And Now For Something Completely Different

Drabbles Tuesday, June 26, 2012 3:47 AM A tall lanky figure dressed in burgundy 511s and a faded blue denim shirt peers curiously at the sudden light of my headlamps with unsure jerky motions, the flat slick octagon of its head craning squarely as though around a corner, but really only compensating for its shape and size, obscene in contrast to the beanpole body casting pointed flickering shadows on the concrete. I blink at the suddenness of it all, but when I open my eyes again, nothing is clearer, and the slim angular man is just a stop sign. She loves the taste of her sweat. But not in and of itself. Because her lover is special, different, considerate. Always clean, her lover never tastes of body odor, or dirt, or any of the other things associated with sweat. Instead she tastes only of pure water and salt, with a hint of sweetness from her freshly washed skin and their sex, her body so purified that no impurity mars her perspiration. She thinks briefly that it's what it might taste like if you could fuck saltwater taffy, the minty kind, with the same softness as she bites down on her lover's skin that she would encounter with the confection itself. Some days it's impossible to feel like I've been given anything but half a gift. There are moments of flawless clarity, shining like diamonds in the dark. But expression is the difficult part. Because making words from a perfect moment, a transient epitome, a sudden image that is whole and so full of intent that it can not be misinterpreted is difficult. Sometimes the disconnect between what I am able to say and what I mean is so large a gulf that I wish with all my heart I could touch palms with my audience and have them see as I see, hear as I hear, but more than that, feel as I feel, and perceive as I perceive, so that they could feel the import of the stop sign men and the taste of saltwater sex skin. Because I know I have no gift with images, I get stuck on a simple and perfect spinal curve, or the strong angle of a jaw before I can even start to represent what lives in my head. Just so with music, too, I get caught in resonance structures and rhymes and forget how to paint pictures with the sound. But with words, I have some brief moments where I am able to not only create images, but whole entire moments, complete with the passage of time and the perspective of emotion. Not merely personal feelings, but the emotion that lives in certain instances, the pathos captured in the best of still photography. I am no writer though, and glad of it. Because I feel as though if I were like this all of the time, I would catch myself and others in an infinite loop of happenstances with too much meaning, and all the perfection of transient seconds would be too much for me to ever leave the maelstrom of my own thoughts on the matter.

Chronic Pain--You're Doing It Wrong

I just realigned my back using the shower step and my own two hands with Icy Hot as a muscle relaxant. I think I'm getting a little too good at this guys. Also if anyone has a good recipe for licorice tea, I'd much appreciate it. Deuces.

Strange Happenings in Commerceville?

Today I got a call on a job I had applied for. Which in and of itself isn't weird. I'm perfectly employable, I swear. Anyhow, it wasn't that. It was the kind of job that had called me back. Now normally I'm pretty prudent in my job search. But I had applied for this job just to see, since it was so high above my pay grade, I mean, it's a position as a loans analyst/banker, which is definitely more than a few steps up from being a cashier or a teller. They're calling me back for a phone interview. Which is like, step two of the process. I assumed they'd tell me no at step one. So that was cool. Also I had really weird dreams that involved this job. Like, dreams of my future approving mortgages. Then again, those dreams also included spontaneous babies, so what do I know?
Until next time.

The Blog That Was Dead--And Then It Wasn't

So, I took a hiatus. A really, really long hiatus. And by that I mean life caught up to me and I never intended to see this piece of shi---I mean. Outlet. For my artistic expression. Yeah, that. I moved back in with my parents. Except. Not. Because then they moved to a town in another state we're gonna call Hicksville, USA, or more accurately EveryoneAndTheirMomHereIsAGoddamnRedneckville, USA. And left me the house. And a car. Also I got a dog. Yeah. I accidentally the whole thing. I'm also back in school, pre-law if you must know. Who am I kidding. All of my readers know me. Anyhow. Welcome back. Let's see how this thing goes!

Love Made Me Blind: A Friendship In Reprise

This post is about Ace. Who will invariably read it. Today we spent the day together. We got lunch and thrifted for ridiculous items like hooker skirts and pirate jewelry. Now, normally I don't need to explain my titles, but I'm sure this one's got most of you wondering. And it's because I realized how the rest of the world sees us. Ace is my best friend. I knew that, if you read this blog at all, you know that, and so does the rest of the world. And my love for her made me blind to the way the rest of the world sees us: as a completely batshit, occasionally crude, but mostly humorous matched pair. We assumed our level of awesome mind-reading insanity was normal. I realized it wasn't when she IMed me 30 minutes after she left saying she missed me. We really are a matched pair, even though we had virtually nothing in common when we met years ago, and still don't except a love for coffee, women, and being awesome. And by being awesome I mean women. I'm leaving for a trip in a few days, and I probably won't be back for the rest of July. Which is dumb. Because I'm going to miss her and she's going to miss me and it's going to be stupid. God knows when we're together we spend more time around each other than most couples do. So this post is for her, to tide her over while I'm gone, even though she hates this sappy shit. Because I love her more than I'll ever love any girlfriend. Bros before hoes and all that. Love you babe, I'll miss you when I'm gone.

Nondum Lux Erat: My Brain Speaks In Latin When Tired

So, I've been trying to kick my coffee addiction for a while now, and last night, because JJ and Riven and I are trying to get on something resembling a normal sleep schedule, we decided to stay up all night. BAD DECISION.
I got back from my best friend Ace's place at like 2 am. JJ and Riven were still up. For some random reason JJ and I were starving. So we went to Denny's, home of late night breakfast, hookers, gay men, and the best cheap shit coffee outside of a real 50s diner. I drank two cups before I realized they were even poured. We got home at probably around four, and JJ and Riven went promptly to bed. I did not.
Coffee, for me, is more than a great way to spend money or an unfortunate dependency or a great way to go on a date without it seeming like a date. Coffee makes me superman. If you've ever heard the phrase in literature "...made their blood sing..." that's exactly how I feel when I have coffee. I can't sit still. I don't feel pain. I'm inspired to start projects I'll never finish. I can't even keep up with my own thoughts. I am invincible.
I'm also the one person on the planet who doesn't crash. I go back to normal levels of energy, but I lack the comatose-zombie-irritable-bitch phase most people get when their java finally wears off. So it makes sense I'm picky about my coffee, since I drink so damn much of it normally. I only drink two kinds of coffee. Expensive shit worth more than it's weight in gold I import from Italy that's totally organic, or cheap shit coffee. Not like, Starbucks commercialized cheap shit coffee, like Denny's-Dunkin' Donuts-4 a.m. Circle K sludge coffee. I know, I don't make any sense to me either.
So now I've had two cups of cheap shit coffee, and I haven't slept all night because my body thinks that alligator wrestling sounds like a legitimate career choice as opposed to sleep right now. Unfortunately, my brain is so tired it reverted to Latin, which I know because it announced the sunrise with a cheery "Lux est!" this morning.
I'm so, so screwed for functionality today. Clearly. I'm blog posting at 9 a.m. Until later.

We Duct Tape Hamburger Meat to Fishtanks: How Our Household Deals With Grief

Despite a brief hiatus, I'm back. This past weekend, JJ, Riven and I sojurned to our hometown for Father's Day, and I went to see my grandmother in the hospital.
For me, the visit went about as expected. My grandmother's condition is serious; she has calcium deposits growing in her skull. According to the doctor, this condition, while rare, is one that you either get used to (read: your brain and skull recalibrate around the deposits, requiring a period of adjustment) or it kills you. My grandmother can barely open her eyes or walk, but she's lived over two weeks since the diagnosis, so the chances she'll power through it are good.
When we got home, the new fishtank looked off, and stank something fierce. Long story short, the fish got Ick, the fish version of flu. So we spent a few hours cleaning out the tank and filtering the water and putting antibiotics in.
One of our plecos didn't make it. The pleco is dead, long live the pleco! Unfortunately, we had a panic moment when the temperature of the new water we put in was too high for the remaining fish that would have to return to the tank. Time was running short, since they were in a temporary tank made out of a water bottle. We ran out of ice to put in the tank. What were we to do???? And then I had a flash of inspiration: I had duct tape. It fixes everything.
So we taped a bunch of frozen hamburger meat to the outside of the tank to cool it. Success! The temperature dropped 4 degrees, but it still wasn't enough. We needed it to drop two more. In a flash of 20/20 hindsight, Sweetheart realized we lived like, two feet away from the Safeway, and that we could just buy a huge fuckoff bag of ice for a couple bucks. Awesome. And then Riven was like "You should post the ridiculousness of today in your blog." And I was like "...Ok." And then this happened. Until later.