wish you were here

So go see Garden State. Beautiful.

I practiced a little today for Tuesday’s feature.

The weekend was… okay. Just okay. I’m getting a little worn out on readings, but I roll along with it. I’m glad Andy tore it up Saturday, and Liz and Jeff’s reading went well tonight.

And thanks for calling. But I’m used to silence when there are more important people you’re trying to get to know. Just remember to come up for air every once in awhile.

And so I shut my door on the rest of my house, to keep out noise.

I lost $40 at Boulder Station tonight.

More boo-hoo.

And to the gym tomorrow, to feel better about nothing.

So, I have to just express how excited I am that is coming to town next weekend.

I’ve known her since I was 17. Our first actual interaction together was in the hall after Chemistry class, on a day I was wearing a Queen shirt (yes, the band, a shirt that I can’t even find online, that subsequently got lost in Real Life somehow), and she said, “I wore black for a week when Freddie Mercury died.”

Needless to say I didn’t realize the badass-ness of that statement until later.

Her mother describes us as being able to have fun in a paper bag; we describe it as if one of us had a penis we wouldn’t leave the house.

Just so you have an idea.

I haven’t seen her in a long time, and talking on the phone just isn’t the same. She’s loud when I’m quiet, sharp when I’m not, quick when I can’t think. She’s an Attorney with a capital A. I’m a Writer with an almost-capital W. We can spend endless hours making fun of people and we don’t even have to drink.

Yeah. I miss her.

I am so in love with the song “Morning Theft” by Jeff Buckley right now.

You’re a woman, I’m a calf.
You’re a window, I’m a knife.
We come together making chance into starlight.
Meet me tomorrow night, or any day you want.
I have no right to wonder just how, or when.
And though the meaning fits, there’s no relief in this.
I miss my beautiful friend.
I have to send it away to bring her back again.

Yeah. Off to Cheers to hang with Kim, Greg, and Nicole.

I hope you can read this now.

In college, I was in the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies. In short, I picked my classes however I wanted to, just as long as I had breadth and depth in said classes. At the beginning of the semseter I would write a class contract stating what I wanted to do in the class, what my goals were, and how I planned to get the most content I could out of it considering my emphasis. My emphasis was fleshed out in my Graduation Contract (this link is to my contract, which explains the process a little more), where I gave my degree a title and a story of why I was getting to that point. At the end of the semester I would fill out an evaluation of how I did in the class, if I set out to do what I’d meant to, and instead of a grade, the prof would write an evaluation for me as well.

The title on my Bachelor’s Degree says The Poetry of Belief: Writing and Religion. Creative Writing with a Religious Studies minor.

The spring of my senior year, when most seniors were doing research papers or huge sociology/culture papers, I was writing a novella. In Johnston, for seniors, there was a program called Integrative Semester, where 8 units were based on my project, done independently of the regular class schedule, and the other 8 units would have to be regular classes. So, 8 units for the novella, 4 for an independent study on death and dying and the other 4 for Fiction Workshop, partly because I needed the distraction from the novella and forcing that writing, and mostly because Tim Powers was teaching it.

In my independent study, I read and watched movies related to death and dying, because that’s what the novella was about, and I wanted to explore things I was feeling/observing after Mom died. During that semester I had a surrogate grandmother die of cancer and a friend commit suicide, plus try to verbalize what I was seeing in my father and brother in their particular grieving processes. Life imitating class, I suppose.

One of the books I’d read during that time was the very clinical On Death And Dying by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, and cried Bullshit at the 5 stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance– you know you’ve watched it being mocked on Best Week Ever). I told my advising prof at the time, Yash, that the book was ricockulous and the fact that she had assumed that every person goes through those stages was silly. Especially when he gave me a copy of her Playboy interview right after having some kind of spiritual experience, where she explains how the press villified her in the early ’80s about it.

She died Tuesday, and it makes me wonder if her family is going through those five stages. I know I will.

Wait, I am already, but for vaginal reasons.

Huzzah.

Novel work was done today– more consolidating bits than anything else.

I have a vague outline of scenes I want to do next. The problem right now is that I’m focusing on 3 different characters, and I want to flesh them out more than they are, and I feel like that’s a lot of boring writing to do. It’s a little sad that I’m more interested in some of the (really) minor characters right now rather than my main ones. But things are Coming Along (in that tomorrow my plan is to go to the gym, come home to take a shower, and get thee to a cafe to write, and write to the point where I look at my watch and I’m late for the Iowa reading tomorrow night.)

Oh, shit. I just thought of a scene to expand for one of the other novels. Nice.

Did I mention how fucking excited I am that Cat is coming home over Labor Day weekend? If you’re around Vegas, get those days off, it’ll be worth it I swear.

I’m down at the Coffee Bean doing work.

You should be doing work, too, you know.

I am very tired. Not because of 5am bingo, mind you.

Hmmm. Things are funny, and sad, and somehow I hear things when I need to hear them, and I greatly appreciate it. I stopped believing in coincidences long ago, mainly because of the many kickass people that end up in my life– even as twacked out as some of you get. I will always wonder about my direction in life, but I don’t have to wonder if that direction will involve Good People With Capital Letters ‘Cause I Mean That Shit Goddammit.

You better get home to see me.

And I have housemates for the next couple of weeks, so it’ll be nice to break things up in the house. And Fonz has a playmate for awhile.

Serendipity’s going to happen soon, I can feel it. If only you didn’t think about Salma Hayek when I say that. If only I didn’t think about her, either, except in that it’s been too long kind of way.

And there I go again, on my own, walking down the only road I’ve ever known.

Throw your hands in the air and wave them like Fred Astaire.

Yes, the wedding went beautifully– short and small and pretty. Everyone was happy. I felt good to be there.

And now, I do work. And catch up with my ex Sean, who just randomly showed up. Hmmm.