Crisp Idaho Air

Fulsom’s semi limped into the truck stop with two tires scalped and a rhythmic clunk shaking the entire cab. He angled it between two rigs from out in Wisconsin, vowing that this was his last stop. He’d hitchhike away.

Crisp Idaho air flooded into the cab when he opened the door, and he stepped to the oily ground. The engine ticked as it cooled. A mean-looking driver limped across the grass as his basset hound bounded about, nearly tripping on its ears.

Fulsom shook his head. Too many miles, but he loved it. He could never give up his rig.

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Ironic Tower Builders

Clarence realized that everyone around him was erecting towers from which they could stand and shout.

“Hey lookey at me, I’m up on a tower!”

“Oh man, ah, elevation!”

Their self-indulgent irony soaked and curdled in his bones like meatloaf grease. Everyone built towers, no one took themselves seriously, but no one stopped building towers.

So Clarence built a tower too. He did not speak as he climbed to the top, nor did he make any joking proclamations. Aware of his every move and uncaring, he wrote down every fascinating thing he saw from up there, every tower and sunset.

All we will have left after this is dinner parties

But it’s okay because you know I’ll fly to Brooklyn any weekend to bring you sunshine from San Francisco and unlike the real world, I won’t judge you if you get blackout on a Tuesday.

All we will have left after this is dinner parties.

But you know what? There will still be lonely cheese-its on the ground, still crushed into wine-stained carpets as we still dance on tables and chairs to electro, to techno, to shit-that’s-cool-just-‘cuz-it’s-retro because fuck it if my dinner parties are going to be anything less than what I’ve called home for the past four years.

abc

always be cool.

it doesn’t matter what strangers think about you. they don’t hate you, they don’t love you, they don’t really care what you’re doing. if you talk to them maybe they’re friendly, maybe they’re weird, maybe they’re Brazilian, wealthy and on a three year trip around the world. you can think this stuff all day and it’s all wrong anyway.

you can’t control who they are and what they think, but you can control yourself and your thoughts.

if you’re cool with yourself, they’ll be cool with you. that’s the operating assumption at all times. always be cool.

What’s In My Writing So Far (Statistics Thanks To Wordle)

More chickens than eggs, and only one chick.
More joy than pain.
Barely more dark than light.
Everything for a Greek salad except the feta cheese.
Four trolls.
More magic than science.
One triumph and four losses.
More beer than wine, and more wine than liquor.
Two sayings.
Three routes, fifteen paths, twenty-two roads, and one hundred sixteen ways.
More day than night.
More desperation than confidence.
Ten parties.
More gravity than parachutes.
More mothers than fathers.
More gold than silver or bronze.
A solar system without Mercury, Jupiter, Neptune, Uranus, or Pluto.
More work than play.
Kerosene and ketchup.

Buffalo

Today was a nice weird day. Very early in the morning, I flew out to Buffalo, where I encountered a woman named Tiffany Bison.

She brought me a gin in an empty airport bar while I waited for lost luggage. “Honey,” she said, sounding sluggish, “I’ve never seen a chest so hairy.”

I blushed, wondering why she thought she could see through my sweater.

She stretched, then leaned over the bar and kissed me.

“How about that.”

You don’t expect airport kisses to be so heartfelt. And now I can’t decide if I’ll ever fly out to Buffalo again.

Alone is Focused

Work is calm.

Alone and focused, she sits. The system is hers as she turns thought into draft, draft into product. This is flow, this is the zone. Creativity becomes thing.

Interruptions are kept to a minimum. She sips tea drinks water eats toast goes to the bathroom: minor interruptions. Else is major.

She is the conductor to the symphony and she is the symphony as well. She is the chef to the restaurant’s dining patrons and she is the dining patrons as well. And she is the tomato the mozzarella the waiter the bartender the maitre d’ the sommelier.

Explicit

tap tap tap.  One sentence about the conquistadors, one sentence about the necessity of language to communicate, one sentence about sharing ideas and form a cultural identity.

TAP TAP TAP. I pound out a slammed sentence of strung together consciousness, an episode of Tourette’s amidst a carefully formed analysis. A dialogue forms on my paper, between active voice and stunned listener.  One only gets a word in edgewise, the other dominates.

highlight.  delete.  the slam disappears like it was never there.  I try not to notice the irony of writing about communication when it’s the one thing we’re not doing.

Breakfast Dinner

I’d like to cordially invite you to a pancake breakfast. Except it’s for dinner. And the pancakes aren’t just pancakes (well, they are pancakes, but they’re also more than pancakes, as you’ll soon hear). The event will take place this Friday evening, or late afternoon, at six o’clock. I will serve diced melons and iced tea. Mainly, we will consume my newest culinary invention, which are pancake burritos, that is, a pancake rolled around bacon, eggs, and maple syrup. It truly is the best of every world. Please RSVP to my house by tonight at the minimum if it works.

Noise

I haven’t written in weeks. You cannot understand how noisy it is in here.

Just today:

Sufjan crooned in intertwined melodies,

the B-52’s highjacked their own jukebox, baby,

Florence wailed with her ukulele,

Mumford and his offspring sighed noticeably,

Donald leapt from waffles to wayfarers,

the Dandys told me everyone was totally insane,

Thom greeted the magpie,

and the Foxes argued in perfect harmony

except it was no longer perfect with all the company over.

all while I read Whitman, proclaiming himself through the ruckus.

how can I celebrate myself if

I cannot hear my own voice in this chaos.

With Gatorade on our Side

We got off the bus, changed into our jerseys, and got ready to play our toughest opponent yet. We stood a great chance, with Gatorade on our side.

We saw across the field as the opposite team began warming up and doing drills, getting mentally and physically prepared for the game, with Gatorade on their side.

I’ve never met someone on their team, but I’m still coached to fight them, and that’s easy to do, with Gatorade on your side.

One team wins, and you can tell it’s the good guys, because they celebrate and dump Gatorade on their coach.