My friend Seth thinks I need to find a new job where I'll be happy. No wait - he thinks I need to decide on a career path, instead of being in perpetual limbo. Those were his words. Then he gave me several suggestions: trucking or the mafia. Or selling porn on the internet.

Seth has three jobs. He works as a chef for a catering business, at an opthalmologist's office, and as a graveyard shift counselor for troubled teens.

Actually, what he said was if I stopped being so cynical and pessimistic, I might settle nicely into a normal job and NOT hate it.

This frustrates me, apparently everyone I know thinks I hate what I do.

Andrea and my brother were talking about this the other day, she told me. Well, actually they were talking about my blog. And my brother was like, she just needs to find a job where she can blog all the time, then she'd be happy. And then he quickly edited himself, and said something along the lines of: "but then she'd have to blog, and that would make her hate it. I mean, look at her illustration major. She loved art, loved drawing, decided to do it for school. Suddenly she hates it because she has to draw all the time."

Gosh. Be iffy on choosing a major and people think you're indecisive and troubled and don't know what you want.

I didn't want to continue my illustration major because art was something I loved. IS something I love. Somehow, I knew in my gut that if I tried to do it as a career, I would hate it. I would never draw for fun anymore. I would run screaming if people came at me with a sketchbook.

Doesn't anyone understand that? I didn't want to cheapen my completely pristine love of art by commercializing it. I want to "do art" for the sake of art itself, and not for a bottom line or an angry boss or a demanding client, because then it suddenly loses its inherent nature of being art. It's not art anymore, it's a product. Something in me regards my talent in that area as precious, and turning it into a product...cheapens it. And because art is, by it's nature and mine, intrinsically a part of me and who I am, and therefore I feel cheapened. I feel like I'm turning this gift that I have into something...superficial, insubstantial.

Can this make sense to you?

I suppose it's a self-imposed theory that I apply to everything and - can I tell you? - that I don't mind at all doing some menial thing for a menial job. Because the thing is menial itself, I have no problem with it being cheapened by the fact that I'm doing it because I've been told I have to. For someone else. For money. It's something that I'm not attached to, and therefore I have no problem whoring it to the masses.

Maybe that's it. It's just my anti-corporate attitude that needs adjustment. I'm not anti-corporate, though. I don't throw bricks through the Walmart windows, or leave their carts upside-down all over the McDonald's parking lot. I understand that people need things, and that money helps with that and that if we didn't have some sort of capitalist economic system in place most people would be worse off, in theory, because people are selfish slimeballs.

I don't hate people either. Let me clarify. I hate people in groups. I hate people en masse. I hate people as a "society," or as a faction, or as a "community." I love people as a family. I love people wonderfully as individuals, for their inherent uniqueness - nay, divinity - as a person, as a perspective, as a sentient being. I love people. One at a time. I hate people as a "public consciousness."

A group is as smart as it's dumbest member. (This is true.) And there are some awfully dumb people out there. Additionally, many dumb people are unusually loud and vehement about their imbecility.

I dunno. Maybe I am cynical. Maybe it's because I know too many people who treat other people like crap and it's skewed my world-paradigm.

I want to write. I know that for sure. I want to write because words are...words are all-encompassing. Words are like people. And I don't mind selling people to people. I like words because they operate in a structure or outside a structure, and you can make them as conformist or as individual as you want them to be, because either way they have to be filtered through you and in that process of filtering they become yours. I can share words with people. Millions of people can use the words that I use, but none of them will string them up exactly the same way that I do.

But you know how I feel about words.

I've been reading Lenin lately. I don't know why. Someone once gave me a copy of his writings a long time ago, I think it was my World Studies teacher in 9th grade, Mr. Willey. He's one of my heroes. He, if anyone, would be the reason if I ever become a teacher.

Anyway, Lenin... Interesting character, that one. I enjoy reading Lenin because it's fascinating to watch the way he stumbles into truth.

"Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle," he says.

I love that. You will be miserable if and when you have nothing to fight for. In the midst of all his cries for political (don't worry, I use that term lightly) revolution, he says so many things that can impact your state of being, if you'll excuse the pun.

I dunno. Read Lenin. Ponder individuality. Don't be miserable. Fight for the things you love, and love things that are right and good.



All the great ones were writers in some form or another anyway...

Soooo...if I get the chance to get on the computer at home today, I drew a comic strip in church yesterday (that was decidedly not churchy) because I was bored, and because Seth told me to, which I will scan and post up here, because I think it's delightfully tasteful and well-drawn.

But I shan't spoil the surprise until then.

Andrea's dog Princess died. Along with her childhood, and the hope that Jed will ever marry her.

Stupid Jed, I wish she'd just tell him. It's been three damn years, it's not her fault he's a little lot thick.

Sigh.

We made Su's bridal shower invitations. You have never seen anything so vomitatiously Victorian and over-the-top IN YOUR LIFE.

I'd wager.

I make a mean tom ka gai, I have discovered.


Somedays, even my lucky rocketship underpants don't seem to help.


Next week I get the house to meself while the fam goes up to stay in a condo at Bear Lake for vacation, because I said that the best vacation for me would not involve screaming children and lots of water. Last time I was Bear Lake I nearly drowned anyway. (Seeing as I was three...)

Besides, I have to be home, because I'm hosting Su's damn tea party at my freaking house.

And it's cheaper than paying to kennel the dog for a week.


That's about it. Chels is officially emotionally empty. As you shall see by my comic, if I get to scan and show it to you. I have... da mad draw0r sk1llz.

I hate Mondays, Garfield.

One wound up punch of intuition lays flat my whole take on us. You're the girl on the wing of a barnstormer, the tidal rabbit who came of age before her time. We could have been so goodnatured if I'd relented when you insisted, but we've been backed against nature's walls far too long.

You felt abandoned by me, I recall the sunshine as you were melting, and though the comedy softens the fall they still hear us with their ears to the wall. I sold all my evil motives, no icicles stuck in my hide. I'm through with riddles, I know we're little...just help me feel warm inside. Before we take this ride and let it slide into the cracks where fall and winter collide.

I surrender all my gall in a song of modern love. Remeber you're the one who summoned me above any other kind. We could have been so good-natured if you'd relented when I insisted we take a week off, let the garden grow by itself and let the gluttons fill themselves with all the worst of the gory nineties. And though the comedy softens the fall, we still fall short.

You felt abandoned by me, I recall the sunshine as you were melting, and though the comedy softens the fall, they still hear us with their ears to the wall...

I like that line a lot. The sunshine as you were melting. The comedy softening the fall...hilarious, the tragic ways we trod. Too funny, the millions of times we are fooled, and fooled again. Is it ever real? One wound-up punch of intuition. Sometimes that's all it takes. Sometimes it's more than enough, as each little jab and poke does the job acutely enough.

I'm not paranoid. Not really. I just...know things? They fall: in the spaces between words, on the eyelids of each downcast look. How stupid, stupid to ignore them. That small, familiar twist in the gut from background voices. And then? Another year, the doctor says. Another problem. You can't leave, you have to stay. For months, you stay. Aching just to leave, to see. To be hurt again, more. I hate my wording. I can't wind it tight enough in prose, but the poetry is so hollow these days. I force myself to write them about feelings I force myself to have, and they come out...forced.

Suddenly I come out feeling unattached - detached - and restless. Compelled toward moving. My brother reminds me there's no progression in comfort.

Growth is hard, uncomfortable. And I hate it. I am tired of growing. I am tired of so much. Of this...waiting for you, for this impossible reassurance of things.

Oh, the little parts of me break so finely along miniscule lines. I watch them weaving across my arms and up my back, slow-spread spiderwebs of blood and understanding. Resolve. Girl inform me, all my senses warn me your clever eye could easily disguise some backwards purpose. Do you harbour sighs, or spit in my eye?

The blocks I'm building with have numbed my senses. I am fumbling in the dark, for some warm thing to hold on to, and it keeps moving further and further away from me.

And none of this, even, makes sense. It's just me, some self-important meandering enigma that wastes your time with the words that I try so desperately to make mean things.

Doted on like seeds planted in rows, the untied shoelaces of your life nurtured all year then pressed in a book or displayed in bad taste on the table. Problems arise, and you fan the fire while there's a wild pack of dogs loose in your house tonight. Cut from bad cloth, or soiled like socks, add it up and basically people never change.

They just talk...and make plans in the dark, or make haste with ideas that can't help but creep good people out. As you talk to me too much you're assuming we don't always want what's right. Did I strike the right set of chords? You're annoyed.

The goal is to ignite you then move on. You feel ill at ease, you've got no squeeze. And the wisecracks won't make you more stable. You've learned your lines to scale and to time. Why must I remind you now I'm only less able? Cut from bad cloth, or soiled like socks, we're ordinary people we can't help but to change as we walk, and make plans in the dark, or make haste with the boy who can't help but creep good people out. As you talk to me too much, you're assuming we don't always want what's right.

Two fallen saplings in an open field. Snow padding gently on an empty bench. And old woman's jewelry lying unadorned. Cold nesting robins allied for the first time. I know when you hear these sappy lines you'll roll your eyes and say, "nice try."

It's short today. I feel quiet and stand-offish. I keep trying to write, and it keeps coming out all the same.

desperate,
four-day affair.

you know nothing of
your rivals.

a dozen blind struggles
to make him search
the cracks in the walls
and remember.

you hoarded
the keys to this life,

the gold-plated things
you have marvelled.

some celibate lies,
you're always the first
to fall off
for the dregs in the crowd.

Old friends are coming home. Seth and I made sushi and played Battlefront II for 5 hours last night. It was the most fun I've had in...years? Perhaps.

I keep finding realization around dark corners, like the crucial aspects of things that I miss when they aren't...here. I need it.

I need more close to me.

You say the hill's too steep to climb. Climbing. You say you'd like to see me try. Climbing. You pick the place and I'll choose the time, and I'll climb the hill in my own way. Just wait a while for the right day. And as I rise above the treeline and the clouds, I look down, hearing the sound of the things you said today.

Fearlessly, the idiot faced the crowd. Smiling. Merciless, the magistrate turns 'round. Frowning.
And who's the fool who wears the crown? Go down in your own way. And every day is the right day. And as you rise above the fearlines in his brow, you go down, hear the sound of the faces in the crowd.

Do I feel fearless? I've been wondering this week, weaving thought around the subtle difference between a lack of fear and the overwhelming presence of apathy. I think that I have the latter, mostly. And in the apathy, I lost my fear. Or, rather, I can't feel it. I don't care to.

My emotional body has been numbed, and I'm not sure why. I had such a rushed past month of overwhelming emotion, striving, I think, for a semblance of some good thing in all the crap that kept hitting me, and something in me broke. Or closed. Or decided that the occasional good thing wasn't worth all of the garbage...it's easier to feel nothing than to work so hard trying to feel good. Or at least, better.

Especially when it doesn't come.

Don't ask me to leave you and turn back. I will go where you go and live where you live. your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.

Do you know what else I've been pondering? Loyalty. Not in the smarmy, buy-a-bumper-sticker-for-my-country, sports-fan-enthusiasm, go-my-alma-mater kind of way. I mean loyalty in...love. But not like that. Not love-love, but..compassion? It goes beyond that. Not charity, not goodwill, not concern. It's...loyalty that I have a problem with. Goethe once said, "He who does not feel his friends to be the world to him, does not deserve that the world should hear of him." And I do, girl howdy, I do. And none of them seem to understand the depth of what I can give, what I do give.

I cannot help it. If it's asked, I will give it. But oh, the agony of spending so much of life giving away yourself with such unwilled, yet hapless, abandon, and then to wonder why it never seems returned to you in quite equal measure.

There are just some of us who, inexplicably, have this gargantuanly proportioned capacity to give and love and be. I don't know why, I don't know how. I can't hope to explain it clear enough for you to understand. (But then, understanding is such a irregular, immeasurable thing.)

I don't know. The more I think about my unconscious willingness to exasperate myself with such violent loyalty to the people I care about who number in spades, the more I wonder if it's me trying so desperately to give people something to need me for, because I wonder, to myself in darker moments, if I'm worth having. If I give people any semblance of value, when I see so little of it inside of me. I can love you, it's the one thing that I know how to give. I have to love you, because it's easier to emanate love outward, than try and find the small space inside of me that's not willing to hold any part of it for me.

If you need me for it, then you will keep me here. And I like to be kept. It's the one thing that I want, really. People who will just keep me.

This is the story of your red right ankle and how it came to meet your leg. And how the muscle, bone, and sinews tangled, and how the skin was softly shed. And how it whispered “Oh, adhere to me, for we are bound by symmetry and whatever differences our lives have been we together make a limb.”

This is the story of your red right ankle.

This is the story of your gypsy uncle you never knew ‘cause he was dead, and how his face was carved and rift with wrinkles in the picture in your head. And remember how you found the key to his hide-out in the Pyrenees? But you wanted to keep his secret safe, so you threw the key away. This is the story of your gypsy uncle.

This is the story of the boys who loved you, who love you now and loved you then. And some were sweet, some were cold and snuffed you, and some just laid around in bed. Some had crumbled you straight to your knees; did it cruel, did it tenderly. Some had crawled their way into your heart to rend your ventricles apart. This is the story of the boys who loved you.

This is the story of your red right ankle.

I think that's the hardest thing that I've had to deal with lately, as far as the whole Su-Dan marriage fiasco goes. Dan was my best friend, for the first time I had given myself, my friendship, my concern, everything completely, wholly, genuinely. And then had to watch it all cast aside. He knew that if anything happened with him and her, that we could never be the same kind of friends, and he did it anyway.

And that, most of all, has been the hard bit to swallow, that me - real, sincere, seriously vulnerable me - was worth so little to him. It's like being flayed open with a knife that you gave them. I handed him all of my insecurity, and he used it to peel me open, and show my fears and doubt back to me in a way that has, for all intents and purposes, nearly crippled me with a loss of..confidence? No, mostly just a loss at the desire to be so open again. I have to retreat into hiding, and wait for my skin to grow back.

But then, I seem to go through this every time.

And that is what I mean. All this giving, this loving people. It's work.

Oh, how it's work.

Shut out, pimpled and angry, I quietly tied all my guts into knots. I gave up trying to make them, figured it'd take them too long to look up. Besides, it was undeniably clear to me. I don't know why. When every other part of life seemed locked behind shutters, I knew what worthless dregs we all are then.

Lucked out, found my favorite records lying in wait at the Birmingham mall. The songs that I heard, the occasional book were the only fun that I ever took, and I thought I would make it myself. Yeah, the trick is just making yourself. But when they're parking their cars on your chest, you still have a view of the summer sky to make it hurt twice, when your restless body caves to its whim and suddenly struggles to take flight.

Three-thousand miles northeast I left all my friends at the morning bus stop, shaking their heads, "What kind of life d'you dream of? You're allergic to love..." "Yes, I know, but I must say in my own defense it's been undeniably dear, I don't know why."

When every other part of life seemed locked behind shutters, I knew the worthless dregs we are, the selfless loving saints we are, the melting, sliding dice we've always been...

I mean, come on, the best laid plans of mice aft gang aglae...

"Johnny's always running around trying to find certainty, he needs all the world to confirm that he ain't lonely. Mary counts walls, knows he tires easily.

Johnny thinks the world would be right, if it would buy truth from him. Mary says he changes his mind more than a woman, but she made her bet even when the chance was slim.

Johnny says he's willing to learn - when he decides he's a fool. Johnny says he'll live anywhere - when he earns time to. Mary combs her hair, says she should be used to it. Mary always hedges her bets. She never knows what to think - she says he still acts like he's being discovered.

Scared that he'll get caught without a second thought. Johnny thinks he's wasting his breath trying to talk sense to her. Mary says he's lacking a real sense of proportion. So she combs her hair, says he tires easily.

Johnny's always running around trying to find certainty. He needs all the world to confirm that he ain't lonely. Mary counts walls."

Odd, sometimes, the way you slip without knowing it, then wake up and find the hollowness in your voice that wasn't there before. The echoes of untruth in the background of the words you spend so much time building.

For a while, you feel something. And then you convince yourself to maintain the feeling and the something slips away, and then suddenly you feel nothing, but the convincing, and the doing, and the saying is such a habit that you can't stop. And the something, when you look at it now, isn't the same something that you saw worth building a feeling around. Because now it's not something idealized, washed with some rose-coloured paradigm of hope and dreaming. It's something real. Something that can be broken, that dulls in the harsh light of truth and circumstance.

Perhaps it's the same thing. But the somethings are not the same, and the somethings are what you tied your feelings to.

"I was just bony hands, as cold as a winter pole. You held a warm stone out, new flowing blood to hold. Oh what a contrast you were, to the brutes in the halls - my timid young fingers held a decent animal. Over the ramparts you tossed the scent of your skin and some foreign flowers tied a brick, sweet as a song. The years have been short, but the days were long.

Cool of a temperate breeze from dark skies to wet grass. We fell in a field, it seems, a thousand summers passed. When our kite lines first crossed, we tied them into knots. To finally fly apart, we had to cut them off. Since then, it's been a book that you read in reverse, so you understand less as the pages turn. Or a movie so crass, and awkwardly cast, that even I could be the star.

...Over the ramparts you tossed the scent of your skin and some foreign flowers tied to a brick, sweet as a song. The years have been short, but the days go slowly by, two loose kites falling from the sky drawn to the ground, and an end to flight."

How do you find and label the time when you realize that you can't keep doing the things you've been doing? How can you identify the moment when it's not for anymore doing, but done. That you finished whatever chapter of your life you've been writing and building and breaking and manipulating and playing with so fascinated and sure. How does the unsure creep in?

Maybe I let it. Maybe with the wavering, the uncertainty, I left a door open, and it just came. And then, instead of kicking it out, I listen to it. And what it says makes so much sense in the dark,and in the corner, and sometimes in the lightest part of the middle of the room.

"Cough and twitch from the news on your face and some foreign candle burning in your eyes. Held to the past, too aware fo the pending chill as the dawn breaks and finds us up for sale. Enter the fog, another low road descending away from the cold lust, your house, and summertime. Blind to the last cursed affair, pistols and countless lies. A trail of white blood betrays the reckless route your craft is running. Feed till the sun turns into wood, dousing an ancient torch, loiter the whole day through and lose yourself in lines dissecting love. Your name on my cast and my notes on your stay offer me little but doting on a crime. We've turned every stone, and for all our inventions, in matters of love loss, we've no recourse at all."

How long have I been doting? Losing myself in lines trying to explain it and me to myself? To rationalize away all of the small things nipping at my heels? I cannot continue running with bleeding ankles. I cannot continue this road more-traveled.


Where is my yellow wood? Where is my diverging?