Friday, February 5, 2010

thoughts (fragments)






















untitled, mala marija


i don't have stories because i live inside of rooms not outside of them. (she looks over my application and says, well, North Carolina will be warmer, Chicago's cold that time of year. i smile, the aircon in the libraries will work the same. it's a joke and she chuckles and turns the page, __i'm sadder for the truth of it. i'll probably not go to the Art Institute often enough.


*___*___*

ever think, a couple hundred years from now, after the fires and the gentrification and the projects and the capital gains tax and a couple of wars, recessions and olympics, __and people live and die and alternate with tight and loose clothes being fashionable, RayBans being always cool just the same, and global warming so it snows in the middle of the pacific ocean where there's no one to notice it, __one day after all that, an archeologist will find in a mound of rubble just inland from the coast of South Africa, the Galapagos Islands, northern Israel, a book with your signature in it. a shoe with what's left of your sweat still inside it. a drawing you did for your mother when you were three and she kept because that's what mother's do in a folder that once upon a time also contained your birth certificate, a photocopy of your university degree (with a paperclip attaching a small picture of you in the silly hate, a mother's day letter from when you were 12, and a postcard you sent her once from Venice to say you were alive and well and she was right you probably should.could have fit a few more pairs of underwear into the backpack. __ever wonder if it's your fragment of a Grecian urn that'll be found so a future Keats can write an ode about it?


*___*___*

THINGS YOU PROBABLY DIDN'T THINK WHEN YOU WERE 10 YOU'D EVER THINK EVER, A LIST:

(1) these shoes are uncomfortable as all hell but i look sexy as all hell in them (and taller too)
(2) leave me alone, i wanna stay in bed a bit longer
(3) grass stains are the most annoying to get out. (actually, cherries too)
(4) i like well made beds. they make sleep so... formal. like an invitation.
(5) i'm lonely. consequently, i think i'll stream internet videos of other people having sex and hopefully just fall asleep quicker
(6) dude, i'll call you back, i'm just watching the news
(7) sushi beats pizza.
(8) i have nobody i can talk to about this. this is my problem.
(9) maybe i should just get it terminated. it's nothing, then life will go on. again. ish.


*___*___*

- you got the Dean's list. now you want the VC list. then, you wanna go overseas and prove you can do it there too - are you noticing a pattern? you're never happy, nothing's ever enough for you, __just... freaking enjoy the process or something. you found what you wanna do with your life, great!, so why all the hectic, obsessive, stress?
- never underestimate the partnership of a sincere inferiority complex and the obsessive compulsion that results from the fear of being an abysmal failure...
- you're not a failure, look at yourself, you're topping classes, you're fit, you have friends... what, where does this come from?
- i can still taste it. __10 years of it, i can taste it. __still. everytime i'm waiting for a result, talking to someone about... a job or what happens when this all done, or 'what's next' or, __all i remember is 10 years of not knowing and hating everything and sitting behind the computer calling people and sending f*cking resumes (god dammit i hate sending resumes) wishing hoping that someone will just blow my brains out - no way i'm doing that again. no way.
- you still need a night off.
- yah. i know.


*___*___*

i'm tired of taking account of all the times i f*cked something up. tired of carrying around soo much it. you put it outta mind, but, it's there. someone says something you remember. right there, like it were yesterday. like it were now. just once i need to finish something and think, yup. owned it.


*___*___*

black 1965 mustang. __a white, thick, gorgeous woolen blanket that i'll fold and leave on my couch for when we do impromptu movie-sessions on rainy sundays and warm thursday nights. __leather foldover briefcase thingee. __a home that smells of regularly bought jasmine. __where every mug is my favorite because i picked it, and a place where the art on the walls is invariably delicious. __bookshelves everywhere. __sunday afternoons and wednesday lunches spent in coffee shops writing in notebooks and reading Seneca, like i used to. __regular, slow jogs by the beach. the river. the park. on the treadmill. __phoning people back. having them phone me because there is a reasonable likelihood i'll actually show up. __my GF not being quietly annoyed at me for my inattentiveness and preoccupation.

things i'll one day (maybe) have (some of it, again).

2 comments:

Sholeh said...

Trust me, you will go to the Art Institute enough. I did. :-)

mar said...

no no no...you will lie in the equisite gardens at duke next to a pond reading.