the prophet

tonight at the matador dive bar
an Indian told me I had a sister;
I said nothing to him
I gave him my hand
He was a self-proclaimed prophet
He told me I was ‘the middle’ named Kyle
He told me I was ‘quiet’
He said
You do not say anything
You do not say anything
And I looked at his coke and wiskey and thought
‘Lucky guess.’
And he told me my mother was suffering
He said I was the only trusted one.
He told me my mother was “on the way out”
I said,
“NO.”
I said,
“We are fine, there was a scare but..we are FINE,”
I said,
“We have to meet when we are sober.”
He is Cochati, and Navajo
I called him
PHONY
I said “please.”
If my mother dies
There is no world
Without her.
There is no world.

stealing jesus

Gonna steal that concrete praying savior by the side of the road near the farmer's market.
gonna maybe do it some night when there isn't a moon. when i can borrow five glasses of whiskey and a truck.
because there is an entire garden of oxen, flamingos, waterfalls of stone and cold curving breasts
i don't think anyone will miss a son cast out by his father, eyes pleading upward forever
he was right there by the stoplight and the gas station and the american flags
now he is in the woods
when was the last time god answered you anyway

the only thing worse

the only thing worse than things
is other things

what a bunch of shitbags.

i have a problem when people go out every weekend. i have a problem spending money at bars with the same cell phone toting fashionistas. if you are 25+ and have not yet learned that by 1 am you should either be saving the lives of homeless children, be going on a serious adventure (possibly by accident), be getting fucked, or be tucked in, you are not someone i want to hang out with. i made a poster to remind myself about how i haven't been 21 in like, 5 years. i am over it.

i will tell you about it.

the building i work in smells like old cheese even though it is new and sterile and pristine. every morning i have a moment of clarity.it passes with the stoplights. i can tamp it down. i am not leaving yet. i am secure. the people are nice and the pay is good. i have an office with a window. i live inside a spreadsheet; insert row of days. the people i love the most sleep late because they are going to die sooner than i am.

the building i work in is near a busy main drag where chain and box stores and row afer row of auto repair and nail salons breed. when i complain about big box stores people around here say, "folks got to shop somewhere." i went to food lion to grab vanilla extract and saw a mother of two with a chick-fil-a sweatshirt on buying lunchables. the man with the hunting cap behind me bought five packs of cigarettes. the folks have to shop somewhere.

the building i work in is built on clear cut land. the north carolina woods are mean. summer brings ticks, poison ivy, thorns. winter trees are thin and straggly, mud perfumed with death. leaves fall and decay. spring is pollen. autumn lasts a week.

i can't tell if i am sad because i am not where i wanted to be. or because there is so much good and i can't see any of it.

can of worms

[things people have said when they have put makeup on me]
this is a closed list.

"you look just like a little china doll now."
"you have great skin."
"your skin is well-oiled."
"what a difference. this is only $28."
"you have a very defined cupid's bow."
"all it takes is a little time in the mornings."

[possible reasons people do not want to hang out with me]
this is a running list. it will keep running until i figure this out.

i leave parties when i am disappointed
i am openly disappointed
i talk shit about everything
i do not make good eye contact
i make too much eye contact
i will not put out
i am judgemental
i talk about what i want to do
i cuss too much
i get angry
i am too eager
i am impatient
i call instead of text
i mumble (eamdkmsdkm)
i flake out a lot
i genuinely enjoy cutting people i do not like out of my life, pretending that they got hit by a train, and never saying their name again in my mouth
i am too quiet
i pursue (do you want to hang out?)
i forget names
i take things personally
i ask questions (too probing?)
i am a broken record
i speak in cliches

pocket life

When I was growing up, there was a toy called Polly Pocket. A blonde, fingernail sized, Zelda Fitzgerald little darling that would dress up in various outfits and professions. A forward- thinking, working woman of the early 90s who partied hard, yet accomplished her goals. She had no male counterpart as far as I knew. She inhabited various shells that would fit into the cotton pockets of 7 year-old girls across the nation.
Her worlds were like makeup compacts, but instead of pressed powder inside, you would find an ancient bejeweled Egyptian palace, a vet's clinic, or a big city apartment.
It was this last one that really got me. Polly's apartment transported me from my concrete block back steps in the desert to an urban evening full of promise. I would crack open her pastel abode and delight in moving her from the living room (complete with hot tub) to the breakfast nook (where a fridge opened and shut) to the bedroom, where, through a miracle of Small Science, a switch would illuminate a backdrop of stars through a window even smaller than Polly herself. A pinprick cosmos, waiting; satellites swirling and echoing and imaginary people on pretend sidewalks below. moving always forward.
I would often linger Polly by the window, turning on the delicate plastic moon, watching the city light up and thinking of a velvet skyline right before twilight that I might be a part of one day. I would get chills.
Unconsciously, I took these pocket experiences of my small self to San Francisco and neglected to re-scale my expectations. On Polly's microplanet there were no homeless people. No gangs, or flakes, or drugs. No isolation, because Polly was made of plastic and didn't really need a community. There was only the cozy comfort of a fake fireplace (which I did eventually have) and the knowledge that everyone out the tiny window was going about their lives, inside their warm star-squares, as you were, preparing for the next little adventure.

a perfectly awful encounter/everything is wrong

you know you are in for a perfectly awful encounter when one or two of these things happen to you at once:

you walk into a room that smells like smoke, look around and see twenty beer cans, but are not offered one.

the thing that is on tv is a movie in which a monkey is turned inside out inside of a transporter box.

a terrible man with an oppresive southern twang speaks loudly to anyone that will listen "LETS GO OUT TO THE BACK YARD. THERE IS A GRILL AND WE CAN EAT SOME OF THEIR FOOD. THEY'RE COOL. YOU CAN SIT AND SMOKE AND THEY'LL TALK TO YA. I WENT OUT THERE ONCE," he is smoking cigarettes and he is drunk and it is only 3 on a sunday.

(why are the windows closed. why is the tv muted, and bad music is playing, and the other two lumpy men in the room look stoned but there is no pot. i feel like the inside of an empty frito's bag.)

he goes on, "I WENT OUT THERE AND A GUY SAYD DO YOU KNOW WHUT WE CALL PEOPLE WHO DONT COME OUT HERE AND COOK THEIR OWN FOOD WHAT I SAID AND HE SAID BACK DOOR FUCKERS."

(she is out of place. her tight body and dress and perfect makeup. what is she doing here? we were on an errand. one of the men is pretending to kiss her and she tenses. everything is wrong. these people are trash. is she thinking it too? why am i here, why am i anywhere now?)

the only light is frozen in january through the wrought iron and windowpane you can see dogs and grilling and you hear laughter in the courtyard.

"BACK DOOR FUCKERS," he repeats because no one has said a word.

the facts about my upbringing

Historian Ralph Emerson Twitchell once claimed regarding the Old West, "Without exception there was no town which harbored a more disreputable gang of desperadoes and outlaws than did Las Vegas."

in new mexico, in san miguel county, there is a little town called las vegas. it is split in two by the gallinas river. i used to swing on weeping willow branches over the muddy water. on the fourth of july i decorated a bike with red and blue tin foil and road it over the small bridge that spanned west and east.
the racial makeup of the city is 54.21% White, 82.94% hispanic. skip the other numbers. those are the ones that mattered.
there were probably about 14,100 people when i lived there.
we had a wal-mart (no mall) and a gas station called alsups that sold chimichangas and coca-cola. the biggest building in town was at the university. it was called simply "the high rise", and it was 9 stories tall.
there were pow wows at the gym. there were traditional hispanic dances and spanish songs. there were plays in the summer.
there were the monsoons, and you could see them coming from miles away. june through august, dark clouds thunderous and mounting in a brilliant azure sky. at summer art camp,after a morning of tye-dye or paper making, i would watch the sidewalks disappear in a matter of minutes. for a desert, we got a lot of water in the summer. in between, it was dusty. in the winter, always snow. enough to inter-tube, enough to play snow ball catch with the neighbor's dog, gordie.
there were gangs, and robberies, and everyone was poor. there were ghost stories and monster trucks. when i went back, things were the same. they tore down the high rise. but they have not replaced my old elementary school's playground equipment in 18 years. there are gelled hairstyles and hot springs and barking dogs and lowriders.
if las vegas could change, i am not sure it would. if could do anything differently, i wouldn't.

new year

11:54 pm EST 2012
i ran away from a city blazing in my wool mittens and fur hood
what would i tell them if i escaped?
i swear i met the devil tonight i swear she had no necklace or adornments only black lips and ridiculous phrases (isn't it stupid that there's a law that you can't drink and drive?) and oh god, oh god my little leopard print shoes could not get me away fast enough.
it wasn't midnight, not yet. i had time to turn and toast a glowing, green, horrifying skyline. glittering zombie hoards rushing, pushing past me. a parade of hundreds of regrets waiting to happen. i tripped and stumbled by the leering freaks in front of the porno store. empty old grain silo i'd climbed four winters ago with friends i never remember. over the rail road tracks, no loitering sign in the shadow of neon, i opened a small bottle of champagne and said i hope i'm a million miles away next year. or i hope i'm not awake at all. fuck you. and i drank, and threw the bottle. ran and ran and into the car. locked the door, and turned on the safe music just as the fireworks exploded in red and gold spazms over that rotten town.
but, this year is different, i would tell them.
it's not the town or the people. it's me.

Every time I see it come up, I say "dang."

Who else would make an Elliott playlist titled "for Shannon"?
Even when I was across country.
Back in the day.
Back to today ; just down the road a piece.

Oh, Little One.
it was always you.

dr. katz

"i don't know what's wrong with me, stan. i seem to be stuck in this middle-aged-this- is-my-life-get-used-to-it rut. and i don't like that. i don't like the way it sounds." -pretzelkins, season 1

the way of things (apparently.)

you work hard
to work hard
then you work hard
some more.

A Field Without Birds

A shallow night last week. I was on my way home, taking the route near the fair grounds when I stopped. In the dark, near an oak, there was a wooden shack. I peeked inside and found a warm glow. There was the shadow of a Chinese man sitting, throwing coins. "Fortune." he said. I was drunk, but managed to formulate a question while maintaining that strange kind of concentration necessary when approaching The Book of Changes.
I thought about her and her friends and how disappointed I'd been to meet them all. Luckily the fortune teller did not even let me finish. He responded in a voice a thousand years old, interrupting the idea of her like a puff of smoke at an 8-year-old's birthday party:

"There is nothing to be found here of what one is looking for."

And I knew I could trust myself again.

heartbreak witnessed on instagram

he was moving to a big city and she wasn't in town for his final farewell party. she wasn't in town a lot. i went to the party to ask how in holy hell he found a job on the best coast, and he said he hadn't found a job. he was just leaving.
the next day there were those old looking photos of his house post-party, and him giving away his giant speakers, and minutes after, were her photos of nature and moss and clouds and both of them were stuck there next to each other in instagram, not saying whatever was never going to be said.

out of the fog

I remember he said to her, "I work hard. We should have nice things." And she, not wanting to argue, said, "Yeah. Whatever you want to do." So that day they went downtown and I was with them. We went around Fisherman's Wharf and it took forever to park, but the way he drove, so fast and sure, we found a space in time to meet the real estate lady.

I was like a ghost. Living with them, eating in between their ins and outs of the kitchen. Staying as quiet as I could when the roof was falling in with screaming matches. Were they happy? Were they not? Sometimes it was as though they were my parents and I knew I always wanted them to get along and love each other. On some nights they did. His hand on her waist, she would smile up at him. They'd match so well.

But lately he was on her about decorating the apartment while he was away and she was on about being an Independent Woman.

A lady in a charcoal gray fog colored suit showed us up to the towers. Arguably the tallest and newest in The City, made of glass. We signed a waiver, and I was a third wheel. The woman eyed me warily. "I'm the roomate." I said. And she nodded, but didn't understand. I'm not sure I understood.

I know from my Mother that half of wealth is faking it. You do not have to be rich to have Class. If you can speak coherently and walk with purpose, you can be One Of Them. I feel like I could have made it work. But I wanted to suffer more than pretend at that point. I kept my head down and my hair in my face.

From the bridge I could see the towers on my way in. If I was coming back from Oakland, I could see those clear spires green and phosphorescent. In the daylight, I looked up and thought I might spot people at their breakfast tables. Cracking boiled eggs in plush, woolen bathrobes. But down below, with normal people, when you're next to the bay, you'd rather look at the bay. Past that, the Pacific. And that's what I did.

Then I was up inside one of the units. So vast and ridiculous. So white and sterile. A party of 50 could be had in any room. They argued in low tones in this new environment, too.
"Where would we put this?" "That would never work there,"

Everything was windows. Even the bathroom. I stood in the dry shower, absently fingering a white, spray painted starfish decoration, and looked down on the ant-tourists and the avenue and wondered what kind of complex you'd get sitting up here like God. All rainbows and fog. Prisms and toil down below. If anyone'd earned it, he did. And I wanted them to have the best. In the end, they didn't even have each other.

We rode down in a tin box for 98 floors in silence.

Phillip Marlowe

"I stuck the Olds in the garage and poked at the mailbox. Nothing, as usual. I climbed the long flight of redwood steps and unlocked my door. Everything was the same. The room was stuffy and dull and impersonal as it always was. I opened a couple of windows and mixed a drink in the kitchen. I sat down on the couch and stared at the wall. Wherever I wet, whatever I did, this was what I would come back to. A blank wall in a meaningless room in a meaningless house. I put the drink down on a side table without touching it. Alcohol was no cure for this. Nothing was any cure but the hard inner heart that asked for nothing from anyone."
-Raymond Chandler, Playback

nostalgic ruminations on a failed love affair

The delicate sun warmed peaches are gone at the farmer's market and the sign of the changing seasons, the scuppernong grape is here. When mid-august hits and there is no sign of any autumn coolness, you can begin to imagine the leaves turning crisp and gold as you break the skin with your teeth and spit out the seeds. But this autumn remembered stirred a sadness I hadn't associated with north carolina before. A longing for a job I once held closely from September all the way through Thanksgiving. A short little affair, a fling and a burning ferocity. I was an alleged production assistant, working on a documentary that allowed me to leave the horrible dreariness of suburban sprawling Cary, and drive 45 minutes to the little main street in Durham.

The day I had the interview, it was raining and I connected with the director woman on a very real level (I thought.) I got coffee next door at the little bistro and warmed myself with its creaminess and the thought of $15 an hour and really working on a project that mattered. With a real film crew. Flown in from New York City. (That should had been the first tip-off right there, because I'm highly aware of perfectly capable crews in the area, but this woman HAD to have fellows from NYC imported.)

I was in a haze and a spell when I got that job. I would drive and crank the music and smile, smile, all the way to Bull City. I was so confident that I quit my anti-depressants and although going cold turkey was not recommended, it hardly mattered. I was dizzy but that was also from excitement. Even when I was taking the crew's lunch orders, or at a thrift store looking for period piece furniture, or detailing a log of what I'd spent money on for the director, I was having a blast. It was my first(and from what I can tell, last) real film job.

There was another girl working with me. She gave off a mannish vibe that I imagine is important to project in the industry. I tried to exude that too, after a while. Sauntering around in slacks and dress shoes. I'm a lady. I am working in a man's industry. I am Getting. Things. Done. But it never really took, and before long I was back in my skirts and blouses and taking orders for folks like a high paid waitress. It still didn't matter. I was on a film crew. I was off at 5. and 5 o'clock traffic was bad. So I'd go to the Pinhook and sit, cozy and confident in my adulthood, drinking local beer and admiring the warm interior of the high-end dive.

Once, we were in a fancy part of town filming in a ritzy house, when I was asked to drive a large moving van 4 hours away to pick up a hefty prop. Alone. It was getting dark earlier now, and twilight was upon us. I asked the director's cousin, the wardrobe girl, if she had spare time if she could ride with me. I'd never driven such a large van to a strange place in the dark. It seemed ilke a reasonable request but she said no, and gave no excuse. I got into the van and tried to back out. I hit a tree quite abruptly. I turned off the vehicle and sat and cried for a moment. This was something I simply could not do. I got out of the van in defeat and shame and took my tears to the director. I was probably more upset than I should have been but it was most likely because I was coming off of the anti-depressants and was freaking out about the smallest things. The director assured me it was fine that I could not do it after asking me,"Are you sure you can't?" At which point, her cousin volunteered to drive the van "If my boyfriend can come with me," she explained. "I've never driven one alone."

Ultimately, a substitute prop was found in the attic and no one had to drive the van. But it was the beginning of wrapping up. After that episode, I was asked to do more around the set like take photos, shake snow out of a tarp, entertain the child actors, and do more inventory work. I tried to be as helpful as possible and even take on other's jobs just to make it seem like the "van incident" never occurred. We wrapped without further happenings. I did not attend the wrap party because I'd lost my glasses and couldn't drive without them, and I was feeling more and more nauseous since I quit that stupid medication. I sent my well wishes and apologies in an email, but I think it was a mistake to not have someone drive me all the way to Durham to make nice and chat with the crew.

I expected my check a month or two later, and when it did not come, I contacted the pseudo-lesbian. "No, I haven't gotten mine either. And she hasn't responded to my calls or emails." Now, this was ridiculous. We did the work. Pay us. We went to her office for a scheduled appointment and she promptly stood us up. She simply did not show. And she did not answer her phone. After a day and a tank of gas wasted, I wrote a strongly worded, slightly threatening email throwing around phrases like "it is imperative" and "of utmost importance" maybe. I don't fucking remember. But I remember thinking that I needed to document this because "the woman is a crook."

I did get paid. And I did get apologies. And I thought we were square. But I have never gotten the single most important thing in this line of work from this person: a recommendation. She'd even promised me one when she finally handed me the check. I have tried to keep in touch to ask about the project and how it is progressing, and I have begged and squealed for some kind of recognition email, or that she is even alive. A recommendation would have been better than the thousand dollars I got for that work. A recommendation would have made any number of doors open because I was a legitimate PA, getting paid a PA's wages, and doing a PA's JOB. Her stonewalling clam-up has effectively closed the professional filmmaking door in my face. I am starting from scratch again.

I saw her at the documentary film festival in April. There was free beer and maybe that made me brave enough to approach her. I had had three. "Elisabeth!" I said all false Southern charm and style "How ARE you? I'm so excited about the movie!" She looked quite ashamed to see me, and part of me thrilled at that. Through my smile and crinkling eyes I was thinking, "That's right, bitch. I fucking come around. I come to your town and I walk on your block and I god damn know what you're doing."
She played nice though, (I'm not the only phony Southern socialite around) and talked with her friends near me and introduced me, and looked tired, overall. Maybe she really had been working too hard to write something. Maybe this is how the game is played. Maybe you work and you give, and you fuck up once and that is the end for you. Maybe, even though you're discouraged and you know the odds are against you, you still believe in that little job that makes you smile all the way to work.

"It takes more than one psycho fluff-headed director to ruin a dream," I tell myself. And without anti-depressants for a year, and with the anniversary of my love-affair job coming on, I can't help but think I made a type of progress. Even if it is invisible and might as well have never happened. But most loves are like that, burning so strongly and wasting away with painful death twitches, and questions. ("Will they? won't they? will I? can I?") The denial. ("This has to work, there's no way this can't work.")

Like a breakup, it's hard to go back to that bistro and get a coffee and be next door to her office, and it's strange to go into the Pinhook and know that I won't be back for a long time because it's such a drive to Durham for no reason. I don't know how long it will take to stop feeling sorry for myself. I don't know how long it will take to stop blaming others for my bad decisions. It will probably be like clockwork, something I re-hash pointlessly to myself before I go to bed for at least three more years.

I don't know why I am haunted more than others. I wish, like with everything else, this had turned out differently.

found a poem

Neil Ellman
The Brightness of Martyrdom

Nothing seems
as nothing is
(something perhaps
or was
or what might have been)
what seems blood under a microscope
the blood of martyrs
corpuscular debris
of sacrifice

perhaps the Lord’s
himself
bright
birth
forsaken
death

perhaps
what seems bright
is nothing
as it seems
or was ever meant to be

perhaps the moon
and you
were never born
or meant to be.


from this one: http://asbestosboots.blogspot.com/