Trying My Hand

"I've been sitting in the coffee shop for almost three hours, reading the second book I flipped through at Powell's four and a half hours ago.  I could be a writer, if I were disciplined.  I'm great at first drafts.  I don't even like to read, but this book and I have quickly developed a strange and very fast relationship.  It's like it knows me.  It's like the book is reading me.  It simultaneously makes me feel less and more lonely than I did last night, when I cried emptily into my soft pillow with the lavender case, the inky mascara stains growing bigger and inkier with each plea.

I prayed for sleep.  It took nearly four hours, two glasses of water, one muscle relaxer, and the sun setting, but God finally answered.  While I slept for what felt like an unnaturally long time, I awoke alert and weak at 4:15am, wishing there was more sleep left in me.  I remained still, like I didn't want the other person in the room to know I had woken, only there was nobody.  I stayed curled in a tight ball, wishing myself away.  Wishing I could reverse time.  The hole of loneliness in my belly grew bigger and more intense, throbbing, urging, and then waned, over and over again, in a terrible cycle.  Somehow, though, I was able to keep the tears back with each sweeping wave.  I did this for three hours, until I couldn't take it anymore and finally agreed to one cup of coffee, and we would see how things go.  (And by "we" I mean Me and Myself.)

The stories in the book are both deeply disturbing and also comforting.  The tales of broken women and the desperate quietness of their shortcomings strike me as equally beautiful and tragic.  The beauty is the part that makes me less lonely; the tragedy, more.

I have been drinking the same cup of coffee for three hours and I've yet to see the bottom of the mug.  It's probably because it makes my stomach hurt, but I drink it anyway, because I love it.  I suppose that is an unhealthy perspective and not too dissimilar from an unhealthy love relationship.  I am writing now only because I spent this time reading a book by an author I have never read, and now I am writing like her.  It makes me think I am too impressionable.  I see drawings and mimic them in my own.  I see women and think I, too, can be adventurous in fashion.  I read a particular style of writing and want it to be mine.

I have only spoken to two people today and both were working registers.  My face has not moved really, since last night when I finally found relief from my own mind.  It feels like plastic.

It is warm today and my eyeliner is melting off, leaving smudges underneath, and I don't care.  I am so still, and my hair is ugly, and I keep drinking the coffee, and I don't care.

I have a hard time being the rock in the stream.  I am always the water.  Is it because I am easygoing?  Or because I am afraid?  Or some woven combination of both?  I have needed to pee for one half hour but I can't make myself go.  The thought of asking someone to watch my backpack for two and three quarters minutes makes me cringe.  And I despise public restrooms.

Today is not about talking to other people.  Today is about being away from home, about not being alone, and about being silent.  Though, I am starting to tire a little from the R&B music that is playing the slightest amount too loud.  The kind of volume that interrupts the thought every three to four minutes or so, making it very difficult to write the first draft that I am fairly certain I will never finish.  The coffee shop has nearly emptied out but I am reluctant to leave.  Maybe the too-loud music is the only thing keeping me from myself right now.  I don't want to be at home.  The evenings are the worst.  But I am impossible.  I want to live alone for seventy one more years but I do not want to be lonely.  I cannot help that my Sun, Moon, Venus, and Mars are all in side-by-side signs.  It is a non-complementary duality I keep telling myself the perfect person will be able to negotiate.  Preferably, with skill.  Maybe it's just too complex a thing.

Maybe I actually do like the R&B filling the warm, still room with the high ceilings and worn wood floors.  (This town is pretentious about the decor looking just worn enough.)  Maybe the R&B is keeping me from myself, just enough.  The pressure in my abdomen has increased to such a degree that I won't make it fifteen more minutes before needing to locate the nearest loo.  Only, I am going to make it more challenging by refusing to use the public one, even though mine at home is probably dirtier, and the floor has more hair on it.  It's been almost four hours now.  My face is hot and I am stuck in a rock wall of indecision.  

The sun is going to be out for at least another three and one quarter more hours and my bedroom just doesn't get dark enough to sleep before it's time.  I may need to invest in some Tylenol PM."

On A Sunday, With the Boys

August 12th

Helser's on Alberta

pepper bacon & cheddar hash

sausage breakfast

smoked salmon hash

coffee

     coffee

          coffee...

. concept of "un-learning"

. "cursive typing"

. I want long hair so I can put it in a bundle atop my head

. maybe I'll feel better once the weather changes...

. ready for Fall, afterall?

Day: Saturday. Mood: Quiet

Stumptown
7:40am
I want to run again.  A lady is talking to a man about a 10k and my guts wrenched for a second.  I want that feeling of freedom, of weightlessness, of not caring and feeling my breath move in and out of stretching lungs.
My gym workouts are okay.  The stairs are good and challenging enough.  But it's not the same.  I can't walk out into my neighborhood, breathe deep the chilly air and step out onto a stairmaster. 


8:30am
Children are mesmerized by me.  I don't appear to be doing anything differently, but the last two days I have suddenly become very compelling to these new little minds.  I don't think I'm doing anything differently.  They must sense something about me.  They must sense that I'm almost 27 and without children.
I am quite okay with this, but biologically the universe is like Tick tick tick tick tick . . .
Thanks for the reminder, Universe.


8:45am
Dear Laura Walker,
I'm afraid you are severely undercharging for your artwork.  It pains me a little.
Love,
Newly Devoted Fan


8:55am
I think too hard too much.  Sometimes answers come not by thinking so hard to find them, but by relaxing the mind and letting go to let the answers arrive naturally.  Like that sand metaphor: If you squeeze too tightly a handful of sand, it spills away.  But if you hold it gently in a cupped hand, you can carry and bolster it.
I'm thinking sitting in a public space and drawing and writing is good for this kind of thing.
Relaxing my thoughts and absorbing the soothing sounds of low chatter and coffee clamor.

Why don't I do this anymore?
 ...
It feels like it's been a long time since I've sat and reflected and written down my thoughts.  It feels a little unfamiliar.
I think there's some fear.  Not wanting to confront some things, maybe.  Not wanting to address frustrations in my life and delve into thought paths that are all too familiar and, sometimes, dark.
Lately I feel like things aren't going the way I want them to.  I don't know if it's me or if it's everybody else.

It's easy to think it's everybody else.
...
I

This Week's Picks:

Go here:
     http://steammeupkid.blogspot.com/p/about.html

Drink this:

Drool over everything on here:
     http://www.stripedesigngroup.com/estore/

(In particular, lust over this):
     http://www.stripedesigngroup.com/estore/?page_id=4&category=16&product_id=123

And ponder this for a minute:

   

Why Yes, August, You Are Correct

The Grand MoMare Adventure

         A (painfully)  

Short Story

<ahem>

She arrived.

We ate heartily

nom

and drank (very dramatic) cups of coffee.

We lazed about and chit-chatted

 boop

and sat on sidewalks drinking tea

and swilling beer.

 We got to peruse many a-menu

 because that's what happens

when you eat a lot and are daunted

by giant flatware.

 RAWWRRR

We had fantastic hair

and gesticulated wildly

and made funny faces in public places

  until we nearly peed from laughter.

And even though we felt exhausted at times

oy

that didn't stop us from admiring the flowers

 I think those are weeds

eating radishes the size of baseballs

womp

and flaunting our fantastic bosoms.

yowza

The End.

Moonstruck, Awestruck, Lovestruck

  

Yesterday I went to my usual appointment in the afternoon, only it felt like Friday because today I have the day off.  Upon leaving the building I discovered the sun was intermittent enough and the air warm enough to warrant parking myself at a metal table outside Moonstruck with, do I dare say it?, a cup of coffee so smooth and easy that cream would likely have ruined it.  I sipped from the cup that fit neatly in my hands, nibbled on the shortbread cookie with the zig-zagged edge, and admired the way the sun came in and out of the tree branches, laden with fresh April blooms. 

Sometimes it doesn't feel real.

Sometimes I don't feel real.

Then I discovered an entire world

living inside of my coffee cup.

And my new favorite butter jeans looked so compelling in the light; strangely complicated and pretty with pattern.

 Oh, and I almost forgot!  Look what Mom sent me!

The most perfect, timeless, fantastically elegant

Yellow Teapot in the world!  Yeesh, this photo does it

no justice.  In person, it just glows.

Thanks, Ma. :)

Breakfast WIN

Brother Number One took up the Atkins thing last week, so I cooked up a badass full-on (nearly) non-carb breakfast.

Cheesy Egg Mess
Three eggs
Splash of Heavy Whipping Cream (unwhipped)
Shredded Mexican four-cheese blend
Extra pepperjack cheese
Cayenne pepper
Topped with avocado and chunky salsa

Fat mild Italian sausages

Coffee, with naturally carb-free Heavy Whipping Cream (unwhipped), Splenda, served in a perfectly weighted small brown coffee mug with matching saucer

 Tiny kitchen + lots of cooking = a wee of a time (!)

Mug!

 

Week One of Arrival Continued

The best thing about Diane's besides (duh) the sausage gravy

is the light.  Especially when it is cloudy. 

Diffused and fantastic.

Why, yes: I would love clouds made of pancakes!

Gravy + Gravy = 2Gravy

Gravy + Gravy + Brother = (2Gravy) + Brother

     2Gravy/Brother = (2Gravy) = Gravy(Brother)Gravy

Brother

Gravy(Brother)Gravy + Coffee + Merriment = Tears of happiness