Starry-Eyed

Boy, oh Boy.
He kept using the word "hypnotized," and that's about accurate...we're both still hypnotized. Chemistry and starry-eyes and things I can't yet render in words.
Boy gets a name..."Corvus." Constellation, raven, sacred servant to Apollo.
I picked him up at the airport. I've been cleaning my house and myself. He seemed entirely taken by surprise...I wasn't surprised by Boy and Girl make with the smooching, but the whole thing was surprising...listening to eachother's heartbeats just holding close but somehow doing so without pretense or even awareness at first...it was all so crazy electric yet smooth and perfect. We're so awkward until...we're not. I'm less and less sure he's real or I'm awake because it seems impossible, but there's no question, we were awake and alive. Jesus fucking fuck.

Lake Street Red Line Stop on a Wednesday Afternoon

Two men singing on the el platform with their permit clearly visible.


One plays guitar and sings melody, the other harmonizes.

They sway.

The harmonizer smiles.

The guitar player has long grayed dreads. He’s thin but not hungry, looks faded and worn but without pain. His skin is graying. His shiny black guitar looks gray under the subway lights.

His voice is anything but gray. Warm and mellow, like honey, like the 1960s folk that bore him. You can hear the hope and marijuana round the edges of each phrase.

The harmonizer reminds me of the old smiling Sambo images. Less bright, less ridiculous, but retaining a bit of the please-the-white-man quality. Still, his voice is pure and adds a dimension to the familiar tunes.

Police officer with his big german shepherd sitting not 10 feet away, staring.

The German Shepherd is watching the permit

The police officer isn’t watching much of anything.

A train comes and the guitar player leans into a concave *beam* to retune.

I drop a dollar into the bag with the permit.

A woman walks past. She is so large her legs sink down, burying her feet and her flip flops.

Poke Her Face

My hands are covered in dry superglue. I made a bunch of cards with envelopes to match. I can't sell the sum total of what I did for more than $30, but I left a mess and I created things and I enjoyed the process and my head is better now than when this day began.

More things I want to write about but I'm crashing (finally...sleeping much of the day has me wide awake past 1 AM). I'll write a treatise on Lady Gaga as a songwriter and Gagaism as the new dadaism later. Just watch this because it is in my head and totally changed my opinion of Lady Gaga:

Media, Men

Song in my head for the past bunch of days:

I finally watched the new Star Trek movie. That's some super high quality nerdiness. The graphics and everything were so amazing, it's hard to imagine 20 years from now we'll look back on it and roll our eyes or laugh at its campiness, but then you look at the original Star Wars movies and those were revolutionary when they came out. Still, it was fabulously refreshing to see things that didn't look like "The Future" always looks. Not just slight variations or improvements on what we have or are doing now, but bigger jumps and random side-steps so it's not all flying cars and giant computers and robots that do the dishes.
In short, awesome movie.
So good I didn't spend the entire time wishing I was smooching on Possible Boy, with whom I was watching said movie, on his couch, under his blanket. Ugh. For the first time in my life, all these boys want in my pants. There's an argument to be made for "getting my numbers up" while I'm young and spry. Let go. Make stories. Experience life. How many girls would kill for even a kiss from Ken? Beetle's brother invited me over last night while his roommate was out and I doubt his intentions were entirely pure and friendly. Dijon's compliments stopped feeling so friendly and safe. And I suspect even Possible Boy would be more than happy to screw my brains out if there weren't emotions involved.
But there are emotions involved.
Pesky, pesky emotions. I want in boys' hearts, not just their pants. Reciprocal hearty likeyness, which seems to be particularly difficult. No more of these stupid chains of he likes me but I like this other guy who likes this other girl who likes another guy who likes yet another girl. This is what I get for hanging out among the Lonely. Birdie said it really well the other day: the Boys I like and I are deeply and profoundly lonely, but we will also do anything within our power to make sure we stay that way.

Today, I made myself a schedule for my amorphous daily life. It has everything from eating meals to working on long-term projects to taking my pills to writing in my blog (scheduled for now). I missed the whole afternoon chunk because I took a rainy-day coma nap, but I still got tons more done than I have been and it felt good to have direction and something to turn to and say "what's next?" Also, I forget things and get distracted so easily these days. Yay schedule.

I'm hungry again. I made real food for dinner, but I guess I didn't eat enough of it. Must drag dog out for final pre-bed walk.

I know Possible Boy will read this. It makes me pause before writing, then I write what I was going to write anyway. Totally honest. Dammit, why couldn't things have worked out? Maybe NBF, my therapist and 99% of humanity are right: I need a better filter, one can't be totally honest, The Game is important, etc., etc. I tried to play, but I suck at it and don't like it. I just need more practice, maturity, acceptance, or some other adjective I don't quite believe right now.

Seriously. Stop writing. Eat something.

2 AM Post Script

I have my Pandora station going. I'm heavy with tired, and I'm eating puffed rice like it was a bag of chocolate chips. I found my familiar warm buzzy place. If I'm going to revel in my shadow, then dammit, here it is: the part I enjoy. One step away from sleep, brooding, ruled by the soundtrack.

Play along at home:
Wings - Josh Ritter
Uncurl - True Margrit
Kathy's Song - Paul Simon
Almost Lover - A Fine Frenzy
Swim - Stuart Davis
Julia - The Beatles
Colorblind - Counting Crows
Selling the Drama - Live
Forget Me Not - Lucie Silvas
Absentminded Melody - Joel Plaskett
Hey There Delilah - Plain White Ts

Children's Stories

Talking to my mom on Friday about my "picking" business stuff felt a little like defending a thesis. At least I know it's not just me. Both of my parents put people on the defensive a lot, like you have to justify your life because they know better unless you can prove otherwise. I fear I do that to people, too. My mom had my cousin feeling like a charity case a few weeks back when we all went out to lunch.

I see more and more the disparity in general outlook between my parents, who have more money than anybody needs but will argue over a $5 mistake in their bills for hours on end, and much of the rest of humanity, who would never even notice a $20 service charge on their credit card bills. It's largely how my parents got to the point they are, but now that they're there, it seems completely distasteful when they argue to keep their every dollar because my mom "should" get her bangs fixed for free if she didn't like the way they were cut after a week.
What's the line from Streetcar Named Desire about "you just begged me to rip you down from those marble pillars" or something? Now I have to look it up...
Found it:
You showed me a snapshot of the place with them columns, and I pulled you down off them columns, and you loved it, having them colored lights goin'. And wasn't we happy together?

Sometimes my brain spits out elaborate stories for other people's lives based in very little. Overhearing a woman's monologue to what appeared to be a very young couple on the bus last week, I filled in her role as step-mom and their relationships and backgrounds and general life stories. Sometimes a bit in the news will have me convinced of a secondary back-story. Then one of my friends gave me a juicy morsel of gossip about himself without any further information, so when a seemingly random photo popped up in my Facebook feed I came up with an entire plot involving their grandchildren. Until three minutes later when I realized I had the timeframe messed up and the picture and the gossip didn't coincide, but I was still amused and convinced he should hunt her down and name grandkids. The next time we spoke I had to tell him, and it turns out, I was right. Well, not about making babies or anything, but all my stories in my head were kind of the ideas he had in his head and I am clearly the smartest person in the whole entire universe and I get at least their second born child as a prize. It's such a cute hypothetical story, too, since he had a crush on her sister but they were really just friends and then she's way more his usual "type" so it's perfect (this is why I came up with the story in the first place).

Soundtrack in my head right now: Fleetwood Mack's Landslide, as sung by the PS22 Chorus

Music of the Night

Thing that gets stuck in my head on a regular basis:

Yo Gabba Gabba! (There's a Party in my Tummy !)
Uploaded by Materialiste - Click for more funny videos.

I think I first heard about Yo Gabba Gabba from Mixed Species's blog. Never mind I'm 27 and have no children. When I watch Sesame Street online I can claim it's for the nostalgia. No such excuse here. Yo Gabba Gabba is just silly and entertaining and better than Charlie the Unicorn, so I will continue to go there for an occasional mental escape.

Who knew Al Sharpton played piano?



Ok, that's not Al Sharpton, it's Allen Toussaint.


Real Al Sharpton:

Tell me they're not long lost brothers.

Bruuuuuuuuce!

Went to the Springsteen concert with my dad (birthday present from me) tonight. The band was great and energetic. It was loud and it was fun, and in the bathroom I overheard "He's still really good-looking!" The only black people there (besides Clarence Clemons) were working for the United Center, and "Wrigley Field!" got a bigger cheer than "The Bill of Rights!" during the requisite between song audience pandering. When did all the baby boomers go bust? My generation had nothing to stand for or rebel against, but come on, 50-somethings! You used to dance and scream! Now you're relieved at a single encore because it's late and you have work in the morning. I'm disappointed in you. The band had tons of energy and played a great show, and my dad was very happy, so I will call the night a success anyway.

My writing brain is dead. Too much writing for school stuff. Can't make blog sound like I want it to sound. Blaaaaaah.

onward and upward

Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes via phone, email, text message, Facebook message, and any other method I'm forgetting. It was a very pleasant birthday. Fizzled out a little early, but splendid while I was being social. My cousin, cousin-in-law, NBF and I went to a late lunch at Bittersweet, which was amazingly not crowded for Mother's Day afternoon, ate wonderful things, wandered over to Uncle Fun, drove to the lakefront where we tried to fly kites but there was no wind so we played frisbee catch instead and shmoozed for a long time. Then my cousinses had to go (who the hell has work meetings on Sunday nights?) and I went to NBF's to watch the long awaited last disk in Samurai 7, a strange but surprisingly good Anime series based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Then I came home and futzed on the computer for hours on end and now I have some random music in my head that I'm trying to get down on paper but I don't have a keyboard or perfect pitch and it's hard to plunk it out on the violin, especially when it's a two part harmony thing.

Tomorrow, I go to the premium outlet mall with my mom to try to return the skirt that doesn't look great on me.