cheap bandaids

A body language expert could learn a lot from watching me as I sit at the dining room table with my roommates.

This is probably unrelated, but I have been destroying the cuticles around my thumbnails this week. I spent every long rest during Thursday's orchestra rehearsal biting at them, pulling them back until they bled.

I may be lazy. I may be instinctually apathetic. But YOU SHOULD SEE THE THINGS THAT DO INSPIRE ME.

I was thinking of this last night, thinking that my best friend Sarah gets bottled up in her head overanalyzing reality, and I do the same, but what I'm dissecting, it's not even real. I've made up problems and now I'm trying to figure out how to solve them. I'm having arguments in my head with someone I've never even spoken to. Well, that's not ok, but at least I'm staying occupied.


I'm done being bothered by things like
jackhammers and
ice and
sore knees.
I'm forging ahead anyway.

recovery

Turns out the exact place I needed to be to finally pull out of a five day slump was at the kitchen sink, doing the dinner dishes in hot hot water while wearing the oatmeal-colored sweater that still smells faintly of spices, like its first owner, with Pink Floyd blaring in my ears, almost too loud but not quite.

Because, wow, I am back.

shut down

I'm home from work because of the snow, and my evening rehearsal was just canceled as well. Let's be honest: I'm annoyed.
My roommates are home, too. And we've made crepes. And will watch a movie or two. And ok, I like spending the day in my pjs. But screw it, I'd rather be somewhere.

fight

I caught you smiling a secret smile today when you didn't realize I could see you. I think you were congratulating yourself on the way you always manage to turn our office into a warzone. What you don't know is that I sit at my desk smiling, too, because there's no one I like arguing with more than you.

begin again

Yesterday I watched the Inauguration on the big screen in the library's basement, sitting next to one of my favorite librarians. She's a favorite because she's pushing 60 and she's fussy and she's the principal cellist in my community orchestra and because she tells me I'm a bright spot. I found the whole process riveting—the pomp, the brilliance, the rhetoric, the stumbles, the hope—but I couldn't sit still. I was glad the lights were low and no one was sitting close enough to me to mind how fidgety I was. My head was fully immersed in the images and sounds on the screen, but my body was trying to be everywhere else at once.

express

I am overwhelmed by 18 people in my living room and intemperance and the slick patch on the dining room floor.

fire and ice

I still don't know how to deal with migraines that aren't mine, or surprise parties, or the crusty, sticky way I feel when I wake from a twilight nap. I know that this is not supposed to be a chore, this sweet low-stress job, the warm house in the height of winter, the jumping bean coworker, the one who puts his arm around me and squeezes my shoulder, the roommates who bake chocolate chip cookies and mop the floor even when it's my turn. But doesn't the ease of it all exhaust you?

thanks be to god for woven things

I paid $3.50 for the shirt I am wearing today. The dark turquoise is the exact shade of the afghan I made this fall that I want to but haven't yet given to my favorite evangelist, and it is warm. I'm chilled this morning, because I went jogging in 17 degree weather and then an hour later biked to work and all the while felt vaguely doomed, the way you do when you wake up with a scratchy throat and a hotter forehead and you feel, oh shit, I'm going to get sick, but before it really incapacitates you, you want to squeeze in all the activity and thought you can, like jogging, and biking, and writing letters, and meeting someone for coffee, so you do, and all the while you're wearing a really wonderful sort of dark turquoise thrift store shirt, and you're glad you are, because its color is rich and it is warm enough to pull out some of the chill from your bones and divert the wind.

reflex

It has been nearly-two years now that I've been a relatively competent but thoroughly amateur bike commuter. There have been flat tires and broken chains and snapped axles, a few near misses with cars/trucks/buses, and that one time last year I completely wiped out because it was snowing in these big, irresistible clumps-- so I was looking up instead of ahead and rammed into the curb full speed. Today, though, was new. A woman stepped out into the road right in front of me and a split second was all that kept me from plowing into her, breaking her legs, twisting my bike frame, landing in a tangle of spokes and concussions. If that had killed me, my last words would have been damn it!
I could do better.

remix

When did I shift from being random play all to repeat track?

I thought of a good argument against this under the old moon last week and I can't remember now. I have so many levels of censorship so what is one more?

collateral

metaphorical pain
a knee to the throat

I never expected
to stand so calm

or--forgive me--
to look away first

ha.

A guy walks into a bar with a lizard on his shoulder. "What do you call that?" asks the bartender. "Tiny," says the guy. "Because he's my newt."

THE RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN YOUR LIFE AND A DOG

I never intended to have this life, believe me --
It just happened. You know how the dogs turn up
At a farm, and they wag but can't explain.

It's good if you can accept your life -- you'll notice
Your face has become deranged trying to adjust
To it. Your face thought your life would look

Like your bedroom mirror when you were ten.
That was a clear river touched by mountain wind.
Even your parents can't believe how much you've changed.

Sparrows in winter, if you've ever held one, all feathers,
Burst out of your hand with a fiery glee.
You see them later in hedges. Teachers praise you,

But you can't quite get back to the winter sparrow.
Your life is a dog. He's been hungry for miles,
Doesn't particularly like you, but gives up, and comes in.

-Robert Bly

courier

I've never met anyone quite so conscientious about doorknob turning as you.

give and take

See, that's where we're different: if it was me who hadn't brought anything to the potluck, I'd eat anyway.

ow

If something kills me in the next week, it'll be going down stairs.

after a day of stretching

I was wearing a green shirt today, and you were wearing purple, and you were wearing yellow, and you were wearing red, and we were sentinels. We pinned the room down at the corners, our voices met in the middle. I was not impressed.

reentry

I drove the six hours from my parents' house to my house this afternoon and I kept my car within 5 miles of the speed limit
for the first time ever?
As for why, maybe because I was comfortable, or because I was distracted by thoughts of 2009 (I have high hopes).
For four hours I listened to the Bulgarian Women's Choir and then the rest of the way I listened to Coldplay's Viva la Vida on repeat. Because, well, I don't need a reason. I have no one to defend myself to.

I'm not that great of a juggler

So who else would I tell that I
dreamt last night that I was out
$480
when I decided to
pay for my family's dinner in Paris?
Or that I need another set of eyes to supplement
mine,
to receive my projections?
Because I do and
I did,
and damnit, my U key keeps sticking.

self control

When I am sober, I never hiccup more than once. It just takes a second of sitting still, of consciously suspending my breathing, and I can stop myself before the second hiccup hits. I didn't realize this ability was contingent on my sobriety. But it is. Because last night, damnit, I hiccuped once, and then again and again, and no amount of willpower or stillness could touch them. I was powerless, and laughing, and making bracelets out of glow sticks, and eating guacamole, and sipping champagne, and feeling so utterly grateful for the friends who surrounded me, and I was hiccuping.

old friend

I am grateful, for my own sake, that your arms are big and warm and male.