so I started writing again.
that's the good news part of the sentence: I'm getting used to typing on a laptop and not feeling my fingers connect with the keyboard. I make the slightest of movements and they appear. I don't know if I like that yet.
bad news: it's all anemic. haven't started lighting a fire under my ass. don't know if I will. it's directionless, storyless trash, and until that fire gets lit, it will stay that way. worse news: I'm not my harshest critic. there are other things wrong about my writing than the way I go about writing it: there's content, style, continuity, common sense, blah blah. (that means more than I care to list and therefore admit.)
and I have work this weekend, and I graduate in a couple days. and camp after that. and even when school starts, I'll have to deal with the "no, you shouldn't be having fun right now, or ever, ever ever ever" mantra, set up like an enormous minefield between poles of northampton, amherst and worcester. maybe I should do something dramatic, like go completely, prematurely bald or major in international languages. wouldn't that be nice? freedom? just coming and going as you please. not "well, you could go, I mean if you really wanted to, and I guess if you could deal with all this subtextual guilt I'm blasting at you right now with my FUCKING EYES."
maybe next year.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Friday, May 16, 2008
chapter three: moneysink
so I worked mother's day weekend making fruit baskets for eight bucks an hour, and I didn't know it then but it was all under the table. getting paid cash is nice. not having to pay taxes on what you make is also nice. under the table is a good place to be right now, especially if you're me.
the trick to making a pineapple daisy: stick the skewer through the core. if you put it anywhere else, like on the tender brighter part of the slice, it will slide down away from the cantaloupe bulb, and who wants that.
I actually applied for that job around valentine's day, and they wouldn't hire me, because I wasn't eighteen. apparently there's an expiration date on being critically unable to take the rinds of honeydews.
saturday I made daisies and took the rinds of cantaloupes and took the green part off the cantaloupe slices after the rinds had been taken off by other workers who did not make their fruit baskets with love, like I did. sunday I wrapped and boxed them and skewered chocolate-covered strawberries on the ones which had been forgotten when we finished short of our goal on saturday. it's hard not to imagine them screaming when the little plastic sticks squish through their skin.
haven't written anything since February, and I wish I had something to blame that on. I imagine my brain turning into a smoker's lung while I'm pretending I'm good at anything else. this image isn't a deterrant. it's just really, really depressing.
the trick to making a pineapple daisy: stick the skewer through the core. if you put it anywhere else, like on the tender brighter part of the slice, it will slide down away from the cantaloupe bulb, and who wants that.
I actually applied for that job around valentine's day, and they wouldn't hire me, because I wasn't eighteen. apparently there's an expiration date on being critically unable to take the rinds of honeydews.
saturday I made daisies and took the rinds of cantaloupes and took the green part off the cantaloupe slices after the rinds had been taken off by other workers who did not make their fruit baskets with love, like I did. sunday I wrapped and boxed them and skewered chocolate-covered strawberries on the ones which had been forgotten when we finished short of our goal on saturday. it's hard not to imagine them screaming when the little plastic sticks squish through their skin.
haven't written anything since February, and I wish I had something to blame that on. I imagine my brain turning into a smoker's lung while I'm pretending I'm good at anything else. this image isn't a deterrant. it's just really, really depressing.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
chapter two: driving while tired
I'd like to ask them how much I've disappointed them, but since I don't know what they'll say, or if they'll tell me it's too much and it gets more painful and sad that I can stand, and since I don't know what I'd do in that case, it's one of those questions you'd like to ask but never, ever will. Or I'll just be riding with them in the car, in the passenger seat, and the notion will hit me, and between the core of my brain where the taste and smell of it began and the place where it leaves and enters the air there'll be a lightning bolt, which will make a sound like "Oh shit, what am I doing." And then I'll have asked them, and who the hell knows what's after that.
Funny story I heard in the last day of Bible History class: We were discussing Ecclesiastes, and it came up. A king gives three of his servants bags of gold.
The first he gives three bags of gold.
The second, he gives two.
The third gets only one. He tells each that in a year, he will return.
The first servant invests his money in a vineyard. Three bags of gold is enough to buy a sizeable plot of land on which to raise his harvest, and the servant is wise enough to pick fertile land, with rich, muddy, brown-black soil all throughout. Words spreads about his business, bringing wealthy, thirsty customers from across the king's lands. After only one harvest, his invesment has more than paid off. He now has six bags of gold.
The second one, while not having enough for so rich and garish a business as wine, can now afford to fulfill an old dream of his. He buys a fishing boat. At first it's slow; he doesn't know the sea well enough to really dig in, but he makes enough to survive. After a few months, though, luck or God directs him to waters writhing with tuna. He hauls up as many as he can and sells them, and uses that money to buy another boat and hire another crew, and uses that boat and that crew to sail with him to the herd of providential tuna, and after a few days' work there are no tuna left, and he has four bags of gold.
The third one doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to do. He sees the others have all paid off. He sees the drunks the first servant has created. He sees the men put out of work by the second servant's overfishing. He sees the riches they've gathered, and wonders if his king will truly be made proud by all that stupid shit. So he buries the bag of gold he's got and tries to forget it's even there. Even tries forgetting it's anywhere else, too, but that's a bit harder.
Anyways, the year ends, and the king returns and summons the three of them. The third servant is overjoyed. He's been living with this dead weight buried underneath his house like a severed head for most of a year. He unearths it and carries it to the king's court. The other two are there with their ten combined bags of gold and their stories of profit and adventure.
The time comes for the third servant to explain, and he says: "I didn't do anything with my gold. I just buried it."
The king says, "Oh."
"I thought you might want it back."
"No," says the king. "I just wanted to see what you'd do with it while I was away."
Feeling a bit sad, but not unusually, the third servant leaves before the evening has properly ended. He goes back to his house and finds the hole where he'd stored the money. He thinks about how, earlier in the day, he'd been expecting to fill it back in with dirt, and he chuckles at the thought that he still is, but just using dirt of a different kind and color. He lives there, with it under him like a curse, for the rest of his life.
Funny story I heard in the last day of Bible History class: We were discussing Ecclesiastes, and it came up. A king gives three of his servants bags of gold.
The first he gives three bags of gold.
The second, he gives two.
The third gets only one. He tells each that in a year, he will return.
The first servant invests his money in a vineyard. Three bags of gold is enough to buy a sizeable plot of land on which to raise his harvest, and the servant is wise enough to pick fertile land, with rich, muddy, brown-black soil all throughout. Words spreads about his business, bringing wealthy, thirsty customers from across the king's lands. After only one harvest, his invesment has more than paid off. He now has six bags of gold.
The second one, while not having enough for so rich and garish a business as wine, can now afford to fulfill an old dream of his. He buys a fishing boat. At first it's slow; he doesn't know the sea well enough to really dig in, but he makes enough to survive. After a few months, though, luck or God directs him to waters writhing with tuna. He hauls up as many as he can and sells them, and uses that money to buy another boat and hire another crew, and uses that boat and that crew to sail with him to the herd of providential tuna, and after a few days' work there are no tuna left, and he has four bags of gold.
The third one doesn't know what the hell he's supposed to do. He sees the others have all paid off. He sees the drunks the first servant has created. He sees the men put out of work by the second servant's overfishing. He sees the riches they've gathered, and wonders if his king will truly be made proud by all that stupid shit. So he buries the bag of gold he's got and tries to forget it's even there. Even tries forgetting it's anywhere else, too, but that's a bit harder.
Anyways, the year ends, and the king returns and summons the three of them. The third servant is overjoyed. He's been living with this dead weight buried underneath his house like a severed head for most of a year. He unearths it and carries it to the king's court. The other two are there with their ten combined bags of gold and their stories of profit and adventure.
The time comes for the third servant to explain, and he says: "I didn't do anything with my gold. I just buried it."
The king says, "Oh."
"I thought you might want it back."
"No," says the king. "I just wanted to see what you'd do with it while I was away."
Feeling a bit sad, but not unusually, the third servant leaves before the evening has properly ended. He goes back to his house and finds the hole where he'd stored the money. He thinks about how, earlier in the day, he'd been expecting to fill it back in with dirt, and he chuckles at the thought that he still is, but just using dirt of a different kind and color. He lives there, with it under him like a curse, for the rest of his life.
Monday, May 5, 2008
chapter one: the knot can be as intricate and complex as you please.
step 1: go to Filene's. don't look anybody in the eye. instead look at the patches of skin above their cheekbones. listen to the tone of their voices. are they talking about the clothes? how absurd is that? don't think about it.
step 2: find the men's belts. they look like snake skins, and some of them are, hanging on fang-buckles, trophies somebody brought back from the Great Snake War. compare price to length and buy the best you find. it is imperative that the one you buy costs less than a cheeseburger, or burrito, or wrap at Taco Bell.
step 3: as you walk out to your car, worry that it will come alive as you drive back home with it in the back seat. double back and buy some Coke from a vending machine- potent antivenom. when you get back to your car, wrap the plastic bag tight around it, so if it does come alive, it won't have much air to breathe. this will be your only defense.
step 4: drive slowly. a hair out of place could spell disaster. hold it in both hands as you bring it from your parked car to your home. don't fumble with your keys when you unlock the door. even sleeping, it can taste your fear.
step 5: take it to your refridgerator. open your refridgerator. put it in. the cold will make it less violent if it wakes up, and if it gets the notion that you're trying to placate it by offering it the contents of your refridgerator as a gift (which you are) it might also be less violent. close the door gently.
step 6: gather your materials. you will need a piece of sandpaper, a sharp knife or pair of scissors (scissors work better, but a knife would be more appropriate), a shoelace (black or brown, to match the leather), a razor blade, a screw and a cigarette lighter.
step 7: open your refridgerator. if you are not dead yet, take out the belt and sever the buckle with whatever tool is closest at hand. don't worry about neatness. a rough cut can be tidied up. there's enough belt left for you to worry more about your life. put the head back in the bag- they have been known to convulse and kill before the outrage fades. breathe deeply. collect yourself.
step 8: measure the width of your right wrist. cut that much off one end of the belt. what you've cut off will become your xenith wrist thing.
step 9: take the screw. half an inch away from one end, dig out one hole, and then another one half an inch away from the one you just dug out. on the other end of the xenith wrist thing, dig out a third hole half an inch away from the edge. you now have holes to put the shoelace through.
step 10: sand the xenith wrist thing. not so much that the lacquer's all gone from the proud monster it once was, but enough to make sure it's really dead. take your cigarette lighter and darken what you've sanded a bit. this is for your protection.
step 11: with the razor blade, cut an X into the part of the xenith wrist thing that will face you when you wear it. then take the cigarette lighter and hold the flame to the X you just cut until the edges begin to pull back, revealing a nifty brand. sand down the edges of the xenith wrist thing, and the side that will touch your skin when you wear it. this is for your comfort.
step 12: tie it to your wrist. the knot can be as intricate and complex as you please. burn the frayed parts with the cigarette lighter and press them into each other until it's just a mass of melted plastic-thread. understand that you're lucky to have survived. try to make that mean more than what it does as of completing your xenith wrist thing.
step 2: find the men's belts. they look like snake skins, and some of them are, hanging on fang-buckles, trophies somebody brought back from the Great Snake War. compare price to length and buy the best you find. it is imperative that the one you buy costs less than a cheeseburger, or burrito, or wrap at Taco Bell.
step 3: as you walk out to your car, worry that it will come alive as you drive back home with it in the back seat. double back and buy some Coke from a vending machine- potent antivenom. when you get back to your car, wrap the plastic bag tight around it, so if it does come alive, it won't have much air to breathe. this will be your only defense.
step 4: drive slowly. a hair out of place could spell disaster. hold it in both hands as you bring it from your parked car to your home. don't fumble with your keys when you unlock the door. even sleeping, it can taste your fear.
step 5: take it to your refridgerator. open your refridgerator. put it in. the cold will make it less violent if it wakes up, and if it gets the notion that you're trying to placate it by offering it the contents of your refridgerator as a gift (which you are) it might also be less violent. close the door gently.
step 6: gather your materials. you will need a piece of sandpaper, a sharp knife or pair of scissors (scissors work better, but a knife would be more appropriate), a shoelace (black or brown, to match the leather), a razor blade, a screw and a cigarette lighter.
step 7: open your refridgerator. if you are not dead yet, take out the belt and sever the buckle with whatever tool is closest at hand. don't worry about neatness. a rough cut can be tidied up. there's enough belt left for you to worry more about your life. put the head back in the bag- they have been known to convulse and kill before the outrage fades. breathe deeply. collect yourself.
step 8: measure the width of your right wrist. cut that much off one end of the belt. what you've cut off will become your xenith wrist thing.
step 9: take the screw. half an inch away from one end, dig out one hole, and then another one half an inch away from the one you just dug out. on the other end of the xenith wrist thing, dig out a third hole half an inch away from the edge. you now have holes to put the shoelace through.
step 10: sand the xenith wrist thing. not so much that the lacquer's all gone from the proud monster it once was, but enough to make sure it's really dead. take your cigarette lighter and darken what you've sanded a bit. this is for your protection.
step 11: with the razor blade, cut an X into the part of the xenith wrist thing that will face you when you wear it. then take the cigarette lighter and hold the flame to the X you just cut until the edges begin to pull back, revealing a nifty brand. sand down the edges of the xenith wrist thing, and the side that will touch your skin when you wear it. this is for your comfort.
step 12: tie it to your wrist. the knot can be as intricate and complex as you please. burn the frayed parts with the cigarette lighter and press them into each other until it's just a mass of melted plastic-thread. understand that you're lucky to have survived. try to make that mean more than what it does as of completing your xenith wrist thing.
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