born into this mess
in which i confess that i am a hypocrite
I purchased clothing from the gap today.
fits good, too.
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in which I give into various temptations, selfdeprecation included
I went to the mall today with firm intentions of buying nothing but somehow bought frilly seethru shit at VS.
There's something about malls, going into the stores and feeling that dull sick feeling building up behind my eyes. What my daddy used to call the gimmes. All the pretty things I wish I had, sleek shirts with scoop necks and sleeves long enough to cover all the scars and tattoos, the one pair of pants that will make me look taller or thinner or curvier, the boots with the fur trim and the spaceman soles. The skin creams and the silk slips, all the things I rub between my fingers knowing that I could never with a clean conscience spend eightynine dollars on. I look at price tags and see nine hours of crouching wiping baseboards and vacuuming up viciously sharp black hairs and mopping up cat urine and I turn away, squishing the dead hot lust to be Someone Else back down into the bottom left corner of my stomach.
I didnt ever really have nice clothes when I was younger but went to school with hundreds of Those Girls. the ones with not a hair out of place and perfect skin, whose clothes stayed wrinkle free and were never dirty, never marked by a stray ink blotch, the ones who never tripped running up the steps, never chewed their fingers in class, whose legs were brown and strong and unbruised. The kind with boyfriends and photo albums and more than one pair of earrings.
So there's just something about the mall, the florescent lights, the way I always feel too skinny and dirty, the way the bones in my face become too sharp and the scars on my legs and back make my body seem horribly disfigured and unlovable.
Like some little voice that tells me, you will always be rumpled and poiseless. You will never keep your white shirts white and you will never be graceful. You will always be Gertrude Stein and never Audrey Hepburn.
I do like riding the escalators though.
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next stop, saving the whales
dear men,
here's a tip. next time you have to pee, siddown on the goddam seat, take that thing you think gives you the right to rule the world (or at least cover it in urine), and tuck it inbetween your legs. lookit there, no need to aim, just pee right into the bowl.
I'm tired of wiping your pee off the floor and the sides of the toilet and the fucking walls. and sitting in it at bars, or crouching over it, or stepping in it.
see, what you don't know, is that we women can pee standing up too. and we can make just as much of a mess. it's just a lot easier and drier to sit down. and you get like a little rest from standing up.
really.
love,
sue
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cheer up honey i hope you can
this is why I haven't written in a while:
i finally got my name written on a bathroom wall.
funny how that never happened when I wasn't trying to be a different person. and i try so damn hard not to care but damn, the thought that someone really dislikes me THAT much. yeowch.
still, the part about my having promiscuous sex with animals is pretty righteous.
i sleep facing east and wait for the moon to land on my pillow, next to the sleeping cat.
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hhrrrgh
dear dial up internet access,
you suck.
love,
sue
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tires on a wet street sound like yesterday leaking air
today I sneezed so hard I woke myself up.
washed my hair.
cleaned my rooma t my parents house.
fired my mom from cleaning her bathroom and pulled everything out and spent over an hour in her shower monkey crouched with a toothbrush and a bottle of peroxide.
paid my library fine! it was $30!
started the new stephen king gunslinger.
bought a really pretty breastfeeding outfit for a friend who is pregnant (so she can feel sexy but still nurse the sprog in public)
bought shampoo for the first time in years.
i'm exhausted. at my parent's house I got in a fight with my brother because he claims that good charlotte is punk rock. just like being a kid again. eeesh.
there is this big party tonight for my friends who got evicted from their house. kids have been living there as long as i have been able to drive. lots of good memories, lots of stolen toilet paper and drunkeness and porch swing antics. sad, really. i can drink cos of the antibiotics so i imagine it will suck. and it's raining.
i am not feeling clever tonight if you can't tell.
holla.
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a story that goes nowhere
when I was real little, my daddy used to give me my baths, I guess cos mom was around us all day and he had to work, and i got bathed at night.
anyway, they used this balsam and protein cream rinse. and he used to call it elephant snot.
yeah, I'm still sick.
hee hee.
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& you're hiding behind that wolverine smile
I got an email just now from the american family association, asking me the following
shocking question:
Did you know that 91% of evangelical church youth don't believe in ABSOLUTE TRUTH?
well no fucking shit.
how could they when their elders and leaders are a bunch of murderous hypocrites? I'm sure these kids have read "give up everything you have and follow me" and then turned a questioning eye to the rows of SUVs that line the walmart sized parking lots.
or maybe "this is the greatest commandment. love god with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself." which if you love, really really love, and god is love, then you, in the action of loving, are an instrument or vessel of god, right? and then they go on and on about how these evil muslims want to kill us all cos they hate our lifestyle and we should hate and fear them, and let's not even get started on the black folks we've moved to the suburbs to escape.
hhhrrrgh. i had a religious discussion for the first time in a while with my roommate, last night. and she loves me no matter what ungodly things i may say.
dog bless my liberal arts education for that, at least. i still have certain beliefs that i cherish, but i ain't puttin no yes lord bumper sticker on my car.
and i unsubscribed from their website, the american family association. i hope this isn't the beginning of an onslaught of spam. religious spam. HA. i'd take penis enlargment and paris hilton over that any day.
in other matters, I've got a nasty sinus infection and am oozing green gunk from my poor raw nose. got some antibiotics, hopefully that will help.
for my really personal shit, well, get yourself a livejournal.
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wow I am such a geek
I just figured out that if I click on my hit counter I can see the ISP addresses of all the people who have been reading here. I saw Warren Wilson, how ya doin baby girl? I saw a few bellsouth dsl that had come from
Sonya's page, maybe that guy who just emailed me in Kentucky? and Ginny? Only one hit with a MAc and no ISP was logged so I am guessing Denny, then a columbus Road Runner, I guess Pat. I am feeling very warm and special.
OOOOOHHHHHH I am gonna Google some things and see if i can find myself.
wow. that soundds absofuckinglutely hilarious.
"um, yeah, so I was trying to, you know, find myself, and there i was. On Google. Heavy."
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thoughts from last night's dogwalking
you are walking the chihuahua into the wind alongside the river and, like you always do when you are alone for too long, you begin to chronicle your thoughts; as always, they are the same: this boy, that boy, work, money, and memories of Colin that have resurfaced unbidden in the past week.
nine months of obsessive introspection has got you writing and rewriting every thought that passes through your head into some kind of everpresent 2nd person narration,
"Things to Write Later in the Blog."
water seeps across the paving stones, runoff down the bluff from last night's rain, and the chihuahua's feet leave a neat double row of pawprints on the sidewalk.
the skin on your face and legs is starting to burn from the cold and you turn around to walk back to where you are dogsitting. like you do any time you see the Mississippi, you sing Lucero's "Drink til we're gone," from the depths of your lungs and
With Feeling.
the water is moving faster than normal and as the small dog pulls you along in the same direction as the water flows, you almost feel like you are being borne away by the current,
downstream and into the sea. you take a deep breath and try to imagine that this heaviness that overtakes you with every twilight is leaving your body and floating downstream with the rest of the flotsam and jetsam to the Gulf.
every time you see the old train bridge you think about Porter. today you are troubled by your inability to remember his middle name. you were never close, and you never really knew him, but you had study hall together and he was close to your ex.
you imagine his fall into the silence of eternity and you think about the last thing he said:
look.
it's so beautiful.
and it is. the sun sets behind the black trees over across the water in Arkansas, lighting an orange pathway that ripples out from between two of the bridge's support columns, ending at your feet.
a plane flies into the darkening cloud bank that hovers over the horizon, becoming a point of infinitely bright light that moves steadily through the grey and out into the pale sky, cooling again into another flying cylinder of dull metal. you have started to talk to yourself, narrating under your breath in a low voice that makes you think of Winona Ryder for some reason. the sunset makes your eyes tear up. and you don't know why.
it has gotten darker and colder when you walk up the hill and across the footbridge, lost in your thoughts and wishing that the woman for whom you are dogsitting had a computer with internet.
as you walk back through the neighborhood, some kids have started a game of football.
you stand and watch awhile in the end of the daylight before you turn to go back home.
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hey look! it's how i really feel
I woke up late after a latenight bout with the whiskey and the mirror. they won, and I crawled into bed with a comic book until the light from the computer monitor cut off.
the last thing I dreamed was that someone had left a banana pepper in a dent in my wall and my desk was swarming with ants of all sizes.
I'm trying my best to stay away from drama, so I mostly keep to myself. I'm dogsitting all weekend and maybe will manage to stay away from the computer.
I feel sort of sad and hurty and disappointed with myself, mainly because of the repercussions of some decisions I made last year. I can't help wondering if I am going to be alone forever. You know, maybe you only get one shot and you blow it.
wah wah wah.
happy birfday to my best girl RIFF from RAFF.
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ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
Remind me to tell you the story about the girl with no sense of smell who worked at the perfume counter...
and the anorexic who worked at the all you can eat
and the boy who rode trains with his puppy
and the time I prankcalled the president
but first, it's time to make muffins. the monster under the back stairs has become very demanding.
p.s. How weird is Robert Smith singing with Blink 182?
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I can't tell if it's a conscious aversion to being at home in the evening or if I really do have this renewed desire to catch up with all my old friends, but whatever it is, it's nice not to just sit around and spent 4 hours on the internet.
anyway, last night I was sitting around in the communal kitchen in the Pilgrim House at the church visiting Amy and eating some kind of curry hummus, when I realized that I may well be growing up.
I don't mean I'm paying my bills on time or eating right or keeping my room clean, but that i am really trying hard to excise all drama from my life. You know, whenever I start to obsess over dumb boys I quickly start to plan future english classes in my head. that sort of thing.
Now if I could just find a new job.
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just like say anything, baby
In a John Cusack moment, i made this collage card thingy and rode my bike to leave it on someone's car. This boy, to be more precise.
It's about 46 out, and I was listening to Sigur Ros, and I forgot my gloves.
And even if he never says anything about it at all, or even realizes that it was me, it was worth it for the cold on my face and the feeling of flying with angelic voices singing in icelandic in my ears.
tjúuuu...
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when I was five or six and lived in Redwood City, we had this little olive tree that grew bent over in the back yard. I used to climb up onto the trunk and sit right at the base of the branches. I'd sort of rock up and down and pretend I was riding a horse.
Until I broke it, that is.
On a nother note, I saw Hedwig tonight, live. It was absolutely amazing, I sang along and cried like a baby.
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blind dreaming
There are times in my life when my dreams become blurry. I can tell what's going on, I can hear and feel, but all i can see is brightness.
Last night I dreamed that the one who got away decided, finally, after all the text messaging and the livejournal nonsense, that he wanted me back. He came up behind me and bearhugged me, and I knew it was him from the scratchiness of his beard and the weight of his arms. But when I turned around to kiss him, I couldn't find his face.
So what I want to know, is am I blinded by how badly I want to see, or is it just that in my sleep I have rolled to face the window and am blinded by the rising sun?
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The sadness of half a lime, cut last Monday and put unwrapped into the fridge, pulp wrinkled and dried like a dying turtle.
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The last thing I dreamed, before I woke up:
They are felling an olive tree, and it calls out to me as they drag it away. I reach out but they wrench it from my hands and I am left holding 5 leaves and an olive. I put the olive in my mouth and wake up with its taste on my tongue.
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only 50 minutes til mrs smith and her warm gooey blackberry goodness are ready.
in the meantime, Ratty and I will sit around being sad over boys.
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oh oh oh i'm on fire
right now, as i type, i have a burning tube of cloth covered in wax stuck in my ear.
fizz crackle crackle.
damn sinuses. damn earache.
boy i sure do want some blackberry cobbler.
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I woke up this morning, after dreams full of blinding lights and lost sunglasses, to find that during the night someone had stolen my head and replaced it with the Death Star.
O, you might say, that's silly. The Death Star is the size of a moon, and your head is only as big as a ... um ... head.
ok, so they also built a containment field linked to another, smaller, dimension.
Cos right now, Darth Vader (oh dark father!) is marching squadrons of storm troopers through my sinuses. Little do they know that my brain is about to explode.
Onanother note, Tachi's new Favorite Thing is sitting staring fixedly at the radiator. He used to do this whenhe was a kitten. What does he see? Weirdycat.
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the radiator in my bedroom sounds like it's boiling, and I dream that the bathtub has been moved next to my bed.
I wake up feeling like the little mermaid.
Voice stolen from my mouth and feet full of glass.
Would you understand if I said, I wish you were leaving sooner. Because I never could. You're a mirror held up to my failures and I'm going blind, not looking away.
When I was 17, and going away to school, my father drew a red circle on the map, Memphis at the center, and told me, I'll help you if you stay in the circle. No Chicago or New York, and no state schools cos my father is a snob, so there I had Sewannee, Davidson, Emory, Washington U, Vanderbilt, and Rhodes. So I went to Rhodes. But it wasn't like going anywhere.
I was terrified to leave.
And when I finally left, I didn't leave alone, even if that's how I came back.
How can I tell you that you remind me of all the things I have wanted to do and am scared to do. All the regrets I've accumulated since 17, they're an anchor snagged on some underwater derelict that just happens to be lurking in the shadows of Midtown.
There are so many things I've never said to you. Things I will never say.
I wish I could have been with you the way you wanted me. I wish I had never broken your heart. I wish I had been a better person. You made me almost want to try.
I wish you could have been enough.
It's like this. I wanted legs so badly that I gave the seawitch my voice. And now I will never sing, or swim again.
At least not with you.
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time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth...
somewhere in the past year or so things have gotten unbelieveably muddled.
back in july, when we had that big storm, my best girl went on a long road trip, and we just never really got back into spending time together.
she's been seeing someone, and it's not that I object, it's just that sometimes it's hard to be an ex.
and now she's moving away to go to college, in something like a week, and honestly things won't be that much different, we'll talk on the phone and write letters, I just won't see her around.
and I guess what i am trying to say is that I'm pissed off at myself for letting her go like I did.
Was I always like this, so in a hurry? tonight I went out with some friends for a beer and I had to seat myself where I could see both the door and the clock. one thing going in and out or another.
The present never seems to quite be enough, and I've got fuck-all idea what to do with my wreck-of-a-life in the future, and the past has just gotten blurrier and blurrier.
if it weren't for obsessive bloggin i'd have no clue what happened last year.
click click boom.
maybe it's the drinking, maybe it's the lack of mental stimulation, maybe my brain is being eaten by worms.
it's like living in one of those simpsons episodes that is entirely made up of clips from other shows, except that this doesn't seem to be nearly as well put together.
in other news, my car is now clean. i still wouldn't eat anything i'd dropped on the floor, but it's clean. so now i can spend the rest of the year screwing up, since i've already accomplised my new year's resolution.
hurrah for me.
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I tend to have insanely complicated dreams. They are like being in a fantasy or sci-fi novel, but jumping in right in the middle of the 4th chapter- i can usually figure out what's going on, but there's this massive amount of background information that I never quite catch up with.
Last night it was sort of like this:
The world has two layers, the normal one, and the scret, magic one underneath that. Duh.
Harry Potter? Neverwhere?
The secret magic world is divided into the witches and these weird lion men. I couldn't figure out which ones were evil, but I had just recently joined a coven, so I guess the witches were good. We're talking pagan earthgoddess worship, not pointy hats and brooms. And the lion men had stolen or kidnapped someone, and we were trying to find her. And a small boy who was sort of a lion boy but sympathetic to us had met me on a roof to tell me where the missing person was.
And then i woke up. It was extemely frustrating. What the fuck happened?
I never ever have normal dreams. They are almost always like this. Maybe it has something to do with having the Dream King tattooed on me.
Maybe.
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like an old painted doll in the throes of dance...
I was cleaning alone in this woman's loft, a modestly swanky second-floor walk-up in the gallery district. Because of the lovely but unsealed exposed brick walls, the floor and furnishings were covered in cement dust. I love this stuff. When I lived in a dive-y second-floor walk-up in the old Pinch District, I used to wake up every morning feeling like I'd slept in the litter box. Nasal membranes coated in a hard grey crust.
So anyway, I normally just dust with swiffers, but this seemed to require damp toweling instead. Take everything off, wipe underneath, and put it back on. No big deal.
Except that her entertainment centre was covered with old circus figures, like in the mechanical circus at the Pink Palace. They lined the shelves and posed up on top, precariously balanced on feebly jointed leather legs.
The horses, elephants, and lions still held tightly to their dignity, but the camel and the seals just sagged. The clowns were menacing in a very Dave McKean way, and when I couldn't get them to stand upright again after I put them back, I frankly panicked a bit.
I kept hearing creakings and whisperings, even through the music on my headphones, and although they were beautiful to look at, I could not imagine living with them in my home.
I believe that the things we create in imitation of living beings hold within them some shadow of life. Some translucent, almost weightless thing inside the fur and feathers and shiny shiny eyes.
And they awaken behind our closed doors.
And they watch us as we sleep.
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I will begin again...
This past year has been a giant hole. I went back last night and started to reread all my old livejournal entries (this was after getting drug to some guy's house in the burbs where I knew 2 people and thus holed up on the interweb all night), so I know a lot of things happened, but it seems like a big blur. A whole whole lot of Hi Life, internet, and heartache.
I don't know when I became so scatterbrained. I mumble inanities when I should keep quiet, I fidget constantly, I forget important dates EVEN IF written on the back of my hand, and I have gone from being a bit of a slob to a total pig. I am capable of acts of tremendous tenderness and I have a kind kind heart, but Oh Man, my foot has started to get scars from my having to pry it out from between my teeth, and I think I have hit on every boy for about 30 miles around at some point.
However, I seem to have gotten a lot of things out of my system. Namely the drinking and smoking and the boys. I still get lonely and in wish-i-had-a-boyfriend mode, but I don't go out to shows and get wasted looking for some boy to pay attention to me. Like the slavering doghowling that used to flood my room at night just sort of died down to an occasional whimper.
It's 8 o clock on New Year's Day, and you know what? I STILL haven't kissed anyone. And it doesn't really seem to matter.
So here's to starting over.
I think I can I think I can I think I can...
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