Friday, July 03, 2009
Have I told you that I'm writing a movie? An old friend who's a film maker asked me to write a movie with him, some goofy mumblecore something based on a few things I've written here. Hilariously, it has sort of turned into a horror movie, which is definitely something I know less about than most things, since I've never seen a horror movie all the way through. Of course, I've also never written a movie before, either. This is probably going to be a terrific fiasco.
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Wednesday, July 01, 2009
When I knew him he was surefooted and lean, confident that the ground would always be there to meet the bottoms of his feet. He remembered people, considered them, stored up their details in the lines of his skin to be pulled out and repeated back, unexpectedly. Just so you knew he was listening.
I remember one night, not too long before the end but prior to when everything got all broken and bad and medical, sitting on an empty lifeguard stand, drinking something warm and sweet, shoulders heavy with youth. I think he knew what was coming, and regretted it, that one misstep years before that would cost him all the rest. I knew only that the world hung too heavy on all of us, that we were being handed visions and secrets that we were unprepared for and would never really recover from. We sat there silent and watched the sun melt on to the horizon, kicking up a breeze and washing the water gold, looking suddenly hazy and tired and more like a winter sun than a summer one.
I left his ashes on the Arno last year, but sometimes even now through a break in a crowd I'll catch a glimpse of a tall strong back, a flash of a confident smile, and remember.
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I remember one night, not too long before the end but prior to when everything got all broken and bad and medical, sitting on an empty lifeguard stand, drinking something warm and sweet, shoulders heavy with youth. I think he knew what was coming, and regretted it, that one misstep years before that would cost him all the rest. I knew only that the world hung too heavy on all of us, that we were being handed visions and secrets that we were unprepared for and would never really recover from. We sat there silent and watched the sun melt on to the horizon, kicking up a breeze and washing the water gold, looking suddenly hazy and tired and more like a winter sun than a summer one.
I left his ashes on the Arno last year, but sometimes even now through a break in a crowd I'll catch a glimpse of a tall strong back, a flash of a confident smile, and remember.
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Monday, June 29, 2009
On Friday night I made my debut as a cocktail waitress, which seems like it should have been a spectacularly bad idea, given how clumsy I tend to be. But a friend of mine needed help and in this post-Michael economy we could all use a little extra cash, so I gave it a shot and didn't fall over even once. My next trick will be to pull a rabbit out of a hat.
Saturday turned out to involve piling 10 people into a van with a side door that wouldn't close for a trip to the beach. Five of those people had just finished a half marathon and were in varying states of injured, sore, and bloody. Marathons, like cocktailing, are not as easy as they look. (None of it looks even remotely easy, actually.)
And yesterday was the end of gay pride weekend, so I closed out the night dancing at a leather bar in a sweaty press of shirtless men all kissing each other and yet still, somehow, ending up kissing someone myself. So far I am quite fond of the shape of this summer.
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Saturday turned out to involve piling 10 people into a van with a side door that wouldn't close for a trip to the beach. Five of those people had just finished a half marathon and were in varying states of injured, sore, and bloody. Marathons, like cocktailing, are not as easy as they look. (None of it looks even remotely easy, actually.)
And yesterday was the end of gay pride weekend, so I closed out the night dancing at a leather bar in a sweaty press of shirtless men all kissing each other and yet still, somehow, ending up kissing someone myself. So far I am quite fond of the shape of this summer.
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Thursday, June 25, 2009
You know, I had something else I was going to say, but I am too busy being bummed about Michael Jackson. In my baby book my mom wrote that one of my first phrases was, "Michael Jackson! Yeah! Alright! I like that!" When I got a record player in my room I listened to "Bad" over and over and over again, and no one will ever be able to convince me that the video for "Billie Jean" is not the greatest video ever made. With the shoes! And the light up sidewalk!
He was a tragic, brilliant mess, and most of my early years were lived to his songs. His death has kind of derailed me.
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He was a tragic, brilliant mess, and most of my early years were lived to his songs. His death has kind of derailed me.
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Monday, June 22, 2009
In World War II Japan built bombs tied on to balloons that they released into the jet stream in hopes of bombing forests and cities from across the ocean. They launched 9,000 of them, and about 300 were found or seen in North America, although they were hoping to land about 900 of them. (The rest, I suppose, were eaten by whales or sank all the way to the bottom of the water to give the Kraken a nice massage.)
They were assembled out of mulberry paper and edible paste, which the young girls putting them together frequently stole to eat, and their bombs were set to be lit and dropped after three days in the air. The balloons made it as far as Detroit, some of them, exploding all over the West coast and even short circuiting the power at the Hanford nuclear site.
The balloon bombs didn't do a lot of damage, except for the day that one killed six people in Oregon during a church picnic, while they were trying to pull the balloon from a tree. There had been a media blackout about the bombs, because no one wanted Japan to know if any of them were reaching land, so none of the people in the cities where they were landing had any idea that they should stay away.
The rest of them could still be out there, somewhere, in forests or ponds or trees, waiting. Maybe they're all corroded and unexplodable, all of the cracks in their metal pieces exploited by the plants, covered over, disconnected. Future archaeologists will find them someday, faded bits of parachute coated in muck and haphazardly preserved, attached to those sad lumps of metal by the impression of strings. They will look just like planters or lawn ornaments, as whimsical as gnomes and flamingos, stripped of their danger and therefore unrelated to bombs.
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They were assembled out of mulberry paper and edible paste, which the young girls putting them together frequently stole to eat, and their bombs were set to be lit and dropped after three days in the air. The balloons made it as far as Detroit, some of them, exploding all over the West coast and even short circuiting the power at the Hanford nuclear site.
The balloon bombs didn't do a lot of damage, except for the day that one killed six people in Oregon during a church picnic, while they were trying to pull the balloon from a tree. There had been a media blackout about the bombs, because no one wanted Japan to know if any of them were reaching land, so none of the people in the cities where they were landing had any idea that they should stay away.
The rest of them could still be out there, somewhere, in forests or ponds or trees, waiting. Maybe they're all corroded and unexplodable, all of the cracks in their metal pieces exploited by the plants, covered over, disconnected. Future archaeologists will find them someday, faded bits of parachute coated in muck and haphazardly preserved, attached to those sad lumps of metal by the impression of strings. They will look just like planters or lawn ornaments, as whimsical as gnomes and flamingos, stripped of their danger and therefore unrelated to bombs.
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Thursday, June 18, 2009
We set out a box on the curb labeled "Free!" and full of everything we no longer needed. Bouquets from the weddings of couples who are now divorced, math books full of equations that never added up, ghost stories and butterflies and sugar packets and the bones we found papered in behind the kitchen wall. The neighbors took most everything in the night--well, someone did, and whether it was the neighbors or the squirrels or a roving band of hermit crabs is anyone's guess--and the sides of the box crumpled a little in the morning dew. It all smelled of mildew and roses and celery.
Left at the bottom was a tumbled layer of crackling flower petals, exclamation points, and a snake oil cure for heartache. We held our breath as we looked at it, waiting for it to be sad in the way all left-behind things are, but just at that moment a shaft of sunlight broke through the tree behind us and coaxed a rainbow from that snake oil like a turbaned charmer with a golden recorder.
There was nowhere to go from there but sideways.
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Left at the bottom was a tumbled layer of crackling flower petals, exclamation points, and a snake oil cure for heartache. We held our breath as we looked at it, waiting for it to be sad in the way all left-behind things are, but just at that moment a shaft of sunlight broke through the tree behind us and coaxed a rainbow from that snake oil like a turbaned charmer with a golden recorder.
There was nowhere to go from there but sideways.
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Monday, June 15, 2009
We have two weapons in the summer of not overthinking, and those are drinking and remaining well-behaved. And I must say that though it is boring, keeping my hands to myself certainly does calm everything down. I haven't smashed anything in ages, and there are few people that I am embarrassed to run into on the street. I can see the appeal, although I am having a hard time with it lately.
I guess that's not entirely true, though. There are other weapons. Hugging and making plans helps. Dancing for hours on a twisted ankle, eating french fries, sitting in parks. Playing catch and sleeping until afternoon. Napping with all the windows open.
It's all very pleasant, of course. Like an ad for jeans, all sunny and carefree, attractive people with sunglasses and terrific hair. Which is making it a little difficult not to spent a lot of time thinking about how everything will go wrong. I usually am my own biggest obstacle.
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I guess that's not entirely true, though. There are other weapons. Hugging and making plans helps. Dancing for hours on a twisted ankle, eating french fries, sitting in parks. Playing catch and sleeping until afternoon. Napping with all the windows open.
It's all very pleasant, of course. Like an ad for jeans, all sunny and carefree, attractive people with sunglasses and terrific hair. Which is making it a little difficult not to spent a lot of time thinking about how everything will go wrong. I usually am my own biggest obstacle.
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