i've had a weird day

i couldn't sleep last night
or i didn't try very hard to go to sleep
and that happens with some regularity
i'd normally just go to work on three hours sleep
but
i woke up with a migraine-esque headache
and again i'd normally just go to work
but
i didn't

i decided i needed no to
and i thought i'd spend the day
writing to you
but
i didn't

i felt bad
but i couldn't go back to sleep
[repeated texts]
so i mostly watched videos on youtube

i watched this whole documentary about this woman in romania
having a 158 pound tumor removed
but it was voice-over-dubbed in russian
almost an hour

then i watched plastic surgery videos
i am shocked and amazed to see all the things fillers can do
i been religiously
putting baby collagen growing serum on my face
boom
five minutes with filler

that botox is some messed up shit though
i'm not doing that, ever

i wanted to talk about some serious stuff
but now
i don't want anything heavy

i'd like to just collapse against you
i'm not even sure i could handle anything much else
but i do wish i could kiss you
and
maybe we could flop down onto something comfortable
and watch something mind-numbingly beautiful
or have the kids run back and forth
over the top of us
till we finally pull them down into a big heap with us

that's what i want to do tonight
we'll have to conceive them on another night

i love you

what will he think of that post

nope, not that either

i watched the boxing episode of battlestar galactica last night
and all the dynamic between starbuck and lee
some of it i only understand intellectually
it seems all tied up
with their
past
in ways completely foreign
some of it i find just confusing
but
when they are fighting
until each is so exhausted
that they are holding each other up
so the fight won't end
and
starbuck says: i missed you
lee says:  i missed you too
and she smiles
because she realizes that something vital is intact

that
i understood viscerally

i wanna tell you what happened on my official visit

i was worried
i really didn't know what to expect
the dist manager k. came by early to make sure
i guess, that he knew what he was going to be walking into
it wasn't perfect
it wasn't bad

he asks me sample questions
he gets my answers
he tweaks my answers
[he doesn't care about this visit]
he tells me:
now they may have feedback for you
try not to take it personally
[he isn't addressing this to me, specifically
he doesn't know me
it's more of a general warning to a junior officer]

he comes back with them
them is my arch nemesis [the chick i gotta ask for dough]
and one of the buyers, let's call him pete
handshakes all round

pete turns to me and says: what's working for you
and i tell him, in some detail

he starts telling me about company exclusives
i mention one that's been doing extremely well
he mentions some awards another line has won
gold for the cab and the chard and silver for the pinot

really, i say, i think the pinot is the best one
i think so too, he says

he takes a picture of my sake display
blah blah blah

they have a plane to catch
handshakes all round
the district manager says:
i'm gonna be seeing you
[only he says it like that means something]

he takes them out
he comes back
he shakes my hand again
you were really great with pete, he says

he was a lot of fun
i answer back

he stops
he looks quizzical:
yeah, he's a good guy i guess
we just come from different worlds
i'm operational

[i'm not really sure what i'm supposed to take away from that]



i sort of think it was a good visit

i hope you got to read that

because i didn't feel comfortable leaving it up
i don't think it's a good story
but i do think
it makes me feel exposed
and
yesterday i found out i had some kind of inspection today
and that also made me feel vulnerable
and
that wasn't what i wanted from that story
it's too much wind up
i thought maybe i could weave it
but
it loses the poetry
it loses the zen


maybe you're unhappy that i didn't finish
i'm sorry
and i feel awkward now

ok so i've been trying to decide how to approach that story

and
i'm just getting myself confused
and further and further removed
from the actual story
so
here's what i'm gonna do
i'm gonna
imbibe
and then i'm gonna write
and
we'll just see what i get
not claiming it will be the story
but
i'm gonna start it the way i decided to write it
and
we'll see what happens
and you'll see
writing in real time

go

it occurs to me that i left out something, possibly important

the question i asked god

was
yeah yeah, blah blah blah
give me a sign
we know we know

but, i remember now there was more

i was muttering some small bit about
work

so this might have been
about what
about career

counseling

i asked god for a sign today, and i guess i got it, but it kind of traumatized me

thirty-year-old sushi guy
i don't think i mentioned
is a student
he's in junior college

and i guess he's in an english class, or something
so he asks me to read "his paper"

he makes some comment about it being late
but how if it's amazing he can get away with it
and he talks a little bit about what a good writer he is

so
i'm thinking
ya know
that it's a finished paper, and he just wants
i don't know
advise about making it perfect

but
i mean
jesus christ on a popsicle stick
this is not even coherently a paper at all

he read an essay
which, in fairness, i haven't read
but, even so, i think he is speaking to what he read
but
is it possible that he really thought that that was a paper

i think i may have not been a very good friend
i tried to give him useful advice
but
i don't think that's what i should have done

it was the first moment
[reading his paper, that is]
in which i was profoundly grateful that i did not become a college professor

it began with the most passive version of not really saying anything that i think i have ever read

'it is the case that in life there are many things which are beyond the control...'
but it wasn't clear if that [or anything else in the first paragraph] was an assertion of the author of the essay or the author of the paper.

anyway
he's talking about a victorian essay on finding what one truly likes
or something
and he was saying that the author was gay
and he had a subtext [i'm paraphrasing]
he was asking his readers to consider what they really liked
rather than liking what they were told to like
and, i mean you get it
it could be an interesting paper, or not

but
he seemed to be supporting his point
by using outside sources to say the guy was gay
[yes, he says, that's what he's using the outside sources for]

and i flash back to high school
what do you know about what this teacher expects, i ask him
because i got into all kinds of trouble
trying to make assertions about the motivations of the writer
english teachers don't usually want you to really make you own assertions
they usually want you to collect a group of approved scholarly types
who have already had your thoughts, and quote them

and
i tried to explain to him about passive sentences and why it really is better
to have a subject, verb, and object
and how much stronger a short paper it might be
if he stated, oh, like  in his essay "blah blah" M. Blah states blah blah blah
and when he does that what he is really doing is blah.
and then proceed to show with examples from the text
those points

so
what we learned here is: i'm a bitch, right
i mean
if he didn't know that stuff
probably
i should have been nicer to him

but
how do you get though high school without learning that
he took me by surprise

but
i had a similar experience with my mom a few weeks ago
she is taking some sort of public speaking coaching
and she had written a speech
she wanted me to proof read it
tell her what i thought
now
my mother can write
she understands that
she just didn't really take into account who she was talking to
she's making a shell argument
because she's trying to convince people that they need to be more creative
only she doesn't really care about that
what she really wants is to sell them lessons

so she starts out with an argument meant to persuade non-creative types
only she doesn't fact check
so there are things that are just wrong
and then she seems to get bored with it
like, whatever, i gave you enough reasons
and starts talking about how our inner creative self might be our soul
[which, under normal circumstances, i might say: hell yeah, cool
but coming at the end of this let's-appeal-to-the-left-brain attempt
made me want to dismiss her entirely]

i told her it would be a stronger argument if she chose her audience
although i'm thinking now
you could do a two pronged argument
if you set it up that way
that might even be stronger, in fact
appeal to a mars and venus type dynamic
show how creativity training could benefit each type respectively


so
i'm asking you now:
what is wrong with me

what is this experience supposed to be telling me

untitled

have you thought about me
have you
do you still dance with the lollipop kids

is there a shiver spot
on the tightrope
between
here and
now

i psychoanlyze
myself

and last night i dreamed of baking brownies
with cacao and ice cream, and oddly, mayonnaise

you had built up
bar by bar a structure
made of dough or sushi, particle or wave

i had to finish it
perfect the edges
fill the gaps
to win the second round of i'm not sure what

then i was baking
eight perfect bars

that was where the brownies came in

the cards say
who's your daddy

do you want me to write you, mr okada

the once and future

it's 4/20
and i'm celebrating
it's been a long time, and i don't remember
this exactly either

and
i miss you
or
maybe my imaginary you
sitting around
talking
being together

would that be anything like i imagine
because
i imagine you definitely
a particular way
and sometimes i think you see how i see you
but i'm not sure how much of it you really see

you're interesting
not that you talk a lot necessarily
but you have thoughts and observations
that are off beat and slightly random
in a way i find stimulating

but i realize now
i don't write you much dialog in my head
for good or bad
it's mostly tone

you know a lot more about me
how i think and what i like
and what i might say
i feel like that, anyway

do you feel like you know me well

yellow glass heart sutra [i'm writing you a story, i hope]

about a week ago
i was in an overlapping place in time
and
the key
was a yellow glass pendant of kwan yin
heart sutra etched behind her in chinese in the background

the story, i hope
is the overlapping

i don't think this can have been you

because i don't think there had been enough time
for you to have read it
and gone to sleep
and
dreamed it at me

so
maybe
it's me
or
it's god
or maybe
you just thought it at me
really hard

i can't be sure which i believe
but
here's what i dreamed

i was having a stressful dream
i had forgotten to order paper coffee cups
and scott was yelling at me
then i was eating
some kind of exotic tofu dish
when someone
let me know there was a problem with another vendor

then i was sitting at a table
telling someone
that i had a test the next day
and i didn't know what it was over
that there was no hope of better than a C
because i was going to just go off my general knowledge

suddenly
a handsome man leans in:

you and i
we are going to get some cacao smoothies

and i'm all like ok

and then
this woman
who i don't recognize
who has been talking to a group in an adjoining area
she comes over and starts berating me
for not attending to what she's been saying
apparently she's my boss
and she's giving me the test tomorrow

and then
it was 6am
and i had to get up to go to my
wow we just told you about it on friday
work meeting
on my day off

and i said to myself

we are going to be getting cacao smoothies

but
then i thought
maybe it was god
finally deciding to answer me
about what my next step in life needs to be

i've been having very stressful dreams

please send me some
filled with
what you want "us" to look like
i'm not askin ya to tell me, understand
i'm askin ya to dream it at me

today is not going well

i had nightmares
i damaged my eye somehow
in my sleep
it is red and scareing me
i am working 4am to noon, or whenever
i need a hug
today
so far
sucks

i'm doing laundry and i just realized something

all those colorful clothes
that i ever mentioned
i don't wear them at all
i'll go to brown, plum, gray
i will on occation go to blue or ocher
but i just will not wear
no matter how good it looks
brights and patterns
or, really pastels
orange shirt, once
sleeveless patterned shirt/jacket, never
blue and orange tie dye, twice
but once was to sleep in
i proved my lesson again
do not buy those things
i just cannot be comfortable in them
weird, huh

i hope you get what i'm trying to say and don't just think i'm being stupid

i'm feeling very grateful for you today

even if
this is all
it's still pretty awesome to love you
and to get to use my imagination in a way
that i never would have
without there being you
and
i was thinking
that i need more
but
that can mean
a lot of different things
not just what i want it to be
and
so
grateful
rather than
whatever