Where would we be without uncensored glory?

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.

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 want to be better, I want to be the best–

In Seattle we’re sunless but there’s never less water than a lake and a sound; in Chicago it’s endless… land, and Michigan stretches to the Arctic or nameless lands beyond the paleness of the water touching the sky in all its blueness–

As I weave through happy pedestrians, of mommys pushing strollers trailing packs of kids waving sticky hands and sweating sweetly their mouths are sprouting pink “blahblahblahblahs!” of questions, exclamations, experimental sounds forming the foundation of the words they will use for the rest of their lives (Chicagoans stretching their a’s as far as they can go)– how will they experience meaning and its forms, of symbols and metaphors creeping into their imagination or leaking through their ears like a constantly dripping rusty pipe, drip drip dripping, dropping their words like careless pennies tossed into the cracks of sidewalks or baking in the sun (hot little buttons waiting for a superstitious savior to scoop them up into the hospitably warm darkness of a jean pocket)

These images are fluid. They flow into each other.  Morphing in form and consistency as natural as watery sand, or pillowy thighs, or strawberry lips. Once I read a viking romance novel that described  nipples as raspberries; I read that passage aloud and laughed heartily.

Love is mythical; it is a story already told, like the American Dream or Cinderella, where you compare yours to what supposedly Should Be; most base it on the good, when like anything on this green earth it should include the darkness, the darkness of Love which can morph into hate quite naturally as the stars burn for centuries until the mass is so condensed their is only blackness, confusion, a hole of despair (as far as the rules of physics go). Love is light as is can be heavy. When you love someone you love all of them; finding fault leads to finding more faults, until the disgust and contempt takes over and the monster you’ve made your friend out to be stands next to you and smiles sweetly from the shadows of memories (i.e. “who they used to be” and “the person you ‘fell in love with’”). Why no, I do not love you anymore: goodbye. You walk away steadily, as if a star in a fashion show, as if Marc Jacobs were clapping behind you with his tan, oily skin and bright, smiling eyes, twinkling with his diamond studded (and also tan) earlobes, as if you had donned Swarovski crystals as lingerie because “you’re a million dollars, baby”. Even if you aren’t, convincing yourself of that lie is just as good as the dream of love.

You’re married. You’re married. You’re married. GOOD ONE

the night sky is tinged with orange from the street lamps. As it lightens, I see a purple penumbra kissing the edges of my vision with an lurking, purple glow.

In my dreams I experience an existential calmness. I am one with myself, a shallow experience where I have been taken along for a ride.

His eyes are brown and comfortable to look at

She looked at the ergonomic office chair. It glared back through the shine of its lofty armrests, the netted ‘breathable’ stripes stretched taut to form the back on an unsightly curvy frame. The stub of its readjustment bar smiled sarcastically. She threw her laptop at it and screamed. “F*CK YOUUUU!”

Wouldn’t it be better to say “Some things weren’t meant to be questions” rather than “Some questions weren’t meant to be answered”? I would say so; it’s much more precise. Furthermore, questions are questions only because they beg answers. Otherwise, it’s a fact. Or there would have been an Unsolved Mysteries episode on it. Do you remember the printed “purple lightening” backdrop?

His eyes were blue and his eyebrows, expressive. He reminds me of Tintin. Or an Egon Schiele portrait.

Max Ernst

Yesterday, a small series of strange events occurred between a space of thirty to sixty seconds.

My friend and I are walking down the sidewalk; Monroe towards the water. We pass  the paved lot where Taste of Chicago hosted swarming hoards of the hungry, lip-smacking crowds, tourists and locals alike; suburbanites with wide eyes and sparkly stares rubbing shoulders with businessmen orbited by screaming children secretly smacking each other and pulling pigtails. Plumes of smoke off the black charred metal bowels of grills screened the blue sky above… a stretch of sidewalk before us, fenced on one side, a busy street on the other.

The sidewalks of Chicago are wide; the size of an alley-street in Rome

Luxuriously large, uniform squares of cement dotted and pimpled with black gum spots–

On the sidewalk, in the shade of a tree on the other side of the fence, stands a small, blonde boy. He has tall white socks drawn to his knees; a red pullover with a blue collar, a red baseball cap, and blue shorts. Something is wrong; as we encroach, I see how strangely dirty and forlorn he seems. His face is abruptly tense and fearful, his lip curled under into a wrinkled chin, his green eyes flashing as he stares directly across us to our left. We notice the strange blemishes of scabs on his smooth, tan cheeks. Following his gaze, we watch as a fireman’s vehicle pulls up onto the sidewalk and parks. The stretcher in the back is empty. There are two policemen sitting with the empty stretcher, but they dismount quickly as the vehicle stops.

The empty stretcher is propped up but ignored; the men stand poised near the entrance of the small cab of the vehicle.

As we watch, the scabby orphan-like boy is forgotten. As we watch, a large, obesely overweight black woman gingerly crawls out of the front of the vehicle. Her face is concentrated; tense; belabored– we watch as fat legs emerge from under the fleshy, khaki-covered paunch of her pelvis and step out onto the bright sidewalk. She is carrying something– a fat, barbecued turkey leg in a nest of crinkled, shiny foil. She looks down at it lovingly. The turkey leg is covered and glittering with sauce. We continue walking and look up to the lake and the tall sails of ships.

And we’re not sure what just happened, but it feels profound, like a scene from Paul Haggis’s Crash.

The timing of the sequence of events was incredible

I don’t feel like I did it justice–

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.