exit

when i was young and i wanted to make myself cry i would think about my grandpa dying. not just any grandparent, Poppy. it was always him. not my parents, probably because i was so young i probably hadn't yet realized that my parents were going to die.

when Poppy died dane was flying over northern california. he was over lake shasta and the siskyous with all that beautiful blue water and those green trees.

when Poppy died i was sitting on my bed, petting my new kitten, reading encyclopedia of an ordinary life, waiting for paterson to come over.

when Poppy died my dad was sitting next to him. "he went peacefully." that is what he told me on the phone. he called me ten minutes after it happened. when i hung up i felt the world continueing to move; it kept rotating. the girl outside was laughing, the gate of my apartment creaked open, i still had laundry in the dryer.

when i was visiting Poppy earlier in the week i laid across his bed and grabbed his hand. i was happy that he squeezed back. i was tired. so was he. and i closed my eyes and held his hand. his skin hung off his bones. his eyes were nearly crusted shut. when he breathed a whistle came from his mouth. a hospice social worker showed up and filled the room with artifical sweetness. she was equal or splenda in our black coffee. she repeated everything my grandma said in a whisper and used the word blessing a lot. "what a blessing," she whispered. she refered to Poppy as my grandma's, "handsome guy," in a whisper.

while dane and i drove down to mcminnville we listened to patsy kline. the sky was turning purple. and all the lights on the highway--the fred meyer's sign, the gas station lights--were perfect. so often that drive can feel like wading though mud, so slow, but it felt like a comfortable floating, like we were being pulled to mcminnville by a tractor beam.

once we got there we met my family at the brew pub. they were eating and drinking and my grandma had cried all her make up off and told me that it was so great that i got to sit with Poppy on monday. i agreed and hugged her tighter and kissed her head. i loved kissing Poppy's head. i loved the smell of his forehead. i would kiss, smell, and then say i love you Poppy.

legit

yesterday i bought a swim cap. it was like my final step: i am a real swimmer now. it is red and says barricuda on the side. it matched my goggles (which are also really nice). i swam at the y yesterday and there was a coaching session going on. the coach taught me how to do butterfly. i am excited to go to the pool today and work on it. i feel like it's been a while since i've worked on getting physically better at something. i suppose i do in yoga but the changes are so slight that it's hard to feel like they count.

speaking of physical challenges, i am planning on taking dance class tonight. i plan on sweating a lot and not feeling very good about myself.

my brother is coming to visit this weekend because my grandpa is dying.

is this for real?

so i got a job. i'm am goign to be working with my father. my dad isn't a doctor or a lawyer or a college professor. his job isn't cushy. he owns his own business, sealing asphalt. from what i gather i will be walking A LOT smearing tar on people's driveways. the pay is really good and i can just do it a couple days a week so i still have my free time to waste my life away. i am nervous about it. it sounds hard, and hot, and sweaty. but i've never shyed about from physical labor. i like it. it feels honest.

yesterday i did this workshop at the festival here in portland called wordstock. the class was about writing sex scenes. there were 11 of us, all women. i think i was the youngest. we had to write a really "bad" sex scene. i wasn't very good at it. i mean i can write badly all i want, but i was shy about using words like, cock and meatstick and tits and sperm dumpster. i didn't share mine, but some of the other ladies did. it is weird to hear an older lady with a shaky voice talk about huge dicks and ass fucking. so we had to write a "real" paragraph about sudden and first attraction. this was my shot:

i had never really noticed his hips before. They were narrow and flat and i became obsessed with the way his pants hugged them, the placement of his belt, the slight curve from his back to his ass. I couldn't stop looking. I didn't want to take his pants off or press my hips against his. I just wanted to reach out and put my hands around them and squeeze--like i could pop them, crush them, run my fingers through them, make they stop existing so that i could stop thinking about them.

pretty hot and heavy right?

help wanted

i am an extremely indecisive person. i woke up this morning at 915, and i thought, oh good, i can get ready and go to dance class. so i wash my face, get dressed, put on make up, then i start to doubt how much i want to go. i start thinking about how long it's been since i've been, and how i've been sick, and how billy might call me later and want to get a burrito, and how i dont' want to answer any questions about how my life is going (does this usually mean you don't like how your life is going?). so i pace through my apartment, purse on arm, water bottle filled, ready to leave. then i sit on the couch and think about how i will feel guilty if i don't go. and i think--how guilty really? will the guilty feel worse or the dance class itself? i ended up eating yogurt, bananas, and granola watching arsnic and old lace wishing cary grant were still alive and young and charming so he could be my boyfriend. the guilt wasn't so bad.

i did get that burrito with billy.

then this afternoon. i do the same thing with yoga. i get ready to go. i think about how i'm sick, but think it will be good, sweat it out, you know. so i get in my car and i drive and i'm almost there, and i miss my exit, and then it's all blown to bits. do i really want to go? it's not even that i'll be late now it's just do i really want to go? i could go home and read and drink a beer. so i light up a cigarette and turn up mates of state and drive home with my windows down wondering what it wrong with me. i think of calling someone who knows me and asking them if i need to see a therapist. but i don't call. i don't want any outsiders' opinions.

i think the job situation is the same way. i go back and forth between thinking about how badly i want a job to thinking that i never want a job. that having a job will suck. at this point it is something i can hardly wrap my head around. a job. i was at this group interview and the whole time i was fixated on my interviewer. is he really happy? how does he sleep at night? this is his life, is that how he wanted it? what does he do for fun? how does he talk about his job to other people?

there was a manager i used to work with at the movie theater. her work keys were on this plain, plastic key chain but she had taped this note on it that said, "i am not my job." with a job like, manager of movie theater, i think it is easy to believe this. but when you have a real job, a job where you actually have to work: you are your job. but not very deep down i know that isn't true either. i think of my friends and their various and disparate jobs, they aren't their jobs. they are my friends. but when my parents ask about them, oh how is he doing? where is he working? they assign some meaning to their jobs. when really jobs are meaningless. they are money.

maybe too many things are losing meaning to me. or maybe i just need to stop taking myself so god damn serious.

for real.

hermit crabs

tonight, while at qfc, purchasing laundry detergent and getting quarters the checker actually asked me, "doin' laundry?" i guess this isn't so bad, but i am surly today, and hungover and the world seems so ridiculous and slow, and maybe a little sad. i think it is like this everyday and i just don't notice, but today, with my haze i see it clearly.

i got internet in my apartment today (barely, thanks bhc). i would say that it is the last piece of the puzzle, that my home is now complete but i still feel like there is something missing. i think there is something false about it. i've put together a great apartment, and i love it, and i spent lots of money doing it, but when will it stop feeling like a weak shell? like hermit crabs live in those shells and they carry their houses on their back and those shells are strong. this doesn't feel strong yet.

hermit crabs reminds me of this story i once wrote about a girl who wanted to live inside a sea shell and on the last line of first paragraph my professor wrote, "maybe too clever." but i wasn't even trying to be clever. i hadn't realized i was. does that make me even more clever, or just lucky?

last night i brushed my hair with a fork. this morning my eyes are tired and my hands smell like cigarettes.

while walking to the coffee shop for some reason i started to think about my grandma (this is how these things come on, no warning, no time to prepare). i started to get really upset that she was so young when she died, 71, and that all my other grandparents are now past 80. and i start to ask the silly question i always ask, why her? she was the youngest. then i think about how strange it is that i still think about it and miss her, that i am still healing. i fell off my bike last week and ripped my hand apart on the asphalt. it was dirty and bloody and looking at it a week ago i thought it would never heal. but now it has almost completely and i hardly even think about it. my grandma died four and a half years ago, isn't that enought time? shouldn't i be healed? maybe it will always be with me, this open sore, a wound that never goes away.

i brushed my hair with a fork last night because i couldn't find my brush. it worked pretty well and i felt very ariel. my eyes are tired because i flopped into my huge queen size bed, all alone, at 230 am. and my hands smell like cigarettes because i smoked all night long last night. i think a queen size bed might be too big for just one person. it's size is almost like it's laughing at you, like it's asking the question, is this the best you can do? give me more bodies, fill me up. but the only thing i am having a love affair with these days is my cigarettes. we only get together at night. and i try to keep it a secret from my family, and it my friends i act like it's no big thing, oh cigarettes, whatever. don't tell anyone, but i am in love with them.


smokes.

doors and windows

there is a woman standing outside the coffee shop i am at now smoking, wearing a t shirt that is black and in pink letters it says, "love harder." shouldn't we all? yesterday while turning on to fremont i saw a lady wearing a t shirt that was periwinkle and in yellow it said PRE and then below it, TTY. pretty. i like seeing these t shirts with postive messages. i, on the other hand, have a t shirt that says if assholes could fly this place would be an airport. i liked wearing it to school.

yesterday i went to this place by my house called the rebuilding center. it has rows upon rows of old doors, paint chipped, stickers on glass old. and rows upon rows of windows, and old sinks that people used to bend over to wash their faces. it is interesting to see the refuse of peoples houses, their lives. all these pieces came from all over, or they might have been next door neighbors. i bought an old door for $5 that i plan on making into a desk when i get my shit together. if i ever get my shit together. it might end up leaning up against my wall forever, a door with no use, leading nowhere.

i have no marketable jobskills.

i think it might be impossible to get a job unless you know someone. i'm thinking, and i think all of the people i know, who have decent jobs, even the ones who don't have decent jobs, got hired because they knew someone on the inside. i have no one on the inside. my mom and my grandma tell me i should be a waitress because i'd make "good money." but i wouldn't make that money right off because i have no experience waitressing, so i'd have to work my way up. to be a waitress. i should have just done that when i graduated from high school. why did i go to college? i hate it. i'm not letting my kids go to college. i'll tell them it's a waste of money and time and that education doesn't matter anymore because the only jobs out there are for waitresses and bartenders. and nurses. maybe i should be a nurse. a pyschic told me once i'd be a good nurse.

ugh.

good intentions

i wanted to start writing on this more frequently. i thought that it would help me write everyday, which i have found impossible to do. not that i don't think about it all the time. does that count for anything? constantly writing things in your head. they sound so good. i'm afraid of the transition to paper.

what i have been doing lately is driving around and listening to music. i have this feeling like this isn't how this is supposed to be, things aren't turning out how i wanted them to. i listen to more adventerous over and over again, like it a year and a half ago. one night, driving home from billy and erin's i listened to gold lion over and over until i pulled up to my sister's street. i've also been smoking a lot lately. i also have been going swimming. my skin smells like chlorine and my hair is all dried out.

i spent the last two nights sleeping alone in my new apartment. my first place all to myself. i have so much stuff to surround me that sometimes comforts me and sometimes makes me miss everyone. i find myself leaning against the kitchen counter staring at pitures of my friends. i've tried not to put up pictures of daniel. it's too strange how the last two and a half years of your life can feel like they never happened, you wonder who you were then, like you want to meet yourself at a bar or getting coffee and talk. not to disclose the future, but just to help remind who you've become, what you were like, and how you lived, what was important, because too much has changed in a short period of time and you can't remember.

yesterday morning i was hungover. erin bought me breakfast because i was driving her around. we went to a place that was crowded and we opted to sit at the counter because we were so hungry. the waiter wasn't especially cute. he had a bad hair cut, but nice eyes, and the disposition to match. i don't how else to describe it but say that he clearly had a crush on me. and i felt like i milked it. asked for a cup of fruit (he didn't charge me), chatted about the food. i guess you could say i flirted back, but i feel like i'm a little rusty in that department. as i said goodbye we held each other's gazes for a bit longer than normal, and i felt his eyes on me as i walked away. i'm not interested in him, or even in a relationship, but i think for the first time in my adult life i was part of something that i'd never been a part of. a strange, but meaningless connection. i felt mysterious, and i liked it.