Man Burning Alive

His arms like angel wings
Splayed out behind him in a wild unthinking akimbo
His mouth stretched open by two invisible hands
Out of it pouring a stream of unintelligible screams
A hurtling mass across three lanes of highway
We just tried not to hit him

My response has been to wonder at
Deaths outside of hospital beds
Deaths met not with silence but screams
At the moment in which the soul leaves the body
And to hope that though the fire may claim
Our tears, our hair, our flesh
Our soul does not burn

Today Frank Warren of PostSecret asked “What would you write on a postcard you could mail to your younger self?”

I found the art book and glued it onto the last page. =)

Sunday night I was talking to my friend Andy at work. He was really upset over the girl he has feelings for dating a guy who is a complete shmuck. And he said “I’m really great. But she doesn’t want me, does she?” And then he said “I guess she just wants anyone but me.” And to me that just perfectly summarizes one of the lessons we had to learn as teens. I wish I could have told my 16 year old self that there are a million ways people can reject you even if you’re an amazing person who would probably be the best thing that ever happened to them. I wish I could go back and tell my 16 year old self a lot of things.

So, I sat and watched the waves crash for like an hour today. I didn’t find any answers but I did think of this: the point is that it hurts. If you want to stand in 38 degree ocean water then it should hurt. If you want to rebuild a friendship then it should hurt. If you want to tattoo your love for someone on your wrist then it should hurt. Life hurts for a reason and I’m okay with the pain.

Because you have the most knowledge about life the moment before you die

I really don’t know that much about anything. But I do know that there is probably a reason I’m still up at 2am even though I have a slamming headache and my body has wanted sleep for hours. There is probably a reason I can’t stop thinking about what my biggest flaws are. Because here’s the thing, we all play to each other’s flaws sometimes. And it makes us shitty friends and shitty people when we do. We drag each other down because we can. Because I’m insecure and you are too, we just go about expressing our insecurity in different ways.

Rebuilding anything is hard. Because obviously you want to keep some pieces of the old. If you didn’t you would just be building – starting over from scratch. Rebuilding a friendship is hard. It’s a lot easier to entrust someone with your wallet than your heart.

I think one of my biggest flaws is how much I want to be loved. Because there has been a dearth of love in my life. I mean, yeah, at the end of the day we all want to be loved. But in the past I would prostrate myself to people for an approximation of love. At some point I would like to think we’ll grow up enough. Grow up enough to be able to hold out for the real deal of whatever it is that we have been searching for.

For a few years now I’ve been a real fan of life’s unseen forces. Karma, spirit, God, all that stuff. I think there is a reason you meet the people you do. I think there is a reason that you can feel like you have lived an entire lifetime with someone in two and a half years and yet life shoves you back together with them. Because you weren’t done learning from one another yet. Maybe my perspective on this is the same as my answer to most of the unanswerable questions: life is both. I need to believe that there’s a force that draws people together for a reason. But I also need to believe in free will. That I can resist my flaws and be a better person for it. That I can let go of my anger and hurt and anger over being hurt. That we can share the same space as in the past but be different people.

Was I high when I wrote this?

On Tuesday morning Henry woke up and stared at the alarm clock for three minutes before it went off, playing a tune on the radio that he did not recognize. His wife didn’t stir; he knew this without looking back as he padded down the hallway towards the bathroom. Fifteen minutes later he was dressed in his khakis and polo shirt. His wife always teased him that since he had retired this had become his uniform. It was true that he had approximately seven pairs of the same pants and owned the polo he was wearing in every color that L.L Bean made. Nonetheless he resented her for this. Women have more options than men, he thought.

He grabbed a donut from under the clear plastic dome overtop the tray on the kitchen counter and went outside to his car. He heard but didn’t listen to an NPR show as he drove to the hospital. Henry took the first spot in the parking garage and puffed out his chest a little. He made his way through the tight hallways of the hospital, trying not to look around too much or to breathe too deeply. He noticed that he must have taken a turn that veered from the directions the woman at the front desk had given him because he was definitely in a wing with admitted patients. Once he found the doctor’s office he sat in one of the uncomfortable lobby chairs and filled out paperwork without reading it.

Henry spent four more hours having tests done on Tuesday as morning turned into afternoon. When the doctor told him he had stage two testicular cancer he looked down at his khakis and thought of his wife – women have more options than men.

"Look at all the shit we've made it through."

Untitled 3/7/08

I loved my hands the first summer I was in love with her. I was flailing, ill-equipped to deal with the rate at which my life was exploding around me, the rate at which I was falling. I was stranded, a fish out of water. A writer who could not write. A writer who wouldn’t even put pen to paper out of fear of the truth that might pour out of it more like blood than ink.

The first girl I ever loved told me that the way to get over the second girl I ever loved was to make an art book, to “channel my creativity into something productive.” Thus girl number one bequeathed to me an old hardcover book onto which I was supposed to pour my soul via paintings and drawings and doodles and whatever else I could think to put on its pages. So I worked for hours every day, sometimes forgetting to eat, always forgetting that I am not an artist in this way. And after hours of paint fume inhalation that made my head spin I had created a masterpiece and a monster. I had created something that was one part self-portrait and three parts shrine to girl number two. I had created something that I can now neither bring myself to look at nor to throw away.

When I was younger I had inspirational quotes of all kinds taped to the closet doors in my bedroom. Quotations that I ripped down while crying at four in the morning one day the second summer I was in love with her. I got to the one that said “Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real,” and I sat on my floor, cross-legged in a pile of torn papers, staring at it until the sun came up.

I don’t miss anything about either summer. Anything except my hands smeared with Technicolor paint.

Teeth 2/09/09

I am standing in a smoke-filled room eating a hot dog. In front of me is a large mirror – the kind you look into in public restrooms. I watch myself as I chew. I visually zoom in on my mouth. Suddenly I feel something wet at my lips – that isn’t right. I reach up with my free hand and touch my mouth. When I remove it and look down at it I see that it is covered in blood. I startle, and stumble backwards. I am further now from the mirror and the smoke is obscuring what I can see in its reflection. Another weird sensation – my mouth is bending like a warm strand of licorice. I watch silently as my teeth fall out one by one, plinking off the floor like cheap guitar picks.

I awake with a start. I immediately shove both my hands to my mouth. I wiggle my front teeth between my index fingers and thumbs. I bite down hard a few times making a chomping sound. I begin to calm down – my teeth are not actually falling out. Taking note of my surroundings for the first time I realize what has happened – I dozed off in the library on top of my pile of books. I also realize that a black girl is staring at me. She is seated directly in front of me twenty feet away, facing me. I shoot her a feeble smile. She does not return the gesture. Her expression seems to say crazy fucking white people. Indeed. I resolve to brush my teeth as soon as I get home.

"White Girl" 2/07/09

“White Girl is late.”

I plop down in my chair with my coat still on. I check my watch – 8:04am. I glance to the front of the room – the professor isn’t even here yet.

“White Girl looks tired.”

I ignore what they’re saying about me. This nickname was given to me on the first day of class. I laughed upon hearing it. I was coming back from the board after doing number fourteen on it. “White Girl has mad skills,” is what I heard. This was a compliment. I mean, okay, so there’s five white kids in the class. Every person in this room has counted. Okay, so I’m the only girl among us. I get it. I’m the white girl. It makes sense. The class is comprised mostly of black and Hispanic kids. There is one Asian girl who sits in the back corner of the room. She is always shifting around uncomfortably in her seat. Don’t call attention to yourself, I hear myself say to her in my head. Don’t become “Asian Girl” to them.

“Yo, White Girl dresses whack,” I heard on the second day of class. “And so it has begun,” I thought to myself. And so it had.

The professor shows up finally and starts class. She asks me the answer to number six on the homework. My best guess is apparently incorrect.

“White Girl blew it.”

None of them will make eye contact with me. What would I say if they did? If I actually existed in this room and they could hear me?

“Hi, my name is Pat,” or “You can all fuck off.” I don’t know which.

Late Night Facts

I am terrified of great white sharks but also want to see one in person someday (and I don’t mean seconds before it eats me).

I am afraid that I will never find her.

The group I am most bigoted against: Christians.

I believe I am funnier than all the people I have ever met in my life combined.

I also believe I’m a more talented writer than all the people I have ever met in my life combined.
I used to put a lot of pressure on that fact that I was born believing that I would change the world.

I came out to my friend Shannon when I was 16 years old. Part of me died that day.

I want to get a tattoo of a phoenix on my lower right leg.

I would not be alive today if I had never met Amy. Without meeting her I would also never have become myself.

I don’t think college has changed me much. I also think I am a very different person than I was in high school.

I’ve been in love once, I think. It is/was horrible and also the greatest experience of my entire life.

I believe that when I die I will meet Angel from RENT. Not the character, not the actor. The person.

I cross-dress because it makes me feel comfortable but also because it forces people to consider an idea, however briefly, upon meeting me. My point is not that anyone should be anything like me, but that if they really wanted to they could be whatever makes them most like them.

I have a pet hamster named Abner who is the most perfect thing I have ever held in my hands. When he dies I will be devastated.

I miss my grandma almost every single day.

I don’t fear my mom’s death as much as I fear that she will live for many more years with a horrible quality of life.

When I was in kindergarten I had a crush on the teacher.

I cried almost every day of my life until I turned 14. I was a sensitive kid.

I haven’t yet had a good year. I am super hopeful about 20. So far, so good.

I used to love photography and was fairly talented at it. I think I’ll get a new camera and try it again.

I am an organ donor and once convinced a girl in line with me at the DMV to be one too, even though her fiancé, whom she was snuggly attached to, begged her to reconsider.

I read books 1-4 of the Harry Potter series and have no inclination to read 5-7.

When I was 5 I burned my hands horribly on an open flame. Lighting matches scares me but I can do it.

The shore makes me feel peaceful.

I am not cut out for roller coasters.

I think facebook is lame but I also like to talk about myself.

Untitled 2/01/09

Note: Sorry about the giant gaps in the text. Blogger isn't letting me indent and messing with the html is the only way I could indicate a sense of paragraph structure.

My friend Sarah is the smartest person I have ever met. She is also the most socially awkward. In five years of knowing her I’ve mostly only been able to draw out of her commentary on the weather.

One night our senior year of high school we were down the shore for a class trip. There was a dance party in the pavilion and I thought Sarah looked about as miserable as I felt. We went outside, both of us completely burnt from the day, and lay on our backs on top of a picnic table. She asked me if it was cloudy. I said I didn’t know what the weather was supposed to be like. I was still looking when I burst out laughing, “Sarah…the stars. We can see them.” She thought it was funny too.

We talked about all kinds of things that night. We talked about the past four years of social hell and her sister dying. We talked about the future and what would happen if we actually got all the things we dreamed of. It was the kind of conversation two characters have in a movie right before they go their separate ways forever. It was the most sweeping conversation I’ve ever had with a friend about life.

Three weeks ago I saw Sarah at a house party I had. She looked thoroughly bored, a bit uncomfortable, and exactly the way she had looked that night in the pavilion. Our friend Amy brought up that senior trip, reminding us that she was too ill to go on it. Sarah turned to me and said, “Remember when we went outside near the end?” I smiled and said, “Yeah, I loved hanging out with you that night and the conversation we had.” Sarah cocked her head a little, “We talked?” “Yeah, you don’t remember?” “No, I don’t. I thought we just went outside cause we didn’t want to dance.”