I think somebody better put out the big light

Thurs|02.06

Riding home, you look out the window, see people with their shopping carts, with their babies, with their cell phones.

Everybody got one.

One guy was shaving, right there on Market near Powell, dipping a pink disposable razor into a container of water in the front of his cart, shaking it, then running it over his bare face. He didn't cut himself, at least not while you were watching. No mirror, just by feel.

Flip-flop guy has been seen in Starbucks near work, talking to himself over a hot latte. One day he was wearing long pants! But now he's back to his red shorts. Surprised to see his mouth moving. You've never heard him speak. This was last week, and the week before that. You haven't seen him since.

Haven't seen Rooster Guy around lately. Nor Johnny One-leg. Your own favorite HELLO! person hasn't been on the curb either, where the heck is he? What about the tall guy with the bum eye?

Where did everyone go?

You have 0 unread messages, and that wasn't a decaf.

just saying it could even make it happen

Tues|02.04

I wish I could write poetry. I mean, sometimes I try, but it sucks. Believe me. So one time, like a year ago maybe, a friend was trying to teach me how to write a certain kind of poem, and it turned out I couldn't even hear the rhythm of it. Like the accent was supposed to fall on every other syllable, and I could not hear it. I heard something, but it wasn't that. I think he couldn't speak for three days after that experience. Of trying to teach me something.

What I'm trying to say is, I think this medication is fucking up my head. I think maybe, even though it's the fourth day, I think it's wrong, I think it's bad, I think it will not help and is right now doing the opposite of helping, I think I think I think it's bad and wrong and I don't want, I don't want to ummmmmm.

This feeling is weird.

Why would you read this? Why?

it's a shay-ay-aame the way you......hurt me

Sun|02.02

GROUNDHOG!

EARTHQUAKE!

JENNY!

CONTEST!

CLEAN!

PUPPY!

sliiiiiiiiide

don't trouble your mind, whatever you do. he got me like he got you.

Sat|02.01

Earlier in the week, some friends and I were talking about where we were when certain things happened. Was it brought on by this site? I can't remember. We talked about John Lennon's assassination, Reagan being shot, and of course, the shuttle exploding.

Some were in high school in 1986, some grade school, or at work, or shopping. I was in a college class. I remember where I sat in that class, and I don't just mean "in the back" (I sat in the back of every class)--I remember the room, my desk, and who was around me.

I was intimidated by a few of the writers (one of whom has a book linked at the left--yes I know about the typos, but it's an excellent book so read it) and I was unbelievably afraid and shy at that time in my life, which, as usual, led me to a seat in the back. In the middle of the back. The desks were wooden and one-piece. I sat in the same place every class, just like a lot of people, even though there was no assigned seating. Near my left was K, and on my right a little to the front was a woman who was in her 30s or 40s, married with children. (Once she brought her daughter to a class; after hearing one of my stories read aloud, she whispered to her mother, "Mom, when I say I'm going to the mall, I really do go to the mall.")

In front of K was a girl with long blonde hair whose name I don't remember, but she reminded me of people I grew up with. She was from Jersey. I was kind of afraid of her just because she was obviously friends with K. They were two years ahead of me, as were many in the class. I can't remember what the heck I was doing, being in there.

Another long-haired blonde student, whose father was well-known, once critiqued someone's story by comparing it to the time she was kidnapped as a child; she was illustrating what fear is really like and why the fear in the story we were reading didn't ring true, but I couldn't get past her having been kidnapped, never mind being able to sit in our classroom and talk about it so casually. (She lived across the hall from me and I have to say she took an entire semester to return my comb.)

So on this particular day, January 28th, it was cold, and snowy, and I was inside on the second floor in a room facing Beacon Street, a small classroom with desks scattered all about, the school's favorite writing teacher at the front, the cult teacher, the one everyone wanted to be loved by but almost no one was, still they tried and tried, and someone came in late and said he'd just heard on the radio, downstairs on Joe's roach coach, that the Challenger had exploded and everyone was dead.

Yeah, right, we all said.

Best excuse for being late I've heard yet, our professor said, his mouth set in his usual wry expression.

But it was true, and in the next few weeks, everyone saw the footage again and again. Krista McAuliffe was from New England, and so I heard a lot more about her than maybe I would have if I lived in another part of the country. Her students wrote her letters and read them on television; her parents talked about how excited she'd been to go up in the shuttle.

Anyway. You know where this is going, right?

Right.

Could I have written MORE self-serving bullshit in getting to this point? (Yes, actually. I edited some out.)

Yeah, another shuttle blew up. You knew that already. What can I say about it that isn't trite? It is so fucking sad. Yet it is only seven people. More people than that die in family shootings that we have quite often in this country. Traffic accidents, hospital beds, people are dying everywhere. This is different. How is this different? Because they're astronauts. Why is that special? It just is. They were in outer space. Bootsy Collins is from outer space, and that's about it; I don't know anyone who has been there. It's one more thing to be depressed about today, a second shuttle disaster.

It pushed the war that we're about to have for no apparent reason out of my mind for a bit. Have we always been the bullies of the world? For 200 years or so? My country is FUCKED UP. And I can't write lately. So many things. Wrong.

Hey. Would you rather be dead, or stranded up there on the space station?

It's 2 a.m., and I'm horribly frightened. Thank you, cable television.