and then she was texting me boyfriend problems. she kept referring to him as josh, and she was in love with him. "is it me?" i thought, "am I the boyfriend?". there are a lot of people named josh.
moments before, i'd been in a car, trying to get across Seattle to fine, cheap pizza. the offramp to the 405 was sheer like a waterfall, and we decided it was a bad idea.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Tid-bits
I continue to experience the unidentifiable taste in my mouth... or is it an unidentifiable smell in my brain? It's old, whatever it is. That is, it goes back years, probably back to childhood. Something I tasted once, or a taste I had in my mouth once. Or a smell I had in my brain.
Tonight the street was blocked off by police cars, flashing lights, officers talking to their shoulders. A car was parked on the other side. Someone down on their knees. This is the classic arrest-pose, but as I found out later, no one arrests were made.
It happened by a church. A beautiful old brick church where we once ate pancakes with peanut butter at a Sunday brunch, and I bought my denim oven-mit. Honest to God. Who was kneeling in the street outside a church, surrounded by the police? Surrounded by the new soft magenta police lights. Pink lights. When did they move from red to pink? Who thought it would be good to soften up police lights?
Since living here we've had our share of the cops. If downtown was a sledding hill, our house would be right at the frosty base where the screams emanate walloping WOOOO-HOOOs! And the main drag deviates here, left to the University area, right to the old Strip. Four months ago a high-speed chase ended on our lawn. Civilian car at apex, driver's side door flung wide. An inside straight of cop cars fanned out from behind. I guess the driver wanted a foot chase. A few weeks later I heard a car slam into garbage cans in the alley out back. Doors pop! "Get out of the car!", followed in short order by cries of pain, distinctly "Ow!", which is something people really say even as adults. I used to think it was only in comic books, but then I came across a devastating car wreck where a guy had cut right into a light pole, driven it right into the passenger seat. The steering wheel was jamming into his gut and they had to saw him right out of his car. No screams, no groans, just shallow breath and a recurring "owwww", like a child whining for desert. After the "Ow!" in the alley, the officer shouted a rousing "You are under arrest!" I swear to God in the very intonation of the archetype Game Show Host.
Sound-bytes are nothing new, and it isn't only laziness that attracts us to them. Life is made up of sound-bytes, tid-bits, things overheard, taken out of context. No one has the full story.
After I saw the road was blocked off, I messaged a journalist I know, a girl I met just a few weeks ago as the result of an experiment in social-anxiety. I met her on-line. We decided to get together and have a drink. I hate meeting new people, but I forced myself to do it, and it was good. She's a really sweet girl, sincere, sensitive.
There's the taste again. It only lasts a few seconds. It's a little like the taste in the mouth you get after you've been sick for a while, but that's not it. This is distinctive. I've tasted it before, but I can't place it. It's possible that I couldn't place it the first time I tasted it. A recurring de ja vu of the taste buds. Would be ironic if it tasted like onion, but it doesn't... and if it did, it really wouldn't. Be ironic that is. You may as well not have even read the last two sentences. Or this one.
My journalist friend came down and got the story. Walked right into the fray and took a statement from the cops. Braver than I who circled the scene like a vulture, batting away paranoid thoughts of stray bullets, martial-law, and mistaken identity.
"An 82-year old woman was hit by a car," she told me, shaking. Actually the first thing she said was "I hate this! I hate this!"
I saw the car, flooded with light. The back door was open. Someone was still sitting in the back seat. I couldn't see if anyone was in the driver's seat, but someone was sitting in the back. What did they see? How had it gone down? Who hit the breaks? Who called the cops? The ambulance must have come before we even knew what was going on. Just the cops now to clean up, give their statement, and deal with this guy who wouldn't get out of the back seat of the car.
"There were chalk outlines," she said. "I should have gotten more pictures." She was shaking.
The first thing that comes into my head is my Grandfather, surely asleep by now in the old-folks home. He's been there three weeks. First time ever in a home. He has a severe Parkinson's that has twisted up his spine so that he can't walk. He falls a lot and his new wife can't take care of him on her own. So he's in a home. This man is a riot. I saw him wheel down the hallway last week grinning like a six year old and shoving his thumb up like he was looking for a ride. He recently walked out of the home and crawled on his hands and knees into someone's yard. He thought they were trying to poison him in the cafeteria. He wanted to escape. Who wouldn't want to escape from a place like that?
The way my Grandfather tells it the cops came and got him. The cops! 80-year old men wandering into yards. 82-year old ladies walking out into traffic. Did she do it on purpose? "They'll put me in a home soon. Fuck that, I'd rather get the soul slammed out of me from the front fender of an Oldsmobile." People are getting itchier for escape. My mom says take her out to the woods before putting her in a home. "Go for a walk with my gun," says my Dad. I'm inclined to agree. My Grandpa probably would be too, but when it comes down to it, we can't do it. We put them in homes. We look away, look for alternatives. Otherwise we'd end up in the back seat of a car, trembling.
"I'm still shaking," she says, and we're about to part ways. "Can I tell you something?" she asks... "I'm very attracted to you."
Tid-bits. Everything we say and hear is out of context. There's not enough room in our heads for the context. The threads that belong to the end of each word, that go back to undefinable tastes on the tongue.
An 82-year old woman just walked in front of a car. I'm thinking, "Did she do it on purpose? And if so, did she mean to do it right in front of her church? Give the angels an easy pick-up and delivery?"
My friend is thinking, "I'm very attracted to you, and worried about how you'll react if I say so."
I'm thinking, "I'm crazy about a girl who barely acknowledges my existence, and I live inside that shell of longing every day."
She's saying, "I have to tell you this or I'll burst." And I know the feeling. Is anyone ever attracted to someone who's attracted to them back?
This journalist friend of mine is very pretty. Really lovely eyes... my lord! Attractive, but not my type, and I can't bring myself to say that. The girl just put herself out on the wire, so I try to appreciate it and not ruin it, and yet she probably wants to know if I reciprocate. But I can't say anything.
I've been living a fantasy life in my head with a different girl who barely acknowledges my existence, and I know in my deepest core that this girl would make perfect sense as a partner in life. The girl who is very attracted to me, I know in my very core, would not. Suddenly the car chase juxtaposes over the chase of a boy for a girl or vice versa. Keystone romance. "You are under arrest!" I should say that to a girl some day, then tackle her.
I'm sick and overwhelmed with the bits and pieces that flash out of a normal day. So many have gotten lost already.
Somehow it seems unsatisfying to say that it is our disconnectedness which ultimately connects us... but if the only alternative is to say that nothing connects us at all, I'll take bad irony any day.
When I'm 82 years old I will feel exactly like I do right now. I will fell that THIS is the moment of my life. It does not reference anything but itself, and yet I experience it as a connected moment anyway. Like the taste. What the hell is going on? I couldn't trace it before and I can't trace it now. Maybe this taste will come into my mouth again, when I'm 82, and I'll think, "What is that taste? I know I've had it before... I've felt it... on the tip of my tongue. Can't place it," and distracted by thoughts I will step out in front of a car.
The girl I want, don't want me, the girl who want me, I don't want. That should be a nursery rhyme for infants.
Then there's the girl I am closest to these days, who I can talk to about anything, ANYTHING... and who clicks with me, laughs with me, cries with me... nothing there either. It's fucked. I only want the girl who barely acknowledges my existence. Are our souls carrot-and-stick machines, gnawing illusions in the dark straw corners of stray thoughts, disconnected ideas, tid-bits? I only want my future-self to wander out in the woods with a gun. But when my future-self becomes my real-self, he will probably have none of it. I feel no connection to who I was or who I will be. I'm severed even now, like an asshole who saw police lights out the corner of his eye and thought he was Kafka. Even this post should have ended paragraphs ago, but it's lingering on like a dying woman, like a bad news story, like an unrequited crush, like a church brunch, like a familiar taste in the mouth, like the back seat of a car you just can't get out of. God, you fucked your girlfriend in that car two days ago, and now the front fender has impacted with the hips of a frail ghost of a woman in the dark. Your hands are shaking and you don't know what she was doing in the street, why it had to be you and your car, what you're doing looking for stories in the shadows cast by magenta police lights, why I am confessing my feelings, trembling with paranoia, swallowing saliva, looking for an excuse to walk around the block.
If anything is true, it's that life lingers. It doesn't slam to a stop until someone steps out defiantly into the street. Please, make it stop. Here we go.
Tonight the street was blocked off by police cars, flashing lights, officers talking to their shoulders. A car was parked on the other side. Someone down on their knees. This is the classic arrest-pose, but as I found out later, no one arrests were made.
It happened by a church. A beautiful old brick church where we once ate pancakes with peanut butter at a Sunday brunch, and I bought my denim oven-mit. Honest to God. Who was kneeling in the street outside a church, surrounded by the police? Surrounded by the new soft magenta police lights. Pink lights. When did they move from red to pink? Who thought it would be good to soften up police lights?
Since living here we've had our share of the cops. If downtown was a sledding hill, our house would be right at the frosty base where the screams emanate walloping WOOOO-HOOOs! And the main drag deviates here, left to the University area, right to the old Strip. Four months ago a high-speed chase ended on our lawn. Civilian car at apex, driver's side door flung wide. An inside straight of cop cars fanned out from behind. I guess the driver wanted a foot chase. A few weeks later I heard a car slam into garbage cans in the alley out back. Doors pop! "Get out of the car!", followed in short order by cries of pain, distinctly "Ow!", which is something people really say even as adults. I used to think it was only in comic books, but then I came across a devastating car wreck where a guy had cut right into a light pole, driven it right into the passenger seat. The steering wheel was jamming into his gut and they had to saw him right out of his car. No screams, no groans, just shallow breath and a recurring "owwww", like a child whining for desert. After the "Ow!" in the alley, the officer shouted a rousing "You are under arrest!" I swear to God in the very intonation of the archetype Game Show Host.
Sound-bytes are nothing new, and it isn't only laziness that attracts us to them. Life is made up of sound-bytes, tid-bits, things overheard, taken out of context. No one has the full story.
After I saw the road was blocked off, I messaged a journalist I know, a girl I met just a few weeks ago as the result of an experiment in social-anxiety. I met her on-line. We decided to get together and have a drink. I hate meeting new people, but I forced myself to do it, and it was good. She's a really sweet girl, sincere, sensitive.
There's the taste again. It only lasts a few seconds. It's a little like the taste in the mouth you get after you've been sick for a while, but that's not it. This is distinctive. I've tasted it before, but I can't place it. It's possible that I couldn't place it the first time I tasted it. A recurring de ja vu of the taste buds. Would be ironic if it tasted like onion, but it doesn't... and if it did, it really wouldn't. Be ironic that is. You may as well not have even read the last two sentences. Or this one.
My journalist friend came down and got the story. Walked right into the fray and took a statement from the cops. Braver than I who circled the scene like a vulture, batting away paranoid thoughts of stray bullets, martial-law, and mistaken identity.
"An 82-year old woman was hit by a car," she told me, shaking. Actually the first thing she said was "I hate this! I hate this!"
I saw the car, flooded with light. The back door was open. Someone was still sitting in the back seat. I couldn't see if anyone was in the driver's seat, but someone was sitting in the back. What did they see? How had it gone down? Who hit the breaks? Who called the cops? The ambulance must have come before we even knew what was going on. Just the cops now to clean up, give their statement, and deal with this guy who wouldn't get out of the back seat of the car.
"There were chalk outlines," she said. "I should have gotten more pictures." She was shaking.
The first thing that comes into my head is my Grandfather, surely asleep by now in the old-folks home. He's been there three weeks. First time ever in a home. He has a severe Parkinson's that has twisted up his spine so that he can't walk. He falls a lot and his new wife can't take care of him on her own. So he's in a home. This man is a riot. I saw him wheel down the hallway last week grinning like a six year old and shoving his thumb up like he was looking for a ride. He recently walked out of the home and crawled on his hands and knees into someone's yard. He thought they were trying to poison him in the cafeteria. He wanted to escape. Who wouldn't want to escape from a place like that?
The way my Grandfather tells it the cops came and got him. The cops! 80-year old men wandering into yards. 82-year old ladies walking out into traffic. Did she do it on purpose? "They'll put me in a home soon. Fuck that, I'd rather get the soul slammed out of me from the front fender of an Oldsmobile." People are getting itchier for escape. My mom says take her out to the woods before putting her in a home. "Go for a walk with my gun," says my Dad. I'm inclined to agree. My Grandpa probably would be too, but when it comes down to it, we can't do it. We put them in homes. We look away, look for alternatives. Otherwise we'd end up in the back seat of a car, trembling.
"I'm still shaking," she says, and we're about to part ways. "Can I tell you something?" she asks... "I'm very attracted to you."
Tid-bits. Everything we say and hear is out of context. There's not enough room in our heads for the context. The threads that belong to the end of each word, that go back to undefinable tastes on the tongue.
An 82-year old woman just walked in front of a car. I'm thinking, "Did she do it on purpose? And if so, did she mean to do it right in front of her church? Give the angels an easy pick-up and delivery?"
My friend is thinking, "I'm very attracted to you, and worried about how you'll react if I say so."
I'm thinking, "I'm crazy about a girl who barely acknowledges my existence, and I live inside that shell of longing every day."
She's saying, "I have to tell you this or I'll burst." And I know the feeling. Is anyone ever attracted to someone who's attracted to them back?
This journalist friend of mine is very pretty. Really lovely eyes... my lord! Attractive, but not my type, and I can't bring myself to say that. The girl just put herself out on the wire, so I try to appreciate it and not ruin it, and yet she probably wants to know if I reciprocate. But I can't say anything.
I've been living a fantasy life in my head with a different girl who barely acknowledges my existence, and I know in my deepest core that this girl would make perfect sense as a partner in life. The girl who is very attracted to me, I know in my very core, would not. Suddenly the car chase juxtaposes over the chase of a boy for a girl or vice versa. Keystone romance. "You are under arrest!" I should say that to a girl some day, then tackle her.
I'm sick and overwhelmed with the bits and pieces that flash out of a normal day. So many have gotten lost already.
Somehow it seems unsatisfying to say that it is our disconnectedness which ultimately connects us... but if the only alternative is to say that nothing connects us at all, I'll take bad irony any day.
When I'm 82 years old I will feel exactly like I do right now. I will fell that THIS is the moment of my life. It does not reference anything but itself, and yet I experience it as a connected moment anyway. Like the taste. What the hell is going on? I couldn't trace it before and I can't trace it now. Maybe this taste will come into my mouth again, when I'm 82, and I'll think, "What is that taste? I know I've had it before... I've felt it... on the tip of my tongue. Can't place it," and distracted by thoughts I will step out in front of a car.
The girl I want, don't want me, the girl who want me, I don't want. That should be a nursery rhyme for infants.
Then there's the girl I am closest to these days, who I can talk to about anything, ANYTHING... and who clicks with me, laughs with me, cries with me... nothing there either. It's fucked. I only want the girl who barely acknowledges my existence. Are our souls carrot-and-stick machines, gnawing illusions in the dark straw corners of stray thoughts, disconnected ideas, tid-bits? I only want my future-self to wander out in the woods with a gun. But when my future-self becomes my real-self, he will probably have none of it. I feel no connection to who I was or who I will be. I'm severed even now, like an asshole who saw police lights out the corner of his eye and thought he was Kafka. Even this post should have ended paragraphs ago, but it's lingering on like a dying woman, like a bad news story, like an unrequited crush, like a church brunch, like a familiar taste in the mouth, like the back seat of a car you just can't get out of. God, you fucked your girlfriend in that car two days ago, and now the front fender has impacted with the hips of a frail ghost of a woman in the dark. Your hands are shaking and you don't know what she was doing in the street, why it had to be you and your car, what you're doing looking for stories in the shadows cast by magenta police lights, why I am confessing my feelings, trembling with paranoia, swallowing saliva, looking for an excuse to walk around the block.
If anything is true, it's that life lingers. It doesn't slam to a stop until someone steps out defiantly into the street. Please, make it stop. Here we go.
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