Wrapped

She wrapped herself up in him,
drawing him around naked shoulders
like a child’s blanket.
Tighter and tighter--
enveloping pain
as night swallows the day.

Movie Review

I do enjoy Jim Carrey in more dramatic roles, but this movie just sucked. Much of the plot was contrived and poorly acted.

I will say that the sets were great and the overall aesthetic was great; however, that wasn't enough to keep my attention.

Amnesia meets John Nash and the madness of numbers and not in an interesting way.

Movie Review

Zodiac was a bit long, even for someone who drools over Jake, Mark, and Robert.

There were whole scenes that could have been cut. I can't imagine what I would have thought if I'd seen this in the theatre. At least I was at home and could occupy myself with cleaning up my hard drive, and picking out imaginary china patterns.

I'm not saying that it wasn't well acted, but come on.

Out for a drive

I'm getting a new office at work and I'm without artwork. I decided rather than spend cash to buy someone else's work, I'd take a drive, snap some shots and create my own. I'm not sure how it'll all turn out, but off I go.

Emo Harry

Read Harry Potter over the weekend. I enjoyed it while reading it but having stepped away from it I'm disappointed. I guess I feel that JK Rowling is training yet another generation to be whiny emo kids.

Anyway. I've got my health and the new White Stripes album so what do I care. Maybe JK Rowling already converted me... damned Scottish hussy.

Balloon Rally

Swimming at Blue Mesa

Box Canyon

Red Mountain Pass

Black Canyon

Carolyn's Birthday Party

The sisters reunited!

Pre-Party Planning

Blow!

Carolyn and some string.

Dunes

Riding the Dunes

Looking at the Sand Dunes.

Eastern Colorado

Left Newton at 5ish for the big adventure. Drove through Kansas to avoid back tracking. Drove overnight to get to the Great Sand Dunes Saturday morning.

I'm going to miss this show

Where did this show go wrong? It started out so good.

Brown flecks mingled with thick yellow bile in the white porcelain bowl. Her stomach undulated with the tides rolling in the basin as she held auburn curls out of her face.

Alfred whined and yelped from outside the door. After four years of living with this regimen, Alfred still hadn’t gotten over the shock. He paced and pawed at the door each night she

She flushed the toilet watching dried blood and vital potassium disappear. The only light illuminating the antiseptic bathroom was the blue glow of an Indiglo alarm clock. 10:34. Aislin’s stomach was faltering and twelve minutes behind schedule.

Cool water felt delicious against her face. She was thankful that it hadn’t been a bad night. The force of the past hadn’t pressed stomach acid through delicate nasal passages.

Traveler

I'm totally hooked on this show. I'm sure it won't be able to go the distance because of production costs, but it'll be fun while it lasts.

Blanket

She wrapped herself up in him,
drawing him around naked shoulders
like a child's blanket.
Tighter and tighter--
enveloping pain
as night swallows the day.

Bridge

Warm from the early summer sun, the worn planks and wooden trusses smelled like they were freshly hewn. This bridge—a place of history, love, and turmoil—was a welcome sight., a train rumbled in the distance, although the crops were recently planted and three months from harvest. Peri wondered what it would really take to hop a train and then mentally catalogued the contents of her trunk. She longed to be set adrift on the Midwestern plains; afloat among the cornstalks; a sea of small towns and no-name country lanes; prairie grass undulating in the wind.

She needed a moment of clarity. Life had become and endless shell game with happiness always hiding beneath a different shell.

Not a gambler by any means, Peri had bet on love—went all in and went bust, yet again. This time, however, she was unsure if the taste of victory would ever be sweet as acid crept up the back of her throat.

Peri lived in each moment of her life, yet her fascination with the past was what killed so many of her relationships. She wanted to tear out all the illogical parts of her psyche that were jealous of something that was over and someone, literally, on the other side of the world.

Salty grief escaped as tears hit the lumber beneath her heels. She needed to cry, she wanted to cry. Peri shook with racking sobs, and the quiet country air was filled with her wretched wailing. Her stomach finally loosened and she vomited into the Skunk River. Her knees crumpled, she grasped at the guardrail, and splinters skewered her legs through her pantyhose as her suit skirt slid up.

She wiped her mouth with a shirt sleeve pressed for work, stood, and stumbled back to her idling car. She wasn't sure if she was walking toward him or away, but at least she was walking again.

It was one of those moments when she was capable of the most impulsive, reckless deeds. Peri wanted bottles and gallons of cheap wine. She wanted to peel off her skin and become someone new. She wanted to run away or get fucked up. Anything. She'd do anything to forget what she'd seen. She'd trade sanity just for a moment without those images in her head, playing like a drive-in movie on the backs of her corneas.

Peri thought back to her late adolescence when she'd run an iron across her pale, pink, Irish flesh just to feel something other than the overwhelming disappointment she now expected from life.

The past was past. She could either move forward with first man she'd loved in ten years, or she could let a mistake end it all and turn her inside out.

I wanna hop a train just once

Hobo Photo Essay

I'd name him Pookie

Dear Sean:

I've been in this strange state of liquid grief as memories lap upon the shore of my new hope. A place of suspended reverie and floating nostalgia. You saw so much and I have been so blind. Is it again time to shed the skin and step into a new life?

Bad Morning

Peri stayed in bed, pulled the blankets up further, and curled up tighter. She'd only been awake a few minutes but already knew that he was mad. The bangs of kitchen cabinets and sliding chairs came up the stairs. Peri either needed to confront the problem or face spending the day under his cloud.

Peri descended the stairs while pulling on a robe. Gideon was eating Cheerios and watching the news with the television blaring. His jaw muscles flexed and twitched with each heaping spoonful.

"You should stop pouting. You broke shit the last time."

"I fixed the door two weeks ago. What's your problem?"

"You were so mad you broke the house. Why don't you just tell me what I did before we have to move."

Art

Career Confusion

I crashed a class on Friday. I wasn't interested so much in the class, but rather the speaker, Babak Armajani. I probably took more notes than the students getting a grade in the class and probably more notes than I took my whole senior year at Western. Armi, as he likes to be called, only confused me about my latest career choice.

I think I should just apply to five different programs (Creative Writing, Public Policy, Communications, Playwriting, and Student Affairs) and see where I get in. I need to move out of Iowa, sooner rather than later.

Childhood

"What's the deal with your family?" Duke asked.

Aislin peered down at her hands, picked at something under one of her nails, and tucked her hands back into her coat pockets. "You mean the fact that they're crazy?"

"Whenever you run into any of them it seems like you can't wait to leave."

"It took me awhile to realize just how dysfunctional my family was."

"Every family has it's own quirks, but they're still a family."

"I thought it was normal for every kid to spend Saturdays at the dog track with grandpa; all moms had panic attacks at the mall; secret grow rooms in the basement; moonshine in the garage. My first childhood memory was of my uncles getting high while babysitting me. I was three. Three, for god's sake!

"When I asked where my dad was, I was told that he was a bad drunk and ran away. My mom acted like this was the most evil thing a person could do. Yet, I've watched every one in my extended family turn to the bottle and run away from responsibility. I learned it was okay unless you were my father, in which case you were an evil, evil man worthy of the wrath of god.

"There was never any cough syrup in the house, instead I was handed a shot of Jamison and told it would put hair on my chest. A bad tooth called for a shot of vodka. For a headache, the prescription was a bong hit and a nap."

The Last Kiss

Not the movie to watch when your personal life is falling apart and you have no faith in modern relationships.

Do Not watch on the day your ex-boyfriend--however feebly--apologizes:

I'm sorry for anything I might have said or done. Or anything I didn't say or do.

Gabe I cannot absolve, but I do forgive.

I'm done with relationships via google chat. You want to insult me, you gotta do it person. I will not feel bad for being smart. Ambition is not wrong.

Fever

"and I woke up in a fever so delirious. I'm in a patriotic panic. Where the fuck at 5 o'clock in the morning can I buy a big American flag?"

David Wojnarowicz

Book Review

I'm really going to try to keep up on book reviews this year.

David Sedaris's Me Talk Pretty One Day was a book for short personal essays or vignettes. They did not necessarily equal a whole, other than snapshots of a herky-jerky life. Sedaris doesn't take himself too seriously and never insults the reader, which should be the goal of all writers.

The reviews printed at the front of the book promised tearful laughing fits. I did chuckle a few times, but more than anything I was able to relate to the author.

If nothing else. the story about his father's food hoarding habits will stay with me for awhile.

A Libertarian is an elephant in donkey's clothing.

Where roads meet

Met him at an intersection:
not a crossroad,
but a place where
I could recover or return.

Ring moved from the wedded
finger to the benign right.
Memories of a widow
carried in the back
pocket of worn denim.

His Royal Hipness

Books to Read in 2007

I already own these, so it shouldn't be that hard.
Me Talk Pretty One Day - David Sedaris
Franny and Zooey - JD Salinger
Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
The Complete Stories of Truman Capote

Need to Buy:
The Beautiful Room is Empty - Edmund White
Copenhagen - Michael Frayn
Betrayal - Harold Pinter
David Wojnarowicz: A Definitive History of Five or Six Years on the Lower East Side

Books Read in 2006

Fiction:
She's Come Undone - Wally Lamb
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
The Confessions of Mycroft Holmes - Marcel Theroux
The Story of Lucy Gault - William Trevor
My Friend Leonard - James Frey
A Million Little Pieces - James Frey
The Husband - Dean Koontz
Dark Rivers of the Heart - Dean Koontz
Light before Day - Christopher Rice
Catalyst - Laurie Halse Anderson
Speak - Laurie Halse Anderson
The Divide - Nicholas Evans
Bleachers - John Grisham
To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
Brother Odd - Dean Koontz
Density of Souls - Christopher Rice
Horse Whisperer - Nicholas Evans
Heaven's Coast - Mark Doty
On Writing - Stephen King
Good in Bed - Jennifer Weiner
A Place I've Never Been - David Leavitt
The Divide - Nicholas Evans
Villa Incognito - Tom Robbins
Dark Rivers of the Heart - Dean Koontz

Nonfiction:
Wordsmart for the GRE
Princeton Review's Guide to the GRE
30 Colorful Quilt and Patchwork Projects
Generation T
The Enneagram
Outstanding Personal Statements

Wishing for his pain

Aislin knew it was childish, but it felt great to delete all traces of Gabe from her computer. Hundreds of emails and pictures gone with a click. Blocked from sending instant messages. Phone number deleted from her cell phone.

Gabe had very little recourse to make a feeble appology and little chance of being able to track her life through electronic means.

They hadn't spoken in a few months, but in light of his betrayal she felt somehow vidicated by cutting off contact.

Aislin believed in dating karma. This would bite him in the ass someday, maybe in Boston.

Bootstrap

Her dark page boy haircut stood out among the permed and bleached bouffants circling the bar. Crocodile skin heels as opposed to white cross-trainers. Her only ring was a huge turquoise stone ensconced in sterling rather than a small diamond solitare set in cheap gold. The arrogance of having risen above this blue collar town cloyed like the wafting cigarette smoke. Aislin's affluence offended many lining the bar as they turned to watch her and Duke walk in.
Aislin faced the bar, and stared at the neon domestic beer signs, NASCAR plaques, an infamous picture of Babe Ruth, and small placards denoting fried delicasies served in red plastic baskets. Each person's face was cast with an eerie red glow; each one marked by bad marriages and multiple children. Familiar faces from high school telling the familiar stories. The bartender, a large man with COOP tattooed down his forearm, walked up and nodded to her. He looked like an ex-boyfriend and probably was. Aislin had been popular with the opposite sex in the days before college--a lucky combination of running five miles daily and the Irish baby feeding breasts.
Aislin stared down the bar and catalogued familiar bottles. "Absolut Mandarian, tonic, and a twist of lemon."
"And for you, son?"
Duke looked her with a befuddled look.
"An Irish car bomb for my friend here," Aislin said.
"ID, son."
Duke pulled his driver's license from a ratty brown wallet and slid it across the bar picutre side down. Coop furrowed his brow, looked at the ID, and returned it as delivered. Aislin considered grabbing his ID to end the suspense, but felt it might violate some sort of trust.
They sat in silence until the drinks arrived. Aislin squeezed her lemon into the drink with two dainty fingers and patted them on her cocktail napkin. Duke watched this ritual before dropping the Baileys shot into the beer and drinking it in two swallows.
"You drink like my dog."
"Excuse me?"
"Alfred gulps Guinness like a normal dog takes to a bone."
"What does he do with a bone?"
"Sniffs it and walks away wondering why I didn't make him a steak too."
Duke laughed. The loud speaker played decade old hits. Men still wore flannel shirts as if the god of grunge was alive. Mullets were worn with pride. The psuedo businessman at the end of the bar wore a cheap gold tie tack.
Duke stared into his glass as if the answer was hidden in the foam.
"Hey, Coop! Another Guinness."
Duke started to speak, but Aislin interrupted him, "You know, I never hear confession when alcohol is involved. Let's just enjoy our beverages and take in the atmosphere."
"Why's that?"
"You seem so above all this. Bad beer, bad hair, and everyone smokes."
"I always felt like I was adopted from some fabulous Park Avenue couple. But this ... Iowa shapes my art. Middle America is exactly that, the middle: where high meets low and intelligence meets the bootstrap myth."
"The what?"
"The myth that every man can make something of himself by the leverage of his bootstraps. Work hard and you will be rewarded with the American dream."
Duke frowned.
"It takes more than your own ingenuity to get by these days."