Birds

Don't you ever wish we were birds? I'm sick of words. lately language is narrowing me, and mildewing me, into one of those obtuse people in pea pods, running in figure eights.

Red Wine

There are some very exquisite moments that I think I could write books about. I read my mother's journal once and it compared her relationship to red wine, something of pungency and culinary eloquence, a sharpness on the tongue but a sweetness in the throat. I remember the man she compared it to, tall handsome and highbrow, and I remember the wine, a vintage merlot. I would compare you to the lipstick stains on glasses and the fingerprints on stems, that often take several washes to remove. I would compare you to the stinging feeling of red wine on chapped lips, or the bitter bit on the back on the tongue before I swallow it. You're the cabernet sauviognon I bought for six dollars and drank for two weeks. Anyway, there are some exquisite moments I think I could write books about. I could write about his body in my bed, hell I have, I could write about one night like it was forty, forty days and nights of him with his neck against my mattress and our bodies coiled together like rattlesnakes, or wires. I remember every second so poignantly, the quiet darkness, the buzz between our ankles and his toes crawling through the sheets toward me. I could write a novel about the sound of crickets and his breath on me, walls and scalps and plaid blankets and cold sheets and bellies and backs.

Maps

I am rarely honest or blunt. I'm so accustomed to hiding in vague metaphors that sometimes I feel like I lose what I mean to say. Sometimes I am so fascinated by what other people are doing that I forget what I do myself. Lately I am fascinated by this woman & her daughter who quit their lives in Baltimore, sold their furniture, drove to California, and have been living in hostels. I've stayed up until 4am reading their blogs. It's nothing too unique I guess but it fascinates me and lately it's made me feel like traveling is the absolute most important thing I could be doing. Sometimes I think that the experiences I've had in other places are ten times more valuable than anything else I've done. But then I sit in Colorado in a baby blue Camry smoking a cigarette out the window on I-25 feeling like it is the most exquisite experience of my entire life. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever relate to anyone the way I relate to her or experience anything more worthwhile than the conversations I've had on porches or sucking on clamshells in her kitchen.

I have been to sixty-one Jack's Mannequin shows and 37 states. Sometimes I wish I've blogged about it, every detail and every moment in photograph and framed, every conversation documented, every interstate tracked. I sit in class and go through these dissociative spells where my entire life seems written out and ridiculous. Sometimes I see no value in doing anything else, these hours in these desks cracking my back. Like that weekend when we were driving back from Louisiana, the sun was setting over the Mississippi and I felt like all the plans I had were fencing me into a narrative. I remember the feeling that their 6 square foot slab of concrete was the only place I'd ever want to be again, that somehow the french toast and the cigarettes we shared in April meant more to me than any semblance of "life" I had elsewhere. But then I wonder if I ever found something worth settling for, or if this is all a desperate case of wanderlust. Lust, indefinitely, is the driving force of my life so far. Lust and spontaneity. I don't know if I'll ever know what it's worth but it's been an amazing thing so far. Sometimes I wonder if I'm faking something, when I think about how much it meant to us to swim at Ventura Beach, filling bottles with sand and experiencing everything for the first time, dipping our toes into the pacific and eating clam chowder out of bread bowls in chinatown, worried that somehow the newness will fade. But maybe we were just children, maybe the first time is always the best time, maybe the pictures and the alcohol are just more mediums of the experience.

Sometimes I worry myself sick that I spend so much time elsewhere that I am losing something at home. I'm worried that the time I spend away takes away from the time I spend with the people who stay. I fight constantly with myself over which I'd rather focus on. The trips end and I grow tired of watching people leave. I am always leaving and always watching people leave, their planes lift and their cars turn corners, upwind from jet engines and staring into red lights. Why can't we be the kind of people who stay? Sometimes I wonder whether staying somewhere requires a stronger spine, whether seeing the same people every day is such an inconvenience. But then I think about the nights I spent in Colorado watching the walls cave in on me, and the time I spent in a town that pushed up against the mountains until it all almost toppled on top of itself, and how claustrophobic it became, and how good it feels to scream off of rocks in Kansas, and sit on levees and hills. And I can't help but fascinate myself with this girl writing in the common room of a hostel, talking about the morning stroll she took through Montreal. Maybe wanderlust isn't such a bad thing. Maybe we're not all so fit for the narrative prescribed to us. I know that at the very least I have incredible stories to tell, and I'm tired of apologizing for them.

Apathy

I took the bus two stops too far so I had three extra blocks to think. The wind isn't bothering me. I can't stop listening to this song, it's not poignant, maybe it's just relevant. Maybe it's the way he sings it, be here now. Maybe I just wish I could be everywhere. I feel kind of smacked across the ass. Flipped upside down or whatever. Some kind of cliche no doubt. Some kind of hackneyed slap. When I was 19 I tried to save a dog in the highway, I pulled my car into the median and I was chasing it across the lanes, on my knees in the grass, and I spent an hour trying to get it to come to me, find its collar and call someone, tell them their dog was missing. And people were honking, and the dog was barking at me, showing its teeth and snarling at me, and my mom told me Katy, you can't save the world. You are not a superhero, you need to let the dog go, it'll find its way home, and if it's dead in the road, you're not the one who killed it. This Irish man told me today that people always forget to put humor in their writing, that he sees these kids laughing with each other, and then when they sit down to write they talk like they are men in their forties grieving their youth. And when I write about ghosts, I never think that maybe they'll make good company one day, a few holes in my cushions, and thumbprints on my walls.

ghosts

is it just me or is this house getting heavy with history?

in every corner there's a ghost that's whispering to me

there's a ghost in the bedroom crying in the sheets

and all of the skeletons in my closet are grinning through their teeth

i get the feeling i've been feeding fish that don't eat

wrapping nets in empty water and watching them sink

and there are ghosts of my past and my innocence

i don't sleep well to the sound of them tapping their fists

so i stay up to count all the names on my list

and it takes me the night to get through what i miss

and lately my body is sore, from pushing lines and rocky shores,

and wedging my fingers into so many doors

but i want more, i want more, i want more,

so i keep tiptoeing these tightropes in rooms without floors.

Today for a moment I thought about Karl Marx and commodity fetishism. I am caught in the center of a circle with a ten foot radius. A fly in a spiderweb. Please do not cross the barricade, remain on the other side of the tape. We reserve the right to remove patrons from the property. Autonomy is incredibly important to me. Flaws are so forceful. Today I'm not sure I know anything. I don't care to hear anyone's beige beliefs. Your mundanity is boring me. I'm tired of punctuation. Admission is so futile. Coats with fur trimmed sleeves. I'm so often the opposite of what I preach. I'm tired of words, they're never enough. I'm sick of devices. Was Marx right two hundred years ago when he said that commodities separate man from man? Was he talking about steam engines? It's sad to think we've lived out his prophecy. Cities with 2nd floor restaurants. Maybe I'm closer than I think but I feel so far and disconnected. So tense when I'm touched. Today I heard the prettiest song in the subway. Perfect pitch. I have bricks in the small of my back. People don't carry hammers anymore. Snow covering the names on tomb stones. Dirt roads in graveyards. There's one ghost that's truly gone now, making my way down the list.