i'm such a chick

i think i need to talk about the whole pluto transit thing.  i didn't necessarily want to, i wanted to write a story, but i can't focus.  so this pluto thing gas been going on a while, and it's supposed to go on til 2023.  i am not sure i can deal with that much transformation.  i said i didn't want to be a writer, when last we talked, and i think that i was being disingenuous.  that's not quite it.  it was that i didn't want to be a "writer".  i want to write.  the reason i became not-a-writer straight off the bat instead of trying and then giving up like apparently most people did was this:  i wanted to choose what kind of whore to be.  when you do something for money, essentially, at some point you end up a whore.  this might not be true.  but it is what i believed.  and it is what i still believe to a large degree, even though it is not what i believe at all.  confused yet?

you see, i now believe that the only way anyone ever achieves any greatness is by doing the activity for the love of it--  if you had to pay to do it, you would still do it because you love it that much.


so, in my fantasy, and this is terribly un feminist, i don't work.  well, i mean i guess i do, but i don't.  i take care of you [do you need a lot of personal minding?] and the house and the kids--  and i write.  i write to you, and for you, and or the kids, and i'm hopeful something might happen with it, but in another way i don't even want to know about it.  is that over the top weird?


that's kinda what i'm already doing here.  and, to be honest, it makes me a little uncomfortable.  i can see that all these people in malaysia visited the other day.  i want to know why.  what did i write, how did it catch their interest?  did they actually read it?  are there some web crawlers in malaysia that hit a key word and zeroed in, or are these actual people hitting a key word and zeroing in.  either way it doesn't mean readers, necessarily.  i am annoyed and relieved.  i write this to you.  i'm not writing it for the general public.  but of course i am.  and that awareness creates a dynamic.  it's hard to separate them because i actually think this makes me better.  i have to choose my words carefully, i have constraints.  i think these thing improve me.  but i am not constrained by structure, which is nice.  i think i have issues with structure.  which is odd really.  don't i seem like the kind of person who would do well with structure?

aren't i, in fact, trying to do the quintessentially female thing with you?  tell me, tell me, in concrete terms, what am i to you?!  i mean, i'm being all cool about it.  hey, whatever, ya know but what am i spending my time doing, here man.  time's a wasting.  that's, at it's core, such a chick thing.  i am such a chick.

i have this friend.  she's got problems.  they aren't the same problems i'm used to, but they're bad.  i just want to shake her.  she has done some things i didn't like.  i let her know i didn't like them.  i never implied that i didn't like her, or that she was bad.  although, i did really believe [internally] that it was laziness that led her to do the things that caused me trouble, and it might be that she's just kinda stupid.  anyway, i think the general feeling of wow-you-really-did-not-live-up-to-my-expectations leaked out of me enough that she got it.

let me just say right now.  this is something that i'm aware that i do but rarely when i'm doing it.  i try very very hard to hide it, unless i'm really mad.  well, that's maybe not quite right.  i think, with a certain type of individual this dynamic works okay.  when the people are like the people i tended to hire, and like my assistant now, they rarely see the reaction, and when they do, it's so mild that it just removes the need for a conversation about it.  they say what their thinking had been, i say how that differs from mine, or i don't.  if i'm satisfied that that was the best decision for them at the time, sometimes i just rethink my reaction.  i plan out new systems of support so they won't have the problem any more.  it's very satisfying.

but this woman, she just reacts without much thought.  i take that as a lack of caring about my job and the performance of it, but that's not fair, because it doesn't have anything to do with me.  but she's broken, and now i've given her the wow-you-really-did-not-live-up-to-my-expectations and it set off a landmine.  i think i have to find a way to fix it.

i kind of resent it.  i see why she runs through guys.  she does this.  and this is a super turn off.  you don't love me.  why don't you love me.  i do a lot for you.  she's told me this from her own perspective.  much longer and more complicated, but essentially the same.  this build up proceeds the stage where the guy leaves her, or where she says fuck it i don't need this shit and leaves him in what i think amounts to a preemptive strike.

i'm not sure i never had that break, maybe i did, i don't remember it.  but i really do not like feeling responsible for her whole collapse as a human being.  that our friendship means that i have to be sorry that she screwed up.  that i have to plug up her insecurity holes.  i'm having a bad reaction to that.  on the one hand i feel bad, i want to fix it.  on the other hand, i feel so much less of the friendly feelings that have bolstered her up when she had this before [i'm now realizing].  it's kinda crazy, but my instinct is to buy her flowers.

and i don't ever want to be that to you.  i'd rather be like, later dude, than to degenerate into that kind of shit.  i have issues i have to resolve.  i've told you some things i needed.  i don't think i was vague.  i'm not sure how that's gonna all play out.  there are aspects that don't favor the game i thought i was playing, but i would rather play with you rather than call all the shots.  and, ultimately, i'm not sure who will have the advantage.

the fact that i'm playing the long game may cause me to end up being bitter for missing my chance at the puppyfish, or it may make me decide that i have to get a job making a bunch of money and have insemination.  i think the first is more likely.  but i really hate myself bitter.  i'm really afraid, to be honest.  i will have to make changes.  and i don't think that the things i suspect maybe you want me to do are going to be very effective pieces of the puzzle that is the changes i have to make.

i guess that means i can't really factor you in.  and i don't really see how i can not.  round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows.


he's gonna read that and think, what exactly

you know

you know something
there is something that you know
that you know i want to know
but you won't tell me that
and
i gotta say
i find that distrustful

but
i'm playing along
not making a big thing
and, i think i ought to get some props for that
because
it is either really cool of me
or it means that i'm a fool
and not in a good way

so
what i think that you should do
is tell me something

something you think i want to know
so keep your state secrets
but give me some currency
as a show of faith

if you can

not something you think i want to hear
i want this to be the truth

i'm lookin at you malaysia

ok
that's a lot of hits
in a short period of time

tell me
really
manly funk
that's what brings the heat?

scent of

so
i decided that i need a scent for you
i can't help it
that's just a fiction that i'm going to have to write
i need the sensory stimuli
and, of course i'm not going to create a body scent
because you can't unwrite that stuff
no, i'm using a cologne

preliminary testing was not totally successful
the contender:
thierry mugler men

it has coffee, cocoa, patchouli, it's a bit much
but those are things i liked
it's like a gourmand oriental wood scent
it has a jarring quality, at first, and for a while
but once it's dried down it starts to be close to what i want

it's a little exotic though
and, of course, i'm mixing it with my body chemistry
it would be better with some manly funk


i looked up the notes i'm that interest me
i don't really get anything

just a little hint of bay, not too much, and green pepper
some herbal notes, not too green, sage maybe and smokey pinon
coffee, vetiver, whiskey, tonka bean, and maybe just like a drop
of carnation which give this spicy note
that doesn't read specifically floral

that get's nothing

of the ulta choices thierry mugler men is the closest

and it's refillable, which is nice, but i just don't see you wearing that
or gaultier, which is also nice
they just seem a little frenchy

maybe i should smell old spice again
i think i like old spice
i think that's where the bay comes from
probably tied to closely to my father
not a good idea
i really want to discourage any cross pollination there

or juniper, spruce, ozone, seaweed
because i could see you wanting something cleaner

l'occitane has some nice ones
here i need to smell it again
but
i think this might be it
cade

i spent a lot of time pondering the dragonfly

i like dragonflies.  i always pay attention to them.  i don't see them often.

there was one day that i was feeling something very strong about you.  it was during a period of time that i spent my time drinking coffee, smoking, pacing the patio thinking of what to write next.  which doesn't seem much like what i'm like now.  i don't think i'd want to go back to that, not exactly that, even though i think of it as the best time of my life.

it's probably not that different than college.  except i only smoked a tiny bit in college, and now i was a pro smoker, well, not now.  in the interest of clarity that seemed best.  now i smoke, but i don't smoke, if you get my drift, but lately i've been thinking of stopping that again.  it's not as expanding as it once was, i don't think it gives me what i need, and i don't like the fuzzed edges that hang around the next day.  what i want, what i really want, is hallucinogens.  but i'm afraid.  and i mean i think with good reason.

i don't have a normal mind, it's just wired differently.

crazy people make me uncomfortable.  they always have.  i'm like looking for a pattern.  one of the most frightening things to me was that one time i had a conversation with a schizophrenic woman without realizing that that was what i was doing.  no, she didn't make any sense.  i don't remember what she said.  there was something to do with a trash bag.  there was something to do with lightning.  this was maybe 2000.  i just kept asking her what she meant about the lightning.  finally a friend came up and pulled me away.

what were you doing?  you know she's schizophrenic, right?

no, i'd had no idea.

so the idea of hallucinogens frightens me.  pot used to make you see things, i remind myself.  so, which side of that argument are you taking, exactly, i ask myself right back.

dragonfly

i take this very literally as a sign.  even if it's not a sign from god, or the universe, or synchronicity cosmically linking me to this dragonfly through a fractal map of chance or destiny take your pick. then that only means it is a sign from me.  which is just about the same thing if you ask me.  that dragonfly captivated me.  there is nothing else in the world that could have pulled me from that dragonfly.  so it means something.

so, meaning.  what does it means.

it took me three times longer to describe that dragonfly than it felt like it took me to write the rest of what i wrote.  and today when i was researching dragonflies, i cried.  now i may not be a trained psychologist, but i say that if you cry over something relatively banal you've hit some sort of serious psychological paydirt.  

this was the video that made me cry

so, yeah, it's an allegory.  for death.  for change.  for rebirth, in a way, because the dragonfly doesn't just change form;  the dragonfly can't even visit the life it had before, that life becomes dead to it.  which is essentially what i'm telling myself with all this astrological talk about pluto.

sometimes what i think about you is that you think i have talent.  that what you really want to do is mentor me.  that it's all pure and innocent and i just become like a child of art to you.  when i think this it makes me angry with you, just so you know.

regardless, some big change is clearly coming.  i've dicked around long enough.  the dragonfly apparently has a two year cycle attached to it.  so either a two year cycle is about to end or a two year cycle is about to begin.  but even that is vague, because it could be that i leave this job after christmas [which i'm thinking i probably should, it's really not right for me] and then there is another two year cycle to the next big jump.  which i guess with that pluto on the mercury thing on some level i want to think is writing.  but that is not what i thought i wanted.

why does it feel like i'm being hoodwinked somehow?

tombo kachimushi

and, some more. i'll go back and title these later

i drove around.  looking for a way to the beach, not finding it.  when, at last i found it, there was no parking. and i didn't really care, didn't even want to see it.  i'll go back later, i said to myself.  i didn't really care about it except sunset, i needed the sunset.  maybe eat something.

i have eaten a couple of times at the little place next door to the motel.  once at the place across the street.  this doesn't seem an exploration kind of place.  the timbre is fine, legitimate, but without much range.  so the place next door and across the street seemed to offer representative, if not popular options.  i had tried to go to the popular place and there was a waiting list, but it didn't seem worth the wait.

i realize this is a fairly common trait for me.  i will wait.  but i don't like to.  for example:  when crispy cream donuts came to my town it was a huge deal.  people would wait in line for an hour to buy donuts.  i was never one of those people.  i run the math, i don't want it that bad.

i did wait in line for the freedom train when i was a kid.  i still remember that.  it was like the carnival coming to town in the thirties and the whistle stop presidential campaigns and yoyo contests before the old serial westerns and a myriad of other americana bonding events.  it was just the one available for my time and place.  and in a sense, i knew it would be that for me, that's why i wanted to go.

i drove by a place that had lazy in the name.  here, this'd work.  it was perfect.  a slightly commercialized version of the places i'd been, along the gulf coast throughout my childhood. maybe that's what was wrong with this place.  it seems too familiar, but different.  too much like places i'd been that had more contrast and drama.  this was beautiful.  safe.  closed in.

the, i can't help it, at-this-point-i-have-to-tell-you-it-was-a-flamingo pointed the way to the big outdoor menu:  walk up, read, decide before going in what's wanted, don't waste anybody's time menu.   three things looked good to me.

conch, i'd had bahamian conch chowder the first night.  this offered conch chowder and fritters for dunking.

grouper, which i like, generally.

or there was the pot, the one everybody loves.

well that was too good to pass up.  i'm mean, if your going to bother to come to this restaurant here's what we think you should get, and look, we still give you choices:  oysters and clams or either alone.  i mean i simplified it.  the original resembled things from elementary school in complexity and diction.

i had found the perfect place.

the inside reminded me of a place i went with my mom as a kid, called moby dick's. honestly i don't remember it well.  it was a bar.  my mom went out to a bar with her friends and she took me. her friends all thought it was funny.  i liked it, but then any time i mentioned it she got kind of weird.

do you want to sit inside or outside?

outside.

i order unsweet tea and ask about the pot.  they steam those shells in beer.  that sounds good, simple, with celery, onions, old bay.  all oysters, i like oysters.

you know your how to shuck your own oysters?

no.  oh, maybe i shouldn't get that.

i'll show you how.  it's easy, she says.  something in the way she says it makes me think of hard northern winters.  like maybe it isn't going to be easy after all.  maybe this thought showed on my face, because she said this:

if there are some you can't get we'll help you.

table across from me there were three roughly blonde women having drinks.  one of them starts screaming violently at what seems from her tone and demeanor to be a football game.  i look around to see how i missed the tv.  the table of women immediately in front of the tv, did not have my same reaction.  they thought she was yelling at them.  maybe.  i'm not sure i believe that, but maybe.

she's a cheese head.  her friends are glad she didn't bring her cheese head.

they left shortly after.  An old couple came in and sat down at the same table.

is this sun too much for you?

no.  we love it.  the man, he went further, he upped the ante:  we don't get enough up north so we're going to just soak it in.

ten minutes later they moved to another table.

i had an optimal amount of bright shade.  the air flow and temperature were also pleasantly like the beach town i grew up with.

an enormous dragonfly.
buzz...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...

he is the color of tarnished silver, but gleaming.  his metallic quality doesn't seem possible;  i actually consider whether he might be fake.  clearly i am meant to notice.  ok, got it.  dragonfly. daydreaming.  that didn't seem right.  illusions, no.  all the associations i have for dragonfly, fail.


with martial movements, sharp, bright
this dragonfly, here
directs my future journey



the oysters came.  she showed me how to shuck.

she brought me drawn butter and lemon wedges.  what else do you like with them?

i don't really know, i said.

i'll bring you an assortment to try.  see what you like.

turns out horse radish.  pop open the shell, wipe the knife.  cut the oyster loose, dunk it in butter, put it back in the shell.  squeeze on some lemon, dollop on some horse radish, eat the oyster with the fork.  don't resist the urge to drink the remaining buttery horse radish slurry.

there were at least two women at the table behind me.  they were talking about her canadian clients needing to buy supplemental insurance to travel to the u.s.

there was something very rewarding about having to work for my oysters.  shells, enough to start thinking about a future driveway, they seemed so many.  at some point the old couple left.  one of the women at the other table had gotten louder.  a few minutes later she came up to me, slightly startled me, her face so quickly in my face, her eyeliner so hard and unflattering.

is that the pot?  she asked.

yes, with only oysters, i answer.

well.  is it good?  would you order it again?

yes.  it's very good.

do they open them for you?

no.

she looks slightly shocked.

but it isn't hard to do.


she seems to want more from me.  judging my veracity, perhaps.
 

alright, let me smoke, and then just free type and see what comes out

one thing i've never told you about our fantasy life is that, very early on--   before i'd worked out the whole skull ring thing--  i used to imagine you'd meet me with a ring.  you'd give me the ring, sometimes followed by the emergence of a secret surprise wedding that you had planned.  the ring was always something you designed.  the details of the dress and the wedding very simple and very matter of fact, but beautiful, tasteful, made poetic by the beauty of the gesture.  no big brew-ha-ha. no other people even.  just a vegas chapel or captain of a ship.  i never focused too much on the details of these things.  because, of course, it wasn't the fetishization of the details of the event or the item that interested me, those i sketched in broad strokes;  what interested me was that you had planned it--  what you would think that i would want.  of course, it's still me painting the broad strokes, and i don't like tacky or ugly.  my whole life people have bought me gifts for various things at various times, and i'm grateful or not (to be honest, in varying degrees) but generally not truly satisfied.  my likes are so odd.  my tastes so specific.  i almost never can really use the thing.  but, they took the time, spent the money, i feel tied to it.  and, in the end, i feel like they really shouldn't have bothered.  i wished they hadn't.  this is a pain of mine that i have largely managed to solve.  i manage to convey the wish for cookies they baked rather than something they bought.  or, ya know, whatever, it's not important

the thing is that it doesn't mean i don't like gifts.  i love gifts.  i just love them to be spontaneous and spot on, ya know.  that just pretty much doesn't happen.  like hardly ever.

so, this surprise wedding, it's perfect.

it just so happens that the way that this just oh so casually happening wedding can just go off without a hitch to become this effortless poetry, implicit in that fantasy is the groundwork of you knowing me well enough to pull that off.

but no, maybe that's not even right.

it's supposed to be like the first time you and i collided in that doorway.

the total effortlessness of that moment.

our wedding would be like that,  the symbolic embodiment of that.

not the towel moment.  that's what our life symbolises.

that feeling that the atmosphere changes, like molecularly, and there's a slipstream or something.  i still have that.  i still don't know what you smell like.  i know i've hugged you when you must have smell.  when you wear a shirt for four days straight it has to have a smell, even if you do not, and the smell it would have would be your smell.  it would give me so much comfort to have your smell to think about.

i'd have gone mad from the want of you if i had that.  

i don't.

you know how i said there are different cards that represent you or me

well over the last several months
you have developed a preferred tarot deck

it's weird
hard to explain
i don't know how much of life
you just feel in that sort of just-know-this way
but
when i do the tarot
i often use the "choose for me" option
for deck and the "one card" option for how many

and, somehow
this deck seems to be the one that almost always comes up
when i am asking a question directly of you, specifically

see

although, come to think of it this one too

i can tell you more about the sadness now

now
don't get me wrong
the vanishing likelihood of the puppyfish
the fact that it's happy happy blood time
and the fact that i'm still exhausted from my promo set
these things all contribute
but
none of those things
seemed like what was going on
and now
now i can somewhat unhappily tell you
i have some sort of mild food poisoning

i should recognize the particular way
that illness makes me feel
sad, irritated, slightly hmmmm

i don't know whether to say
pixilated
or
like the way an old tv got fuzzy
and the image would kinda roll
like that, but sped up
there's a new technique like that
but i don't know what it's called
hence pixilated [which i know]

if i was feeling better
there's some stuff i'd have picked up

and
i don't know
maybe i'm wrong
but did i hear both a consider the source
and
a declaration of love
poetically double entendre-d
just sayin
dogfish

i feel more comfortable driving

and
i guess i perform better
in my own head
when i've had a chance
to spin my little pre magic


i'm a little sad too

maybe later i can explain why

i need you
and sometimes
i wonder if i'm strong enough

rule of thumb

I dreamed about baseball

and
alien rescue
they seemed dead
but
they weren't
had to get in
and
safely extract

slipstream in the breach of time

the future seems
both
clear
and unimportantly vague
I will love you
you will be however you will be
and
it's only the coarse survival issues
that remain up in the air
but somehow
high though I'm not
I figure to have some sort of future
so maybe the trick
is to find a way to leave behind everything
that makes me think I don't

she looks out
staring across into the middle distance
ravens remind her of kids in a school yard
strangely warmed in the cold
I love you ernest

i like to think i'm rothko

but
maybe i'm not that nuanced
shoes really opened my eyes today

is there a purple power ranger

i lost myself
in structure
i found myself
in lost-ness

i live in a world
where the sky might be green
or purple
by turns

and i don't want that to stop

i want the normalcy to stop

when i was four years old i was initiated into something
by the spirit in the tree stump

then there were all those messages with the suicidal birds

i can't live in the just-the-facts-ma'am world
i don't need to tell it
that
bad

i wish i could remember what i dreamed last night

it looks beautiful

I set everything on a slant

a good dream, at last

I dreamed
that someone from corporate
came to see me
to commend me for selling
so much wine
we went to a cool little bar and grill
in austin
and
she gave me four bottles of the wine

in actuality
this year, I've been down in comps
for a lot of reasons
but this last weekend
I moved it from 1.8% under
to .6% under
which is $5 or $6 thousand
on top of regular weekly sales
so, not nothing

and
it's not really something I did, exactly
but it is because the buyer
did exactly what I told him I needed
to be successful
so
maybe
it is something I did

whatever
the dream was cool

i dreamed that i couldn't get anything done because

I had to spend all my time
showing people where the bathroom was

I am doing a promo change
so maybe
I just knew
everyone was going to irritate the fuck out of me

boy will my arms be tired
and
I'm super stressed
and, maybe
premenstrual
hurray

I feel
weird
and
strangely
like the world might end

my work

the girl who helps me
just sent me a video

it's adorable

sometimes
sometimes i'm all like
crap, i am so far behind
i think i'm gonna have to come in early
she often closes on friday nights

so
a few times she has texted me
it's all set up, you don't need to come in early

i really like those texts

so today
we were talking about the tasting
i was asking her suggestions
for sweet wines
what did she think we had enough of
has to be red, there's a sale on red

when we got it all ironed out
she said she was going to do her best to get it all done

and, i told her

i really like those texts

you really like [thumbs up] them

yes, i do

well, i'll send you a text to let you know i got it all done
and
a picture

she sent me a video
[i'm not gonna learn how to place that here]

[text]
hey e____, this is the wine dept
and this is the set up
i replaced the other red wine that was a syrah
[move in on replacement syrah]
because we didn't have any more of the, uh the one with jaqk [voice raises uncertainly]
yeah, we didn't have anymore of that jaqk stuff
so i replaced it with this
also, trash can and cups are in this door
[move in on open cabinet door]
over here, and that will be closed
[closes door]
[door bounces back open]
[closes door]
also, everything else is set up
you might need more towels
yeah, you don't need to come in early tomorrow--  you're welcome

like in that teenage girl tone
like thankless me

but i think she's using it ironically
because the last thing i said to her was

thank you for all you're hard work