When I read Nabokov or Keruoac or Baudelaire or Fitzgerald, the reality they portray is entirely anchored in the objective reality we feel in the norm. The Normal, the Un-Other, the less-than-extraordinary is conveyed to us as a story of extraordinary events. Sequences of narratives, emotions, etc. (flying across the forsaken lands between the east and west coasts, falling in love with the freedom of unrequited love, the filth of living and our visceral existences climaxing then rotting) are journeys in which the reader may watch through sentences unscrambled with meaning… they remain distant tales, Disney characters who we will never make love to, or could barely feel anything for but customary twinges of sympathy (even then, these spasms cease at the ring of a dinner bell).

Yet when I read Murakami, I find an altogether astonishing surreal truth of existence.
Within the very mundane is the magic of hypersensitive detail… The fabric of how I feel in my very environment is stretched and ripped. The bowels of what normal reality I once felt as a numb being are spilled out, pulsing, gleaming, semi functioning but slowly, surely, twitching in the death of the chaos I have recently found myself in. What consistent reality I once trusted has committed a delicious seppuku. I feel a crippling childlike uncertainty, the suspension in any belief hanging my conviction by tenterhooks wound up on a high, cold ceiling in an cavernous warehouse.

These are melodramatic observations, perhaps encouraged by the sheer volume of pages I have voraciously consumed these past two weeks. But I feel the same threads of fate in my life this year that Murakami has so eloquently and keenly committed to his millions of copies of books… The eerie swells of conflicting selves. Of dreams birthing dangerous premonitions that have spilled into my waking reality, even going so far as to affect my relationships in subtle but significant ways.

I’ve always been wary of the vivid nature of my dreams, careful not to trust each whimsical event as evidence for viable desires, wishes, or fears. But emotions are emotions, whether or not your eyes are awake to differentiate the reality in sunlight or the dark night. I have always experienced a heavy, affective residue after my vivid dreams. I cannot ignore them because the grow stronger.

This last one had the power of returning me to life before I met you, when things were emptier, lighter, more free. When I awoke in the morning, I felt less for you. But I also felt less of myself. The retrospectively serious nature of what happened in my dream may directly lend significance to these feelings, but I remember a strange, shallow joy in the experience.

Ironically (? Depending at how you look at it) this makes it easier.

Granted, I’m not the most experienced of woman in this strange world of dating.

I’ve learned how easy things can be up to the point of realization that there exists deeper feelings for a person. But how wonderful this painful struggle is in itself! The heaviness brings you a melodramatic romance of significance. Of consequences, of change and growth within oneself. The pain of existence as proof of existence.

My strategy thus far has been to treasure friendships as they are instead of framing them into potential “dateable” candidates. As a sucker for variety, I am also not looking for “types” of people outside of physical traits I appreciate. What’s most charming? Being surprised at how endearing certain characteristics are in certain people.

This goes for everyone I meet, though. Stereotyping or judgements are naturally automated social behaviors, but you can choose to appreciate or depreciate the people you meet, whether or not they “fit” with your sociology economic or cultural class.

This can still be difficult to remember when they’re boring you to tears, or dancing in a way that makes you want to cry silently.

I have a not-so-guilty pleasure of listening to brash, vulgar music snapping bluntly sexual lyrics

Show me where da money at boy come with that monestat

The best is when I’m walking in public…it’s on a hardy volume 25, and I get this silly swagger where every lift of the foot pops my shoulders and makes me throw my leg out as I strut forward

pop that coochie you know dat procedure if you want that cash gotta shake that ass make it look like a seizure

It makes me feel “alive” and “street”

Maybe this is unrelated, but I have trouble responding to romantic behaviors,

i.e.

hand holding

sweet hugs

dancing with a man

affectionate embraces that you’re supposed to ‘casually’ hang out in

they should really have a class for this: “HOW TO BE ROMANTIC” bullshit;

when it happens I can’t help but see some B-list comedy play out in my head. Snarky lines as you go in for the kiss. Pent up enthusiasm pools out lazily , losing any momentum of passion. Sure, I’ll hold  your hand. I guess you’ll feel weird if I don’t.

Sitting on the couch propped up against each other feels the most natural.

On my last date, I made him order two strong drinks while I sipped my limeade. I knew he needed it.

I can’t help but be that person who is semi-into the moment, where any proposition of intimacy prompts me to remove myself like a phantom shadow. As a phantom shadow, I stand a couple yards away and watch him earnestly take my hand as I smoke my phantom cigarette and stoically blow out my phantom smoke. I think about what Tao Lin would write about in this moment.  I think about absurd crises that might interrupt the cloying sweetness. Like an obese bear with a shaved chest lumbering in and smashing a table. Or if I stood up and roared like a lion.

Or I think about brunch. I think about how amazingly eggs bacon and coffee go well together.

He stops and strokes my face. He tucks my hair behind my ear.

I smile and I think about oatmeal with cranberries and brown sugar.

He pauses.

I think about how I’ll never sing like Mariah Carey.

And then I lean in to kiss him.

clean packets of stapled paper

matchboxes

the jeans I saw on a bum yesterday (um); he laced up huge rips in his jeans with orange shoelaces, insensitively reminds me of the lesson we had on ‘generative constraints’

the way the couch looks without anyone sitting on it– provokes images of people sitting on its fluffy cushions and the sensation of sinking pillows

Fiji water bottles trembling with water

Plain white tees on boys

the clouds in Chicago

how the clouds in Chicago swoop over the sun like giant birds and slip away; that moment when the sunlight warms your skin once more

the excitement of eating a hot dog before you actually eat it

peeling a banana

swirling iced tea in glasses like I”m Don Draper with his scotch or whiskey or something

the sky reflected on tall glass buildings

weird tan patterns that gradient white in the crooks of your elbows or the underside of your arm, where your shoulder goes black while the boobs stay pasty white

when people dye their hair and go tanning and end up with one funny, uniform brown-orange color

watching children get into trouble

watching people cross streets from the 32nd floor

thunderstorms

strutting

watching other people strut

rubber cement

The Color of Her Panties

Crewel Lye: A Caustic Yarn

Queen of Sorcery

Isle of View

Magician’s Gambit

Castle Roogna

Robot Adept

Bearing an Hourglass

The Seeress of Kell

Sorceress of Darshiva

Blue Adept

The Source of Magic

Dragon on a Pedestal

Vale of the Vole

Demons Don’t Dream

Split Infinity

Ogre, Ogre

Castle of Wizardry

The Amber Spyglass

Juxtaposition

Night Mare

Demon Lord of Karanda

Currant Events

With a Tangled Skein

The Subtle Knife

King of the Murgos

Centaur Isle

Enchanter’s End Game

Mossflower

It would be fun to make posters for books. Or ‘fanfic’ book cover art. Hmm.

I had a whole cigarette: My friend’s boyfriend gave me a Newport Menthol, and we were in her car. The pleasant spin of a buzz caught up just as we swung a left– the trees flew by– I asked if everyone else felt as great as I did. They vaguely agreed.

I puked in public: A frat party at the UW. I don’t know if that really counts as “public”, but my Australian friend wanted to “experience” the “American college”. We snuck him into a frat party where I danced, felt sick, sat down, and got up to puke in the already moistened corner. He congratulated me, as good male-friends do when they try to mitigate your embarrassment because they’re embarrassed.

There was also a vacation in LA where I bombed a leather-top table. The boy I made out with that night also congratulated me that time as well.

I had sex: My friend’s friend. I remember how depressingly methodical it was, and how afterwards I congratulated him. On not being a virgin anymore. He had a mini postcard of the Virgin Mary above his bed on his wall, and when I laughed he looked hurt and offended. That sums up our relationship, mostly: callous laughter, followed by hurt and offended.

I was scarred: Bally Total Fitness had a daycare center ruled by the most neglectful witch– a boy dragged me into the bathroom with him, pulled his pants down, and demanded I look at his privates. I remember screaming and scrambling for the locked door. I don’t remember what happened after that, and I don’t think I want to know.

I was bullied: On the kindergarten playground, the popular girl in school made her friend dance around me, point at me, and sing “macho, macho man”. Their accusations were wild and inaccurate; I was neither macho nor a man, and I felt threatened. Ironically, if they had been correct, I probably wouldn’t have been as freaked.

My glasses lens popped out: Funnelball. Followed by several times I played basketball and the backboard returned some good ones.

I was stung by a bee: I sat on a bee at the pool, and had my butt iced in front of the entire complex.

I used the internet: my dad sat me in front of an old school computer and told me to ‘look things up!”. Remember when Ask Jeeves was “COOL”?

I kissed a boy: he wasn’t great– in retrospect– I don’t even remember the exact time–

Shaved my legs: I hid my bald legs from the parents and was very self conscious about them.

discussed ‘dildos’: I was in 8th grade P.E. class, walking around the school with some friends and a teacher. We were talking about pervy Disney movie cover art, and they mentioned the dildo in Ariel’s sandcastle. I asked what a dildo was, and Mrs. Breen told me to ask Mr. Toppenburg. When she saw that I was seriously going to, she explained it herself and I was Mortified.

At times, I enjoy sitting very, very still.

If I concentrate, I can feel the corpuscular vehicle of my body: the weight of my cheeks, sagging from my cheekbones, or the strange view I have of the end of my nose. The blink of an eye, however quick and faint with the flutter of lashes, is wrung with flesh, greased moist by sensitive oils and unrealized tears of last night’s dreams. Sometimes, I wake up and stare at my fingerprints at the tips of my fingers- bald, pink, ridged with millions of curious lines readjusting my fate, one minute gesture at a time.