7yo boy and 9yo girl in waiting room about to come to blows over him saying college when he meant high school. I am directly responsible.

Angel, Again

All right. I suppose I can tell a story. Last year, my dad was in the hospital for I don't remember what. He was feeling terribly anxious and depressed, so much so that after waiting three hours to be taken down for a test, he was out in the hallway yelling at nurses to bring him a Xanax. As he was yelling, the transporter arrived with the rolling bed, and according to him, was so pleasant that he felt instantly better.

On their way to the test, they spoke about all manner of things. Her name was Angel, which upon relaying the story, my dad said made him think that my brother had sent her to him in his hour of need. She had just moved to Phoenix about a month ago and had very few friends, and after my father told her about how he met my mother, she told him she was hoping she'd meet a nice young man just like him.

After his test, she was waiting to take him back up to his room, having requested that she get the assignment. She told him how she had just called her mother to relay to her my dad's story of meeting his wife. He tells it very well and, in fact, still calls her his "girlfriend", which she thought was adorable.

So I arrive at the hospital to take my father home, since he's being discharged later that day. He tells me the story of this girl. He says things like "the second most wonderful girl I've ever met" and "someone I would love to be a part of this family", clearly hinting that I should at the very least meet her. We sit and wait, hoping that she'll be the transporter to bring him down to the parking lot, but those are the volunteers, not the transporters and we are disappointed.

The next day, I decide I'll go down to the hospital and seek this girl out, to thank her for being so kind to my father. I'm lacing my boots when my father comes out and asks me where I'm going. I tell him, since this is obviously what he wanted to happen. He thinks it's a brilliant idea and I ask if he'd like to go and thank her himself. He does. There are two reasons I even consider this a good idea. It will be less creepy if my father is there to thank her and I'm driving him, plus there is no possibility that I will puss out and fail to even find her.

We get to the hospital and she's not there. She doesn't work again until Monday. I think this is Thursday maybe. Monday comes around and we go back, this time she's there. We wait about ten minutes and then she comes down. She's sort of meh looking, with a very high forehead, but I don't mind such things as looks, and my father has already told me that she does not excel in the visual department. She's bright and cheery and pleasant. This is where things go wrong.

My father does all the talking, even though I try. I know this is foolish and I try I swear I try, but he tells her that he wanted his son to meet her and that perhaps we could go out some time and he would like that very much and it is going so horribly wrong. "If you write down your number, he can call you and you two can set it up," he says. "I'll leave you two to get to know each other a bit," and he walks off aimlessly.

I clear my throat. I chuckle. "Wow. Sorry about that."

She says, "Oh, it's okay. He's nice." She hands me her number.

"Well, anyway, I'm Noah. Um... So you just moved here?"

"Yeah. About a month ago. It's so hot." It's summer.

"It gets better. A bit."

This goes on for a few more minutes, and then I see my father wandering around aimlessly still, glancing suspiciously at signs as though trying to find somewhere to go to not be obvious. I tell her that I'm going to get him, she giggles nervously. I bring him back and he says goodbye to her and thanks her again. I say, "Okay, I'll give you a call."

I called her a day later. No answer. I leave a message, thinking maybe she's completely scared off and I'll give her an easy exit opportunity. "Hey, it's Noah. I wanted to apologize about yesterday. I feel terrible about how my dad sort of engineered this. Sorry if that was awkward, that's not how I meant for it to happen, but if you still want to I'd still like to take you to dinner some time. My number's..."

That was the end of it. I never heard from her again, but I spent a good two days in a nervous panic thinking she could call at any time. It's been a year, and my dad has been in the hospital twice since then. I keep wondering if I'll run into her there, and how fucking awful that would be. Well, this last hospital visit, I believe I saw her leaving the building just as I was walking in. I've lost a bit of weight and my hair is a bit shorter now. I don't think she recognized me behind my sunglasses, but I think I recognized her.

I don't know why this story makes me sad. Maybe it's just because I was drinking all day yesterday and I've got that post-drinking depression I tend to get, but for some reason this story is making me sad. It's not her either. It's my dad. He's crazy but he means well and he does these things with the best of intentions and they never turn out well. He tries too hard to make everyone's lives better. You can't get mad, because he thinks he's helping.

"Noah, you need some more light in here to read by."

"No I don't. I'm fine, thanks."

"You can't possibly read in this light."

"Yes, I'm reading just fine."

He turns the light on.

"Dad, really I don't want the light on. Please turn it off."

"Okay. Okay."

He turns the light off.

It's funny. When I told my mom that night about how her husband asked a girl out for me, the most wonderful girl he's ever met said to me, "Why the hell would you bring your father? You know what he's like." Yeah. I do.

Phone Entry

The internet has been fucked since yesterday, so no new entries, but i will finish the new story after this bender as penance.

Hisolysis, Go.

I've got to stop leaving the blog until right before bed. Now I'm going to get very little sleep for class tomorrow.

I went to lunch with my grandmother today. On the way back she told me the same old story about how she won a bunch of money to go to Europe with my grandfather. Then she told me the same old story about going on a "dirty walk" in Amsterdam and how one of the prostitutes grabbed my grandfather's arm and she had to reclaim him.

I don't really mind hearing the same old stories over and over, and I think that's probably strange, but I hear something new in them with each reiteration. For instance, this time my grandmother made an aside about how my grandfather never said no to anything, no matter what she asked. She said someday I'd make some nice girl a wonderful husband, and all I'd have to do for that was to be like my grandfather.

I think it's a testament to my ill-formed psyche that I just can't envision myself as a husband. I need to figure out what obstacles need to be surmounted to be able to think of myself that way. That must be the next step in this process. Histolysis, go.

There Is No Meaning

If you're out there, please contact me. You'll know who you are if you can decipher the meaning behind this entry.

Oh Man Why Oh Man

Oh Man Why Go Man

Oh Man Die Go Man

Oh San Die Go Man

Oh San Die Go Plan

No San Die Go Plan

Slow Van Try Old Band

Zing Zang Zam

Here I Am

I watched this show called Teenage Tourette's Camp today. It was British and it reminded me how ridiculous girls in high school are. I think I should write a high school girl character into something. I watched Adventureland and it was good. It reminded me how I need to be in a band. I'm gonna change my strategy from recording an album to recording an EP. That should be easier. I can't write and I need to go to bed, but here I am.

THIS IS NOT AN EXIT

I wrote this earlier about the postmodern age. Baudrillard would approve, I think. I haven't figured out what it is yet, or where it belongs, but I'll use it some day in some thing.

Our knowledge in this age is not greater, but simply more precise. It is a maze upon which some early player has already drawn a line to the finish. That is the universe, and our knowledge of it is correct, but we lack the perspective gleaned from exploring horrible and ominous corners and bleak, unavoidable dead ends lacking signs to blink brightly in the night, "THIS IS NOT AN EXIT".

Marco Polo (in progress)

This, a poem I wrote today while sitting in a hospital room where my father possibly has a very slight case of pneumonia or perhaps the flu, is in progress and will be edited in the future as I perfect it. It was an assignment to write a poem about a childhood memory, of which I have very few. I think it turned out pretty well, much better than my original idea which was going to be about the cheeseburger story.

Marco Polo

Sunlight echoes fiercely off

Burning chlorinated water, our dark hair

And olive skin refracting, newly red with summer

Four cousins squirming in opposition

Of our descending adolescence.

Cholla,

A perpetual danger to our soft, unmarred flesh,

Claims the youngest among us, flailing, screaming,

Ambushed by envious spade-shaped Lilliputians standing

One upon another, fearless in the sun.

Grandpa's arms, bristled and dark messiahs, weary

Skin like an ancient language, stretched

To disclose clandestine muscles. Laborer's hands screaming lies,

Betraying honest intentions, rubbing, swiftly

Antagonizing the guerilla spines buried in her leg.

Moments later they have fled and her evaporating tears

Make room for forgiveness.

A year later, with Grandpa gone, doctors find a tumor

In the oldest among us, which eventually makes us three

And leaves the name

Of an early Italian explorer echoing soundlessly

About every swimming pool, bouncing like ripples of light on

Coarse brick walls, never again to be answered.

With a Consistent Sadness, I

I had a pretty good day. Why do I feel so shitty about it then? I feel a little shitty about this blog too. I started it, not just to document my life, but as a way to practice writing, and it's become less about practicing good writing, and simply just writing anything. I don't feel like that's a good way to go on, so I'm going to bring the quality back up to par.

Sometimes I feel like I'm drifting in blackness, much like an astronaut that's gotten separated from his ship, and is now doomed to drift aimlessly until his oxygen runs out, all the while probably reflecting on his life and, mostly, on the one big tragic event that led him here. But in theory, couldn't that astronaut learn to simply appreciate the vast and inexplicable beauty of his surroundings? If he had no memories for instance, he would learn to simply exist, never knowing that his life could be different. I need to learn how to do that.

Well, no, actually I don't. I realize that my life is not drifting in complete darkness, nor is it doomed. I really just need to learn how to accept my setbacks and go from here, but that's so god damned hard. Everyday I see people, younger than me, doing the things I should be doing through persistence and diligence. I recognize that I've been left behind by my peers because of events beyond my control, but I don't have to stay here.

It's just... well every time I feel that I'm on my way to achieving one of my goals something happens to tell me I'm not. I can't finish my fucking film, because I have to rely on the people who actually own the equipment necessary for it's completion, people who agreed to finish it in July, and it constantly seems like they're doing as little as possible to do so. I recognize that they're busy, but for fuck's sake I wish I could just meet a single one of my goals without other people barring the way.

Beautiful and talented women that are married, editors and sound designers that are busy and unmotivated, my own derision, awkwardness, lack of discipline, and general inability to complete any of the things I begin. I can only try to overcome four of these obstacles, but I will try. I promise. For everyone that has ever believed in me, I will try.

Thanks, Life

I can't write tonight. I met an amazing and fascinating girl today. She's a writer/director and the first few pages of her script were phenomenal, perhaps as good as mine, and she gave me some very helpful feedback on mine, as I did hers. Ideal, I know. This is the type of girl I've been looking for. So she says, "I'd love to read your scripts, if you want." I said, "Yeah, that'd be great. I'd love to read yours as well. Are you on facebook?" "Yes," she says. "Okay, I'll look you up."

So I get on facebook and figure I'll friend her later, sort of with the same idea behind the three day rule, but I look her up, just to see how easy it will be to find her. There she is. I go on myspace next; there she is again, this time with a public profile. I find her vimeo profile so I can check out some of her films, and there in the description I find out that she's married to a visual fx creator. Thanks, life. I guess it'll still be nice to have a clever writer to get input from, especially with a female perspective. Fuck everything.

Thus Spake Nap

I took a nap today, which I haven't done in months, and I remembered why I love naps so much. It's the dreams. Combine caffeine with enough sleep deprivation to overpower it, and you get very loose and thought-provoking sleep. I think this is a lot of the reason I love opioids so much, aside from the euphoric waking hours, they also provide very restless but comfortable sleeping hours, and therefore vivid and intensely fractured dreams.

Behold, the dream.

I was a member of some type of resistance force leading an expedition into an abandoned enemy compound, or perhaps just a large mansion, in fact I may not have been part of a resistance at all. I'm not sure, but that is the only explanation that makes sense. So I was in this place with maybe four or five other people, having found an hidden wing (maybe that's where I found the people), when a massive enemy force arrived and began to settle into the main part of the compound. We could never have made it past them out of the compound, so we decided hurriedly to dig in and seal ourselves off until our chance to escape.

We hid ourselves in our secret wing hoping they wouldn't find it. I can only imagine the rest would have been like an espionage version of Anne Frank's diary, which I've never read, but I imagine well. It was a wonderful dream, intense and scary, and underneath the excitement was a real sense of dread and despair for our chance of survival.

I might write it as a short story some day.

Blog Fail

UGH! Poetry! I thought it'd be fun to write poetry again this semester, but I forgot how hard it is for me to write anything other than EXACTLY what I want to write. Fuck. I can't even finish this entry.

Excerpt from "Hell Is..."

A while back I decided to write Hell Is... in novel form, and then only made it to 4 pages. Really, that's sort of what this blog is going to end up as. Here it is:

"It’s the stupid little things that I remember fondest. Like how every morning when I’d wake up and get out of bed she’d have managed to liberate one perfect pink foot from the sheets. Every morning. Until she got sick. That’s how I could tell she wasn’t sleeping well. I wouldn’t feel her toss and turn or anything; I’m a pretty heavy sleeper, but she’d have both feet under the covers when I woke up. I don’t know if her feet were colder after she got sick or if she just didn’t sleep soundly enough to fall into that habit again, but there it was: disappointment. Without the foot, without the light brush of fingers it always coaxed from me, her lips wouldn’t curl slightly at the edges into her infinitely gracious smile as she slept.

“So I lived without it; she lived without it. Our days suddenly less exceptional, though she never knew it, our world marginally less bright. I never asked her about it, but I always wondered. That’s the way things go when someone gets sick like that. You stop having interesting, spontaneous conversations. Instead of your dialogues starting with, “Wouldn’t it be cool if such and such,” they start with, “I was thinking while you were gone,” or “I was meaning to ask such and such earlier, but you were asleep.” They’re more mundane as well. Instead of philosophy and the human condition or what not, you start to talk about what sort of food she’d like you to buy next time you go out or what temperature to keep the thermostat at so she doesn’t get warm when the sun hits her bed in the late afternoon.

“Everything reminds you that she’s going to die, and you’ll have to live without her. So you read more or watch more TV, anything to keep from dwelling on her worsening condition, but then you realize you’re avoiding her and you hope she hasn’t noticed while you privately plan to spend more time with her tomorrow, but you won’t. You think about what it’ll be like when she’s gone, if you’ll get over her, and despite your best efforts it occurs to you that life will be easier once she’s gone, and you begin to hate yourself for entertaining such a horrible thought because you don’t want life to be easier if it means living without her. She’s still beautiful, she’s still the same wonderful girl that invited you up to her apartment even though she hated the movie you took her to on that perfect rainy night in September. And she still lets you fuck her, in fact, she still seems to enjoy it and you’re thankful for that, even though you secretly hate that it really matters that much to you." She colors slightly in a way I’ve seen many women do. I always wonder if that’s what people mean when they say “blush” because I’d grown up thinking that “blushing” meant getting significantly redder than this, like a sunburn, but I’ve yet to see someone meet my over-inflated expectations. Maybe I’m just not as embarrassing as I think. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she says. "That’s what we’re here for. You do have a wonderful way with words. Have you thought of maybe writing about your experiences? You said you want to be a writer, right?"

"Why? So people going through the same thing will avoid it and people who have never dealt with it can experience it intentionally? No thanks." She smiles through a sad little empathetic nod. I remember how counselling is really just paying someone to let me talk at them, and consider that writing a book would be an infinitely more profitable cathartic exercise. I always figured I’d try science fiction; that I’d write some palatable nonsense set in a different world, probably out of spite and loathing for this one.

I’ve pinpointed the exact moment that led me to this psychiatric cauterization. She hated to be called Jenny, absolutely hated it. Jennifer or Jen were fine, but Jenny she hated. So, of course, being antagonistic, I would occasionally call her Jenny in fun, but it never, not once, went as I hoped. She was sort of self-conscious about her dislike of the name to the point that she accused me of belittling her and thinking her silly. It doesn’t sound serious, and it never was really, but it never came off as the jest I intended it to be. I called her Jenny maybe five or six times in the first two years we were married, each time expecting her to, this time, recognize it as a joke.

Anyway, after she got sick, I never tried again. I guess the joke was no longer worth the risk of upsetting her. But one day near the end we were watching some TV show and she muted it on a commercial and turned to me, pulling herself to the side of the bed with the railing. She looked at me for a moment and when I smiled at her she said, ‘You don’t call me Jenny anymore.’ Confused, my smile faltered and I said, ‘You don’t like it.’ She casually wrapped her arm around the railing and gave me a genuine attempt at a smile with more sadness and longing in her eyes than I’d ever seen and said simply, ‘I know.’ It struck me almost physically then that I had failed her, by treating her for the last year as my dying wife rather than the center of a wonderful, if doomed, universe.

Will The Real Greg Singer Please Stand Up?

I'm going to be late to my class for this, but I finally had something to write. I didn't write anything last night, so I owe it to the blog anyway.

Sometimes I lie awake at night thinking about how tragically interesting I am. This may sound vain, but it only makes me sad. I'm interesting for all the wrong reasons. I'm interesting as a character study, possibly as research on personality types that can't seem to deal with reality.

I'm exagerrating, I hope, but perhaps not. I hope someday I'll look at this and think, wow, I was hopelessly disillusioned about my own potential, but often it seems that day will never come.

I thought of a new way of telling Hell Is... by maybe having a video crew follow Greg's dad so he can leave something behind for his grandchildren, but then they meet Greg and realize he's so much more interesting. They begin following him around instead much to his and his father's dismay. I think that'd be a wonderful way of getting some outside perspective into his life. It would force him to deal with how neurotic he's become as well. Perhaps that could provide the turning point.

I love Greg Singer. He's such an amazing character. Everyone thinks he's brilliant, even before they realize he's me.

Hate? Love? Forgiveness.

So. Here we are again. I think I've been depressed for the last few days. I wrote probably half of another song today. I played a shit load of Rock Band. I listened to some new Muse, some new Pearl Jam. None of it really makes me happy.

I think it's coming more frequently and for less time. I usually get depressed for about a week, maybe a week and an half every three months or so. Recently I've been getting depressed for a few days at a time every couple weeks. Maybe eventually it'll just work itself into my life so I'm just slightly less happy always, but otherwise consistent. I don't think I'd like that. Maybe I would.

God, I hate this. I wish I could think of something to write about, but I know that's not what this is about. I know the reason I'm hating writing this entry right now is not because I've got nothing to say, but because I just don't want to write. Maybe I'm tired, maybe I had forgotten to write until just now when I really only want to be asleep.

A lot of my art is about needing an outlet, needing to get my voice heard. What would I do if I got famous and lots of people listened to me? What then would I write about? I'm sure I'd find something else to hate. There is so much to hate in this world.

Anyway, I guess I'll end this once again by saying that I wish I'd hurry up and find a nice girl to share her life with me, and maybe she'd even want to share a bit of mine. I'd love to wake up, hate the thought of getting up, fail to do so, and as she's wondering what to do with me and my brain, I'd say sleepily, "I'm sorry about all this. I wish I were stronger."

It doesn't matter what she'd say after that, as long as when I woke up I recalled it perfectly, and on doing so decided to do better next time.

Phone Entry

I'm choosing to skip my writing in lieu of not driving home drunk. Be back tomorrow.

Thursday

It's ironic, oh so ironic. That's all I got. Oh wait.

So I walk into class late, like I do every Thursday with impunity, and I can't find my seat. Someone is talking so I don't want to make a big fuss, but goddamn it where is the empty seat? I know there is one. Could it be that when they rearranged the desks into a big circle around the room they left one out because they forgot I'd be coming?

Wait. That cute girl, she's motioning me to sit beside her. Yes, that desk is empty. I must remove my sunglasses and look cool. Sizzle.

Cheeseburger, Moral Responsibility

I've got a terrible memory most of the time, but when it comes to making mistakes it's excellent, especially the ones that change the rules I live by.

When I was very young, my mother took my brother and I to the McDonald's drive-thru for lunch while she was running errands. I couldn't have been more than five years old. My brother got a whole cheeseburger for lunch, but my mom thought it best if I only had half of one.

I thought this was discrimination, so when she left the car to go inside somewhere on an errand I didn't fully understand, I ate the whole thing. She came back and looked for the cheeseburger and said, "Noah, I thought I told you to only eat half of the cheeseburger.

"But Adam got a whole one, so I wanted one."

She looked at me sternly and said, "That was my lunch, Noah." I'll never forget that until the day I die. I've never really come to terms with the fact that other people might occasionally know what's best for me. I think that's the curse of the intelligent, or maybe I'm just stubborn, but I learned my lesson that day.

In the end some people do actually make wise decisions that at first seem baffling and ill-conceived. If you decide to disregard someone who is intelligent and has your best interest in mind, be prepared to deal with the consequences.

To Dream

Five episodes of True Blood down. That's almost half of the new season. Oh, shit I have to write. My eyelids are half-closed, my throat dry. I think I'll start writing earlier. I should have realized I'd be too tired to successfully write before bed tonight.

I did write a good portion of that song today, and that ought to count. I shouldn't start cheating on the blog though. (With this entry I'll have surpassed The Passengers blog and finally warranted the creation of an Older Posts link. Hooray!)

The sun is up, and with the darkness has vanished the element of surprise I had hoped to employ as I stalk my bed like a silent and fearless phantom, yawning precociously, an orchid in the sun. I love to sleep. It is one of my favorite things to do. Not to sleep, actually, to dream.

To dream is always to sleep, but to sleep is not always to dream unfortunately. I hope I dream tonight. I hope I dream of meeting her again. She always looks and speaks differently, but every time, I know she's just the same as the last. I can see early reflections of her as ghosts, following closely but with exaggerated movements, their hair streaming out behind them in some long forgotten wind.

Meet me by the lake, under the willow tree, they say, and bring your favorite shirt, because only I can appreciate it, and out there they can all see the stains.

The Passion of Darkly Noon

Someday I'll get around to telling the Tale of the Frozen Pea (it's a good one), but not tonight. I just watched The Passion of Darkly Noon, and while I think it could have been better, it was an amazing film that reminded me a lot of Edward Scissorhands, although without the distinct and haunting visual style. In fact, if it had a truly original and striking visual style, it might have been nearly as good as Edward Scissorhands, which is one of my all time favorites.

It's a dark, modern fairy tale. There really aren't enough films like this.

I've lost my train of thought and must go to bed shortly anyway.

Morning After Edit: Oh, I wish I could write well and precisely all the time.

Behold the little master/waving from his bed of stones/Behold the poetaster/feasting on his third prize clones.

That's from my latest song.

I've bled through my bandages again/...

That's going to be from the song I write today.

I haven't fully woken up yet.

Realationships (sic)

Every night. Something new. I'm so hungry. I'm going to eat something before I attempt to write.

Kim hooked up with Greg. That was cool. Jamie and Ted seem like they have a lot of fun together. Everyone is out for casual relationships. Good for them. I just want a relationship. It doesn't matter how it begins, progresses, or even ends.

This is stupid. I'm going to delete this and write something clever in its place tomorrow.

Edit: A good friend of mine told me that this brief and gaseous trot through recent events sounds "skin hungry". I suppose it does. She told me that it works well the way it is, perhaps because of the understated and brisk nature of the prose, everything that I hated about it. I suppose it does.

It makes me think that perhaps I mask what I really mean more often than not when I write, in florid attempts at elegance. I have become my own unreliable narrator and therefore I have changed my decision about replacing this entry. Instead I have risen in the small moments just before sleep to commit these words that scrambled about my mind. Here it will stand for all time: the truth.

Portrait of a Scene from a Song

I have obligated myself to post something every day, and most always before bed, although I've nothing really to write tonight. Instead I think I'll just turn this entry into an avant garde exercise in linguistics and metaphor.

I wrote a sentence earlier for oneword.com that I really liked, but I've forgotten it now. It went something like this next sentence.

The rain speaks more about his frayed and leprous mind than any of the curses he randomly shouts into the night, matting his hair and soaking his bleach-stained sweatshirt, causing the fabric to stick to his body with scandalous gasps. The moon itself seems to fall upon him in shadowless fistfulls and tiny refracting drops, until he can no longer stand the weight of it and sits in the road, shaking his head and mouthing indistinct words to his naked feet.

I think some day I'll name an entry The Soul Miner's Daughter, but I can't seem to make the title work for this one. Maybe I'll just title a song with it. Something about Space Madness would close this entry nicely.

Against the Wall

You always ask after the worst of yourself, if it is true. It is. Tonight I drove home drunk. Well not drunk, but at the tail end of drunkenness at the very best. Two hours after drinking one glass and one pitcher of beer, I found myself at the Jack in the Box drive thru, but let me explain a bit about how I arrived in this precarious situation.

Three hours prior, outside Uncle Sam's, I discovered that my car would not start and I resolved to drink as many of the $0.75 draft beers within as I could until someone arrived to drive me home. One hour, one pitcher, and one glass later, my friends decided to walk across the parking lot to Applebee's since Uncle Sam's had run out of bread. I followed, the notion that my car might start given a short rest beginning to make my beer-soaked mind sweat slightly, and I immediately ceased all drinking.

Eight buffalo wings and two hours later, my friends walked with me to my car, to watch and listen for clues as to why it would not start. It started. I decided to drive the short distance to my house rather than be burdened with returning the next day to retrieve my car, which at that point might not even start again.

I've recently lost about sixty pounds and am anxious to not retrieve it, so I decided to order only one Sourdough Jack instead of the three I would have ordered two years ago. We're back at the Jack in the Box drive thru, by the way. As I rounded the corner the image of an Xbox 360 struck my eye, plastered across the garish and inaccurate portraits of menu items. I was not ordering a combo and therefore did not qualify for a chance to win a $5k game room according to the advertisement. I got to thinking though, after not being able to read the fine print from the confines of my resurrected Altima, that most of these contests were run with a "No purchase necessary" disclaimer.

It occurred to me that these disclaimers must be the result of some fancy sounding legal ordinance making necessary purchase of an item to enter a contest a form of gambling, and therefore illegal. So as the woman opened the window and asked me if I'd like some ketchup or hot sauce, I said, "No, thank you, but would you happen to have any pieces for the Jack's Big Rip Off Contest?"

She shook her head, "No," she said. I was bemused.

"Then this contest requires a purchase to be a part of? Surely that defies several grand jury statutes on the legality of gambling." She was an immigrant from Mexico clearly, and it seemed to me that my five dollar words were sliding off of her like waxed lead, although I now possess serious doubts about my words having been delivered as I have related them here, or I daresay, whether I spoke them at all.

"I don't know."

I was failing. "My friends are drunk and can not properly articulate their thoughts." I made a broad sweep of my arm, gesturing to the silent emptiness in my car. Whatever I meant for this to accomplish toward my objective, I no longer recall. She disappeared from the window. When she returned, she handed me my food and I drove safely to my household.

The entire time melodic prose dances round the narrowing hall of my brain and one poor cowardly artist against the wall mumbles over and over, "Everything is true and we are all liars assembled in the night, as though the most furiously lonely of all the world would be content with eyes shut, to stand near to one another for a moment in stillness."

Another Monumental Day

I'm reminded somewhat ironically of a Christmas Eve long ago after which I also felt everything had changed. I was horribly depressed, cripplingly so, and I couldn't even leave the house to buy my family gifts. I was meant to go to my aunt's house, as we do every year, in only a few hours, but I could not bring myself to do anything.

I was so anxious my heart was racing and I agonizingly wanted nothing more than to crawl into my bed and sleep for a few hours, my eyelids already drooping with emotional taxation. This was, as I recall, the first or second Christmas after my brother had passed away, which was probably the major thematic root for my desire to remain permanently in my hermitage.

I called my mother and explained to her the situation, described the presents I had meant to purchase for my father and the rest of my family. She was driving home from work, and her advice to me was to take a Xanax and have a nap. She told me that she would go to the stores and pick up the gifts I'd so miserably failed at procuring. This was, as I recall, the first or second Christmas after her oldest son had passed away.

I took her advice, a stifling burden delivered from upon me, and slept as I have often wished to sleep since. When I awoke everything was different. The world was serene and peaceful and I felt that I had found my place in it. I felt for the first time since I could remember that everything would be all right, and that no, that wasn't just something that our parents told us to shield us from the painful and blasphemous reality of life. It was truth.

I went to my aunt's house that evening a changed man. I was happy and grounded, with just the right mix of ambition and contentment. It lasted for almost five months, and sadly, now that I have begun to recall this period of my life, it occurs to me that during this time I found it exceptionally difficult to write the dark, existential screenplay I had begun in my black and brilliant depression.

A Monumental Point

Today was a long day of validation, filled with an inarticulate feeling of contentment, or perhaps resignation. Either way, it is a welcome emotion.

The lizards are gone and the puddle with them. It seems someone must have decided to get rid of the strange liquid. I can't help but wonder if they found the sight as wondrous as I did or if they simply removed it like old trash. It seems so blasphemous that way, so I will invent some fiction in my mind as to how it actually happened.

I can't imagine what forces must have conspired to bring me to discover the image only yesterday in a moment of great stress, to be moved so strongly as to write about it, and to find it finally removed today. Already I feel as though this is a monumental point in my life upon which I will certainly look back from some comfortable and moonlit vantage and say, "Yes. That was the day that everything changed."

The Pool in the Garage

There is a pool of something congealing in my garage. It has been there since shortly after we moved in, nearly four months ago, right in the corner near the outer door. My best guess is that something packed deep in a box leaked out, something viscous and volatile. Being color-blind, I can't say exactly what color it is, but at a guess it's either green, orange, dark yellow, or light brown. It's translucent and although I used the word congealing earlier, I think that is probably wrong. It's like a gel or some type of oil, perhaps used for lubricating something, thick and probably sticky, although I don't believe anyone has gotten around to touching or even remotely manipulating it yet.

It's possible that I would have gotten around to cleaning it by now, but the puddle has not grown since the first week it was there and I thought it benign until today. While looking for an iron in the murk to temper a pair of unruly slacks this afternoon, I neared the puddle and paid it more than a passing, apathetic glance for the first time in months.

There was a lizard, preserved in death, looking like some skeletal hand had stretched out its coarse gray body, nearly half submerged in the liquid and partially on its side, tongue hanging down into the puddle. I crouched near the lizard, remembering its skittering, or perhaps that of one of its kin, in the dark hours, as the front door opened, startling it from its contemplative staring. I recalled how this lizard would make me smile, breaking my eternal reverie almost nightly, if only for an instant.

Behind the lizard was another. This one was much smaller, nearly an exact replica, tiny and fully submerged. A single ant circled the pool, as though waiting for a tiny prophet to part it in waves, revealing its sizable treasure, and just behind it a clandestine portrait of loss.

It occurs to me now in the retelling of this, that it stands as a grotesque reminder of the events we left behind when we moved here. I won't get around to cleaning it for probably another few months, but I do feel a slight urge to lift that large lizard by the tail and watch our mystery liquid drip in strands and then in slow, languid drops back into its cohesive and deadly whole.