holy hands.

we left at 10:30 saturday night
for a day at The Harbor Howse in california,
listening to love jams & andrew wk,
stopping at a gas station so that i could draw a self-portrait in the bathroom.
before midnight we were on the side of the highway giving our licenses to cops
who refused to give them back.
taught ryan how to drive stick as we flipped them off.
need to learn how to ride the bus.
in california we got frozen yogurt & had sex & fell in love.
i'm very busy these days.

been spray painting any/every thing.
drawing pictures with secrets in them.
drinking white wine & talking shit.
being helpful.
making pizzas & watching music.
working.





i love your life.

from the top of the ocean.

moved a filthy orange couch into the living room.

started painting the oak table & chair set for the breakfast nook.

continuing daily self-portrait project.

paid a bill or two.

ate a garden burger with jalapenos on top.

wrote a letter.

parked the wrong direction on a residential street.

counted to twelve about a thousand times.

not necessarily in that order.

scabs, bruises.

why don't i feel the same drive to shower as every other human?
i just hate making time for it.
even if i'm filthy & there's really nothing else i need to be doing.
i prefer to swim. chlorine is the soap that matters.
swimming is really important to me. not in an exercise-y way, obviously,
since all i really do is float around & do handstands & stuff.
you hear about crippled kids feeling "free" or "normal" or something when they're in a pool.
i feel the same way. maybe i'm a crippled kid. or a mermaid.

having t-sauce work at acme is working out nicely.

i had a revelation about the nature of my relationships,
involving my need to be loved & filling that need through several negative behaviors that ultimately end in my being their mothers.
which is bad.
i'm working on it, aiight?

i think the point is,
i'm a stinky crippled needy kid.

celebrity pop culture is meaningless to me.

i'm a stinky crippled needy boy kid.

saying "ugh my room is such a mess!" every time i go into it does not make it cleaner
or unpacked or more organized,
but i do it anyway.

spent the weekend taking pretty drives with t-love to tourist trap ghost town & tucson
taking pictures with Nancy the Nikon F
pictures i'll never get developed because
well
i'm broke & very lazy these days.
drank a glass of whiskey in a western re-enactment saloon,
tristan had a splash kind of on accident, hush hush.
bought jason some birthday presents at the value village thrift store in tucson,
ate a grilled cheese with avocado
& swam in a nice stranger's pool.
it was a pleasant & beautiful weekend,
the kind that probably would've made bukowski less of an ornery butthole.
there is such a thing as good love.

there are so many things i want to do.

i love the way my hands & hair smell like you
after you've spent the night
& i've left you in my bed
while i go to work.
it's always too early for lovers to leave lovers
so we stick our scents to each other & call it perfume,
reaching for the spaces in the sheets where lover last slept.

trumpet fingers.

so i figured out why i'll never make it as a musician
[besides the whole tone-deaf thing
or complete lack of rhythm
or the drastic inclination towards only happy jaunty tunes].
it's because my hands can't (or at least won't) do two different things at once,
like, say, play three keys with the left while the right diddles away at single notes,
or switch chords while strumming or picking.
this is why i can play the trumpet or the harmonica
or anything where only one hand does the work while my mouth makes the noise
but i can't play the piano or the gitfiddle
or anything where both hands are required to work together to make noise that makes sense.
& when it came time to play the trumpet & walk at the same time,
i dropped out of band.
my appendages are only children who refuse to cooperate with each other.
huh.

today i showed up to work at 5 am
so that jeff & i could get some work done before co-worker dysfunction distraction arrived.
jeff didn't show up until 7:15
so i slept on the couch
on the clock, of course.
went to lunch with my mother who still loves me.
came home to an empty house & half a bottle of cold white wine,
played the keyboard for a little bit,
had the aforementioned revelation,
then updated my blog about it.

prom 2003

i went to the senior prom my junior year with a boy named ryan kmiecik.
i borrowed a dress from lynn dillon, who i hated then
& still hate now
because she lied about getting pregnant by doug adams
who was my boyfriend at one point &
he was also in the coast guard.

the prom was nice though.
they showed a powerpoint presentation of photos of people i wasn't close with
but i felt the nostalgia thick in the air & so i sighed to fit in.
i remember they played "bombs over baghdad" & i didn't feel like dancing.
there was a war going on, after all.

i don't remember what we did after the prom.
i probably smoked cigarettes in a parked car for a few hours
listening to the rentals with russell or something
because that's what we always did on saturday nights.

i'm sick, you're tired.

there is this weight on my shoulders
& it is crowding into my heart.
i'm not sure what it's made of but it's making waking up very hard.

returned from back east last sunday,
stayed for a week until courtney got married.
cut off all ties with crazy russell,
made stronger ones with good russell.

i missed the rainstorm here, in arizona.

new house still needs some love & furniture.
lukewarm showers, dusty floors.
(motivation motivation motivation motivation.)

financial difficulties will pass,
or stop mattering at a certain point.
it's funny how easily i forgot poverty,
baltimore, then denver.
empty pockets full of stubborn love,
holes in our shoes. we stumbled smiling towards a quiet destruction.

covered in bug bites with a hacking cough
a 22 of shitty beer & half a pack of smokes.
love me, love me, love me!

we all used to be so skinny,
full of speed & starving.

old photos plastered to the internet
we advertise who we were 3 years ago.

we would laugh while the world turned to shit.
prescription amphetamines, the reason bush stayed in office so long.
self-absorbed while our selfs eroded.

now we have meat stuck to our bones
& we struggle & fail
but at least it's honest.