small stories.

and even if it's sunday may i be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
____ee cummings











untitled by buradori



to my right a girl sits eating in a black corset. to my left, another. more nude.

when i get into bed she automatically climbs over me, pushes me back into my own side. it's one clumsy motion, another of night's awkward fumblings. i kiss the back of her neck and she purrs.
i like that sound.
so i do it again.

the rain tries to fool me. i'm not fooled. the humidity gives it away. this is a ploy. a stratagem. i ignore it, waiting for the ghosts of the heat to seep out of the hot cement : the rough tar of roads and sidewalks : and drift off,

i am bored and tired of everyallthethings we bore and tire of. today i am bored and tired of Monday. i am tired of vacant spaces,
sometime between 9am and noon i resolve to lock myself in a room somewhere. switch off my phone. to rest in being alone.

when i awake i am scared i cannot love.
i cannot be in one place.
cannot admit satisfaction.

i am soo proud of you she says. she says you're really shining right now she says when you were in my class i saw hints of it, sometimes you showed signs of it, but... well done. i ignore the inadvertent diss, i say if i may inquire, to what do i owe your generous laudations? she laughs, i worded it humorously, but i was serious: i have no idea what she's talking about. she laughs and walks away.

if this is not my body then whose is it?

when you give a recital it is a strange feeling. you sit on the stool. sometimes you have to lift the lid of the piano. other times not. depends. my teacher always said hear the first bar in your head, sound it perfectly in your head before you put your hands on the keyboard. then it starts. it's a dance for your hands. it's odd because the rest of your body feels like it's just hanging around waiting. like when you wait for your centre-of-attention GF/BF to get done talking to his/her friends so you can leave. you kinda just sit there. on the stool. try not to look around. try not to look to out of place. i'd always say to myself your role is to sit here politely. you hear the sounds and think oh, nicely done right hand. nicely done. sometimes there's a mistake. snaps you out of it long enough to make a few changes (like adjusting sound on the stereo). then you go back to sitting politely. daaaaaaa - dum!.
then it ends. you stand up, wonder how it went. it sounds different from 20 feet and a body away, so who knows what they heard. __bow. __shuffle off stage.

the rain stops and summer's thick tongue takes a big lick and exhales.

i do not want to be here.
to know anyone.
i want to be in Vietnam,
amongst white flowers.

it is hard not being myself. __i am tired of waiting for the opportunity to catch-up to myself.
so i shower again. reassess my wardrobe. worry about the future. __measure stuff.

i enjoyed the King's Speech. __mostly i want to live in Lionel's chambers. with the wallpaper and the model plane hanging from the ceiling and the wide spaces and the dark wood and the fireplace. ____i want Thom Yorke to teach me to dance.

- are you happy?
- i am not unhappy.
- then what are you?
- i do not know a word for it.

time is making me claustrophobic. and agoraphobic. one or either. maybe both. both. definitely both. i'm not sure whether i have too much of it or too little. i think it's both. like those days you feel fat and skinny at the same time. fat in the wrong places, skinny in the wrong places. but with time. and space.

i'll get them framed later he thinks.
to which she responds but there are no photos of you around anywhere.
that's true. there aren't. so he says there are photos of my memories. that's almost true. it's true, bar one missing photo. he gave one away. it is important to do that, once in a while. to give away something that means the world to you. give someone your version of the world. nice thought. a little jupiter-photo, a dusty saturn-ornament.

it is very Euripides. yes. i know, we've covered that ground already. but the furies, i can hear them. almost wish to hear them. maybe this time it's not even them, it's just me. it's the hum in my head. wants to run. move. relocate. scrub. restart. calibrate. purge. exorcise.

maybe though.
maybe what?
just maybe.
what ever. __so what's next?
the thing.
what thing?
whichever thing. the everyanynothing.
are you gonna have trouble sleeping tonight?

i cannot act this well for too much longer. __there must be some water here somewhere.

...

untitled by irwin romain jules arthur



THINGS I WOULD INCLUDE IN THE STORY I WOULD HAVE WRITTEN IF I FELT LIKE WRITING A STORY (WHICH I DON'T), A LIST:

different coloured books, stacked some horizontal, some vertical, at first glance haphazardly on white shelves. but on closer look coloured, thematic, chronological organizational schemes start to appear. on an even closer look the schemes fall apart. on an even closer look coloured, thematic, chronological ... repeat.


i've lost that sense of home again. i had for a while. but it's gone now. everything feels foreign. it's all very Sartre (unfortunately). __i cannot sit through too many more classes. __or dinners. my house irritates me. i'm soo bored driving to and fro i speed just to put myself out of the burden of it.


a shopping trolley. kicking it. over. over. again. and over. and over. always wanted. over. to. again. over. over. again. and. again over. over.


maybe it should be set in summer. i hate summer. too much light. can't see a thing. always squinting, sweat dripping down my temples, drops on the inside of my lenses. my glasses always dirty. bright as all hell. can't bear to be outside, the air soo heavy you need a straw to breathe it in.


bad writers. bad writing. to make up for it they were tighter jeans. if can't act the part might as well look it. sitting in cafes. drinking soy somethings or another. complaining about irreparable environmental damage. __either that or throw together a couple hackneyed similes, slap a rhyme on the end and give it to a girl so she'll feel pretty and let you kiss her later and later into the night till there's simply no alternative left. (if can't act the part might as well abuse it). bad writers. bad writing. mostly by people who have bad haircuts.


distance. can't decide from what though. __from the future maybe. __also from the past. there's nothing further than the past. it's an impossibility away. distance from yourself ; even in the present. that mixed up mumjumbled wha tha feeling like you just woke up can't make a decision about anything so you just sit there staring away hoping it'll all just keep managing itself like it has for ever and ever.
distance. __that much is clear. __the rest...


a hospital. someone probably works there. i'm tempted to say it's a she. but then for fun it'll probably be a he. not a doctor or anything though. maybe in the cafeteria. maybe this guy wheels a portable television around from room to room for patients whose tvs have stopped working. room number. push. leave. collect. room number. again. again. white pants. the funny smell of the place. funny strange looks on people's faces. sick children are too sad to think about. he concentrates on how hard it is to find parking around the hospital. he hates parking. he drives his mother's van. the central locking doesn't work anymore. it smells like suburbia. there's a half-full bottle of water somewhere when he drives he can hear it rolling around. he never bothers to find it and remove it because ... ... because ... ... ... who knows.


nights we can't be alone but can't bear the sight of a person or the noise or movement of them. are thankful just to get home and close the door behind us. __when i was 16 i got my first notebook. it had a blue cover. somewhere inside it i wrote the line: i let my beasts eat me because they say i taste good. i still do. funny what a little flattery will do for ya.


if i wrote a story it would be like Hospice by the Antlers. fuzzy. but with clear melodies. several voices. i've never bothered to listen to the lyrics. i have no idea what they're on about. i just like the fuzziness. the melody. it's what i listen to when i'm sad. it's perfect for that. i feel like i'm being told a story. something about a hospital i assume.


there would be an after-shot. a '20 months after'. everyone would be ok. it's important that the reader is reminded that more or less, people are ok.
but still, sadder or stronger or farther away thanks to the experience. (distance).


no sex. __no love. __i've already made my money off those two. __this would be platonic.
platonic is under-rated. i'm bothered that it's easier to get laid than to make a friend. that makes me feel distant (except i don't know from what <-- but that's the point right?). she works at a carwash. on the weekends. that's where they met. (his mom was coming home for a visit so he had the mama-van washed). she didn't wash it though, she works the till inside. sells gum, old donuts. that kind of thing. __during the week she works as some blahh or another.
they have friends. as in... people that blahblahblah to each other, and drink on weekends and talk about that bitch or television shows or whatever it is friends talk about. but that doesn't fix anyone's loneliness - i'm sure it causes it more often than anything. __fuzzy. fuzzy lives. just kinda rolling along. you wake up knowing you have to get dressed but not sure why, next thing you know you're reading someone's left-over paper with your lunch, except you're not reading you just have your eyes set on it so they don't have to look around, after that you regain consciousness because you need to pee really bad, after you wash your hands you walk back out into the hall, it's almost dark when you find yourself trying to find the keys to your car. __wtf.


sometimes i get panicky about receiving text messages. i get nervous about hearing the noise. i don't know why. it terrifies me. i dread it. i turn my phone on silent and hide it somewhere where i won't hear it and where no one will hear me and know where i am and come find me and force me to talk to them or listen to them or know their name or make decisions or accompany them somewhere or be responsible or save money or get a job or be an 'adult' and get married and have babies and be a good person all those things they thought my parents would have instilled in me.


she gets drunk and cries to some guy she's never met before and tells him she ruined it for everybody. that she wasn't good enough to have been on the team and she knew all along she couldn't keep up but that she couldn't admit that to anybody least of all herself. so she stuck it out and basically ran the rest into the ground. she cries to the first guy but he has a GF so he leaves eventually. she plays the card on a second, who just doesn't really care. a third is found who doesn't care either (only it confirms what everyone around town had been saying anyway) but takes her home anyway. figures it's what she's after anyway. she is. except she's not. but she doesn't know that at the time. or for a few years yet.


i don't know of any story that has a start or an end. they just kinda pick it up somewhere and drop it off somewhere. it's just what they are, how they are. just distance between points.

apennyfortheoldguy exists again

Book, let me walk on the roads
with dust in my shoes
and without mythology:
return to your library,
I'm going out into the streets.

__from Ode to the Book (1) by Pablo Neruda














i see you by frederico erra


believe me. i'm as surprised as you are. __i was wondering how long it would take me to work up the courage to come back here. __(and if there'd be anything new to say) __(is there ever?)

let's just do this once, and then we can all move on:
the Phillip C Jessup International Law Moot is no joke okay. you might think there's time for things like brushing your teeth and writing on your blog, but there's not. there just isn't. so i did that. and that did me. and now we're both sick of one another, and at long last i've come back to my infinitely silent little place on the internet. if i haven't responded to your emails, your text, your call, your... everything, then, please please accept my apologies. six months it's been since i've been on your planet. where i was before was somewhere else. far far away. unless you've been there you wouldn't believe me.
i've just come back and i don't believe me.


*___*___*

so. someone remind me how this thing works. i remember the process, pick an image, pick a random sentence, the rest kinda just happens how it wants.


*___*___*

everyone i grew up with is pregnant. __it was raining. i remember that. __five months i've misplaced somewhere. doesn't seem like much, __but there's a scariness to knowing you misplaced yourself. __and then you wake up and remember all your friends are pregnant and Martha got married, and GF was gone for 3 months and came back without me really noticing, __and i had a 4 day break at some point which consisted of me sleeping. i think i woke up 4 times to eat. cereal. bowl. milk. back to sleep.

i find myself sitting thinking about who i was before, who i am after. i think it's the same. the very same. just that for a few months in the middle i was ...


*___*___*

it's coming back slowly though. __took me a week to kill the spiders in my house. __i shower four times a day , just to make sure i'm alert.
i have a to-do list. __but i move slowly.

i want to write. but i'm scared to. i'm not sure what i've hidden or where i've hidden it. not sure what the sentences will spell. maybe that's what the spiders were about. a portal-link between my psyche and the house i haven't slept in for weeks. baby spiders. everywhere. little freckles on every flat surface. i'm not scared of spiders really, but when the inside of your bedroom looks like a woman's freckled back, moving and breathing and conforming to your motions... it's creepy.

"hi is this pest-raid?"
"yes it is, how may i help you?"
"my bedroom is Jumanji"
"excuse me?"
"the amazon, it's in my bedroom. and spread to my living room too. can you come?"
"are there bugs?"
"yes. they've evicted me. i refuse to go back there."
"haha. okay, so what are we dealing with?"
"i need you to come."
"haha. we will, how bad is it?"
"do you have napalm?"
"haha. i don't think that will be necessary!"
"you keep laughing. i'm not laughing. we need napalm because it is too difficult to procure enriched plutonium nowadays."
"hahaha. okay okay, tomorrow, first thing? i'll change the schedules."
"now you're understanding me."


*___*___*

in about 8 weeks law school will be done. (bye law school, bye!)

the rest is unscripted.

i suppose we'll just do what we do. meet. smoochy. be dicks to one another. be lovely. get married. or not. get jobs we hate. find things we love doing. dance uncomfortably under strobe-lights and with manic glee around our bedrooms in our underwear. write songs about it. cheesy poems. make babies. stare at dogs at the pet store and contemplate buying one instead of making babies. stuff like that. jogging. running in circles, that's always necessary. take our pills, forget our pills, dream big, live small - fall big, live large ...

what does all this add up to? (Saturday February 12th i suppose).

i love Sinatra's little introduction before he starts singing Send in the Clowns. __someone should teach me to sing. __(or write) ____(or live)


*___*___*

i cleaned everything. under ever couch. vacuumed. sprayed. mopped. disinfected. washed everything.

then i sat on my couch. stared at my bookshelf. thought about April. __about May.

i thought about hiring someone to play somewhere over the rainbow on the ukulele so i could dance with my eyes closed and forget where i am. how far i am from who i am. (whatever that means).

one day i'll remember how to write again.

until then... i suppose we can all just listen to Scarborough Fair-Canticle by Simon & Garfunkel and dream of those quiet heavens that sometimes we stumble upon in the corners of our weekends when we hadn't expected to.

much love to you all,
i'm glad to be alive once again.
i hope you are too.