This is what I think of when
The mold comes crawling out my ears
Copies of copies of copies until
The characters of “Friends”
Or
“How I Met Your Mother”
Will be 40 something-
Past their prime
Sweeping the kitchen
In the middle of the night
To listen to the hooligans
Speak of passion
The things I want are:
A pillow
A cigarette
Some peppermint gum
An eyebrow brush
That dress at the thrift store
Chocolate milk
Cherry schnapps
A speeding convertible
A (moral) compass
And/or you
My roommate and my friend share their love with the signal of the hand-drawn Vitruvian man on the door.
I hope she remembers to take it off at some point so I can sleep in my bed on the floor.
Recently I’ve been thinking of the somewhat stranger I met last weekend. I think I’m so interested in him because:
a) He knew himself well enough to know he wasn’t ready for whatever possible drunken interactions would have happened otherwise.
b) He could have taken advantage of my weak-willed state and he didn’t. I want to know why. Sadly this is a rare occasion and I was upset at the time but now I’m even more curious.
Hopefully by talking a bit I’ve made things less awkward and we can at least smoke cigarettes together, the dirty stress habit I’ve picked up that my friends shame, probably for good reason. I do know they’re terrible for me, the things they could do, but I’m past the point of caring. At one point I’ve wondered “what is the point of living past 50 anyways?” As close as I am to my friends, and I suppose part of my family, it’s hard to see why others care when I barely care about what I do. The only semblance of caring I have is what I would do for others anyways, my unique visions of change.
The fact is that I’m simply a mess and substances (be they prescription, legal or illegal) are some semblance of glue. The only other possibility is the substance of intimacy, another reason for my interest. It takes others in a mirror form to show me that I am not in pieces.
Dear you,
Hopefully someday I will be able to say these things out loud. Preferably without crying, as I don’t think you’ll believe me otherwise.
I’m sorry again that I behaved so childishly last semester. It’s still strange that there was something and then it disappeared so quickly. I’m glad we had some time apart, for me to try and shake whatever remained. I’m sure that, like an old house, there is love in unreachable dusty places in my heart. I find them when I remember a detail, usually something you said once, or a reminder. You were and still are an important part of my life.
And that is why I want to start fresh. We were able to be human to each other before we warped and inverted in relations. I see this fall as another chance. I promise to make an effort to be civil and appropriate if you return that promise. I’ll become cooler, you, warmer, until we are both temperate and have a chance of matching some of the time, enough so that I am not angry and you are not heartless.
Loft window.
Having a cat use me as a personal heater all night when I’m trying to sleep.
The farm badassery skill of scything.
Interacting with uppercrust customers at a farmer’s market.
Detangling a bull’s horns and watching his chances of becoming hamburger go up.
Eating stew consisting of rooster that had swum in red wine (classy) and kale (also pasta and carrots, but I’ve eaten them before).
Going to the Portland Museum of Art to see a biopic about a gay bishop.
UPDATE: Show for the gay bishop was sold out 😦
She reminds me of Mrs. Hogget from Babe. She speaks in stories. She also wrote love letters to her partner Sue (aka Sue-mac) in old Scots (e.g. Rabbie Burns) and “Make[s] it a point to try everything once, except incest and folk dancing.” They built the house themselves. My shared bedroom is loft-like, there is a woodstove and a plethora of books. Outside there is also a peach tree, apple trees, many blueberries, a few beehives, a kiwi plant around a Japanese garden-esque archway, and various other projects. They want to build a hobbit house. Later, we’re going to walk around the lake (which has formed from far too much rain) and try to find mushrooms.
There’s highland cows (which, if you’ve never seen, please do a google image search, or check out pictures which I WILL take before I leave and post) including a month old calf, a boar, a sow, and four piglets, a cat with frostbitten ears, chickens, guinea hens, and a border collie who in a passion for “bouncy round things” sniffs them out in jacket pockets.
I’m glad I decided to take a chance, another step out in the world, to throw myself into life. I used to be so afraid of doing so. Even now, it takes a bit of a push.
In thinking about my future, this might not be a bad place to end up. Not here, specifically, but a farm, or at the very least a farm house. With animals. Though it is work, I think I would like something to keep me busy, to truly enjoy my moments of rest, to feel that I have earned my life and living.
In fact, to truly enjoy everything I do, to swallow the marrow of life.
Destined to be a cat lady. Or a cat. The rest of my family has normal sleeping, food, and work hours. I’m in college schedule time-limbo. Thus the only other life I generally hang with are these two. I missed them.
acerbiaa 