this is about.

"you have to turn back, make a new plan, 'cause it isn't going to be that way..." garrison starr

the violence inherent in the system

2005-07-10T20:20:00.000-05:00

there is, indeed, some lovely filth over here, dennis. now come get it, you pussy little bitch. 'cause i dont want to go to work tomorrow.
there may be rockslides tomorrow. not that surin cares that there may be rocks falling on my car as i drive to work. but if they go ahead and fall, or, say, mountain brook gets flooded (as they deserve for being bastards) then i can stay here and get drunk. and read survivor. which would be nice.
i narrowly avoided my mother in law and her pack of small, yapper type hell dogs. i'm glad she has no sense of personal safety and has decided to stay in her house, five minutes from mobile bay. i hate those goddamn dogs. (uncle ricky says the chinese bred those hairless bastards so as to allow the barbecue sauce to soak in quicker. he says they're quite tastey. he says the next time she shows up at my door with that little piece of shit, he will come in the night and relieve me of him.) i love me some immigrants.)

i want the power to go out. nothing ever happens when it storms here. except the cable goes out, which hasn't mattered in weeks since the palahnuik sickness struck me. boring rain.

i like it this way

2005-07-08T01:51:00.000-05:00

two out of three of my friends agree: i'm doing irreparable harm to my psyche by doing so, and yet i am reading palanhuik book number three. well, of course, i mean four. but i read fight club when i dated adam which was... wow, i certainly am much older than i think i am.
i finished lullabye this afternoon and was amused all the way through. there shall be a review. i know you'll hold your breath in painful anticipation. but right now there's not time for blog babbling-- i only got to read one page at work so i have to go now before mr. brown comes home and must be paid attention to and fed and all such.
although, there's this excructiatingly horrible family drama ("good" side) brewing, of which i am both the center and perfectly innocent. i'd very much like to get into that... no.

must read book. talk about weird, cracked-out, lying, drunk relatives later. tomorrow.

"we generate our own light to compensate for the lack of light in front of us..." ani d.

cut your hair

2005-07-03T16:23:00.000-05:00

now, i'd love to show you the front. 'cause it's nice. i do mean nice. when i meet a crazt israeli hairdresser in a bar, i don't mess around. alas, my husband is not quite the photographer i was hoping when i handed him the camera and said "take a picture so i can show my friends." not only does the picture not really capture the haircut, i also look like ass behind the hair. anyway, i waited until a day after shalomi cut it, which was a mistake. when he had just finished i was so giddy with my own hotness i wanted to get up and poke at the mirror in the salon. the man is good at what he does.
this was a funny little story. i'm in the chair, about to fall asleep while he's working. he asks why i'm so tired. i explain to him that bryan and stayed up all night getting stoned and watching tv since it was his off day. he launches into his "you are such the nice girl" thing he does (he has a crush on me) and says, waving his scissors in the air, "if you are not married already, i will kidnap you. kidnap!" i'm laughing my ass off, like "uh, shalomi, honey? you don't want to run around brandishing sharp objects yelling kidnap in the middle of alabama. i don't think most of your neighbors really know an israeli from an iranian accent. shhh."
i like immigrants.

darling don't you go and

2005-07-03T16:15:00.000-05:00

this is before. from the back. before shalomi and his israeli scissors got so very happy in my head. (i was hiding in my hair again. i hate it when i do that. i had to stop it.)

It's a hit

2005-07-03T01:42:00.000-05:00

I have been into the Palahniuk. I'm filthy and stinky with it, having no time to bathe, only read. Once I sat in the tub, there was soap, but you can't really wash and hold a book at the same time. Not really. It's a good thing they came out with the Reach Access Daily Flosser, or I'd be in sad shape. I finished Haunted last night and began Lullabye as soon as I got up this morning. I'm supposed to be reading some Indian thing from Ashish, but I cannot. I hate many things about my country and my fellow Americans, but our fiction is not on that list. (Well... you know what I mean.)

I posted this already, on the lesser blog. I shall re-post it here for the sake of consistency and anal retentiveness and because I fucking feel like it. Also because I want Boobabla to read it, and he only reads this one, I believe.
Hm. Apparently I shall do nothing of the kind. I cannot make these sites do my bidding. I knew getting so much action in my formative years was impairing my dorkdom. Damn my hot ass.

So, yeah. I guess if Bob cared he could go to www.nodal-point.com/beer and read my little review of the book. Otherwise perhaps I shall call him, drunk, and babble about it.

In but a few weeks there shall be a road trip. (As well as much rejoicing. Yay.) I now believe that the six cd's I've bought in the past two months have been my subconscious preparing for the five unholy hours of southeastern highway. That's not an exciting trip. For some reason I can find novelty in the little, tiny village-esque towns and dusty little roads between here and Columbus but going to the coast is almost painful it's so goddamn boring. Although, I suppose the fact that I will be driving a stick-shift this time will give me someplace to occupy my mind.

Scared of that, aren't you? Ha! I mock you and your fear. I drove to the gas station and WalGreens last night, no gear grinding or crying. On the way back I didn't even stall out. So there. And I live in Birmingham; that fifteen minute drive involved starting on a hill about four times. It was only the third time I drove that car. So I rock.

More importantly, next time I get paid I can order my stickers. And my Rav has a cd player; I've been stuck in Bryan's techno-impaired 80's mobile with a tape deck for like a year and I can't cope. I'm too OCD for tapes, replaying one song or line or tape kills them. I make them dead, real fast. I can't wait.

My mother e,ailed me some dumb shit: do you want the Rav in your name or in Bryan's? Oh, just put it in his. It being 1946 and all, I don't really think I need to own my own property. What the fuck?

That being said, I need to start dinner as he will be home soon. I'm quite the housewife once a week.

"Still, one minute you're just a kid getting off and the next minute you'll never be a lawyer." Chuck Palahniuk

abject terror

2005-06-27T23:52:00.000-05:00

now, i don't really think i need to say anything else about this. it was horrible, brad. obviously a sign from god. i mean shiva. buddha. karl...

the corn has gone bad; nobody eat the corn.

2005-06-18T07:12:00.000-05:00

i got an email from bobby early this morning re: my nostalgia and it's desires. and it was not what i was looking for.

every life, i'll find you there... things left alone are never fine... lori m.

oh kristyn...
duece's lounge and the joint it was attached to are no more...
as in a big emptylot...
bulldozed that mother flat.
yes, the times they are indeed a changin'.
____________________________________________________

i have a theory: it could be bunnies

2005-06-17T02:26:00.000-05:00

tonight: me:"you know how whenever you get a song stuck in your head it always sucks and you're all pissed off all day?" katy: "yeah; that's shitty." me: "i'm defying logic. i have a lori mckenna song stuck in my head and i love it." katy: "no shit, she rocks. did you see her last friday?"
did i mention i had a crush on katy? did i mention we're having a party here (let's not mention that to the husband just now, folks.) in september-- the night of the coldplay concert, 'cause rilo kiley is opening for them, and you can hear the shows at the ampitheater from my porch. rock on. i knew all those nights of fearing to open the door lest the 3 doors down get in were worth some kind of musical karma.

so. tomorrow jess and joel will be here. jess has a degree in english and yet uses the word "broughten". and i say word generously. hm. so i get to deal with that for hours and hours on end tomorrow. along with tales of how awesomely cool is the gulf coast poetry scene. yeah. i'm looking forward to that shit, let me tell you. why can't we get along like 10th grade again?

i'm jealous of jen's apartment. when i write a cool character and imagine her in her place, it's like jen's, almost exactly. fire escape holding potted plants and ashtrays. beer bottles on the ledge of the neighbor's window. fake crystalline doorknobs. bathroom windows. hardwood floors. high ceilings. south side. yeah. it was sweet. she reminds me of me when i was about 21. if she were 21 it would be cuter than it is since she's 23. still, there's a charm. her meaningless sex and ex-boyfriend atavism and drinking... sigh. i've been nostalgic. anyway, she's alot like i was- down to the haircut and scrawny, guitar-playing recurrent fuck buddy. we walked in to the plaza the other night and the bartender was all cheerful to see her, greeted her with a hug and knew what she wanted before she ordered. he reminded me of mark if you pumped mark full of rum and prozac and gave him a blowjob.
i miss my friends.

my memories are tainted. time, i guess, does that. or distance. or lots of things i'm not thinking about anymore. the weirdest part is the house on lassere-- the way i look back at that. i can clearly remember the nights i cried so much smokum was soaking wet, and the tantrums i had over boys a through d. i was frustrated all the time, with april and that possum girl. all kinds of bad. and yet-- i remember singing "fuel" with ashley, shanna and jess at the new years party, and amanda, stephen and ashley sitting in my room while amanda played guitar really softly at like four in the morning on a tuesday. (i can do this all night, by the way. you've been warned.) i remember telling stephen about "the special fear" and making him laugh for hours. jef coming over and the ordeal with shanna, me and the front doors. "poor white trash". walking in on bob jacking off to porn on my laptop. taking adderall with brad and shanna and reading/writing poems/talking/listening to music all night. going to see the strokes. making robby cry. (not that that was a particularly good time while it was happening, but it's a pretty funny story.) i remember moving in to that house, joy crapping on my carpet and how sick i was with mystery illness; the bug-bombs and crying to shanna about infestations that were, i'll concede, imagined. it was such a hopeful moment, the night we brought our crap there. we were setting out to conquer the whole world. and then i went crazy and got some nutso office job and it kind of faltered... but those bright spots are really bright right now. the paint and drinking games and kittens seem to be all that mattered.
and no one died while we lived there. and i read poems for an audience, and i was a star. and the three people in the world who were the world before i met bryan were there, close so i could always touch them when i wanted.

obviously i need to get drunk. right now.

and i'll see you guys soon.

("love just leaves stains on the carpet that never go away"... lori m.)

upside down plaza

2005-06-14T05:24:00.000-05:00

so, i finished a poem. from last year. (really.) finally.

Abdominal Pain

Despite my eyes screaming out
Over the sterile mask strapped to my ears
Don’t leave me alone with this--
I’m not qualified.
She’s gone
Off on her orthopedic soles
To wreak havoc in
Someone else’s sanitized cubicle.
She didn’t even
Yank the curtain shut.

So it’s me and the patient; it’s
Me and the grimace on his face.
Me and my inaction.
I am the watcher—
He winces, he moans;

My husband, my heart
Leaks blood into bandages and
I
Take notes.
The language of
Bloodpressuremedicationrenalscandrawsomeblood
Is not my native tongue, or even
One I studied between parties
When I was eighteen
So

When she leaves, it’s just
Me and him;
And I want to
Need to
Would die to
Just alleviate the pain
Offer an alternative
Give up a kidney in my own hands
(arteries only
streamers between my fingers,
my blood just
paint I’ve spilled to amuse him).

And although I
Want to
Need to
Would die to
Just alleviate the pain
Offer an alternative
Give up both kidneys in my own hands…
All I really do
Is watch from the corner

While the living part
Is left to him.

and before i grew up, i heard you whisper so loud... lori mckenna

just fireflies

2005-06-12T19:20:00.000-05:00

why is there stigma attached to friday the 13th? where did that originate? i wonder because tomorrow is monday the 13th and if i were going to be scared of one of them, i think i'd have to go with monday.
i think i'm going to get fired tomorrow. i was nearly at my most unpleasant friday evening before i left. my fault-- forgot to medicate myself at the end of my break. at the end of the shift i was mocking the table of republican party princesses seated directly behind me for the amusement of another table. (the 2nd table being made up of actual human beings, a rareity in that place.) they were well entertained. i just can't help myself sometimes. the people in that fucking town are terrible, awful, soul-less, hypocritical, self-absorbed assholes. ASSHOLES, i tell you. every single day they fill me with homocidal rage and comtempt. i'm utterly disgusted.
and i'm concerned, too. my job at golden temple was like a little 2-day bastion of goodness in the sea of monetary concern and l-v handbags. (oh, how i hate those bags.) now it is no more. and lacy is punishing me with her absence, and that of her dirty hippy pot, as well. and bryan for real has to get a shrink. and jessica is still trying to come up here, not being able to let brad and shanna have the last glimpse of me. how do you tell a friend of so many years she's a bad house guest and not allowed back for fear of causing a god awful row with your husband? really: tell me how, and i'll do it.
i need brad.
i need a drink.
i need this headache to stop so i can go to barry's and talk artsyness with jonothan.
i need a vacation.

11:11

2005-06-10T01:08:00.000-05:00

the maria taylor cd came in today. i highly recommend it. better news: katy knows her, so i can meet her next time they come to town. i'm cool like that.
i have a crush on katy. bryan finds it amusing.

i've been saved by a woman

2005-06-04T00:38:00.000-05:00

i have an excuse. i've been working on the novel. dilligently. and leaving flowers at the temple once a week. the nepalis have had me to make a deal with one of their godesses. they seem convinced. can't get into that right now... buzz says no.
patrick and candi were here for awhile. that was nice. i like my stuff and to be around it, but i do like the occassional visitor. (brent, brad, shanna, bob, kyle.... feel free.)

anyway, i have really been writing. 10,000 words in a week. and that was 3,600 in one sitting. so, wow. and it's not what i wanted my first book to be, but it will suffice. then comes the restaurant book. and then poetry. and then a book about bijendra, ashish and sushila. just 'cause i can, by then; i'm sure.

you don't have to worry, you who know who you are. see i have sometimes-suicidal friends, as well. and we have deals struck. plus i'm not done writing. when i totally give up on that, there may an issue, but that's many years from now. these rantings about bath-tub death contemplations are just thoughts. mostly harmless.

my tiny baby cousin is beautiful. even when it was time for her bottle and she was screaming,. she was beautiful and sweet. i loved her the first second i held her. i know, it's only biology. but it was amazing. hannah grace sherman. she's gonna rock.

i miss mal-mal. speaking of kids. and somebody in the world owes me a picture before the sun goes into gemini. i'd hate to have to kill a motherfucker...

articulate all that pain, and maybe you'll get paid... rilo kiley

but you are my porchlight

2005-05-22T19:24:00.000-05:00

friday night i came home and began drinking within about fourteen seconds of entering the apartment. in ahappy way, not a bad way. bryan and i stayed up until five thirty in the morning. and talked. about our whole relationship, which isn't new; but also about him being sick. it was sad, of course, but it wasn't anything i hadn't dealt with already. he said that he feels really bad because he knows that he isn't always going to be around for me. that most people get married atleast being able to assume that they'll spend most of the rest of their life with their husband or wife, but i didn't even get that. well, luckily for me i never expected it. i always assumed if i got married it would be for social or financial gain or entertainment and not for love, anyway. so i never really gave alot of thought to "for the rest of my life." i atleast get to married to someone who is worthy of my loving him for hte rest of my life. and, anyway, assuming he gets a transplant in the next couple of years there's still every possibility of our living comparable amounts of time. even though he's sick and even though he's so much older than i am. transplant patients can be surprisingly healthy later in life, and i'm a bi-polar drunk girl with recurrent suicidal impulses. (that's right, folks, that train left the station the other night. did i mention it? i was close; i was very very close.) anyway, these are my demons and i carry them everywhere, i think about them every day. i thought it was because i'm morbid-- k-k-k-karla said i was trying to prepare myself for something i knew i was going to be devastated by. i think it's probably both. i tried to be the reassuring one for once. he's legitimately concerned for my well-being in case of his death. but there's patrick and candi; and obvisouly there's brad and shanna. and everyone is prepared, as much as they can be in any case. (well, maybe patrick's not prepared. but he was good when bryan almost died before so i have to assume he'll be able to cope.) plus everyone's been telling me for so long that i'm so strong, that i've dealt with everything else, and blah blah blah. i don't know that any personal strength i may or may not have will get me through the crisis at hand, but i know i have a support system in place that rivals any ever before seen. and i'm only a little terrified. and i know that i won't get over it, but i think i'll be able to live. right now, anyway.
so we had a really good night together, and it had been awhile. and it's weird and i guess appropriate for us that in the midst of our discussing our life together and our buzzes and a bad tv show, that we had to talk about death and life thereafter. if i read it in a novel i would think it was beautiful.
one day i think i'll say "joyce carol oates didn't have shit on me." one day. for now i'll continue to burn nag champa over her books and leave flowers for sarasvati on thr floor of the temple.

and from above you how i sank into your soul... nmh

i'm a veronica

2005-05-21T00:48:00.000-05:00

bryan decided the other night not to do dialysis. cause, you know, why not? suicidal impulse, i say. not doing something that allows you to live is fundamentally the same thing as doing something that makes you stop living. right? so i can decide not to eat a bottle of phenergan and take a bubblebath and it goes unnoticed, but him...
and the problem is, i can't blame him. i'll promise you, if iever get sick the way he is, i'll be dead much sooner. i'll go on a bender, say my goodbyes and be gone. i'm not going through all the shit he has; i neither love life nor fear death enough to put up with it. sometimes i even want to say to him "well then just kill yourself; if you can't deal with it then just don't" but i can't say that. how could i say that? i think it, though. devastate me, abandon me, rip me open or else love me and stay here... one or the other but for the love of god you have to pick one.
and as always there's that my sickness is not real, is only indulgence, mood or childishness. i'm just crazy, not sick, not suffering. just weird.
i almost want to "show him", sometimes. like, motherfucker, you think i'm playing? and go off my meds for six or seven weeks. hmm. i think there are four people in my life who have seen such a sight and hung around. i wonder if bryan would? it's kind of been understood that that wouldn't be an issue; i'm a big girl and i take my prozac so it isn't an issue. but what if it were? i wonder if he would stick around.

my meds are changed now. 60mg of prozac a day, plus 25mg of visterill since the more prozac means the more hyper. and if i get manic i can take more. the thing is, my doctor isn't a shrink. and i don't just have pmdd, or depression; i've got a whole big ugly disorder and she's not equipped to handle it. i'm waiting for him to get a shrink so we can tell if we can afford two or not. it's more important to me that he have one, since i seem to manage. but it's not fair to me, if he never gets help. and why won't he?

some attempt help but are turned away by a handwritten sign: no visitors today... hamil on trial

this is me

2005-05-15T23:15:00.000-05:00

foolishness, i tell you