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September 22nd, 2005
07:34 pm - Do you want to get to know me?
Mary knows me pretty well. She also is great at illustrating my life philosophies through my favorite medium of microsoft paint.
If you aren't for me, you're against me, mofos.
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September 6th, 2005
04:46 pm - Oh you wanted power? I got some power!
Imagine this. You go to the dentist for a routine teeth cleaning, but instead of kittens or fluffy clouds on the ceiling there are various photos of outhouses. Outhouses in winter. Outhouses on mountains. Outhouses embedded in hills filled with daffodils.
The background music? I know you guessed Kenny G or Michael Bolton. On most days this would be an extremely accurate guess. Today it was Black Power talk radio.
I thought about waving the black panther sign her way. You know, just so she'd stop stabbing my gums with that horrendous pick thing. But I know when I'm defeated.
Freakishly white teeth and 5 archaic floss threaders from 1985 later, I was on my way to another Tuesday.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/blah.gif) blank
Current Music: Death Cab for Cutie - Plans
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August 24th, 2005
12:58 am - Chapter Summary, August.
How is work these days? They ask.
Repetitive. I usually answer as I wander off to something else.
The thing is, my job is in a language that is technically English, but no one really understands except for those of us who do the same thing. Which puts me in a funny place. Like an island. And all I can think is:
It’s a good thing I can fly or I’d never get out of here. If I wasn’t here to begin with.
Sometimes I run late at night. Mostly because I love the way the moonlight hits the sidewalks in our neighborhood. Like they tried to make everything as cookie cutter as they could, but still there are ridges, visible imperfections, in the sidewalk. I run past the mutant ducks at the fake reservoir to the garish grocery store on the corner. Sometimes I contemplate doing jumping jacks out front in the fluorescent light just to be funny. But it’s so late that no one would be looking anyway. When I run at night I don’t listen to music. The only noises you really want to hear are at night.
I sweat my ass off at work. Literally. I think I know now what it’s like to be thirsty all the time.
The planes we fly have cracks in the wings. That’s a little scary. Yesterday, Tricia’s plane was struck by lightning in-flight. She told the story about how the observer was thrown out of his seat. I kind of had to laugh because for whatever reason it reminded me of various Muppet movies where Kermit ends up balled up against a wall with his legs all tangled up.
Today is Wednesday. Since they call it “hump day” I can’t ever help but envision all of us riding on top of a camel’s hump. Perfect animal symmetry. Camels spit. I hope that isn’t representative of Saturday.
Chins up, all. No matter how office spacey your job may be, the world is your dandelion.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/thinking.gif) contemplative
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August 20th, 2005
02:58 am - La Guardia, the Story - by Jane Mead
I
A man in the clot of colors—which are people—
is holding a naked iris, is watching
the long line of faces unloading.
He holds the flower up to his chest, then
down at a tilt to his side—in one hand
behind his back makes a surprise.
He runs through his posture
now and again. He uses
one shoe at a time for standing.
The long line of faces—its trickle and blurt—
hurts me. He is watching for her face.
She must have sat at the back of the plane—
a seven-forty-seven: she's been smoking.
Perhaps something has happened that matters.
Perhaps what has happened is nothing—
but the face that arrives is never
the face that left us. Remember that.
I want to rest my head on his back,
on his blue flannel shirt. I imagine
her face which must arrive. I imagine
that she must not disappoint him.
Will I know her before he sees her?
What does their story mean to me?
I used to walk through Kensington Gardens
every morning on my way to school
that winter we lived at Lancaster Gate.
This is a story too—does it have meaning,
is it about something that matters—does it
tell how the branches aged the white sky?
Is its secret in the fog or the red sun rising,
in the ducks on the Serpentine as seen
through a layer of mist—can it explain
why my mother whimpered in her sleep that year?
In the frame story she walks off last,
sees the flower—hands up for a moment
for surprise before she takes it.
She gives him a small kiss and they head off
arm in arm down the long hall
happily, until I can no longer see them.
This is the story as I saw it happen.
The story as I told it.
In their second story he waits with the iris
long after she doesn't arrive—
but for some other reason than for
so-I-can-save-him: she has been delayed—
perhaps by something inconsequential,
we don't know yet, but in the second story
she does not arrive. This is the story
as I imagine it—the story that exists.
Is there any other possible story?
Walking home from school in the afternoons
I'd stop and sit by the Serpentine
and rub my fingers on the curbstone.
I loved the raw circles I made in their tips—
symmetrical and red as the skin
under the popped bubble of a blister.
Is there any other story possible?
Who must I be to make her exist?
II
I am stuck in the middle of the story,
not knowing if she will arrive.
I saw her face, this makes no difference—
there is a man at LaGuardia
holding an iris. When I think of it
I cannot stop fearing for him.
How do you unlock a story? How
do you recognize the image—
the one that might change you?
If I put in the part about my mother
and step-father fighting, if I describe
—perfectly—his body in action,
his shadow on the wall behind him,
or add the bit about it all boiling down
to inquisitions in the rational morning—as in
whose dark anus holds the safe-box key—
will we have a story with a meaning?
There is a way to discover a truth
about anything you want to know.
I imagine there's a way to know what's real.
Listen—I walked through an empty park
every morning on my way to school
and knew that it was good to be human.
Some nights I make a killer pot of coffee—
I put on the music that I love,
and dance. Sometimes I dance for hours.
Go to your phonograph. Put on
Brandenburg Concerto Number Six.
This is about something very hard.
—This is about trying to live with that music
playing in the back of your mind.
—About trying to live in a world
with that kind of music.
Current Music: Gorillaz
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August 18th, 2005
10:17 am - Oh you want angst? I got some angst for you.
The story goes that the day I was born, it took my mother 17 hours of painful induced labor before I would emerge. As foreboding as this beginning might have seemed, my parents have always been in full agreement that I was an easy kid. I seldom cried, I laughed all the time, and short of the occasional mouth misses during feeding time, I generally was pretty clean. I always did what I was supposed to do. I went to the school I always wanted to go to, I earned a scholarship to pay for most of it. I’ve been on autopilot ever since (no pun intended).
So I can’t help but wonder why, in the past two years, my parents have come to see me exactly once. There have been at least four cancellations, and just one this past week. Apparently helping my sister move to law school took far too much out of them to really bother. I won’t point out that I have moved exactly four times since college and they have helped me with only one of them.
Sometimes I think that formulas are the most direct way to answers. The only solution I can arrive at is: No effort necessary for kid growing up = No effort put in after kid grows up. We won’t even mention how my sister practically raised me. Or how she cooked for me every day for lunch throughout my early years. The menu was always the same. It had about five selections, but she could only really cook spaghetti. Which means she would always come up with some creative excuse as to why she couldn’t cook the other dishes I requested. I think that’s the favorite childhood Erin I like to think of. The one with wildly untamed curly hair and huge glasses, taking my order with an amused grin on her face. She couldn’t have been more than 7.
I’ve always been one to keep the peace. But I think it’s only lately I’ve learned that being easy for other people only means that you get taken for granted. I don’t think I’ll be taking any of my parents’ calls for at least a month. I won’t be the difficult child, but I won’t be the taken for granted one, either. Sometimes you have to take a stand. Sometimes you have to throw in the towel. I’m not sure which I’m doing here, but something has to change. I’ve lived with disappointment a little too long.
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August 11th, 2005
11:10 pm - Oh and you thought weddings were about YOU!!
Dear Shannon of Corpus Christi TX,
I don't know you. You don't know me. So this is a great opportunity for honesty. I've seen pictures of you. I know what you look like, and I also know a couple minute details about you, like you don't enjoy pickles on sandwiches.
Let me level with you here. You and me, bridesmaids at Amelia's wedding. Amelia = rail thin ballet dancer who resembles Penelope Cruz. You = tall thin girl. Me = neither of the above.
You need to take one for the team. I'm not going to be the one to mar the wedding photos. I'm not going to be the only one over a size 4. You're already married, you aren't looking for anyone else, and it's possible you could be in the market for childbirthing soon. Know what that means, other than you'll actually start appreciating pickles? That's right. It means you're going to get fat anyway.
So just take these 20 dozen boxes of frozen cookie dough ordered for you from Annie Gilson of Jacksonville, FL and get on with your bad self. You can happily beeline to the inevitable, and I can look comparatively normal in my bridesmaid dress.
That is all.
BFF!!
-A
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August 4th, 2005
08:38 pm - Do you really want to be the "bare minimum"?
I'm a real team player. I like to improve everything at my squadron in the most basic of ways. When I see the attempt to implement positive changes, I like to do what I can to further these efforts.
That's why I walked 10 minutes back down the hall to retrieve my red sharpie when I saw a freshly painted stick figure girl on our bathroom. It's the little things, folks.
Sign up for the Annie Gilson Improvement Program today!
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August 2nd, 2005
09:37 pm - Greenland Isn't Green.
My friend Benjamin hangs maps of the world on his wall. Nothing unique, you must understand. Just those sort that you might find hovering on a wall at a middle school, all naked and dissected like an unraveled orange peel. All the countries have their own little colors, and they are always quite bright. We used to discuss our elusive dreams. For two kids from such backwards lands in the south, we always dreamed of getting out. But the truth of the matter is, until I left that land I had no idea how much of an aberration I truly was. It never mattered where I discussed living, or being. He would stand up from whichever part of the room he was sitting and walk to the map. Point out every detail about the place. Analyze how far other places were from it. I think that’s how I remember him the most, one crooked index finger lovingly searching the neon colored countries, the back of his head at a slight tilt. I never told him that sometimes I would make up places I wanted to go just so I could see this image. Even if the world was spinning entirely off its axis, I knew that I could get Benjamin in this one pose, a familiar shadow on this portion of my world.
Today at the Starbucks embedded in a B&N, I sat at one of those pseudo-bar counters. The type that would be a bar if it faced anything. But on the other side of the display is only another shelf of books that people want to browse. Hard to ignore someone staring intently at a novel two feet from your face, while facing you. I couldn’t help but feel all jostled.
The maps they sell there are rolled into tubes. I could only see a sliver of Europe, sheathed in plastic wrapping. The maps they sell here could be weapons. So compact and shiny.
At the table behind me was this strange combination of an older poshly dressed woman and a hippie granola 20-something year old girl. I’m not sure I could chalk it up to family interrelatedness. It almost sounded like an interview, but in reverse. Like with the older woman asking all the questions, but so faintly I could scarcely hear them. Then the 20-something year old girl would produce this rehearsed sounding theatrical display of an answer. I couldn’t help but wonder if that’s all life is about these days—booming answers to questions you can’t quite hear and aren’t quite sure you’re even being asked.
Ben and I used to have so much to say in the Starbucks we studied in. Even the silences were something. At the counter today I had a nagging feeling something was missing. I couldn’t piece together what it was. It wasn’t until I was outside driving home that it occurred to me that it was the first time I was at a Starbucks where I didn’t call him. And I didn’t think to.
And how far away from everyone else I’ve been. Breathing in the vapid air. Reading the words of other people. Drinking the coffee a stranger has made. Attempting to blanket myself in a realm where time is suspended, and all those memories of Ben’s back facing me in a room pointing to a map aren’t so far away.
Current Music: Ryan Adams - Cold Roses
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12:16 am - Vapid Air
The last book I bought you was one of those old ones, with 25 cents stamped as the price in the upper right hand corner and the pages edged in this strange shade of blue. I guess back in those times they thought we needed color to lure us in. Looking at the television and the lonesome books all on their shelves with no page colors, I think they were right. The truth is, I don’t have the patience, the attention span. These days I find myself reading for pages with no comprehension. Like I’ve spun into some sort of autopilot for vast blocks of minutes at one time without so much as an idea where my brain was. I hope that wherever it is, it’s doing something real. But I can’t help but have this nagging feeling that it’s just rushing into some sort of emergency shutdown. Just trying to vacate out into a sparse realm before I go places I shouldn’t.
I read for hours these days with silence for company. Even if I have to reread the pages. It’s the only thing that gets me spinning again. The only real interest I seem to have left. I like to believe that after these pages spin themselves through, I’ll have recycled into something else entirely.
I told you when I first gave that book to you that I wanted to borrow it when you were finished. I haven't so much as taken a peek at that author's work since. I wonder which little bit of your garbage will become another part of me.
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July 31st, 2005
03:10 am - Bar me from bars.
Dear Sorta Creepy Bisexual Couple,
I must confess when we all first started talking I was excited. I mean wow, I haven’t really had a good conversation with one person, much less two in months! You both could even finish my sentences sometimes!
Then you, the girl, started getting a tad bit clingy. Like the first time you grabbed my ass I wrote it off as an accident, but by the 10th time I was starting to catch on that it might be intentional. It was then that I thought that I really knew what was going on. Ah. You like me. I get it.
But then when you started freak dancing and backing up in my direction at the same time you were telling me about your fiancé who was right beside me, I started to get a little confused. And then when he winked at you and told you to “do your thing,” I became slightly suspicious.
But none of this so far is the strange part.
The part I still can’t figure out is why I gave you two my phone #.
I mean, it was like once I found out you two own a paintball place I was like a kid at Christmas.
Please? Please let me play for free? I’ll dance with your fiancé once or twice. Hell, I’ll even find you other victims.
I just can’t resist a good deal. What the hell has happened to me?
♥,
Annie, or Amy, or Danny.
Whatever you thought my name was
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July 26th, 2005
05:43 pm - Like totally rad, dude.
Last night, at approximately 4am, one of my roommates decided that my life simply wasn't challenging enough. It's almost as if I have been emitting this vibe that work, stress, and everyday life malfunctions have not been adequate to keep me down. Something simply had to be done.
Damnit, something about this made sense, I swear.
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July 24th, 2005
09:15 pm
If you recollect back to when you were a child, as I’m sure you remember, as all of us remember being a child, you may remember playing the Nintendo. All blips and beeps aside, I’m sure you remember the gray screen. Or the black one. The screen that would flicker when it wasn’t reading the cartridge properly. You might have banged and screamed, you might have flung it out the closest window. There are only two methods that I have known to work.
1) Blow on the cartridge – somehow removing mysterious bits of dust.
2) Place index cards to seal some unknown gap between cartridge and system that is the cause of the problem to begin with.
Either way, you have to hit reset after you do that for the changes to sink in. Because when you hit reset everything is suddenly ok, right?
Current Music: Emilie Simon
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July 19th, 2005
04:44 pm - This is why I love my Australian chef friends..
Does anyone else understand me like this?
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July 18th, 2005
02:51 pm - Monday morning 8am
“Len? Who’s Len?”
“Glenn. You know Glenn – he just had a baby.”
“Ohh.. right.”
I stare at the multicolored CONGRATULATIONS card in my hand. The inside is a veritable wealth of crappily handwritten best wishes. I grab a corner in the upper left hand side. “Hey Glenn. Congratulations. I hope your baby is a real badass. –Annie”
Tricia sleepily eyes the card and signs “Patricia A. Holt” before she even realizes it’s a card and not some other piece of bureaucratic nonsense. I’m sure Glenn is going to appreciate that.
Eliot's signature roughly resembles a pencil sketch of a 3 month old fetus.
God, what’s wrong with all of us?
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06:16 am - Somedays aren't your's at all...
It’s a little strange, but every single road trip I’ve been on, my mind skims over all the dashed white lines. Thinking about how they seem like the road form of our ellipses, the thought process you go through when you don’t have the clarity for other forms of punctuation. When I was growing up I knew this guy who swore on every long road trip that he counted all these white lines. That he knew how many dashed lines were between Charlotte and Texas, New York and Florida. I’ve crossed half this country in my car twice, and even tried to count them. I counted them until it seemed like the numbers might swallow me whole. This past weekend I might have passed a million of the dashed lines. It could just as easily be more or less.
It could just as easily have been those lines from elementary school telling you to “cut here.”
Some days they seem to know that I’m collecting them--that I’m driving the roads on weekends trying so hard for a glimmer. Just a sense of what the ellipses are trying to say. Trying to read the words blanketed in dots, in dashes. I wonder at which dash number I’ll feel at home in my life. So many more of these than mile markers, and yet the chances of finding what I’m looking for in them is so much less.
If my life was a little more square I’d have more corners to hide in.
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/classic/sad.gif) crushed
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July 13th, 2005
11:25 pm - PLEASE STOP FUCKING FEEDING ME!
Amelia, Christina, Tricia, Karie, and Eliot. Please stop feeding me. You don't understand. At first I was grateful, but now I'm just getting fat. It used to be sporadic: a happenstance phone call with "Hey, Annie! We're making steak and asparagus tonight, wanna come over??" But now. God now. Every single day. And there are overlapping situations. Last night alone on my way to Karie's for grilled burgers I get a phone call from you, Amelia, trying to feed me. Earlier in the day Eliot also had invited me to dinner. The truth is, I have no internal resolve. I cannot say no to any of you unless you'd be cancelling the other out. So I have no choice but to eat the quantities of food you provide.
Just in case you need a physical manifestation of my current concern, here you are:
If you're going to feed me so often, could you at least make it so you are really all terrible cooks? Burn the steaks, piss on the salad. I don't care what anymore. I just can't be consuming this many calories and successfully maintain my lazy lifestyle. I've decided to change this up, one step at a time.
Step #1:
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July 12th, 2005
01:39 pm - Ahem, yeah..
Their interpretation of my job:
My interpretation of my job:
I wonder why I'm so annoyed with my job lately...
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July 10th, 2005
10:55 pm - VELCOME TO ZEE LOFTE
Yes. This is it. I know you’ve all had insatiable curiosity. There are two things you will immediately note.
1) I have phenomenally impeccable taste.
2) I live in a constant state of disarray.
If these were your two immediate thoughts, you are on the right track. Allow me to fill you in on the details.
In the lower left hand corner there is an orange plastic purse. This was, in actuality, used only once at an 80s party and I simply cannot be held accountable for it. I keep it because I know that it will come in handy some other 80s party when I feel like donning a plastic orange purse. Besides, I paid a good $1.25 for this at Goodwill.
Yes, my office chair is filled by a gym bag (sporadically used) and has a plastic bag on it from the last purchase I made. If you were a super detective you would also notice that I don’t use my desk since my laptop is on my bed. I’m so obsessed with the internet that I sleep with it.
The minifridge was stolen from the Gilson’s lakehouse household. In the past I would have had to sneak it out in the middle of the night. But with old age comes generosity, so my fridge from senior year of college and I have at last been united. I felt guilty for it being so naked, so I bought these cool Tim Burtonish magnets that hold absolutely nothing. Useful, huh?
Note the empty beer bottles littered about the room. I usually clean these up by day 3 after a session. This is day 1 after. Don’t worry about the ones on the floor beside my bed. Those I rinsed out in the sink so they don’t smell like beer. I just haven’t quite taken that big step of moving them into the trash downstairs.
The futon was that compromise between “I don’t really want to buy a futon” and “Well people who visit me in “ze lofte” should have something to sit on.” I don’t know what’s up with its curious industrial metal frame. Other than that it really isn’t a bad piece of furniture.
Used up, empty diet soda 2 liters are common. There is also one on the ledge of my bathtub. I’d tell you that they are there for decoration, but we both know that’s a lie. Read up 2 paragraphs for explanation.
The white puma flip flops by my bed were my favorite purchase one week ago. Now they are barely holding on to that original semblance of “white-ity” and I’m now ashamed to wear them. That doesn’t mean I have moved them to my closet. I just don’t wear them. Beside them is sneaker exhibit #1: the pair that I just purchased. Well, one of the pair. I know the other one is around here somewhere…
On the nightstand near to where I sleep and close to my heart, is a can of slim fast. Because we all know my vitamin intake would be next to nill without you. I salute you, you beautiful and luscious queen of 2005 nutrition. Also, you economize the whole eat/drink process of my mornings into one friendly little can.
At the foot of my bed is my violin, which I obviously play often. They are covered by my workout shoes, which lately have seen just about as much action. Wow. We won’t go into the psychological implications of that one.
Tour complete. Zank you vor coming to zee lofte!
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July 7th, 2005
01:55 pm - How was YOUR day?
I am a Naval Academy graduate rag instructor.
I will pretend to be extremely laid back. I will tell you to call me by my first name. It likely will only have one syllable, like “Mike,” or “Charles.”
I will be passive aggressive. If you are not in the right place at the right time, I will not say so. I will only mention how usually we meet at this time and in this place with a slight edge in my voice.
I will point out how accomplished I am. Despite my accomplishments and how much I am a “real go-getter,” I make sure to slide in that I have to live “in the city” despite my hour and a half long commute to and from work. Just so you know I’m social and all.
I will name drop my wife’s current grad school name. I like to point out that although I did not attend MIT, I can still lay a chick who goes there. I do not notice that most students there are begging for a first kiss, and that marriage is more than many hope for.
I will ask you minute details about systems you have never studied. I will ask the vaguest question that is humanly possible and expect the most specific answer. If you do not say the “buzz words” I am looking for, you are wrong.
If I point at a system and you can’t tell me exactly where all of its components are by your second time on the aircraft, I will begin to whistle. I will not stop whistling until you say something wrong. I will then rejoice in telling you how wrong you are.
I will pull out an elaborate flow diagram and then point out how I used to have to memorize and duplicate it for my boards. I will point out that you no longer have to do this. I hope that you will note how inferior this makes you.
After we are all done, I will resume calling you by your first name and be all jovial. Just in case you missed the part where I’m a really laid back guy and all. I will smile. I will tell you to have a great day with true sincerity in my voice. I will rejoice in the fact that you can’t tell if you believe my laid back façade.
You will leave and be puzzled. I will leave and reign triumphant over the superiority complex in my own head.
Any questions?
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June 28th, 2005
09:33 pm - In the naaaaaavy
Generally speaking, I love work.
Until I get pulled aside today from some chunked out crusty old chief to receive a lecture about officership and "leading from the top" concerning the color of my bookbag.
I wanted to point out that if we ever had to run anywhere ever, he would not only be leading from the back, but likely too far back to be visible. Instead I smiled and asked him about the military height/weight standards.
I can be such a bitch sometimes.
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zynadae's journal
