Musings of a Winter Wren
When I read books, I try to write down words I don’t know or words I’ve met only once or twice. At a party. While drunk. This list was found on the back of a buy-ten-coffee-drinks-get-one-free-card:
I’m in a movie theatre waiting for the flick to start. The previews are on or something. Suddenly I’m struck with an impulse to purchase a large colorful bag of butter popcorn, so I emerge from the dark booming room and make my way to the concession stand in the lobby. A girl in the green polo shirt and matching visor is working behind the counter, waiting frantically on a long line of people. Her long brown ponytail is flopping about like a windsock.
Last night I dreamt I was flying in the company of a magic weasel.
I have an eating disorder. So I have been skimming a rather mediocre book about bulimia.* It's something my mother picked up at the library for herself. She's resourcefulful like that, you know. As soon as someone in our extended family gets cancer (doesn't happen all the time, but I've seen it enough to notice a pattern), she whips out her 50 lb. medical dictionary and starts taking notes. Suddenly she is the household expert on brain tumors and Hodgkin's disease. Next thing, she's on the phone with key members of the aforementioned extended family engaging them in Cantonese-slash-English-medical-technical-jargon-speak. To the untrained ear it sounds a little something like this:
Setting: Fitness Center
Last April 12 in the company of much beer, my friend and I hacked out five things we wanted to accomplish/experience before turning thirty. Here's my list (I still have the bar napkin):
Do you know why so many people close their eyes when they are having an orgasm? Because silly, when you reach nirvana your eyes cross. And that’s just not sexy.
I was just rooting through my parent’s dresser searching for a scarf I gave my mother. I was very cautious in doing this because I was deathly afraid I would run into a dildo or a butt plug or something awful like that. I have nothing against dildos or butt plugs per se, I just have a problem with the possibility of encountering their dildo or butt plug. Ugh. Enough with this talk already.
Four months ago I was living and working in the People's Republic of China. While there, I adopted the habit of flossing my teeth daily. Unfortunately, I lost the habit of processing lactose.
Sister Friend came into town yesterday afternoon and will be staying the weekend. She is not really my sister (I don't have one). We just go way back is all. She brought me a small stack of burnt CDs and two yards of exquisite antique ribbon. I gifted her a pair of purple merino wool wrist cozies that I knitted a few weeks back.
This morning at work, somewhere between meaningful gulps of coffee and skunk eye glances from my boss, I chatted with Patrick the Starfish. I asked him, if he could have one of two super powers, which would he choose, flight or invisibility. He responded with “flight” and then a more confident, “definitely fight.” When I asked him why, he said, “When I think of invisibility, I think of people creeping around girls locker rooms and I have a girlfriend. So I don’t have any interest in that.” Okay, pause it. Does that mean if he did not have a girlfriend that he would be into skulking around girl’s locker rooms?
I'm alone tonight. I’m twenty-six but I feel like I’m sixteen.
Someone tried to convince me once that noodles could be serious, but I was not swayed by their argument. Noodles are funny. Period. I love the smacking kissing sound of hot macaroni in a sieve.
The Rock Skipper has this method of holding my head in his hands that makes me feel like a character in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. We waxed romantic hyperbole all weekend. And now I'm glowing like an enchanted genie lamp that has been rubbed all night long for wishes. "Rub me Aladdin dear, and I'll give you whatever you want..."
The Rock Skipper smoothed stray hairs behind my left ear and asked me if I'm often cranky in the morning. I guess I was cranky, but then I took this amazing, truly cosmic shit and now I'm feeling much better. Isn’t it lovely when basic drives dictate our moods? It’s like we're all regressing back to infanthood. Presently, I’m sitting in a coffee house waiting for my poet friend to show. We are going to get lunch this afternoon. He has the palest, most delicate ladyfingers I have ever seen on a grown man.
This very evening at a quarter to nine I packed up the car and drove from my city to the capital city. About two hours into the trip, as I was fanaticizing about french kissing a rather fetching man * with crooked teeth, I saw a fresh heap of wicker furniture road kill on the side of the road. The gore lined the highway like so much dry kindling. I tried to avert my eyes, but my gaze was irresistibly drawn to the carnage. I wonder if it was still alive after the accident. I wonder if a state trooper had to approach it with an axe and put it out of its misery.
Christopher Guest, if you’re out there please. For the love of baked beans, make your next genius faux documentary about homeschoolers and their families. There is simply too much good material there for you to ignore! I hex you! It should leave you tossing and turning, sleepless until your work is done!
Why can’t we choose our addictions? Why can’t I be addicted to something simple and straightforward, like meth? Why do I have to be addicted to carrot cake? And bing cherries? And honey roasted cashew nuts?
I’m on a weekend trip to San Francisco with friends. Pit Pat (my brother) and his then girlfriend, Carole are sitting on an antique couch inside an old guesthouse slash hostel thingy doing their best impressions of zombies. Pit Pat informs me that he just shot his arm full of heroin and I notice that his right arm still bleeds from the needle. He is trying to describe the experience to me as I sit cross-legged on this huge red and gold paisley pillow snacking on Tobies Coconut Crunch Cookies.
While smoking cigarettes on the back porch today * I saw an American Crow reunion. I was witness to much cawing and ceremonial breaking of pine tree twigs. I think so many people regard their chitchat as noise, an unpleasant racket to be swept into a corner of our consciousness. But is it really any different from the inane, scripted dialogues I hear at my new workplace day in/out?
My therapist is like my emotional lawyer and when the shit is going down I always wish she were around to speak in my best interest, because clearly, I have no fucking clue what I’m doing. I can’t believe there was a time in my life when I actually thought I did. The sessions with her have been fantastically productive so far. We have exhumed my rotting ID from the grave of my ego and superego and that was all sorts of fun.
Yesterday evening I smoked fags on the back porch and watched the Chipping Sparrows dart around the yard. Every once in a while they would sound dry territorial trills. I also heard a soiree of Rock Doves cooing and purring on a neighboring rooftop, talking shit about house cats and radio wires.
I don the blue pajama pants, the mental patient pants, the professional depression pants. I poured my ambition, my gumption, my appetite down the toilet and flushed. Last night I sleep with regret, two pillows and a stack of facial tissues. I had a threesome with disappointment and guilt. It was pretty hot. Now if you will excuse me, I have a date with a blank wall.
I was walking through a brushy area. It must have been winter, because the bushes and trees were without leaves. I saw an injured blackbird. It was watching me with the one suspicious beady eye, winking every so often. I wanted to capture it, to heal its wounds, but we werenÃ’t speaking the same language. We shuffled around the brush a little, kicking up the sound of dead leaves. Because it was lame, I eventually caught it in my hands. It was quite obviously scared so I tried my best not to further tweak it out.
I called him this morning, across eight time zones. I told him that I don’t love him the way he deserves to be loved. I told him that he should be with someone who adores him, someone who appreciates all that he does. I told him that someone is not me. I told him I want a divorce. It was like strangling innocent baby rabbits with my bare hands. I have been crying all night and it sounds like seagulls being shot out of the sky.
I engaged the owner slash manager of Corporate Bread in some social grooming a few days back. You know, small talk. I asked her how many job applications they get and what criteria they use when hiring new people. She started telling me about the "stranger people" she had interviewed in the past. The first was a black man who according to her had some chip on his shoulder about his race because he was constantly talking about it. And then Snow White threw up her hands, confounded and exclaimed, “I didn’t understand it. What was his deal? I never think about race.”
That’s what a bottle of Thermasilk demanded to know in the shower today. I’m thinking, "Great snakes! Someone finally understands me! My pain! My solitude! My lifeless hair!"
