YUR AL FULES THE MOBB RUULS

Fri|03.15

I was just outside and the pigeons are acting kind of squirrely. That's not a good thing. Squirrels are not messengers from God, you know. Squirrels are no damn good. They will sneak up on you! They will stare at you for no reason. They will! FOLLOW! YOU! Watch it.

So, today, the pigeons. Okay it's sunny and pleasant and nice out, not TOO sunny, because I hate that, but just sunny enough. And these pigeons are everywhere, but not in a normal pigeon way. They're looking at me. I glance up at the building and there is one, ONE, perched on every single windowsill. Yes, they're looking at me too. Each pigeon in a group of one, contemplating my lopsided walking style. Thinking. Plotting.

One on the sidewalk stares at me intently, and lets me step over him. I turn my head and he is still staring, his beady little eyes like found buttons.

I REFUSE TO ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR SECRET COMMUNICATION PIGEON! Now look away.

LOOK!

AWAY!

So, anyhoo. Watch out, something's up. Remember where you heard this. I would save you from a squirrel. Would you? Save me? From the? SKWERRRLLz????

Wee COME einto yr TowN We HElp yOu parteeee doUN

Thurs|03.14

It is tired I am. Scooby dooooby doo.

YES! This was worth reading.

to alll de gurlsss I'fe luuuffffft beefuurrrrr

Wed|03.13

My doctor found a NODE yesterday in the soft place between my neck and shoulder, like, in that triangle of whatever. HEY I'm no meditician, but I'm sure that place has a name. Like, where your shoulder muscles are, on top? There? Okay then. This is what Merriam Webster says:

Main Entry: node
Pronunciation: 'nOd
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin nodus knot, node; akin to Middle Irish naidm bond
Date: 15th century
1 a : a pathological swelling or enlargement (as of a rheumatic joint)
b : a discrete mass of one kind of tissue enclosed in tissue of a different kind
2 : an entangling complication (as in a drama) : PREDICAMENT
3 : either of the two points where the orbit of a planet or comet intersects the ecliptic; also : either of the points at which the orbit of an earth satellite crosses the plane of the equator
4 a : a point, line, or surface of a vibrating body or system that is free or relatively free from vibratory motion b : a point at which a wave has an amplitude of zero
5 a : a point at which subsidiary parts originate or center b : a point on a stem at which a leaf or leaves are inserted c : a point at which a curve intersects itself in such a manner that the branches have different tangents d : VERTEX 1b

As usual, nothing to worry about, just fucking annoying. [SHOUT OUT TO MY IMAGINARY FRIENDS WITH ACTUAL PROBLEMS!!! SENDING GOOD VIBES TO YOU.] That doesn't STOP me from worrying, it's like a little nest in my brain, NODE NODE NODE. I keep touching it, and am tempted to perform minor surgery on meself. I'm a scab picker from way back. I've tried to pull tastebuds off of my tongue because they were sticking up in an odd fashion. (I don't recommend doing this.) I envision it growing, this NODE, and surrounding tendons and muscles in an embryonic fashion and feeding off of anything good I might do with those muscles. I'm poking at it again. Fucking NODE.(I bet you thought I was gonna go somewhere with the 3rd or 4th definition. Nope. We stay on topic here. NODE. Also, I can't be bothered to check whether I've used "embryonic" correctly, so if it's wrong, just know that I know, possibly. Okay? OKAY.)

Then, I have this optical thingie with a sunburst appearing around my eye where there really is none. It's my BRANE you see. Fucking up. In a little, painfree, annoying way. Just like everything else. It adds up I tells ya.

Yesterday, on my FUCKING ANNOYING ride to the doctor's, which takes me past my favorite protest sign (BOYCOTT SMELLY BURGER KING!) there was a woman I kept looking at then forcing myself to look away from because I am nothing if not polite. She was a perfectly normal everyday person, except she was wearing red Santy Claus socks, which I could see because her shoes allowed for much visible footage. She was someone's mom, or grandma, reading the bible on the train, her nails painted red, her glasses frames very large and circular, her knit pants looking comfy and useful, the way they had an elastic band going under her feet there. So that her pants wouldn't just fly off while she was walking down the street, I imagine. The man snoozing next to her kept leaning over a bit too far, and he was much taller than her so his body would almost fold around her like a blanket except, you know, he had a skeletal structure so not QUITE like that. She'd give him a little nudge and he'd move, then nod off and do it again.

The train stopped just before the tunnel for about 10 minutes. The driver didn't tell us why. I assumed we were broken down, and since I was already running late, this didn't bode well for me appearing on time at the doctor's office, and I fidgeted and stared at people and tried not to scream. Santy Claus sock wearer didn't hold back, though, she cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted, "LET'S GOOOO!" then sat back and laughed, looking around, much amused at herself. Or else she was embarrassed, either one.

She had the touch, though--right after shouting that, the driver stepped off the train and walked away. A mutter that sounded like "What the..." filled the train as we watched him go, and then a different driver stepped on and started us up, and off we went.

So, to recap, a 10 to 15 minute wait for a new driver. Not broken down after all. HUH! Who knew. Well, the driver did.

Anyway. I feel the NODE creeping close to a vital organ, so must sign off and cut this fucker out of me. Or else finish my work. One of those.

pretend I'm drunk and so will I

Mon|03.11

I lived with Jake twice. Maybe three times, if you count different apartments. We could see the ocean from the first apartment, which I would've enjoyed had I lived there longer than 24 hours, but we broke up a few days before moving in. Starting a brand new life with my brand new ex-boyfriend in our very own apartment didn't appeal to me, and I moved out. He had an asthma attack, and I took a bitter kind of pleasure in that.

I've been thinking about him, as I do from time to time. Usually it's when I'm depressed. Sometimes I get that, the depression, it's my special gift. THANK YOU FOR THE DEPRESSION! I sure do like it.

Dom was my illiterate boyfriend. My illiterate unemployed heroin addict boyfriend! Who was seven years my senior. Not bad as far as age differences go. Well, unless you're a minor sneaking around behind the backs of your parents to see said illiterate heroin addict. Did I mention the teeth? They weren't QUITE all there.

God, he was sexy. And I mean that.

We would buy beer with his food stamps. He had a black velvet painting of a panther hanging in his living room. He first charmed me by emptying a potato chip bowl and placing it on his head, like a hat. Yes. Dom.

Sexy.

Jake was no unemployed carny worker, but he had his good points. At least he must've, since we got back together. Well, first he moved away, far far away. Then he moved back.

He stayed with my sister and me until he could find an apartment, but he didn't look very hard and when my sister moved out of town later in the year, Jake and I got our own place.

We weren't back together, we were just friends. He was seeing Kathy. The first time I met her, she was wearing a plaid schoolgirl miniskirt and a black turtleneck sweater. Her hair was dyed black, black circled her eyes. She was a badass, with her big black boots, and I was afraid to talk to her. She was 18, I was 20. She turned out to be way too good for Jake and she ditched his ass. I imagine if I'd done the same, and gotten together with Kathy, in a strictly platonic sense, of course, my life may have gone in a more positive route. She could have read my lit assignments to me and I could have adjusted her braces.

But instead of running away with Kathy, I was back together with Jake. JAKE! Jake, of the silver Hyundai, Jake, of the sleeping through entire days.

It ended the way it ends.

I was so drunk the night before he drove away that I couldn't lie down to sleep. The spinning was sickening. Tee from upstairs had been with me all afternoon, drinking and making tapes from my records. He was underaged, so needed me to buy the alcohol. He'd gotten kicked out of the army and was living upstairs with his mother and sister. His sister listened to her single of Tiffany's "I Think We're Alone Now" in an endless loop. I felt blessed to be able to hear it, 20, 30 times every day. THANK GOD FOR MY HEARING! It's important.

These bitter and unsorted bursts of narrative from my teens and early twenties were brought to you by the fine folks inside my belly button.

if you wanted to you would if you wanted to you would if you wanted to you would

Sun|03.10

We'd stand in the field near my house, across the main road, and wait for our turns on the snowmobiles. It was up to the boys, when we rode and with who. We were in sneakers, open coats, no scarves or hats. It wasn't cool to give in to the weather. We did wear mittens, though, I wonder why that was acceptable.

The smell of snowmobiles in the cold air is distinctive, it gets into your hair and clothes and I smelled it on the bus the other day, and it made me nostalgic.

Then it made me feel sick and dizzy, and I though I'd pass out. I didn't though. I also didn't get off the bus until my stop. The driver could be smoking crack and steering with his knee and I will wait until we get where I'm trying to go, dammit, before stepping off that bus. Just TRY and kill me with this ride, just try. I have to be someplace.

There was a period of time in college when I stopped wearing socks. It was during the winter. I wore leather dockers with my ankles exposed, jeans, leather coat. The leather coat wasn't very warm, but this wasn't winter compared to winter winter, which was what we had where I was from. Suckers, with their winter coats and gloves and scarves. I had sworn off mittens by then, mittens were for babies.

One teacher asked me if I was from Florida. I had just read a short story of his and knew that he was from Florida, and that the kids he hung with while growing up didn't wear socks. Maybe he was seeing something special in me. I was a fellow sockless Floridian. This was the first of many times that I disappointed him by opening my mouth.

Jack Jack the Man in Black, how I wanted to impress him. He'd led a tortured existence, apparently, and he liked my writing. I knew he wanted autobiographical stories so that was what I wrote. He dug my suburban angst. He called me by my proper name, despite my preferred nickname being prominent on everything I turned in, and this was one more clue to my confuddled brain that he saw something that no one else could see. I was too shy to talk to him, I responded to his questions with terse cryptic blushing stammers that became my trademark over the years, or I blurted out innappropriate and baffling statements in the middle of class that caused everyone to stare at me until he cleared his throat and led us away to something else. I knew whatever he'd seen in me was over when, after four years of verbal bonding atrocities, he began addressing me by my nickname.

The Margoli brothers hardly ever gave me rides, they hated having passengers on their snowmobiles. Sometimes they'd take my best friend, but who wouldn't. Everyone did. I mostly got rides from Les and Chris. Nights were the best on the back of a snowmobile, riding through the woods, headlight shining on tiny trees whipping toward us, peaking hills at a speed that rushed my stomach like a rollercoaster. I felt free and cold and there was that smell, and the dark, and the crunch of the snow, and then the ride would be over and I'd be standing with my friends again, ankle-deep in snow, hugging my arms against my body, hoping for another ride.

zappity dooooo zappity doooo

Sat|03.09

LOCK LUBRICATED
WATCH FOR DIRTY KEYS

I don't know what that means but it's taped to the front door of my apartment house. On the bulletin board is a note from a neighbor about an attempted break-in to his apartment yesterday. Be careful who you buzz in. This all ties into the phonecall the other morning, the one before work, where I did an asshole thing that in retrospect maybe isn't as bad as I thought it was, and maybe it wasn't the cable guy after all. Phone rang again Friday morning before work and I didn't answer it.

Who is the flip-flop guy? I imagine him in the tropics, maybe with a margarita and a metal detector, all carefree on the beach. I see him a couple times a week outside of my office building, going through the garbage, he doesn't ask anyone for money, just has a mysterious smile on his face. He wears the same thing each time, red shorts, ill-fitting t-shirt, and flip-flops. He's sockless and I suspect him of wearing no skivvies. His hair, longish, is streaked blondish-brown.

He's never met my eyes, there's no reason why he should I'm just saying he hasn't, and I've never heard his voice. I hope he's in an overheated room somewhere, air-conducting an orchestra from outer space. I wonder who he is.

So the guy who claimed to be the cable guy, I'm sure he really was. I didn't buzz him in, I just said, "Hold on," hung up the phone, and continued getting ready for work. Usually when someone says hold on they're about to, you know, DO something, like, go to the door and let someone in to go check the building's cable box like he says he needs to, but sometimes, when someone says hold on, they're yanking your chain and they just want to get off the phone and hope you go away, because they know from experience that you won't be able to get into the cable room anyway and they just got out of the shower and shouldn't have answered the phone in the first place. Then, when you call back? They'll let the machine get it. Then you'll come back the next day and call that person's apartment again, when really, why not make an appointment with the manager to get into the building, that would work out best for you. He can let you into the cable room. SO. Please, don't get all pissy and cut off my cable because I said "hold on" and then giggled to myself while tying my shoes, because it was kinda evil and I enjoyed it.

I don't really believe in karma, it feels like superstition. On the other hand I'm pretty damn superstitious. Go get some sleep, why not.