two poems

"In this language, you can't chit-chat

holding a highball in your hand, can't

even be polite. Once the sentence starts its course,

all your grief and failure come clear at last."*

Sometimes, Garrison Keillor doesn't add anything at the end of the writer's almanac. He just copies out the poem, and it seems to be enough for the day. I've never put poetry quotes on this blog, but I'm going to tonight, and I think at least one of them should be saved at the end, so that those words stay on longer than mine.

I know how to be lonely. I like to remind myself of that. When I wake up alone, and I know exactly what to do. In my new house, I even have the added bonus of closeness, and I can walk wherever I need to go. I can be alone and think. Walking sets the pace, creates the meter for your thoughts. I-know-how-to-be-lonely. Even after being in bands, I never learned anything about timing, but I hear it in my head just the same.

On Sunday I stretched out and walked to find the New York Times, not that I needed the information, but just for the luxury of sitting down in the sun and reading it front to cover (AND the magazine) in its entirety. Just like a cat in the sun, literally bathing in something, I don't know what, the ability to just not be interrupted maybe. Some friends and I walked down the Hawthorne Trail to the graveyard and kicked stones around. The oak trees were black against the sky, just like in a movie, and so were we when walking back to town. A good walk with friends goes a long way. Then the simple pleasure of cooking, and being close in a kitchen together, before everyone went their own ways before bed.

The past couple of days have been less fun. Nikki said, "when you're lonely it feels like everyone else is happy." I have great fears that all my self-righteousness and introspection will get me is nowhere, and the rest of the world will go on without me, happily (and worse still, that I might deserve it!). I stop to take a look around, so to speak, and end up alone in a room with the lights off and the door shut. I've been panicking a little. Pacing around my room, picking up different books. Unfocused. Still doing a lot of walking though, and even in the rain today I caught the words bubbling up, and then I sat on my balcony and tried to arrange them. I've been unable to write for a few months. Writing in this doesn't count. I mean really writing, and not just for my graduate school applications.

I just wrote two pretty lousy poems. Still, the fact that I got them down at all made me cry. The unimaginable pleasure, to just sit down and write! That's the pay off in the end, for thinking, and for walking.

"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things."**

*Bill Holm, from The Icelandic Language

**Mary Oliver, from Wild Geese

thoughts not worth thinking

"This was the interior work of his current life. He thought about himself and then cursed himself- his thoughts were not worth thinking. He was negligible and deserved no pity. He wanted only to help the people he loved, right? But he wasn't doing that, either. He was growing harder to penetrate. A half-dozen inexplicable injustices and you're a cynic. Ten premature deaths and you went crazy or barren. You couldn't care the same way each time; a certain point it was just absurd. The words dead inside presented themselves to him occasionally, but was that it, was that him? He cared, and deeply, about so many things, didn't he?"

I went to a show to see a band I like a lot. I think everyone else would like them too, but they've become an example of A while everyone else wants so badly to like B. The shortsightedness of friends irritates me. I feel like a fence walker and then I start acting like I'm living off lemons and salt, too sour for my own good. I ride my bike home in moonlight, cruising under big oak trees at three in the morning and I started getting worked up over snobbery, weighed down by wanting everyone just to lighten up a little. If I expressed these thoughts I'd sound like an insane person to rational society, "YOU LIKE JAPANESE HARDCORE BUT YOU CAN'T APPRECIATE CURRENT AMERICAN HARDCORE? IDIOTS! POSERS!" you know, the kind of person people don't make eye contact with on street corners. I know I have friends out there who know what I'm saying. They'd say, don't spend so much time thinking about other people. I wish I could stop too. Dan's been my partner in suffering lately, and he told me pretty simply, "you can't change how people act, only how you react to them." I know. I've gotten better and I still have a lot of work to do. Sometimes when I feel overwhelmed I drink to the point of oblivion, or sometimes I stay at home for hours, reading comic books or currently- listening to American Gods on tape. The rest of the time? I can honestly say I know how to enjoy myself. I like being alone, I also like going out, but I like walking both sides of the line (the one I refuse to draw in the sand).

I bought a movie the other day at Video Rodeo because I used to watch it A LOT and I can't rent movies from there anymore anyway (a rough estimate of how much I owe them is more than I'll make in tips tonight). I watched it last night with red wine and a good friend and I felt a little embaressed at how sad the movie was. I remembered, with an air of real dissappointment in myself, that I used to love movies like this. I stopped because every time I loved something like a movie, or a really great record, I'd want to talk about it, and no one would pay any attention. So I gave up. I started watching romantic comedies (which I do genuinely like) and action movies and the jokes I could make about that were better than the actual comments I'd make about "better" movies et. all. Somewhere along the line I really started liking all the crappy blockbuster movies I watched and cared less and less about the good ones, especially if I had to listen to anyone talk about them. Currently, everyone keeps getting me to go see Melancholia at the Hippodrome, but I'd really rather go see Shark Night in 3D. I don't know how that shift happened exactly, but I like my tastes now. Just last night though, I got reminded of that itching feeling, that intense discomfort to tell everyone about the movie, how they just have to see it, really watch it, and really pay attention. I feel like that way still when I read books, even mainstream comics like Grant Morrison's Superman, and especially things like the first chapter of the new Eggers' book- I can't just enjoy it, I need everyone else to see it too.

Maybe at the bar tonight I can shift conversations away from Tim Tebow and more toward Alejandro Inarritu, but if I can't, hey, I'll put on ESPN with the sound off and turn up Sisters of Mercy on the stereo. Lead a horse to water, and all that.

*Dave Eggers, Chapter One (from his forthcoming novel, title unknown, release date unknown. Chapter One can be found in McSweeney's quarterly no. 38)

not enough in the end

"Even those wild memories of his mad youth left him unmoved, just as during his last debauch he had exhausted his quota of salaciousness and all he had left left was the marvelous gift of being able to remember it without bitterness or repentance."*

I like New Years. A lot of American holidays (yes I'm biased because I am geographically deficient) carry a certain amount of nostalgia but New Years Eve happens to be one of the holidays in which it is totally acceptable to talk about it. Every night at the end of the year people make lists about what they'd like to do differently in the forthcoming year, but all of the lists are tainted by what they've done wrong in the year before. Personally, I'd like to not be an asshole or do anymore dumb shit in 2012, but I'm only saying that because I know I've done enough of it
this past year.

We want to do better because we've done so much wrong. I don't want to sound cynical because I like wallowing in it, so to speak. I hate the sting of nostalgia but it's easily accessible for me. After all, this blog is named after a novel dedicated to nostalgia. I rode my bike home tonight through the growing fog (the night, has been- perfect) and I missed a few people so bad that it hurt. Really missed them. You, you might be reading this and think, "me? surely not me," but really, I mean you. I think about people I'd really never want to talk to again, but I miss them. I could blame it on Time but I know at the end of the day I'm just as responsible for pushing certain people away from me. No, that's the sweet version.

The bad version is that I've been a horrible person to people that put their trust and their hopes on me, and I couldn't be the girl they wanted me to be. I don't just mean boys, that sounds like the right answer but it's not (and they should take some of the blame of putting all of their hopes on me because that is, after all, a product of the Patriarchy which is too big of a footnote to include here) but I also mean my mom who wanted me to go to graduate school and my dad who wanted me to go to law school and my friends from out of state who expected my band to tour and my bosses who expected me to stick around all summer even when I wasn't making money (everyone seems upset when I go off and do my own thing, and I know at some point I'll stick around, I promise).

I want 2011 to end with a big, wet, warm apology to everyone that has been disappointed in me, but I don't know if it would matter at this point. I rode my bike home thinking about the friends I can't call anymore, not just from my own volition but also just from Time and Distance, and I wish I could wake up tomorrow in the new year and be able to. The shitty thing is, is that I won't be able to pick up the phone and make it better. Sure, tomorrow morning I'm going to go meet my dad out by the highway. We're going to drink a beer and he's going to ask me what I'm doing, but he sure as hell won't ask me if I'm happy. Just the same, happy new year to you, wherever you are.

*One Hundred Years of Solitude, pg. 341