/ A Night

'Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,' and 'It's not that I have a whore problem, and it's not that I have a coke problem, it's just that my whore has a coke problem,' are two sentences that make me glad I have not died thus far of fatty liver or psilocybin poisoning or being shot by a pissed off boyfriend. Every time I think about the telephone, I crawl into my happy space and kick the crap out of the little kid hiding there because I don't like to be crowded, but then the receiver is thrust into my hand, and a half hour later I am relieved to have spoken with someone who lived a life somewhat similar to mine, knows the weather and abuses and familiar tragedies and appreciates how large a role cigarettes and lap seat belts played in our childhood, however unlikely it was we survived.

Also beatings followed by prayers, and prayers followed by tamales, and tamales followed by cases of Lone Star, and cases of Lone Star followed by long drives through dry, cool nights to Moody I cannot describe unless you spent mornings laying pennies on railroad tracks in central Texas and afternoons trying to figure out why the radio played so much goddamned Steely Dan.

Once, my aunt and uncle took us to wait in a parking lot for one of his friends for SOME REASON, and it was cold, so no one could roll down the windows, and the cigarette smoke was overbearing, and I cracked the window, and my aunt was convinced I would lead to their divorce, how DEMANDING I COULD BE, and I almost said to her, "I COVERED FOR YOU WHEN GRANDMA CAME HOME AND HELPED YOU STUFF TOWELS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE DOOR BECAUSE YOU WERE SMOKING." She was only 16, in the body of a 24 year old, in the mind of 12 year old. God, poor thing. It's not like I blame her. Even as a 7 year old in a 27 year old memory.

We stayed in that parking lot for 2 hours, and I don't know what kids do for two hours on their own in a Chevy Nova in the middle of the night when the only toys they have to play with are a busted vent window and a bunch of beer can pull tabs, although now that I think of it, come on! Remember those old pull tabs, the ones with the notches? You could twist the ring off the lip and shoot it for what seemed like miles and miles, and if your girlfriend was Ally Sheedy, you might even use one somehow to make a long distance phone call to prevent World War III. Oh god, why didn't they tell us these things?

But when I am bitter about bliss, I remember that classic story about ignorance, the confused native asking the missionary, 'Wait. Now, if you hadn't told me about God, would I have still gone to heaven?'

'Well, yes.'

'Then why did you tell me?'

If I were the missionary, my stock answer would be, 'Because although I sometimes deny it, I REALLY like to talk to other people.'

At the Opera \

And she said, you have to go to this conference, and I said, MAKE ME, and she said, but I have the hotel room and conference fee already paid for, so you have to go! And I said, YOUR MOMMA, and she said, yes, yes you have to go, and I said NO, and she said YES, and I said NO! and she said YES! And I said NOOO! And she said ‘no,’ and I said, Yes?, and she said NO! and I said, FOR THE LAST TIME, YES! AND THAT’S MY FINAL ANSWER! And she pointed at me and probably thought about how much she’d like to sleep with me, ‘cause, man, can you get your way with me if you know how to use your monosyllabic words the right way.

And to think I could have gotten out of it entirely by calling in sick and relying on technology.

Well, she doesn’t do email. She’s old school.

But she never answers her phone!

Well, she doesn’t do telephones. She’s REALLY old school.

But whenever I speak to her in person, she never seems to be listening to what I’m saying!

Well, she doesn’t do talking. She’s PRE-school.

/ They Say Bad Luck

I don't think I have ever eaten so little at one of these or threatened to leave so early or had such a pleasant time AFTER ALL and acted entirely out of character, almost to the point where I finally stopped believing in Creationism, 'cause I am thoroughly convinced that monkeys are indeed evolved from humans. We threw at each other whatever we could find, and laughed and swung from the rafters. I have the hip scratches to prove it.

And I fell in love again, BONUS, but it is an entirely inappropriate love, and I am too young for scandal (to be the only excuse for fire). Plus, I remember reading about the inherent difficulty with loving someone who reminds you of the person who never loved you back in the first place, even though you thought they did, and leaning in for a kiss that just ain't there is enough to cause a fear of heights. And that's when I stopped believing in Christmas, because I've plenty of immaculate misconceptions, and ain't got an ounce of myrrh to my name.

It wasn't smiling, but it wasn't far off, and I thought, whatever it is, you better damn sure not call it melancholy, because that's mostly the weather what's gray and overcast, not me. I dreamed that there is one season you can fight, and it ain't the wintertime.

Comes in Trees \

When I flew out of town I should have looked back on the contrails, read the misfortunes that they told, because back home, the gods were merciless on my trails, tearing and thrashing all that teenage angst out upon my dear, dear madronas and my sweet, foolish mountain alder, and picked her right up at the roots and threw her into the woods.

I come upon a surprise, a mess in particular, and I react by smiling, although I have known close friends to shock the surprise right back where it belongs, at the feet of the sous chef, because the meat is too tough, and now it's too tender and now it's too late, goddamnit! But I have my smile, and my eerie quietude, and my stoic eyes that always have a ready answer to the question, 'WELL? WHAT'S THE MATTER?'

...

WELL?!?!

... (see? like a stone.)

Before an hour, it is no different than running through my office, desks knocked over, paper everywhere, discarded food wrappers, and I realize these are all metaphors comparing the busted forest with my messy room, but how on earth did my phone wind up here? Oh, I guess I just dropped it. It is so hard to navigate these unexpected obstacles.

I walked into a scene once, and she was whispering to her new guy, and not even in an evident ruse to rouse my jealousy, but because she really wanted to, and getting around that table, making my way to the restroom, and back, past suddenly ubiquitous onlookers, to the cashier for my check was very much like ducking under felled trees and over storm-bared roots while avoiding the rain puddles, all while not squirming at the memory of it all.

The Essence of T-Giving \

(Umm. This sounds a lot angrier than it really is. I'm actually having a good week/month. But you know, I sort of like how it came out. I always wanted to be the sarcastic one in the group, the one who always seemed to be able to get away with saying LIKE YOU CARE when greeted with a how-de-do.

Of course, it's all true. But what's intact is my positive attitude and my erection. For whatever that's worth.

I mean, the tattoo thing is not true. I'm not getting any body paint. And I don't think I'm ugly. And no one is going to ask me to say the Thanksgiving prayer. I mean really. They will occasionally bad mouth Democrats in my presence, but for fear of lightning, they know well enough not to get started on the Bible.

I did make Alex cry, and have felt horribly horribly bad about it all day because of all the people in the world who deserve to feel that kind of pit in the stomach pain, she is no where on the list, and I am thankful every time she picks me up, plucks me right out of my own burning wreckage, fingertips dipped in aloe and lays kisses on my kneecaps and elbows. Damn.)

I am starting to get worried about my age and situation, knowing that many in my place and time have, oh, I don't know FOUNDRELIGIONTOOKAWIDESTANCEINAPUBLICTOILETGOTATATTOO.

1. finding religion - HAHAHAHAHA! seriously, thanks for that.
2. AISLESWIDESHUT - Um, it's not that I am not curious, but there comes a point when you just realize that you are not gay. So for me to start having sex with men, as a HETEROSEXUAL, would seem like, i dunno, cheating.
3. TATTOO IT IS!

I keep shedding vocabulary like hair; I was reduced to pointing and grunting in the deli today because I couldn't remember the word for EGGROLL. Damn. I am now forced to invent my own kennings using the simplest of terms to describe moderately complex ideas. Like FOOT-TOOTH (toenail), DEVIL-SWEAT (tequila) and ME-BAY (Flickr self-portrait).

The whole morning, I was busy deleting images of me, me, me from my ca(me)ra. I don't know why they are always so down on the modeling industry for giving us unhealthy expectations of self-image because in looking at my self-portraits it is apparent that I am doing that enough already. I thought about posting a photo of what I REALLY look like to emphasize the point I am trying to make but there is enough ugliness in the world without me crapulating it. I am dizzy with hunger of late, and the power keeps cutting out, I had the oddest craving for a cigarette yesterday and I made Alex cry and said bad words about her mother and daydreamed about telling my own parents that today is the last day they will ever see me and I yelled at Tristan and I forgot to feed my fish and I am convinced that I have doomed my daughter to a life of poor vocabulary and self-centeredness. Plus, I accidentally ate a viagra right before I had to chop wood, and I don't even know what to say about that.

It is such a happy thanksgiving, and now I know where began the tradition of taking an axe and chopping down the biggest tree you can find on Friday. Every year someone is asked to say a prayer before the meal, and god help them if they call on me if I've had my bourbon neat. God help them all. Their little peace loving deity will be most displeased.

/ Arts & Science

I neeeeeed to be kind to my body, today, to not fill it with poison and hateful images of waterboarding people who displease me, but it is just so hard. I need to be patient with my family and not teach my children the following, 'A WISE MAN ONCE TOLD ME NEVER TO HAVE KIDS. A WISER MAN STILL, NEVER HAVE PARENTS.'

I DID NOT REQUEST TO EMERGE FROM YOUR UTERUS!

Instead, I opt to fill myself today with science, both fiction and bunk. Nothing makes me happier than scientific drawings that relate the size of prehistoric insects to Vin Diesel.



It is just so believable when it is in a diagram next to a hyper-male, mostly because you secretly wonder what the outcome would be in a gladiator arena. MAN VERSUS SCIENCE!

But that can only mean science can be used for evil. For, if I told you that SCIENTISTS had recently discovered a duck that exceeded 50 meters in height, you would believe me no more than were I to say Moses parted the Red Sea. But add the word 'prehistoric' and a snappy diagram, and BIG BANG! Instant credibility:



Hmm. Even science has its limits. Only a fervent few would buy this.



Tell me you didn't ask yourself, 'CAN THAT BE POSSIBLE???'


- B E L I E V E -

/ A Mess

The way you move is a mess, a mess. I can feel it in the sidestep and hear it in the sigh, and, and, and...

I ran all-over St. Louis last week, and Denver the week before, but this exercise has become too intimate for me now to share with strange pedestrians on city streets, regardless of my chances of running into them ever again. I run fast by commuters, and I don't have time to wonder if they think it's pride, but whatever the opposite is, that is what I am the opposite of, I am appositive.

"Are you going to go out in this?" I peek through the window and my eyes light up where the sun will not. It is overcast. Moreover, it is undercast. The rain comes sideways, and only the wind seems to be obeying the laws of gravity, dropping straight out of the sky and crashing into earth at 9.9 meters per second, that extra tenth a product of shear determination.

"Yes. There won't be anyone else on the trail."

I'm lying. There is another out there. Always is.

By mile 16 my iliotibial band is screaming WHAT ABOUT ME? DON'T YOU! DON'T YOU! DON'T DON'T DON'T!

By mile 17 I have invented a new method of running that doesn't require you to bend your right knee. The only downside is running into angry townspeople looking to eat into their surplus of pitchforks and torches. I'm alive. Alive!

By mile 20, the sunlight that stood me up gives way to darkness, and yet, still, somehow, illuminates the snowberries along the path, and it's almost enough to help me forget why I am running, but they are so, so pretty, and that is enough to bring me back.

"Yes. There won't be anyone else on the trail and I will be free to repeat out loud everything I wish I could take back."

No Less \

I am curious why I am so eager to say out loud when I am alone those words I wish I hadn't said out loud in the first place. Curious in that morbid fashion of picking at wounds or looking at my yearbook pictures or dialing old phone numbers just to see the name pop up on the screen. Somewhere between nostalgia and regret is a 34-year old recreational runner who purposefully runs harder on his bad knee because he gave up religious atonement shortly after he gave up religion. A friend once referred to this as reminiscent melancholy. But I don't remember the bastard's name. God, I miss him.

It used to bother me, the amount left over in the tank, how I imagined it was stagnant and rusty. I would spend an inordinate amount of time draining the tender, and leaving the top hatch open in the full sun, because the water at the bottom was original, had some kind of institutional memory of all those fires we didn't put out, all those roads that ran us off the path, all those wrong turns while people's lives were illuminating the night sky. I talk like this, get out everything in the reserves of my memory, give to evaporation what little bits cling with surface tension.

I can only describe the last year as the one good line from a forgotten poem that once sent you over the edge of your limits, and instead of memorizing it, you never read it again, afraid that it might not quite have the same impact. On occasion, you think the only way to really adore it is to let it go and put it out of your mind. I am so often wrong about these ideas, and occasionally I, what's the word, revel in my mistakes.

The word is wallow.

/ End

It took me YEARS to develop the discipline necessary to learn to run in my dreams and more than one hungry monster has since stood in my dust wondering HOW'D HE DO THAT! as they pulled out their pocket manuals and went right to the glossary, under L for LOOPHOLES. One snapped a photo. One wrung his mitts to the heavens, which, in dreams, is apparently oriented downwards, below your feet. Really.

Ain't no monster can catch the boy who knows how to run through his dreams.

And then, last night, they came back from vacation, from a working conference, probably, bags full of new frustrations tucked into the folds of their leathery skin.

In my sleep, I found myself in a panic I couldn't outrun. I desperately needed to know the lyrics to 'Winds of Change' by the Scorpions! And even worse, my internet connection was set to expire at ANY MOMENT because the Hyatt is a kind of monster within the hospitality Industry (it's true!)!

And...and...and... (catches breath!) ...here is where the demons got devilishly clever: MY HANDS WOULD NOT OBEY MY COMMAND!!!

I could not type fast enough! And of course, the misspellings, OH THE MISSPELLINGS! I tried to type SCORPIONS (SCR@2xx.eoe)! I tried to type WINDS (WXIGNSSSSSSSSS)! Then CHANGE (*(DDKKIE_+)!!!

And every time I went back to delete the nonsensical letters, the cursor would stop moving, only to start up again really fast after I finally succeeded in typing something coherent! Once, I typed in SCORPIONS WINDS OF CHANGE only to see the cursor quickly delete each letter in rapid succession before I could IMPEL MY INDEX FINGER TO HIT THE ENTER BUTTON WHICH APPARENTLY IN DREAM COMPUTERS IS NO LONGER FOUND ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THE KEYBOARD BUT SOMEWHERE ACTUALLY BEHIND THE SCREEN!!!

And even when I got REASONABLY CLOSE, Google, instead of replying, 'DID YOU MEAN THE SCORPIONS WINDS OF CHANGE,' would instead keep saying, 'DID YOU MEAN WHY ARE WE NOT HAVING CHEESE FOR DINNER?'

I spent years learning how to run. And now I've got to learn how to type faster than the demons fucking with the wi-fi of my dreams.

Of the Terminal \

I am at my best when wringing my hands, when sneaking away on another business trip. The nights leave me hungry for the feast of our afternoons.

When I walk the hallways in this jealous state, I am observant, a coveted skill I have had my eyes on for years, because my own life seems so much more (more) when I am completely removed from the picture.

Even then, it's hard not to imagine what it would be like to join in the conversation at the table in the corner, sitting between the loud woman with the lipstick on her teeth, and the skinny fellow in the bow tie, rolling his eyes and pursing his lips. I would say, hold on to your youth. Everything else gets old. I would enjoy the pause before the laughter, most of all.

I could be invisible, thus, if I was committed to it, and I could whisper beautiful conversation starters to the confounded but thoroughly appetized patrons. I wouldn't have to tuck in my shirt, at least not in the back, or fashion my hair in the latest style, or style my hair according to the latest fashion, in that way that highlights the too slowly coming gray. I would only wear sweat suits and well-made running shoes, I'd take off to the end of the terminal, and never once imagine that it's my name being read over the intercom.

/ Wonder

Rhetoric is ruining my chance for friendship.

What do you mean, you CAN'T have a road less traveled clogged with people asking for directions? It's NOT an example of oxymoron! It is a rhetorical device known as antithesis, it is the willful, purposeful juxtaposition of ideas that seems to be contradictory, for emphasis. You can have a crowded road less traveled, just as you can have a nearly empty theater where a stranger sits in the seat right in front of you, or a nearly empty plane where another passenger is assigned to your aisle, or a nearly empty train where all the passengers congregate directly in front of the door.

You can find yourself unloved in a room full of people preaching love. You can find yourself silent next to the person for whom you have nothing but an endless stream of words and thoughts and sentiments. Unmoved in the face of nature. Thirsty at sea. This is not oxymoron. It's not irony. It's antithetical.

We are asked to write a story in 20 minutes. And while I type, I think, DON'T VOLUNTEER, DON'T VOLUNTEER, DON'T RAISE YOUR HAND, I WILL CUT YOU. One person reads. No one answers the next call. The seconds pass like vapors rising in the mirage. Oh. Oh. I can see my hand and cannot stop it. Please. PLEASE. Not this time. This is moronic.

Ho hum is such a pleasant way to spend your days if your purpose is to simply spend your days. Not as a reaction. People like this make writers wealthy and famous, and I wonder what it must feel like to spend those dollars. Let's say you have an idea to share.

God, why would you?

These conferees don't know a goddamn about love.

Full \

I want to take you on a wasted, weekend trip, just so that we can look back and think, oh, that was crazy, and don't imagine for a moment that some husband and wife a generation ago wouldn't have given up the entire crop to get away like this, oh, fairy tale, float among the clean sheets, and skip along the washed sidewalks, and then they would have…

I changed a story today, the last name, mostly, I guess that's why it was so hard on me afterwards, because it was a knock on the door, and you open and it is that visitor, like the two young kids preaching salvation, but this was shame.

But before this, I know I have never held this in my hand; I am too amazed to worry that eyes are on my reaction, I don't care that everyone else has experienced this in the world, because it's mine now. It's me feeling sorry for all of you around me, all of you nodding in smug satisfaction, winking with each other's memories of your first time, but open your hands. They are empty. Look at mine. Your nodding comes to an end because I am smiling so broadly, walking away, snapping my fingers in step…

Sometimes I look around and think I am just as real as everyone around me, standing in front of the bus stop, sleeping on the park bench, tearing through the crosswalk, flying overhead, but there is no real way to know. Please, be invisible, just for today. Please, please. Pleas.

And sometimes I think that this is proof that all of the world is a frame for my own life, and, still smiling, I come home early, and the teeth click lightly, the dogs don't stir, I set my bag down, I remove my shoes, I slip along the floor, I crack the door…

You are on the other side, and you are dancing slowly to music I cannot hear, and it is all I can do to not back away or else disappear into the obscurity of your background, and it is all I can do not to sneak nearby and steal a bit of your fire, but, where would that leave me? And it is all I can do not to be weary with wonder.

/ Gateway

The most curious aspect of overhearing the conversation next to you is not having closed captioning, because did she mean 'insightful' or did she mean 'INCITEFUL???' and at least in this one case, it really didn't matter, either one would have worked, depending on context, AND BUT STILL I cannot help but look distressed at the plate in front of me and wonder, 'HOW MANY TIMES MUST I HAVE BEEN MISUNDERSTOOD????

I imagine more than once.

I walked into a bar today and had that awful, cringeworthy experience where the conversation stops completely, everyone looks at you, and you think OH MY GOD, THIS IS NOT A BAR, IT IS A FRONT FOR A MONEY LAUNDERING FACTORY. And this was confirmed when I discovered that the sandwiches were too underpriced, and when I joked about BLUE LAWS the hostess (DO NOT GO INTO A POOL HALL THAT HAS A HOSTESS) says, "YEAH, WHAT YOU WANT?"

I meekly replied, "um...do...you have...like...um...gin...and stuff?"

"YEAH WE GOT THAT IN THE BACK. HOLD ON."

The gin wasn't what I would call underpriced, but a bottle of JIM BEAM here at the hotel costs $72.

I'm not joking. I know the dollar has depreciated a BIT in the last 7 years, but don't cry to me about the cost of a barrel of oil.

We all have our priorities.

Drag \

I forget how much it costs to hop time zones immediately after daylight savings comes to an end, but it is like overspending when you've been laid off and the only remedy is shopping. I pledge to turn in early, pop some pills and lower the thermometer of the hotel room, crawl deep within the high-thread, low-wash sheets and try to imagine all the regular components of my nightly sleep (DOGS BARKING, CHILDREN JUMPING), much as a man in the desert dying of thirst (OASIS) or dying of cold (HOT, SUNNY BEACH), imagines that which he most desires so that he can go on, but the available substitutes (SIRENS WAILING, CONSTRUCTION HAMMERING) are not close enough to...okay, so they're pretty close.

But my circadian rhythms are nonetheless disturbed, and hours and hours later, I finally close at least one eye enough to count as sleep, and as soon as the other eye has closed, the alarm clock jumps from 2 AM to 6 PM, and apparently my body has adopted cicadian rhythms. But not really, because by 6:30 AM (MY TIME) I am running along the streets, a night's worth of local crime statistics at my encyclopedic mind ready. All the taxis look like police cruisers. All the construction tape looks like crime scene boundary. All the smiles look like bared teeth.

The reason they say you can never go back is because you shouldn't go back. You are the past for someone who needn't return, so every town you visit is full of kindred spirits. Every room you enter is full of people too insecure to have even attended their own 10 year reunions, so why would you not be a threat, what with your fancy jacket and brand new shoes and obnoxiously expensive digital camera?

At any moment I expect one of the homeless men to stand up and show me a rejected manuscript. I could have been a pretender.

/ You happen to me

From the plane, the earth out west looks like the shaved head of a dying old man, all his years visible as furrowed brows, and you want to ask the pilot to rise a little higher, see if you can make out his entire body, or at least his fists, shaking at the sky for all these fronts and occlusions. Dearest Denver, people come to you for all the wrong reasons, and yet you still happen to me, every single time, and I can now definitively assert that no town in the world plays The Eagles quite so often as your mile high radios. But I am seeing another town, shortly, the original gateway to your very existence, packing my bags for St. Louis, where growing up I would sneak away for ball games, and hopehopehope Ozzie would do another flip on his way out to short stop. Praypraypray no one would throw the ball to Guerrero.

I am hopefully going to be meeting people I haven't seen in too long, in one case, NEVER. And as we're lifting off from SeaTac, I will laugh out loud, remembering that old saying about how you can never run away from your problems. I will be kicking in place at my seat.

Directly off the plane, my most recent problems at least a time zone away, Minneapolis called and requested the pleasure of my company, as well, and as long as I'm in his neck of the weeds, I might as well get those new running shoes I've been itching for, and I might as well get that new liver, too, since the old one is very likely the source of the itching in the first place. I want to get another look at that old man from the sky, I don't know why. But I suspect it is a variation of childhood head trauma.

\ All over again

Dreams. I dreamt about someone surprising and now harbor the most sincere affection for that person. I realize it is an artificial affection, but only inasmuch as real affection is not an artificial construct itself, as though it can be measured and weighed. They have done this with pain, I understand, established a scale that allows us to compare degrees of torment. And so I suppose our scientists will eventually tackle a measurement for the opposite of pain, if that is in fact what affection is. The chart will be named after the scientist, something not so easily remembered, vaguely foreign. Olarevin or Moitaru.

"The Elsoedrin Scale of Affection measures the intensity of our feelings of compassion towards another. It is an exponential measurement, so that the difference between 8.1 (a childhood pet, crippled with age) and 8.2 (one's own infant, suffering from illness) is an order of magnitude greater than the space between 4.4 (the driver who cuts you off in traffic) and 6.8 (college instructor who refuses to believe your genuine excuse for being late)."

When I awake and throughout the day, I am running an Elsoedrin fever of 7.8.

Pity. It's that ages old technique for avoiding anger, converting whatever ire you have for someone into pity. They are acting this way because they are hurt, because they were raised wrong, because they are insecure. They said those nasty things because they feel nasty inside, and it can only be dealt with through feeling sorry for them. It is such a past-perfect aggressive approach.

Conceit. I'm not sure how the other animals must find us, but conceited comes to mind. The pigs talk to each other in the barnyard and say, 'They lord over us with their supremacy, and even while offering us to the slaughter, proclaim themselves master over death itself. Not only are we superior to you in this world, but we are the only creature who doesn't even die. When we stop breathing, we simply float away into a greater place than this.' Whatever will you eat? joke the animals. I would never laugh these days if it weren't for the humor of the damned.

Reading. Edith Wharton has been speaking to me from beyond the grave, but not very far, and thankfully in English and not some dead language that would sap all the joy from my understanding. She tells me that in order to love me, she must let me go, and I reply, I don't want your love, so feel free to stick around. And she says, whenever I see you again, it is like the first time, you happen to me all over again, and I laugh, nervously, because with everyone I've ever met, I'd prefer to be remembered for that second time, instead. Don't make me out to be better than I am, Edith. Not even the vain deserve the loneliness of the pedestal.

/conversations

sometimes when i am giving a presentation, i have moments where because i know the material so good i am automatic and can continue but deep inside my head there is a conversation taking place, and it typically involves the following inner narrative: DID YOU REALLY JUST SAY THAT OUT LOUD?!??

this conversation took place FAR TOO MANY TIMES TODAY. it started that moment when i wanted to make a joke about conflating my advice with all those pharmaceutical commercials, and when i meant to say, 'ASK YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISOR ABOUT WORKSHEET C,' i jokingly said instead 'ASK YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISOR IF LIPITOR IS RIGHT FOR YOU.'

but of course i did not actually say LIPITOR. i thought LIPITOR. what i actually said was LEVITRA.

DID YOU REALLY JUST SAY LEVITRA? while lipitor is only mildly funny, it is not in the least inappropriate. what levitra offers in humor, it sadly lacks in decorum.

"SO WHAT I AM SAYING IS THAT THE GOVERNMENT WILL PAY FOR YOUR TUITION IF YOU GO OUT AND GET MARRIED AND MAKE BABIES."

you know, while this is actually TRUE, it does not lend itself to BEING INVITED BACK TO SPEAK EVER EVER AGAIN.

but the other, more fortunate conversation deep inside my head was this: DID YOU REALLY JUST REFRAIN FROM SAYING THAT OUT LOUD!?!!

because i don't know if anyone else has noticed, but my god are there some pretty girls out there. and sometimes they even talk to you and touch your elbow.

\in my head

the waitress delivers my entree, mojarra frita, it is a whole fish, it reminds me of something once ordered in Little Italy, and I begin to tell her this, but my collection of memories is woefully unorganized. she remarks how untidy her car is, i love this characteristic in people, it brings connection to my recollections, how many times i have followed someone to her car, and she said, 'please excuse the mess! pleasepleaseplease!' our unkempt automobiles as common a conversation starter as the sun, how shiny!, the rain, always wet!, the heat, hotter than ever!, the cold, TOO COLD TODAY FOR MY TASTE!

i packed light, and even set aside a few items for disposal to make room for gifts, an old habit of mine, there are hotels far and wide that stand as the final resting places for various items of clothing i once tried on in a department store, or papers and papers and papers, and this time i brought my old running shoes, now never worn, and i was determined to wear them out on these mile high streets and leave them, tidily, next to the little plastic garbage can.

but running, in the dark, under ominously flickering streetlamps, it was brought to my attention, maybe by my knees, maybe even my shoulder, that these unfrilled, cheap running shoes were not causing me any pain. after a half hour the lack of sharp, jolting shocks to my joints was deafening in its silence, and i packed the shoes into my backpack first thing, determined to break at least one of these bad hotel habits of mine.

i was reading an article today, and since i fall in love with everyone, i suppose it should not have surprised me that two girls so far apart in my past were linked by a common newspaper, in a town out west, now that i am in Denver, a more apt description. there was a photograph, even, and i spent no inconsiderable amount of time trying to will life back into that face i used to redden so easily. even as these memories become hazy, they can still close in on you, or maybe that's what haze is, confusion by proximity. everything seems so much closer these days, and so much harder to understand.

/ Shot Through the Heart

I am packing my bags for a one day trip tomorrow, a last minute request for my ex-pertise, and now that I have become the obnoxious person who is always wondering when to fit in that 4 hour run, I have of course packed mostly running shoes, sports gels and bandaids for my nipples. Since it's Denver, I have also set out sweatshirts, longjohns and oxygen supplements, although apparently tomorrow it will be 80 degrees in the Mile High City. Good god, it will take a nuclear winter to save us from this global warming. There has got to be a happy medium (besides Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost).

I had nearly four hours to fantasize my pending greatness yesterday running 20 miles from the town of Rainier to the town of Tenino and back to the town of Yelm. You would think 4 hours would be enough for me to emerge as a content protagonist, but I finished my run woefully short of my emotional goals for the afternoon, and I still hadn't gotten the girl, and I still hadn't defeated my demons and I still hadn't even learnt some moral lesson. I was just tired. I flirted with running another 6.2 miles, but I am notorious for not following through with my flirtation, and the racetrack sulked away sullen and disappointed. It was me, not you.

I have mapped out my run for tomorrow and Tuesday and Wednesday, and I will get in at least 18 miles in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, and by Saturday, I will have mapped out 5 more runs for my trip to St. Louis, and will have that much more time to search for gifts. I just know that my quest for a shot glass embossed with the phrase WORLD'S BEST MOM is that much closer to my grasp. Get it? A shot glass extolling the virtues of motherhood? It's funny.

\ And You're To Blame

There is a stretch of about 5 miles in the Cascade foothills where the flora and fauna have no children, and thus no school fundraiser produced calendars, and thus no sense of time, where the warm days of November produce Scotch Broom and St. John's Wort blossoms, busy arteries of almond scented millipedes and woolly bears, outcrops of shaggy manes and orange cups, but mostly you have to slow down to give way to procrastinating orb weavers, back away when their webs float into your path. Every now and again they latch on to your knee and you have to stop and back away, kick at the air, and the more you struggle, the closer this spider gets. Eventually it hits the ground, curls up, and tries to pretend it is a stone or a memory. Such a goddamned sweet sting.

I counted no fewer than 6 moles squashed into the pavement, a red tailed hawk hovering, embarrassed, waiting for me to carry on and not bear witness to his ineptitude, a covey of quail, and a garter snake desperate for warm blood. I ran out of gatorade and chocolate mocha supreme and kept saying to myself, 'Do not eat! Do not eat!' but of course, I don't have a personal tormentor, someone who is there at all times to pinch my waist and sigh, disgustedly at my figure.

It is all sugar, this weight, and entirely from wine and beer and beer and wine. My knees hurt dreadfully in the beginning, but then it was just emotional pain, knowing that I am racing against quality, not quantity. I dreamt last night I was crashing, and it was such a welcome collapse, like when you are winning too much, you're friends begin to draw away, you think, we can never be that happy when one of us is so full of fortune, and you no longer want to play. I am happy to hold the ticker tape.

/ Portrait of the Artist Formerly Known for His Prints

I continue to read classics this year because the classics are free and as long as I don't hum the tunes from the movie soundtracks (since after all, when you read a book, you just have to watch the film and comment to your partner just how wrong they got it), I am relatively safe from the RIAA. I finished Pride and Prejudice yesterday and it is darling, how sweet and chaste and polite they all were, and I laugh trying to imagine me back then, figuring out some way to bleed off my sexual frustration. Maybe I'd take up fox hunting, beat the hell out of some small animal. I certainly wouldn't write a polite letter, extort the resident lothario into marrying off the 15-year-old whore-sister of my unconsummated love interest. I'd sharpen a spear, bunk up with an exotic man and sail around the world killing and murdering entire orca pods. If something dies in me, you better be sure that at least one of mother nature's creatures would meet a similar, albeit less metaphorical, fate. I would be the follow up act of God.

This is the thing that is killing me about the classics: they are so happy that I want to set my face on fire. Happily ever after is the awfullest fate for protagonists because my god, I wouldn't wish contentment upon my worst enemy. Yay! We finally overcame all our obstacles at the ripe old age of 21 and can now marry and make babies and buy a villa and...and...and...YAWN.

5 Years Later - STILL HAPPY
10 Years Later - STILL HAPPY
20 Years LATER - HAPPY HAPPY
50 Years LATER - SAME OLD SAME OLD
75 Years LATER - THEY WEREN'T KIDDING WERE THEY

So I was very careful not to download Anne of Avonlea from Librivox, because as much as I adore Anne Shirley, I couldn't help but wish that things had not quite turned out so well for her in the end, like instead of maybe getting the teaching position at Avonlea, she would have instead had to take the position at Carmody, and on the first night there realized that all the kids are in fact seed pods for a race of vengeful, land-living krakens. And when Gilbert Blythe came to save her, they would have just gotten away and he would have proposed to her, and then after kissing he pulls back a bit, looks mildly confused, and while she's wondering if she's just a lousy smooch, scream in horror as she realizes he's got a tentacle wrapped around his neck. The confusion was from hypoxia, after all!

But it's public domain, so my expectations are curbed.

\ Prince Rupert's Drops

I can stare into the tomorrow of my wife's tempered heart without once feeling the shame of an occasional wink, how heartily I have hammered on its core, all these years, not the slightest damage, because she was made by glassblowers, dropped hot into cold water, and hardened. I twirl her tail feathers in my hand, but never really with the intention of snapping my fingers, because it would shatter into silt and silicon, and I have seen the look that this sort of careless whimsy produces and it is a tragedy.

But I don't mind pounding on it as long as I know it won't break, and it won't because I have tried, but never in the one way I know would do it all in for good. She walked up and down the halls last night, and I swore she had uncovered the secret of everlasting youth, and she skipped into our room and shut the door behind her and floated down into the little lea of my daydream, threw speargrass at my neck and blew kisses when I began to look cross.

She wouldn't leave me to my idleness, not even when I made a fist and pointed square at her chest, but unbuttoned her blouse and dared me. Opened the fingers of that fist and it was like when you are in school, and all of you are in a circle, sitting cross-legged on the carpet, little tactile games that seem so sweet but are such ominous signs of our growing capacity for impatience.

When she invades my thoughts this way, uninvited, I cannot put space between us, because stubbornness demands maintaining our addresses, but time, yes, time I can throw into the mix, and as they say, 'It's not the mileage, it's the years.'

She puts a hand on mine and leaves it there until all the exhaustion is exhausted, I find myself staring at the ceiling.

Now what?

In the middle of the middle between night and morning, to look over and see the same eyes staring at you, it's hard to describe, other than to say the children of want favor their mother, the children of pride, rarely. It is hard to describe other than to think about wanting what the other wants, not exactly, but close enough so that the differences can be sorted out later, and you might think, the enemy of my enemy, and carry the two.

No, maybe we are the children of hunger, and are not so finicky in our tastes, and while we are cousins of decorum, it is a relation twice removed. She is a princess and she is unaccustomed to my untoward directness. We cannot scratch the surface without destroying it entirely. But we can be as rough as we want, as long as we are not careless with our hands.