today was a good day. I wake up every day with nothing to do and then I do whatever I want. it’s liberating. I met up with alex, pat and teddy for lunch/fruit smoothies in boston. gorgeous day, even with the eerie, invasive cloud of smoke from Québec, even though we didn’t stick around long enough to see dave the street magician deep throat a three-foot balloon.
the bp oil spill is really upsetting me. the people who like to defend big corrupt corporations (republicans; I don’t care who I’m stereotyping/offending) are attempting to blame the EPA for forcing oil companies to drill so far offshore, since the spill would be easier to contain if it weren't 5,000 feet beneath the ocean's surface. this logic makes no sense. if you break a rule, you don’t blame the outcome on the existence of the rule, unless the rule isn’t justified, and I’m sure this one is, for obvious reasons. the fact of the matter is that bp had hundreds of violations that they ignored in the interest of saving money, at the expense of the employees who died, and also at the expense of the entire eastern seaboard, potentially. and I don’t understand the logic behind this “cap” plan. putting a “cap” on the well sounds a lot like putting a “dome” on the well, which they already did, which failed. think about it: cap. dome. see what I mean? (maybe it’s the companion underwater robot that distinguishes the cap from the dome!) also, I think a more viable option would be to block the well with all of bp’s cash and ceos. also, also, also. I can’t even think about it, it fills me with the type of anger I can’t do anything with.
so...
old fav.:
Monday, May 31, 2010
Friday, May 28, 2010
single engine
one day a couple years back. Jackie and I were parked at the seawall in the winter, the ocean to the left of us, gray, heaving, wholly unwelcoming. I’m sure we were eating sandwiches, I imagine we watched the bored seagulls and wondered if their beaks really were perpetually bleeding. the guard tower stood towering (imagine that!) a ways before us on the shore, surrounded by vacant, shingled beach houses. people really love warm weather, neglect the atlantic in the winter. the tide always seems so high in the winter, like it’s reaching out to all the summer people who’ve fled inland for the cold months.
we were eating sandwiches, I’m sure, jackie’s without mayonnaise and mine with, when we saw a single engine Cessna approaching the coast, low, it was so low we immediately sat up in our seats, alarmed. it wasn’t going to clear the houses, the tower, there was no way, it was heading straight for them. we gasped in horror at the crucial moment. we heard nothing, saw nothing, the plane never reappeared anywhere at all, not over the houses, in the houses, or back out over the sea. but there had been nowhere else for it to go. we discussed the event at length for weeks. we don’t know what happened to the small ghost plane.
that was one day a couple years back. the day I’m talking about now is a different day, a day a couple days ago, a day when the summer folks were warming up once more to the ocean. here’s the scene: I’m wearing a one piece my mom wore in the early nineties. the legs are cut too high up, like the red bathing suits on Baywatch. there’s a loud flower pattern all over my body, gripping every weird angle. jackie’s wearing a green and white bikini, we’re on the old beach, and no one’s in the water. it’s only may. two guys walk by. they say: “dick tease.” we briefly probe into the likelihood of the phrase “vagina tease” being used (by females) in a similar context, decide against it, I’m not sure why.
down to the shore. the water is cold, as cold as I remember it being as a child. Jackie says we can’t do it, but I know we did, we can. I work myself up and go under, a million pins jolting me, electrifying molecules, I think about the BP oil spill, touching this water somewhere somehow, I feel incredible. we go back to jackie’s new apartment and I swivel in her new swivel chair, eat a whole cheese pizza while the grease from the cheese seeps through the thin box and discreetly touches the freckles on my thighs.
I’m driving home in mom’s car. not even a tape deck, just the radio. I haven’t heard the radio in years and years. relentless disappointment or bewilderment (kesha?) until ace of base comes on, and I can sing to this, word for word, j- and I used to press play at the same time through our bedroom windows, second floor, adjacent but not perfectly, always a small delay but we strove for excellence anyway, two radios attempting to coo the flawless alignment of “she leads a lonely life /oooh / she leads a lonely life!,” those being the good old days. which reminds me, I had dinner with my dad a couple months ago. I love to hear him talk about what he feels were the good old days, and we bridge the gap between his good old days and mine when he quotes Carly Simon: these are the good old days, he reminds me, this one before us, with our bright salads before us, 2010, and I agree. still has flashbacks from an acid trip he had when he was 17. when I see him stoic, stern, conservative to his very core, I like to summon the image of him with long hair, the world around him feigning a superior paisley skin, and now revisiting him slyly between consciousnesses in the twenty-first century. I wonder how different I’ll be, how stoic, when I’m older. I wonder if my worst drug experience will be dormant but stirring still, I wonder if the thought of it will still make me curl into a ball, wonder if I’ll remember the poem I wrote about it that I posted on a “serious” poetry forum, little to no feedback.
when I get back from the beach/jackie’s, this happens later in the day, roughly:
“whatcha reading?”
“bukowski.”
“blue husky?”
“yes.”
“I saw the grossest thing today, at betty’s. there was cat shit all over her floor, and her dog just came over and ate it. then there was a little bit left, and betty came over, took it up in a paper towel and just put it on her kitchen counter. I tell ya, if I was an easy barfer, I woulda barfed all over the place, it was just disgusting.”
“yeah? that’s pretty gross.”
“yeah. disgusting. did you make a therapy appointment yet?”
“I tried. they were having some problem with my insurance. some kind of bureaucratic nightmare.”
“it always is.”
“yeah. did I show you the graduation photos?”
“no. I hope I’m not in any of them.”
“check them out.”
“there better be none of me.”
“there’s only one. here it is.”
“oh. oh, no. I look like a rock and roller. I look like fucking ozzy osbourne.”
and then something about a pinched nerve in her back being like a toothache from her ass to her knee; I’ll remember that one. I check facebook, which alerts me to a friend liking Gullah Gullah island. me too; fond memories of a giant yellow frog dancing with children in a yard, and of course the jubilant theme song. I click: “Like” and suddenly I’ve joined the Gullah Gullah island group, a commitment I’m not ready to make, I thought I was just liking the fact that she liked it, wonder briefly if facebook will ever allow me to like the fact that someone else likes a fact, and so on and so forth. tomorrow is the final appointment in boston where we talk about my kidneys and whatnot, their failing, and everyone wants to know: “are you scared?” and when I tell them yes, they tell me I shouldn’t be quite so scared, so I stopped saying “yes,” and when I say “no,” they recommend that I anticipate it at least a little bit so as to prevent the sudden onset of a harsh reality, etc. so, I’ve become kind of indifferent, consistently. at first it was a “fuck you” indifference, but now it’s just true indifference. as far as I’m concerned, one day at the end of june I’ll be living like any other 23 year old in the middle of nowhere, dutifully wiping the pollen from my cat’s yellow spongy nose with a damp facecloth even though I think it is really quite precious, and the next day I’ll wake up with a morphine IV, a new organ, a freshly annihilated immune system, some red jello.
so, we go into boston the next morning, my dad and me, meet with the nutritionist, pharmacist, social worker, phlebotomist, transplant surgeon, transplant coordinator, I mention to my dad that I’m interested in phlebotomy, the delicate art of probing crooks of arms with butterfly needles and otherwise. nutritionist reiterates high protein low sodium diet, I’m not eating enough, transplant surgeon says I should feel much worse than I actually do, it’s kind of miraculous. I’m asking him questions about plasmapheresis and outpatient treatment (can I go back to western mass? please?) when he interrupts me and says “what did you major in?” with a knowing smile, like he knows suddenly that I’m an English major, probably because I ask what I will require instead of what I will need, I tell him I like wordsworth even though people think he takes himself too seriously (he might) and he likes wordsworth too. he says I will experience a sudden mental clarity after the transplant. neurotoxicity. the blood becomes so dirty it affects your ability to focus, think, which would explain why I sought out ADHD medication last semester (never got it) and was often content to be completely inactive, mentally and physically, hard to go to work, hard to wake up, hard to do schoolwork and hard to be with people. my surgeon says I am accustomed to this lethargy, so I’ve ceased to experience it as something abnormal. it’s become normal, the only way of being that I know, and so I’ll feel good in ways I don’t even know are possible. I feel like this a present of sorts, like the rush you used to get from opening a Christmas present. I anticipate this rush, this wanting to do things or finish things, being able to. pretty neat. for the first time in this whole process I feel like I have something to gain, after all the intense anxiety over immunosuppression, reduced life expectancy, cancer. I don’t care anymore, mostly because I simply can’t. truth isn’t always the best thing to focus on if it negatively affects how you live your life. I’ve always been obsessed with truth, whatever that means, and now I’m learning that the pursuit of life is greater than the pursuit of truth (they aren’t necessarily synonymous), and insofar as the latter interferes with the former, the only option is to fuck it. the truth is useless if all it does is produce fear. and all that stuff. dan said last night: cliché things are cliché for a reason. how true. if I learned anything in college it’s this, and some other things maybe, but that’s for another post, and I still have one more semester to go. we were parked at the Plymouth beach at midnight last night, dan and me, talking about houseboats, grandmothers, having love to give. i thought, I want to live on a houseboat. this is still true tonight. I want to live someday where I can always hear the lazy slapping of the shore. he said his grandfather had a big sailboat with four beds below the deck, and on the fourth of july they’d take it out and watch the fireworks overhead, sleep on the bobbing boat, wake up early and go fishing. this is the goal.
we were eating sandwiches, I’m sure, jackie’s without mayonnaise and mine with, when we saw a single engine Cessna approaching the coast, low, it was so low we immediately sat up in our seats, alarmed. it wasn’t going to clear the houses, the tower, there was no way, it was heading straight for them. we gasped in horror at the crucial moment. we heard nothing, saw nothing, the plane never reappeared anywhere at all, not over the houses, in the houses, or back out over the sea. but there had been nowhere else for it to go. we discussed the event at length for weeks. we don’t know what happened to the small ghost plane.
that was one day a couple years back. the day I’m talking about now is a different day, a day a couple days ago, a day when the summer folks were warming up once more to the ocean. here’s the scene: I’m wearing a one piece my mom wore in the early nineties. the legs are cut too high up, like the red bathing suits on Baywatch. there’s a loud flower pattern all over my body, gripping every weird angle. jackie’s wearing a green and white bikini, we’re on the old beach, and no one’s in the water. it’s only may. two guys walk by. they say: “dick tease.” we briefly probe into the likelihood of the phrase “vagina tease” being used (by females) in a similar context, decide against it, I’m not sure why.
down to the shore. the water is cold, as cold as I remember it being as a child. Jackie says we can’t do it, but I know we did, we can. I work myself up and go under, a million pins jolting me, electrifying molecules, I think about the BP oil spill, touching this water somewhere somehow, I feel incredible. we go back to jackie’s new apartment and I swivel in her new swivel chair, eat a whole cheese pizza while the grease from the cheese seeps through the thin box and discreetly touches the freckles on my thighs.
I’m driving home in mom’s car. not even a tape deck, just the radio. I haven’t heard the radio in years and years. relentless disappointment or bewilderment (kesha?) until ace of base comes on, and I can sing to this, word for word, j- and I used to press play at the same time through our bedroom windows, second floor, adjacent but not perfectly, always a small delay but we strove for excellence anyway, two radios attempting to coo the flawless alignment of “she leads a lonely life /oooh / she leads a lonely life!,” those being the good old days. which reminds me, I had dinner with my dad a couple months ago. I love to hear him talk about what he feels were the good old days, and we bridge the gap between his good old days and mine when he quotes Carly Simon: these are the good old days, he reminds me, this one before us, with our bright salads before us, 2010, and I agree. still has flashbacks from an acid trip he had when he was 17. when I see him stoic, stern, conservative to his very core, I like to summon the image of him with long hair, the world around him feigning a superior paisley skin, and now revisiting him slyly between consciousnesses in the twenty-first century. I wonder how different I’ll be, how stoic, when I’m older. I wonder if my worst drug experience will be dormant but stirring still, I wonder if the thought of it will still make me curl into a ball, wonder if I’ll remember the poem I wrote about it that I posted on a “serious” poetry forum, little to no feedback.
when I get back from the beach/jackie’s, this happens later in the day, roughly:
“whatcha reading?”
“bukowski.”
“blue husky?”
“yes.”
“I saw the grossest thing today, at betty’s. there was cat shit all over her floor, and her dog just came over and ate it. then there was a little bit left, and betty came over, took it up in a paper towel and just put it on her kitchen counter. I tell ya, if I was an easy barfer, I woulda barfed all over the place, it was just disgusting.”
“yeah? that’s pretty gross.”
“yeah. disgusting. did you make a therapy appointment yet?”
“I tried. they were having some problem with my insurance. some kind of bureaucratic nightmare.”
“it always is.”
“yeah. did I show you the graduation photos?”
“no. I hope I’m not in any of them.”
“check them out.”
“there better be none of me.”
“there’s only one. here it is.”
“oh. oh, no. I look like a rock and roller. I look like fucking ozzy osbourne.”
and then something about a pinched nerve in her back being like a toothache from her ass to her knee; I’ll remember that one. I check facebook, which alerts me to a friend liking Gullah Gullah island. me too; fond memories of a giant yellow frog dancing with children in a yard, and of course the jubilant theme song. I click: “Like” and suddenly I’ve joined the Gullah Gullah island group, a commitment I’m not ready to make, I thought I was just liking the fact that she liked it, wonder briefly if facebook will ever allow me to like the fact that someone else likes a fact, and so on and so forth. tomorrow is the final appointment in boston where we talk about my kidneys and whatnot, their failing, and everyone wants to know: “are you scared?” and when I tell them yes, they tell me I shouldn’t be quite so scared, so I stopped saying “yes,” and when I say “no,” they recommend that I anticipate it at least a little bit so as to prevent the sudden onset of a harsh reality, etc. so, I’ve become kind of indifferent, consistently. at first it was a “fuck you” indifference, but now it’s just true indifference. as far as I’m concerned, one day at the end of june I’ll be living like any other 23 year old in the middle of nowhere, dutifully wiping the pollen from my cat’s yellow spongy nose with a damp facecloth even though I think it is really quite precious, and the next day I’ll wake up with a morphine IV, a new organ, a freshly annihilated immune system, some red jello.
so, we go into boston the next morning, my dad and me, meet with the nutritionist, pharmacist, social worker, phlebotomist, transplant surgeon, transplant coordinator, I mention to my dad that I’m interested in phlebotomy, the delicate art of probing crooks of arms with butterfly needles and otherwise. nutritionist reiterates high protein low sodium diet, I’m not eating enough, transplant surgeon says I should feel much worse than I actually do, it’s kind of miraculous. I’m asking him questions about plasmapheresis and outpatient treatment (can I go back to western mass? please?) when he interrupts me and says “what did you major in?” with a knowing smile, like he knows suddenly that I’m an English major, probably because I ask what I will require instead of what I will need, I tell him I like wordsworth even though people think he takes himself too seriously (he might) and he likes wordsworth too. he says I will experience a sudden mental clarity after the transplant. neurotoxicity. the blood becomes so dirty it affects your ability to focus, think, which would explain why I sought out ADHD medication last semester (never got it) and was often content to be completely inactive, mentally and physically, hard to go to work, hard to wake up, hard to do schoolwork and hard to be with people. my surgeon says I am accustomed to this lethargy, so I’ve ceased to experience it as something abnormal. it’s become normal, the only way of being that I know, and so I’ll feel good in ways I don’t even know are possible. I feel like this a present of sorts, like the rush you used to get from opening a Christmas present. I anticipate this rush, this wanting to do things or finish things, being able to. pretty neat. for the first time in this whole process I feel like I have something to gain, after all the intense anxiety over immunosuppression, reduced life expectancy, cancer. I don’t care anymore, mostly because I simply can’t. truth isn’t always the best thing to focus on if it negatively affects how you live your life. I’ve always been obsessed with truth, whatever that means, and now I’m learning that the pursuit of life is greater than the pursuit of truth (they aren’t necessarily synonymous), and insofar as the latter interferes with the former, the only option is to fuck it. the truth is useless if all it does is produce fear. and all that stuff. dan said last night: cliché things are cliché for a reason. how true. if I learned anything in college it’s this, and some other things maybe, but that’s for another post, and I still have one more semester to go. we were parked at the Plymouth beach at midnight last night, dan and me, talking about houseboats, grandmothers, having love to give. i thought, I want to live on a houseboat. this is still true tonight. I want to live someday where I can always hear the lazy slapping of the shore. he said his grandfather had a big sailboat with four beds below the deck, and on the fourth of july they’d take it out and watch the fireworks overhead, sleep on the bobbing boat, wake up early and go fishing. this is the goal.
Sunday, May 23, 2010
suddenly, the world is my oyster
so i joined okcupid earlier this month at the suggestion of my roommate and BFF, ashley. i figured i'd be able to meet some cool local people, but i'm not very serious about it now, especially after receiving a message from a 45 year old married lawyer who is clearly going through a midlife crisis wants to be my "sugar daddy." also, messages from a very pretentious man who "can't tolerate people who don't exercise."
i got this email from okcupid today. please note the subject of the email.
on another note, i can't stop watching this video:
i got this email from okcupid today. please note the subject of the email.
on another note, i can't stop watching this video:
Saturday, May 22, 2010
first post: HI
hello!
this is a blog that i am using to help get me through the summer. what i mean by this is that i'm living at my family home for the first time in five years, basically in the middle of nowhere, at least 2 and a half hours from most (not all) of my friends (but even the ones that are close are 30 minutes away). life is currently weird and somewhat lonely, and i need a place to write about things i'm interested in, write about things that i observe, write about anything, since i'm relatively alone and far from my friends. also, i can't work, because i'm getting a kidney transplant at the end of june, and plasmapheresis before and after the transplant. it's not something that most people can relate to/want to talk about as much as i do, understandably, so i figure this is the best place i can vent about it and whatnot.
i hope to make the best of the summer despite these things. i hope to do this by having a piano in my room, and by having at least one of the four available cats on or near the piano at most times. i'm getting the piano from craigslist. a regular old upright. it's incredible how many people are looking to get rid of perfectly good pianos that just need to be tuned. i also hope to make the best of the summer by having a netflix account, and by listening to music, and by reading new books, and by jumping on the giant trampoline my little brother and his friends have transplanted into the woods behind my house, and by walking through these woods. i'm reading bukowski right now, tales of ordinary madness. i like bukowski a lot, aside from his almost incessant degradation of women and his obsession with the word "rape." aside from this, he's pretty funny. if you have any book/music suggestions, please, by all means, suggest away! until next time.
this is a blog that i am using to help get me through the summer. what i mean by this is that i'm living at my family home for the first time in five years, basically in the middle of nowhere, at least 2 and a half hours from most (not all) of my friends (but even the ones that are close are 30 minutes away). life is currently weird and somewhat lonely, and i need a place to write about things i'm interested in, write about things that i observe, write about anything, since i'm relatively alone and far from my friends. also, i can't work, because i'm getting a kidney transplant at the end of june, and plasmapheresis before and after the transplant. it's not something that most people can relate to/want to talk about as much as i do, understandably, so i figure this is the best place i can vent about it and whatnot.
i hope to make the best of the summer despite these things. i hope to do this by having a piano in my room, and by having at least one of the four available cats on or near the piano at most times. i'm getting the piano from craigslist. a regular old upright. it's incredible how many people are looking to get rid of perfectly good pianos that just need to be tuned. i also hope to make the best of the summer by having a netflix account, and by listening to music, and by reading new books, and by jumping on the giant trampoline my little brother and his friends have transplanted into the woods behind my house, and by walking through these woods. i'm reading bukowski right now, tales of ordinary madness. i like bukowski a lot, aside from his almost incessant degradation of women and his obsession with the word "rape." aside from this, he's pretty funny. if you have any book/music suggestions, please, by all means, suggest away! until next time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)