although the cylexa is still wreaking havoc with my serotonin levels, things seem to be chugging along rather nicely. i've officially retired the don't-be-self-destructive chart (if you don't know me well enough to know about said chart, you don't need to know. it's embarrassing but it worked) and i finished a little 8 page story this morning. i'm not saying it's a GOOD story, or that i LIKE it, but it's finished and it inspires me with confidence that one day i may actually be able to write two actual stories in a row or something. i'm not getting ahead of myself or anything...but it's a thought.

what else. i finished black swan green, by david mitchell, which is a beautiful, gorgeous book that i recommend to you all. i have annie hall to watch tonight if nothing interesting materializes socially, and i have a whole mess of new music that's keeping me amused. overall, i'd say things are going pretty well. of course there are weak spots in the armor (omar, sore hamstrings, nervous about portland) but when aren't there.

i'm boring when i'm happy.

bah.

so i'm a little reticent to even write anything today because i'm so damn anxious that it might all come out sounding like mush. my medicine is seriously fucking with me. i have no appetite, i have absolutely awful dreams and i sleep a good 10 hours a night, and i'm constantly, connnnstantly worrying about something. here's just a sampling of the fun fears i've had in the last 24 hours:

1)that sean's car will break on the way to portland/to vancouver
2)that i will contract a serious illness in portland and have to be airlifted home
3)that omar has diabetes
4)that i won't get into grad school
5)that i will get into grad school but will never see my parents again
6)that i'm going to end up teaching junior high english instead of writing
7)that my hair makes me look like a pidgeon

the list really goes on ad infinitum. so shit. this really better calm itself down by the time i leave for portland because if i'm this nervous plus flight jitters when i leave, i may poop out my own heart right into my first class seat. yes, it's that impressive.

i think my hair looks okay. :/

my doctor prescribed a mild antidepressant for me when i went for my physical a few days ago. it was sort of a 'you can do this or you could not do this' sort of thing, but i figure i've had enough trouble lately that maybe it'd be good to try. of course there's always the old fear that antidepressants will stifle my creativity or change the way i act or feel about the people who are important to me, but people who take them assure me that that's not the case. plus i'm taking a mild dose - just 10 mg - which seems so small that i scoffed at it having any effect on me at all.

wrong.

my hilarious side effects have included: random nausea, intense sleepiness and general zone-outs, not being able to form coherant thoughts, let alone sentences, for hours...basically i'm incredibly outwardly bubbly while incredibly inwardly anxious. i'm told this goes away within two weeks, which would be nice since i'm going to portland in two weeks and must be professional and awe-inspiring for all the much older and crazy-intimidating people who i'm going to be workshopping with.

since things in the personal life are looking up (alisa came in town to surprise us, for one, which makes my summer) my wormy little brain has decided to freak out about the intensely-not-impressive output of writing i have amassed this summer. last summer i wrote exactly nothing, though, so i guess i have made an improvement. i keep telling myself that most writers don't get published until well into their mid twenties or later and that i have very little training and i'm young and haven't been to grad school and blah blah. but it's not really working. it's not that i have writer's block, it's just that i can't commit to one story long enough to perfect it. getting a grade for it and having a deadline helps me a lot, so i'll be fine once school starts. it's not good enough. i'm already having anxiety about the summer being over (it's like, the middle of june) and not having everything that i need to do done. agh. i'm mentally tailspinning.

i think what i'm going to do now is sit down and type some words very very slowly and maybe they'll sound beautiful. but maybe they'll just calm me down. i'm going to do that. and eat tea biscuits.

one thing that's always sort of fascinated me, and by always I mean since I've been at college and have been spending 3-18 hours a day digesting information of one kind or another (god i'm a dweeb) is the fact that certain themes and subjects and ideas, some that you might never have encountered before, will suddenly show up three or four times in a day, or in every single one of your classes simultaneously, or in three of your new favorite songs. sometimes it really seems like something larger than you is asking you to turn your attention to one particular subject, whether it be something that relates to your personal life or just some random and not even all that interesting tangent. an uninteresting tangent much like the one this paragraph has taken. irony, that's called.

anyway.

over the past couple of days i've run into a lot of end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it discussion - over drinks, in books and magazines, in songs - it seems like everyone's counting down the days for one reason or another. now that i think about it, i guess it's not all that weird that that sort of conversation is coming up everywhere. among creative, intelligent people, especially young creative intelligent people, there's a lot of concern about the world we've inherited (global warming, oil crisis, unrest in the middle east, everything gwb has ever, ever said or done, a predisposition toward jorts and mullets among a striking number of american citizens). on the other side of the political spectrum, a lot of neocon folks are gearing up for the end days, which they see as a sweet v.i.p. party rather than, well, the end. well cool for them i guess.

i'm not here to explain the cultural zeitgeist to you. i'm not really sure what the cultural zeitgeist is. i just like saying zeitgeist, really, it makes me feel fancy. what i've been trying to make sense of in terms of this whole argument is what we're planning on doing about it, why people seem so damn interested in how shitty our world is and how simultaneously unwilling they are to make even the most inconsequential changes in their own lives, and what responsibility i personally have in reference to it all.

although i tend toward megalomania, especially when i have a whole blog at my mercy (i'm an only child, sad and true) i don't really have a problem overestimating my ability to change things in the world. it's not that i don't think that people can make a difference or that i'm overly cynical. okay, i'm cynical, but i do believe that people are basically good and capable of amazing things. horrible things, but also amazing things. i know that i'm not the sort of person who's capable of mobilizing great numbers of people toward change. most of the things that i could do to keep the earth from heating up, blowing itself to bits, running out of its own juices, or going completely fallow are small personal things that i try to do already - recycle, avoid wasting resources, stay educated, vote, etc. but since i'm an artist, and i plan on being a member of a "scene" (ugh) that takes popular culture and reflects it back to the masses, i think it's worth reflecting on what my role is.

i'm going to go on the record right now saying that i can't stand reading or watching or listening to something artistic that's so focused on current events and political issues that it excludes all else. i find that kind of art boring, pedantic, and even a little insulting at times. i don't think that we should enjoy art or consume media for the sole purpose of being educated. there's a time and a place for that but i don't know that it's my responsibility as an artist to tell you how to think and feel. the most moving pieces of art and culture (in my opinion) are those that lead you to an organic realization, almost as if by accident or magic. you realize something that expands your world, but you realize that it came from within yourself, and the art you've seen has just been a means of helping you pull that from within your own mind.

i just read a little section in an article in the latest issue of the believer that talked about john gardner's view of fiction. i'm not going to quote it, but basically he says that artists shouldn't just describe how shitty the world is. they should attempt to tell the reader or the listener or the viewer where to go next. how to negotiate that world. the world is painful. often excrutiatingly so. of course art should show us the truths about that world. great art will often lead us to confront extremely uncomfortable things about our environment and our places within it. it should be challenging. but i do agree with gardner's idea that it isn't enough just to put that on a plate and be done with it. one of the magical things about art is that it forces us to see the world from a variety of different perspectives and viewpoints. we learn what it is to be someone other than ourselves - a lesson that seems easy until you realize what a disservice most people are doing themselves by neglecting it. when you learn to see the world with an empathetic eye, everything becomes a grey area. there is no wrong or right. that is the restorative, saving power of art, in my opinion. art teaches us to feel and think and dream and see things that exist outside ourselves, so that we (with any luck) might develop the capacity to care more deeply about things outside our own bodies and the ability to better understand and take care of ourselves.

while art can pull us outside of ourselves and force us to feel and think things we might not arrive at without it, i think it's important that it help us find solutions. not to offer solutions dogmatically, but to help us begin to think in that vein. i don't think that every story or song or painting should fill us with hope and practical advice. i just think it should reach beyond the gutter, even in a tiny and ceremonial way. in some stories and poems it's little more a gesture, a single word. however, everyone knows that in some situations, especially the most desperate and dire, one word or gesture can change the entire topography of your life. the world is full of high pressure situations and the artist should depict them, and unflinchingly. but it's not enough to build the pressure. we have to look beyond ourselves. in our art, in our relationships, in our societies.

this is basically just a letter i'm writing to myself. i have a problem getting stuck in my own head. i'm a writer. so yeah, i spend a lot of time up there. i always notice that i feel the best about myself when i'm listening intently to something else. that's why i read, why i love thoughtful music, why i like small groups better than big parties. i tend to hole up inside my brain, and i think america does too. it makes my head sick, and i think it's making my country sick too. that's almost horridly simplistic, and really fucking trite to paraphrase in that way, but it's comforting for me to try to imagine ways out. out of my own head and out of the larger problems. there is nothing fascinating or romantic about closing onesself out of the world and letting problems stack up. art has always been my saving grace - both making it and enjoying it when it's made by others. i guess i like to think that if it can make such a powerful, transformative change in me, it could make a change in a larger, wider audience. of course, people have to care, and that's a subject for another time. but it's about the best response i have for a lot of the things i've been seeing and worrying over.

That was exhaustive. And I am exhausted. Ta-daaaah.

so i know i've been using this blog exclusively to showcase my poetry (and oh-noetry) for the last little while which has kept me from feeling like a dirty little hipster asshole for having my own blog, but i think it might be time for a change. one, i'm in a period of...shall we say...flux....both creatively and personally, so i don't have much finished work to show you. the last few pieces i've put up haven't been of the quality i would have liked them to be and i don't like posting mediocre work. also i'm bored and don't have anything profound to say. also also, since i was getting some less-than-constructive comments from some coward fucktard on some of my work before i disbanded the comments function, i thought it might be worth it to say something non-poetic every once in a while.

sorry about the no-more-comments thing, coward fucktard, i just have enough negative energy in my life at the moment, and if i was into being bashed for putting my heart on my sleeve, i would find other ways to do it.

i have so many things to say! also nothing at all! at the moment i'm working on getting my life back in line after a majorly devastating breakup which i'm sure you all know the intimate details of if you've been following my poetry or know me. i'm not sure who i'm kidding by assuming that people OTHER than people i know read this. fuck it, i'm going to pretend i have fans.

anyway, breakup. it's not exactly dripping closure or anything, so it may be a while before that resolves itself entirely. you'd think that would be good for my work but actually that angst really puts a block on me in a major way. i've always been told that you shouldn't write poetry about something that's any more recent than 6 months to a year ago, which i'm not sure i agree with (there's something to be said for immediacy) but also, i see the point. it tends to get sloppy and weak around the edges when it's a comment on something that happened 30 minutes ago or something. once i can stop thinking about the same four inane, cliché things over and over again, i should have more interesting things to whip into shape for you. things are taking slow shape. this i swear.

i have been in austin where i recieved: some delightful new toys from waterloo records and book people (swoon), an ass-ton (metric) of amazing music that i pirated (arggg) off of jake's formidable itunes caché, and a few minor injuries and a cold after a five-car pile up. whoa boy, what a weekend. much drama but hopefully not too much. all i have to say is do not eat ice cream cones in the car when it's possible you might get in an accident, because you WILL bite through your lip and it WILL look like a herpes outbreak.

mmm. kleenex.

before i scamper off to the shower, here is a summation of the universe -
-pablo neruda: can't get into it. i feel like i'm terrible for saying that. geez.
-mucus: gross
-the field: amazing. good for writing. especially "everday" which i love.
-putting things in quotes, as above: awkward.
-the correct meaning of the word "apocalypse": revelation
-the sweet hereafter: great
-the hottest water on earth: not hot enough for me
-things i wish i were: mucus free, not lonely, fearless, a jellyfish or a pine tree

Read Miranda July's book of short stories. Right now.

there is a controversy about aquifers about people who use
too much of our precious water (it cannot be easily replenished) about
piles of our own waste that pollute our life-giving stores about how they
are running dry because of the wasteful and profligate ways in which
we treat the earth this lecture in science class was the one that made me feel
the worst because i know that my heart is an aquifer miles wide but at the tender
and unspeakable age of twenty-one the water table is falling and
it seems that all who attempt to pull a sweet clear
glass from me through a well or other more sophisticated means will either
go thirsty or be poisoned by what they find there you see this is something
that we call a metaphor and although it doesn’t come close to describing
the way legs ache on wide-open nights as if they could run clean across
the world to something i have no name for or the way the hours seem to
slow to a measured trickle when i think of the expanse of all this it is
the best metaphor i have for the simple, silent ways in which i have been half-
depleted at the tender and unspeakable age of twenty-one how do you
refill an aquifer is one question an intelligent reader might ask now and
the answer is you wait and you hope it rains and rains and rains

one.
the whisper drift of one star streak into
another. the crunch of the car frame. a sudden
stillness. the silence, bones ground
into dust. whispers more than cries.

two.
windows facing walls. a light bleeding
across the face. again the silence, a slow
sludgy slip across the veins. the soul
growing louder and louder. that beating.

three.
slither of fire up curtains, its musty
breath. the crushed-heart knowing that
to dust we all return. the consuming shapes
it throws on every surface. eats wallpaper,
then the wall.

four.
a shake of breath, the organ's tremble. the
skull beneath the flesh, its hollow grin. a final
flat joke. the delicate prison of ribs, fingernails
growing and growing. wanting out, wanting in.

five.
flourescent lights. dark water, empty sky. an
itching when you know you've gone too far
and you can't turn around. a gutter-ball. in life, one
by one your choices are taken away.

six.seven.eight.
living without you.
living without you.
living without you.

the end.

Ken Parker on the medieval lute (and the vintage sports car): "There was nothing to them, but they were the result of an equation." - The New Yorker, May 14, 2007

A man somewhere is shaving
a slice of wood until it breathes,
a flashlight in a boy scout mouth.
When his thumb thumps, it resonates -
a bell trapped under a pile of road
mattresses. If you laid down,
your back would be black by
morning. That is to say, you are
sensitive to muffled vibrations.

"A good guitar is in agreement
with itself," but I am not a good
guitar. I will not balance on
a knee. I am full of wolf tones, weak
spots, small, smooth joints cracked
like knuckles. It's not that I
was poorly made; materials
were carefully culled. It's that the strings
are too tight and my sides won't bend.
That's the trouble. The bending.

All these mathematics in the service
of beauty. All this chalk on the board -
embarrassing, a cough. Ivory tusk, shin
bone and rosewood. Metal and mold.
Purling lines, the deep chaos chord.
We are nothing but instruments; we are
what we sing. That is to say, I apologize
for the dead spots in my chest. That
is to say, if there is no use for what
we have, a use will be invented.

the monocled moon slides past
airplanes stitched
in the sky.

everything shears off the poured
sides of the glass,
like this. the time for accretion
has come and gone.

scratched snowflakes burning, and
the refineries on the coast inhale
the sparks in a long, shaking breath.

and under all this, something else moves;
something deeper, to be raped or
broken into. something for us

to put our hands against, to press upon
for the telltale gasp of love. a warm,

open, shallow canyon to fill when the white
paint melts away, one day.

I. Sari

It hangs there, carefully
draped over a hanger
in a closet in
my mind. It is red,
for brides, embroidered
by the hard, expert fingers
of someone’s auntie
in New Delhi. No one bothered
to remind me
that even if something lives
between your ears, even if
you rub its folds against your heart as
you settle into sleep,
it is not
necessarily
meant for you.

II. Stories in Bed

He used to tell me bedtime stories
from India when I could not sleep. He
would hold his long arms out to me
and I would lay my head against his chest,
to hear the breaths between his words. He
would leave me at the edge
of a cliff each night. One night he fell asleep
without a word. I asked him later how the story ends.
He told me he forgot, but I knew he was lying;
that all his heroes eventually
put down their swords and sleep.

III. The Balcony

I would sit there late into the night with
a glass of whiskey (ice cubes chiming) and a cigarette
I never bothered lighting. Without contacts, the
tallest tree looked like a vengeful ghost with one hand
in the window. The air sultry, silent. I wrapped
my hands around the sweating cast-iron railings,
rested my forehead on my knee, and sat still for hours.
I always waited for him to come; I arranged my body
to best fold into his embrace. He never did wake up. The
mint plant in a pot beside me was always dying, never dead.

IV. At the Grocery Store

He had his arm draped across my shoulders as we walked
through fresh flowers to the checkout lines. He
pretended to buy orchids we couldn’t afford, I hit him
with my bag. We stood and waited for our turn, to see
the damage, to pay the bill. When he reached out
for his change, he saw a salwar kameeze from the corner of his eye,
an Indian woman’s angry eyes, her husband’s too – they were
arranged, as it’s meant to be. He dropped his arm, left me
to my pesto, truffles, clementines. Remembered dal and
kebobs on the top shelf at home, laughed and stepped away.

V. The Last Time

I was frozen. I would not look at his eyes.
He put his hands on his face and I hated him
for all the shudders that did not shake his frame. Being left
like that: a whimper from damp dynamite. I ran
out to my car to be alone, made ugly sounds where
no one else could hear. I beat my hands against the glass,
the steering wheel, both arms, my heart. When I got out,
knees shaking, I looked up. I could see the red eye of his
cigarette gliding through the night. I couldn’t wave goodbye.