Sunday, February 13, 2011
Saturday, January 29, 2011
I wish that you were here with me to pass the dull weekend
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/9HiOtb/www.opacity.us/
so cool
so cool
Sunday, January 23, 2011
You've gone away enough when will you decide to stay
The semester has barely started and I'm planning my escape already. Although I don't yet know what it will entail, a summer of travel, visiting friends in Nairobi, grad school in another country, Thailand, Vietnam, a series of places I've never been? I am unsure, the plans don't need to be made yet, not exactly, but I want to find more places to explore. I want to move South, or East, or to warmth. I want an endless amount of time to explore in and no where I need to be.
Friday, January 21, 2011
That single word it landlocked me, Turned the masts to cedar trees, and the wind to gravel roads
Megan Falley | The Honest House
THE HONEST HOUSE
In an effort not to crawl back to you, I crossed the 2 train off my subway map in blue ink, called it a river, sold my canoe.
Swept the soot from the chimney into a vase, scattered it all over Manhattan. Husband, I pretended it was your ash.
Spoke your name in past tense and still, when we found ourselves in the same bar, phoned a mystic. Told her I was seeing ghosts.
When you confessed your mistress, her red hair, her scars, how you learned them from up-close, from inside out, you were no longer the man I married but a dead deer in the center of our swimming pool.
Our dog has always considered you a burglar. Knew to spit, bark, bite before I did. Once while you were sleeping, I stitched her electric fence through your skin. I wear her shock collar on nights I go out drinking, on days I can’t find a reason to stay away even though you have left so many behind.
I’ve watched you with other women. The way you hand fruit to supermarket clerks, how your eyebrows lift at anyone with fake nails. Your favorite party story is how you once,publicly, pleasured a girl with your band mate’s drumstick. It’s no wonder we don’t love the same music.
On our first date, I bought a dress off a woman in Brooklyn so I could stay with you one more day. Last week I threw your clothes from our roof knowing they would have fallen faster had there been a body in them.
When I found a picture of your ex-lovers tits, used as a bookmark, I began opening every novel upside down like a teenager shaking birthday cards waiting for cash to fall out. This explains my love for fiction. We were never married. The dog is not ours.
While washing the dishes I watch from the window as the children we never had drown in the piss-filled pool. I’ve never tried to save them. I invented that pool, this sink.
Did you know that the metronome inside us quickens when telling a lie? I want to build an honest house, where the motion detector is so sharp it knows when my thoughts leave the room. Where the clap-on lamp works as a polygraph. When you swear you still love me, the lights flicker.
THE HONEST HOUSE
In an effort not to crawl back to you, I crossed the 2 train off my subway map in blue ink, called it a river, sold my canoe.
Swept the soot from the chimney into a vase, scattered it all over Manhattan. Husband, I pretended it was your ash.
Spoke your name in past tense and still, when we found ourselves in the same bar, phoned a mystic. Told her I was seeing ghosts.
When you confessed your mistress, her red hair, her scars, how you learned them from up-close, from inside out, you were no longer the man I married but a dead deer in the center of our swimming pool.
Our dog has always considered you a burglar. Knew to spit, bark, bite before I did. Once while you were sleeping, I stitched her electric fence through your skin. I wear her shock collar on nights I go out drinking, on days I can’t find a reason to stay away even though you have left so many behind.
I’ve watched you with other women. The way you hand fruit to supermarket clerks, how your eyebrows lift at anyone with fake nails. Your favorite party story is how you once,publicly, pleasured a girl with your band mate’s drumstick. It’s no wonder we don’t love the same music.
On our first date, I bought a dress off a woman in Brooklyn so I could stay with you one more day. Last week I threw your clothes from our roof knowing they would have fallen faster had there been a body in them.
When I found a picture of your ex-lovers tits, used as a bookmark, I began opening every novel upside down like a teenager shaking birthday cards waiting for cash to fall out. This explains my love for fiction. We were never married. The dog is not ours.
While washing the dishes I watch from the window as the children we never had drown in the piss-filled pool. I’ve never tried to save them. I invented that pool, this sink.
Did you know that the metronome inside us quickens when telling a lie? I want to build an honest house, where the motion detector is so sharp it knows when my thoughts leave the room. Where the clap-on lamp works as a polygraph. When you swear you still love me, the lights flicker.
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Paint tomorrow blue
Ginsberg // Julia Vinograd
No blame. Anyone who wrote Howl and Kaddish
earned the right to make any possible mistake
for the rest of his life.
I just wish I hadn’t made this mistake with him.
It was during the Vietnam war
and he was giving a great protest reading
in Washington Square Park
and nobody wanted to leave.
So Ginsberg got the idea, “I’m going to shout
“the war is over” as loud as I can,” he said
“and all of you run over the city
in different directions
yelling the war is over, shout it in offices,
shops, everywhere and when enough people
believe the war is over
why, not even the politicians
will be able to keep it going.”
I thought it was a great idea at the time
a truly poetic idea.
So when Ginsberg yelled I ran down the street
and leaned in the doorway
of the sort of respectable down on its luck cafeteria
where librarians and minor clerks have lunch
and I yelled “the war is over.”
And a little old lady looked up
from her cottage cheese and fruit salad.
She was so ordinary she would have been invisible
except for the terrible light
filling her face as she whispered
“My son. My son is coming home.”
I got myself out of there and was sick in some bushes.
That was the first time I believed there was a war.
No blame. Anyone who wrote Howl and Kaddish
earned the right to make any possible mistake
for the rest of his life.
I just wish I hadn’t made this mistake with him.
It was during the Vietnam war
and he was giving a great protest reading
in Washington Square Park
and nobody wanted to leave.
So Ginsberg got the idea, “I’m going to shout
“the war is over” as loud as I can,” he said
“and all of you run over the city
in different directions
yelling the war is over, shout it in offices,
shops, everywhere and when enough people
believe the war is over
why, not even the politicians
will be able to keep it going.”
I thought it was a great idea at the time
a truly poetic idea.
So when Ginsberg yelled I ran down the street
and leaned in the doorway
of the sort of respectable down on its luck cafeteria
where librarians and minor clerks have lunch
and I yelled “the war is over.”
And a little old lady looked up
from her cottage cheese and fruit salad.
She was so ordinary she would have been invisible
except for the terrible light
filling her face as she whispered
“My son. My son is coming home.”
I got myself out of there and was sick in some bushes.
That was the first time I believed there was a war.
Friday, November 26, 2010
Silver white winters that melt into spring
I am thankful for all sorts of things this year, again, and it is worth mentioning them at least to myself.
I am thankful for friends and family, even when they are exhausting, or frustrating or far away. I am thankful for an empty apartment to my self this weekend, for getting shit done, for bad television to get me through it all. For the air when it's cold and crisp and fall and just finished raining. For travel, the option of travel, the ability to travel, the constant desire to find new.
For sleep, for comfortable beds, for walking in the snow, for puppies and fire's and friends who cook and drink with me and make me laugh. For bad movies good music and the opportunity to go home for the holidays. For still having somewhere to go home to for the holidays.
There are plenty of things to be thankful for, a certain level of exhaustion reached by the end of everyday, approximately six months til I walk away with a degree and no ideas what to do with it. Or, approximately six months until I have no commitments and can do whatever I like...
I am thankful for friends and family, even when they are exhausting, or frustrating or far away. I am thankful for an empty apartment to my self this weekend, for getting shit done, for bad television to get me through it all. For the air when it's cold and crisp and fall and just finished raining. For travel, the option of travel, the ability to travel, the constant desire to find new.
For sleep, for comfortable beds, for walking in the snow, for puppies and fire's and friends who cook and drink with me and make me laugh. For bad movies good music and the opportunity to go home for the holidays. For still having somewhere to go home to for the holidays.
There are plenty of things to be thankful for, a certain level of exhaustion reached by the end of everyday, approximately six months til I walk away with a degree and no ideas what to do with it. Or, approximately six months until I have no commitments and can do whatever I like...
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
"There's another new world at the top of the world for whoever can break through the ice"
Fall is here. Cold and fresh and lovely. It's still sunny, which makes fall even better. And tomorrow I am going on a quest to get fleece lined leggings, which makes me oddly ecstatic, which is fun. And elections make me nervous, in a way that I want to curl up and close my eyes and hope that when I wake up in the morning that everything will be okay.
And this weekend is New York City, and it's been years. And next weekend is Montreal, and I've never even been to Canada. And then pre-thanksgiving thanksgiving, possibly with Todd, which would make me happier than is possible.
And I am suddenly panicking about my MA paper, but unable to do anything about it. Or maybe just not settled into enough to do it. But tomorrow, I need to spend all of my day that isn't spent getting fleece lined leggings or at the gym working on papers. And then New York, and Montreal :)
And this weekend is New York City, and it's been years. And next weekend is Montreal, and I've never even been to Canada. And then pre-thanksgiving thanksgiving, possibly with Todd, which would make me happier than is possible.
And I am suddenly panicking about my MA paper, but unable to do anything about it. Or maybe just not settled into enough to do it. But tomorrow, I need to spend all of my day that isn't spent getting fleece lined leggings or at the gym working on papers. And then New York, and Montreal :)
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