Dear Slowing it Down,

I would like to take this opportunity to thank everything that has made me into someone incapable of being calm for long periods of time. Charming.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank high school journals.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank myself for periodically having no skill at dissemination or those from-the-heart-impulse moments they always have on Seventh Heaven.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank hot dogs.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank jokes, because they always have a way of helping you out of saying important things.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank people who don't do what they really want because they're affraid. Thanks for making the rest of us look like assholes. Thanks also, for frusterating those around you.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Halloween. Thanks, Halloween.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank nail bitting. Sleep overs. Jerzy Grotowski. The mess in my room. Plan day. Possibly sentimental grey areas. Alt-country. Running around in circles. Snoring. Uncommitted gestures of kindness. Cartoons. That weird girl outside my window who is squatting on the lawn holding some sort of giant staff. Hippis on blankets. Bugs on hippis on blankets. The long warm hours of the afternoon. Better to be good for something than nothing.

Dear god, what do you think you're doing

It's 8:30. But let's specify. It's 8:30 in the morning. And it's Sunday. Why, why am I awake? Why was 7:45 the time that I 'naturally' 'decided' to get up? I am tired, awake, and confused. It might just not be so bad. At least I have a breakfast date with a pro tennis instructor. This is when church people wake up, right? I should call my grandma. "Hey, Nanny, just wanted to call and let you know I got shit-canned at a Halloween party last night and started incoherently but charmingly demmaning things before I passed out at two in the morning--which, by the way, is the earliest I have gone to bed on a Saturday probably in years--and somehow woke myself up early. Since you're awake for church and all, I thought I'd share this expereience with you." Yeah. That sounds good. Naps. There will be a great many naps today.

Dear Lesbian Haircut,

Still can't roll cigarettes. Rolled a good one last night. Smoked it to celebrate. Celebration.

Don't really understand what it is that makes people walk away from conversations when they don't actually want to be left alone. Most people don't pick up and follow.

Sometimes I remember everything at once, and sometimes I'm just as tired as I am wide awake, and sometimes I try to say what I mean and wish I hadn't, and sometimes I don't say anything at all and wish I could speak, and sometimes I wish I was surrounded by dogs, and probably then sometimes I wish I was a dog, and sometimes it's hard to tell if there's someone knocking on my door because the wind knocks it around in the frame so I wind up sitting in my room saying "come in" to no one which is pathetic if you read it the right way, and sometimes I forget that Dolly Parton has had a husband all these years and I wonder who the hell that guy is anyway, and sometimes I want to build a giant looming tent in the badlands and drink dusty water out of mason jars, and sometimes Halloween sneaks up on you and leaves you completely unprepared, and sometimes there are some things you just can't fix and they're not yours to fix and they're no one's to fix, and sometimes it's hard to accept that some things can't be fixed, and sometimes the word "fix" is surprisingly encumbered for only having three letters, and sometimes land locked states can feel like islands, and sometimes I make hints to things I know I shouldn't and no one's picking up on, and sometimes I care too much, and sometimes I can't stop, and sometimes I remember that if the earth was to stop spinning we would all fly off of it uncontrollably and that's scary, and sometimes I hate my vigilance, and sometimes I wonder if I have any, and sometimes I just wish I wrote stories about cotton candy men on Coney island but if I did I don't think even I would want to read them, and sometimes 3:00 seems so late, and sometimes that's when I'm just waking up, and then, other times it's still when I am waking up.

I called my mom this morning and woke her up. I forgot about the time difference.

Missed connections.
Yeah. Different time zones.

Be Jazzed, Which is to Say Listen

I want to go on vacation with you, which is to say, I want to be with you, which is to say it would be like a vacation.

Do You See This Magestic Pegasus? 1998

1. "Brick"--Ben Folds Five. After years of listening to this song you see what everyone was talking about when they said it was about abortion, but for the first few years it just seemed like a downtrodden and relateable song. Oh, the skater boy who has a Jan Sport backpack and a bowl cut doesn't like me. The cool girl with mystery and holiday problems doesn't like Ben Folds neither. Good company.

2. What, exactly is the draw in having pants that bell out far beyond the reaches of your shoe? Is it the amount of rain that accumulates up past the knee when you walk through puddles and how absolutely tiny it makes your feet seem? Pants like church bells, with Stone Temple Pilots quotes across them, and either an inch too long or short, but never just right.

3. One of my favorite things was always sitting in my father's car while he was in some appointment, Shiatzu or something "important", and watching it get dark prematurely, listening to my walkman, and thinking about humans, feeling so grown up when I wasn't.

4. And when I said "ain't" I meant it. I thought I was Country. But I wasn't. I still wasn't City.

5. "And you will take the heavy stuff, and you will drive the car, and I'll look out the window and make jokes about the way things are".

6. Leaps? Sleep leaps?

He Woke Me Up Again

Written on Sunday evening, elated about the idea of horses and sentimental conversations. I thought about deleting it because it's so shmaltzy, but then I decided to post it, because it's so shmaltzy, and clearly I have some sort of equestrian-cowboy obsession.

I rode a horse today. Finally. Not the experience I was exactly hoping to have, but I was on a horse none the less. And Vermont is so beautiful, I realized this morning on the back of a horse, at certain points exclaiming like a tourist (insert: Midwestern accent) "Oh my gosh, look at all the colors of those leaves. Shoot, that's just, that's just beautiful. Wonderful. Gosh. Leaves." Due to the fact that it was an "Outing Club" related activity, and there were 10 of us, and some people had never been on a horse before we didn't do much besides slowly march in a single file line around some trails. The horse they gave me was perfect, though. His name was Charger. He was hungry as shit, and didn't care what I was instructing him to do because when he felt like eating, he stopped and ate. I can respect that. He was sturdy, and majestic, and white. Sometimes he would look back at me, and I knew exactly what he was thinking. "I know dude," I would say to him, "I want to fucking run, too." They put me with him because, as one woman said, "He wants to be the leader of the gang". This horse is Rock and Roll. He would bite horses on the ass if he got too close to them, and he would kick any horse in the face if they got too close behind him. Alpha horse. I'm into that. Someday soon I hope to go back and ride again, when I can really ride, hooked onto such a spiritual beast, strapped into an instant-retard helmet, wearing approximately 18 and a half layers of clothing, smelling like horse shit, in the middle of the small green mountains, and remembering how grounding it feels to let something run beneath you. My friend Kellen always says that all girls go through two phases: A photography phase, and a horse phase. Guilty as charged. But I waited so long to do it again. It feels nice to do things again that are not directly related to being a liberal 23 year old female studying acting at a liberal arts college and living in a big city. Nice. Horses. Nice.

Not Rubbing My Eyes

I wrote to a friend this evening. "Someday the sun will rise on my side of the house. It has to.". Metaphors seem about as exciting as watching the hipsters in Williamsburg become hippies, which they are. It's predictable. It's expensive. It's old.

I was defeated at my own game, which is impressive. I remember the stores on South Tacoma Way I used to shop at as a child. They have been torn down to make newer strip malls with newer Chinese restaurants and newer drug stores that sell a newer selection of prescription drugs. There's no Pay N' Save anymore.

My grandmother deserves more than to be written about on a blog. So I will say nothing. But my grandfather is now in a home, and can't walk, and my grandmother is staying alone in the house. The house I grew up in. If that falls apart, everything falls apart. When you are young you think adults are indestructible, especially when they buy you a Nintendo.

I played so many "trust" games tonight, I can't remember my answers for anything.

I am still waiting for other answers.

I am sleepy.

I am sleeping?

I am crawling into bed, hoping to remember things I have lost.

Nothing is as good as this, nothing is as endless.

I don't really like pudding all that much and I drink most drinks through a straw. Any drink if I can.

Someday the sun will set on my side of the house. I hope I'm home when it happens.

I want Blackie the old dog

I used to be something else. I don't know if it was better or worse but I was something else.

I looked out my window. That's a baby, not a dog. Imagine my disappointment.

Do breast feeding mothers ever think about how many men have also sucked on their teats, and feel like perverts? I know I would be grossed out.

I am going to take the jump. Soon. Soon I will do it. Do something. Do anything.

My grandfather is having surgery today. This makes me chain smoke. He had throat cancer from chain smoking.

Sometimes when I get mysterious things in my mailbox I like to make up stories about who it's from and what it says before I open it. I'm a little bit disappointed every time.

No one makes homemade love letters anymore.

I just realized one of my favorite songs is probably about Bob Dylan. That changes everything.

Friday, you feel like Saturday.

And and andand

Sometimes you have those days where nothing is particularly extraordinary, and occasionally very difficult things come about, and still somehow you wind up feeling like things are illuminated, and the temperature is right, and not even the big things were too memorable but the smaller things were semblant and good. This some-time is right now. For no particular reason, on no particular Wednesday but this one, I find myself in my room feeling just alright, in that "driving all night with nowhere to go but gas is cheap" kind of way. Remember when gas was cheap?

Last night I washed all my clothes and made a bed of new linens. I tied my stuffed penguin in a pillowcase and put him through the washing machine for the first time in five or six years. Once he was clean I wrapped him in a blanket and laid him out on the bed like I did when I was twelve. It felt nice. I fell asleep cradling him the way I used to do falling asleep at my grandparents house on the fold out couch, feeling so old but being so small. Perhaps I did this because my grandfather is not well. I don't know. But I do know it was peaceful and not scary.

I have dreams where I am hungry, and I am riding in cars with people I know on the freeway and to the side there are Mexican immigrants trying to cross the border through fences and treelines and everyone cheers for their success, and then all the cars pull over and we all get out and pretend we are immigrants too, discovering things for the first time, like bits of "beautiful garbage", and then we play "musical cars" and switch around, and get back on the freeway, and I am in a tour bus with people I know wearing pig-tails. And I have dreams where miscellaneous boys that I know without really knowing are the father of my child, the outcome of a drunken party with a lost shoe and fat dogs, sitting shirtless next to me in a museum of living sculpture telling me secrets, helping a mysterious lady make me patterned clothes while promising a walk that somehow means something bigger. And I have dreams where Bennington is going to the dining hall, which is a series of potlucks in houses, and the first house is a frat house, and everyone there is drunk and it's like some crappy straight-to-video release about snowboarders, and some of the guys there try to have sex with me even though I say no, and Bennington kids try to save me but they can't, so they move on to the next dinner-house, and I try to hide until all the frat boys go to sleep. And for so long I only had nightmares. But I have these things now.

And I am impressed when you can tell doctors the truth. I am impressed when doing a head stand reminds you of being seven and being told to do hand stands instead because you will hurt yourself. I am impressed when three voices carry like ten. I am not tired of seeing girls who write notes to each other on the legs of their pants, the kind that get wet to the knee in the rain. And I am not tired of the rain, even though this is Vermont and everyone is tired of the rain. And I am not tired of the lives I create for imaginary dogs I find that have crooked jaws from being kicked in the face, or the imaginary house I create where they could all live. And I'm not humble when I say my sister is going to take us all in the race to find good things because she is some sort of tiny force that is barely even real and understands that time is immovable and people are softer than they want to be. And I am the baby my mother toted around on the back of a bicycle in 1986 when she had feathered black hair and sang songs like Carol King along the shores of Tacoma across the train tracks and past the smoke stack they tore down when I was older. And I am not Jewish, but I have hopes for the future. And "Richie Partai" will be the new slang coming into rotation, so look out.

Tara and Erin have come to save me. I don't know what from, but writing about my sister saving the planet and my bald-headed-bicycling days is a start. Oh, Bennington. Good night, America. All two and a half of you.