and I'm going to write it down

The front porch is unfinished; as I step down the front four steps they rock back and forth a bit and my sense of balance is called into question. I'm going across the street to Miss Patsy's house to wash the towels so there are clean ones. Her house is absolutely nutty, painted orange and blue with banana trees all over, cages of nothing and cages of animals and a big orange Santa Claus next to a crouching ceramic angel. Earlier I heard a rumor of a $1600 operation she had on her bullfrog that lives in one of mentioned cages. Her three dogs bark as I walk through the back door, into a room smelling of the Belles basement on Schifsky Road, these dogs do not want me there. Miss Patsy wanders into the room and asks in her thick Southern accent, "That baby been born yet?"

I go back across the street, I can hear the beeping of the bridge on the river (beeping) it goes up and lets a tugboat through. A teenager bikes by on the levy. I sit on the couch and wait, we're all waiting for that baby, every time Caity has a contraction and moans my stomach cramps up. The feral cat named Biscuits claws at the window; curious as to the labor I'm sure, curious as any of us as to when that baby gonna be born.

Earlier the neighbor Summer came buy, dressed up all "Honkytonk for a Honkytonk party, oh no I don't usually dress this skanky," as she put it and pointed out to me how the sun was shining through the clouds onto that unfinished house in a very God-like way, and it's true, the sun is shining right on that house and this whole street in fact. Summer's boyfriend Christian comes out, with his tank top and tight jeans and his hammer, his masculinity is surely on display at all times and he winks at me and says, "How you doin' baby," and I nod and smile cuz that's the polite thing to do. He goes to the house next door to Miss Patsy's to work on clearing out flood-damaged wood. I hear he pushes tires around the neighborhood early in the morning for his workout.

I drink some coffee and go out on the porch with Missled, this tiny powerhouse of a woman, cabaret dancer and tattooed clown eyebrows wild and free, MAMA NOSE across her knuckles, and I ask her about how she deals with all the violence, or about her son Ottomadic Pilot, or about her drag show, or her cockroach infested car, and I listen to her stories. Her husband Eddie comes by with his twinkling eyes and warm smile and we joke, we smoke and talk. Missled has the loudest laugh in the Lower 9th.

This is a good block to have a baby on, it's a good block for lots of things that I want to remember and write down

So here I am, in the Twin Cities, for the first time in a fucking year, as much as I did not at all expect to happen, I am having a wonderful amazing happy-ing time.

Last night I was in St. Paul, laughing around a table reviewing the events of our lives since we were fourteen or fifteen. Talking smack about everyones life direction everyones incestuous nature with each other everyones fun and glee and mayhem.

I drank a bottle of wine only to come home to my step-dad milling about with nice liquor and nothing to do. Four rounds of Tequila shots and matching amount of beers later, I have convinced him to come outside and smoke a cigarette with me, which he has been explicitly banned from doing for at least the last fifteen years. Seventeen-year-old brother comes home at some point, I then drag him outside, give him a sloppy mentoring speech of which I do not remember a thing,
tumble off to bed, wake up to Thanksgiving.

This is the first Thanksgiving I have had at home in years, and it is nice. Mom bursts into tears because for once her family is all together. My sister and I color the turkey in the special Thanksgiving Day Newspaper, we hang it on the fridge. My relatives stay well into the night drinking and gambling. I sneak off to see New Moon, when I return Brother A calls Bella a Ho and talks about Brother B's weed quality in front of my grandparents. I sneak off to the basement to watch children's movies and drink nice beer and avoid the loud ramblings about how I should join in the horse race game.

-

I guess the thing is I thought I would be sad today, I thought I would drown myself in the sort of nostalgia I usually like to obsess over, tinklings of Ben Folds in the background as was so inspired by yesterday's 6pm-and-drunk-sing-a-long.

The thing is, my parents are trying to move to Blaine (VOMIT), they are trying to sell the house and they want to get rid of all my stuff they have in storage and so they are making me look through my childhood things and pick what is to be saved.

I have barely gotten started, but I did open the box of scrapbooks albums and other such things, from a collection of I-Zone Sticky Film circa 8th grade, to my Senior Experience portfolio. It was all there.

What I was most in love with was my very first scrawl-all-over-it book, a black spellbound thing from my final year at Mounds View High School. It is amazing what can come out of the brain of a seventeen-year-old on drugs. The creativity was impressive and the work I didn't remember, I wonder what happened to this part of myself and where i get it back. Lyrical little stories and a drawing of a lover as a child with a bouquet. Musings and questions, photos of paintings, and (my favorite part:), multiple notes summoning me immediately to the office to discuss my truancy issue.

What was perfect about my life when I was seventeen was that I was stark-raving-mad and I had all the time and space in the world to explore it, as I saw things. My future held a forest and an onslaught of love, and painting on the backroom walls were all I could do to keep at least some of me from drifting off to NeverNeverLand.





What happened to this part of myself and where do I get it back.

Happy ThanksGiving!#!#

Made it through security without a single beep or pat-down or wanding or search. Read a Judy Blume book through the flight and remembered how dumb virginity is. Also dumb, man in front of me, put his seat all the way back onto my goddamn confidence boots.

The plane hit the ground, the roar took over the cabin, still I could hear the shady father next to me swat at his toddler and tell him to get his Fucking feet off the Fucking seat...

I leaned back and smiled
and thought

I CANT BELIEVE I AM HOME...

Section Twelve

It was the night at the shelter that made me think about how little I think about what I am saying, or at least understand that maybe I dont even listen to myself as much as either people are listening to me. Stop and Think. It was the family dinner night that made me think about what kind of impact I am having on everyone, how much I effect all these kids I am working with. Think a Lot. It was the VD scare that made me so obsessed with boosting my immune system and becoming a crazy health nut that doesn't even drink coffee anymore, who woulda thunk. Manifest it.
You see, this I know. The Process is the Thing.
I also know, as I was telling Tovah, that someday I am going to look back on these days and think ONCE UPON A TIME I WAS GROSS AND HUNG OVER AND TWENTY
AND THEN I CHANGED MY LIFE.

I remember Tov and I, skipping fifth and sixth period,cruising around ArdenHills in that horrible green car with cloud that always hung in the front seat. Singing Jesus Walks real loud.
Last night we went to visit Champ Shack and the same sort of chorus in the same sort of drive, I was waving my hands in front of me and I got so excited.
The future is wide.
Go big.

The Graduate

So I watched the Graduate lastnight for the first time. hadn't seen it, thought of getting work post graduation and I saw the film at the library and pulled it off the shelf. I love the library so much. I check out tons of comics from there now. They have a great collection, tons of stuff from fantagraphics. Today the alarm wasn't heard, I went to school and forgot my locker combo and I needed shit out of it so i didn't go to class. Kind of dumb cause I always go to class, and I just didn't for some reason. I couldn't really. I find myself looking forward to dreams a lot to (see toasters entry below). even the bad ones are sometimes better than waking life. It's easy to get in routines and become come totally blank to amazing things that lay on the outside. Drinking more tea and eating less kind of pulled me out of my mundane for a while. When I was really sick this past week I kind of felt the healthist and most intrested in life cause I was taking good care of my body. Why is this so hard to do? why is it so hard to encourage other people to do this? why does it feel dumb a lot of the time?

pattern

I am in a pattern I think a pattern of Olympia life that I am in

it goes like this,

wake up early, go back to bed to fall back into whatever dreaming i was having

enjoy the dream

really wake up, scramble myself into blue jeans and a black top and look for socks,

look for fruit and or vegetables, find gluten instead

hop on bike, ride fast downtown

work at the office, return phone calls and repeat office tasks, 

tell volunteers they are doing a good job

go to the library, read love stories

back to work, til the beer whistle blows,

bike home.  sometimes go to various meetings, sometimes not,

read a bit, eat a bit, watch a bit,

Go to sleep.

This continues throughout my week, what changes is that I sometimes find fruit in the morning

towards the end of the week I am thinking of the two days off, in which i do various things;

like I think about going out, I go out, I go to a show, drink 4 beers, or I drink more, have a hangover with megover, think about doing art projects and sewing my jeans but don't

Go to sleep, wake up and go back to sleep to keep dreaming

The pattern is changing now because now it is raining, and in the mornings I am very wet

The pattern is leading me to believe that I am unsatisfied and unmotivated by the things I am doing and what is happening around me, so,

I am going to break the pattern that I am in

on a Morning that I am wet

"all i ever had was pop music."

I was listening to Radio KYA The Sweetest Music Ever Made,the power had just flickered and oh boy was I pissed, were they fucking turning us off AGAIN. When the radio returned "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" was playing, the version with female voices not the Kingston Trio. It made me think of that music made for each other in 11th grade, the theme was Pretty.

Somehow got lost in appreciating the Pretty in the music, the kind where it surrounds you like you're listening to it on drugs such a 16-year-old thrill you know.
Off in my head thinking about love and what its like when you love someone and they're not in your life anymore- be it time or heartbreak or what have you. And I was thinking about how these things can be Pretty things and Love things even if they are Sad things.

I guess its like on one hand I'm just thinking about love and manifesting it,
as in opposition to hate and power and their cause-effect-manifestation;
I'm reading "The Culture of Make Believe" - its rambling in both overarching and microscopic senses of these things,
so many links and talking points and metaphors and examples-
I just wish to do lines and babble about it ("rap sessions", as I envision)-
more of a scruffy twenty-something thrill than a teenager's.

This other book I am reading "Redefining Our Relationships," the author is so flowery and bothersome- Friends Lovers Partners all the same Interchanging and Each EveryDay Act can be an act of Love of Sexual Intimacy - shared not with just people but with your Cup of Coffee or the Flower you Admire - and each act of Love act of Sex an Expression of Personal Activism...

For reals this lady has got bumblebees and daffodils coming out of her ears tattoos and PolyLit collection.

But I guess what she made me think about was that so many relationships and nonrelationships and loves of all kinds ARE so much more important and valid than perhaps we would like to give credit to-
even if they don't go anywhere or don't last long or aren't in our picture perfect definition of how things Should be or how they Usually are.

I need redefining.
Of course I'm going to feel constantly upset when I place value and rating and prioritization...into things and people and relations where really no such thing can be measured.

#

In the end, I'm just a late bloomer. Because it took me until now to figure out all I really want to be in love with is Morrissey circa 1980 (when he was the same age as me)
and now hes old and falling over and the same age as my parents and this is the sort of crush you're supposed to have when you're sixteen you know when you do drugs and worship music like I was saying.
I guess I am going to the UK next summer