one is (not) the loneliest number

bon anniversaire sets of paragraphs.
i'm really happy i've made it this far. more to come.

a call to arms

pure class by the satorialist

le monde est illisible

today, as i pulled back the makeshift curtains and was blasted with sunlight, my eyes watered. but my heart, my heart leapt. i feel very at home now, being back in san francisco with school starting, with things happening, with life being reinvented. i like that people know my name and face. its always such a delightful thing. i'm hoping that happens more often as my life progresses. not to be famous, just to be known. to be known by people who i want to know me. i still have to conquer more of the world, but i feel pretty good right now. in twenty minutes, i am going to get a pizza and bike to the dogpatch, sit on a roof and smoke a cigarette, dance and mingle with old friends, laugh and fall asleep slightly drunk. i like that i know that. i like that i'm here.

how soon is now?

every morning i wake up to blurryness. every once in awhile, i want to just rub my eyes and see crisply. to not reach for my glasses or stumble into the bathroom for my contacts. i want to feel the way you do after diving into a wave and coming up to the surface. when everything is fresh. and new feeling. and sunshiney. like morning should feel. morning without glasses.

silver lining

every week

when i was born for the 7th time

for almost over the past two weeks, i've been sleeping in a twin bed. there was one in aliza's childhood bedroom, one at my parent's for a few hours, and the one i sit in now, the martha's vineyard bedroom. there are two twin beds in this room, the other covered with clothes, extra blankets, trident gum. i was lucky when i was younger, and had moved from my antique twin bed before my 8th birthday. i moved into my sister's room where the full sized bed was also so tall i had to run from the door to jump on it. i loved that bed. it was metal and white with seashells carved into parts of the frame. my mother bought me a full sized canopy bed when she re-decorated that room for me. the wood was dark and the bedspread was pink and full of flowers. the canopy was pink and striped. i wanted a canopy bed because the bed i slept in, at my grandparents house in martha's vineyard, was a canopy. it was my aunt's bed, an antique they bought her when she was young. it had a curved canopy and the sheets were all white. it was a twin, maybe smaller because it was an antique. antique beds tend to have their own measurements that do not correspond with anything in particular. i think sometimes that my own measurements also do that. i do not correspond with anyone in particular. one night in march, i went to a large party and slept at ellena's house in brooklyn, first on the couch, then in her twin bed. we both lay there together and she was pleasantly surprised to see we both fit quite well. i concurred. but maybe that's because old friends like ourselves are comfortable anytime we are together. my twin bed, the one i sit on, creeks a lot. i watched uncle buck in it the other night and got very lonely when it showed the two young kids sleeping with uncle buck in his huge bed. i like to sleep alone and i also dislike it. in a twin bed, you cannot roll over forever; the fear of falling is imbedded in your body and brain. i had that falling feeling last night as i drifted off and woke to find myself clutching the mattress. i was curled into a fetal position, probably trying to keep from rolling off the bed. instead, i was just falling straight down.

i could be your pharoh's tomb

for ever

the desert of the real

pictures from detroit

feel my footsteps

as we push forward through to dawn, the car just swerves ever so slightly. well, sometimes its more than slight. i wish i could say i feel safe when my father drives, but its truly the opposite. in fact, i rarely feel safe in cars anymore unless i am driving. my heart races rather fast and i see accidents constantly in my mind. i wish i could sleep right now, but only the dog sleeps. she is the most comfortable of the 5 of us, tucked into the back of the car between the scrabble board and my luggage. although who knows if she's really comfortable. its not as if she will tell us. i'd love to have one of those dog collars they had in UP for emily, but at the same time, i wouldn't want her to tell me what happens on a daily basis. i am starving. its 7 minutes to 6am. we passed some cows grazing, but its mostly just trees and cars and trees and cars on the other side of the highway. in detroit, i saw more stopped and stranded cars on the highway than i ever have in my 10 years of driving. shane said it was because everyone there drives american cars and maybe that's true. my family drives volvos. i drove a prius in detroit and felt out of place. scott and i parked it in front of the packard plant and it looked silly. a silly looking car amongst the remains of industry. the ruins of industry. the post-industry. my father and i had somewhat of a conversation about detroit yesterday while driving through queens. i think that's one of the first conversations we've had about my interests and work that we've ever had. for more than a few minutes. although i didn't tell him my theories or my stories. we didn't get there just yet. we drove down jamacia avenue and he commented about the traffic and the pedestrians and the white castle. i commented about the uninteresting new stories and the weather in edgartown and the condition of the roads in queens. i was starving. i tried to not picture the accidents, although they were in the front of my brain as we swerved, ever more than slightly.

if i ever make it home

jason lazarus

she tastes like the real thing

today i ate lunch outside with an old new friend. we talked about art, my mother, fulbrights, los angeles, japeth mennes, graduate schools, and detroit. we took a drive in his car to highland park, where there isn't enough money to hire its own police force, where people steal the manhole covers for scrap metal, where big concrete road blocks block roads so people don't just dump things there. useless roads, since there is no one living there. there are weeds taller than me, wild dogs, caved in roofs. my old new friend took me to houses he painted orange with his old friends. orange objects. they are still there because the town/city/idea of highland park cannot afford to demolish them. the idea of highland park cannot afford anything. i peered into an open manhole and it was about six feet deep. nothing as exciting as a river of slime, although there may as well be. the people we passed looked grumpy and tired. in front of an orange house, if you can call an object with trees growing inside and no roof and no family and no anything a house, there was a streetlight with a long vertical stripe of orange paint. i motioned to my old new friend and he laughed and mentioned the night they painted, one of the four was fairly intoxicated. the lights don't work, but i liked the streak of orange. demolish this too it says. nothing here works it yells. you can do better than this it beckons. i wonder if joe biden went to highland park today. if he saw the orange and the wild dogs and the tired faces. i wonder if he saw my face, which is still slightly confused about what i saw and what i plan to write about and if i think change can actually happen. what do you think joe? do you think electric hybridness is going to change detroit? are we in for a surprise? there is no reverse. first turn back on the lights and cover the manholes and then we'll talk hybrid.

say my name outloud

his shirt said oaklandish