Truly a Day in the Life of Loca

Okay, so I'm going to attempt a normal blog post--the kind that I once wrote more frequently before I ran out of things to say. Beware, scarce reader, this post may be (and most likely already is) exceptionally boring. Here's what Thursday, June 30, 2011 looked like in the life of Loca.

1. This morning as the new light gently grazed a sleeping night sky and peeked through the windows above my bed, I woke up to a calm, but restful peace.

That's both cheesy and a lie. I really woke up when my Cairn Terrier, Prudence, shoved her snout into my bedroom door (for some reason it has difficulty latching), burst inside my room like the Kool-Aid Pitcher, and launched herself onto my bed for a nap. She conveniently positioned her ass across from my face and was quite pleased with herself. Ugh, every time I breathed it smelled like dog. Actually, it smelled like fish because for some reason Prudence smells like fish. Thankfully she's getting a bath tomorrow. As for the one section of my bed comforter that she slept on this morning (read: that she sleeps on every morning), I'll have to Febreeze it.

2. I made coffee and ate peanut butter cookies for breakfast. If peanut butter cookies are available to me in the morning, it's customary that I eat them.

3. I wrote a terrible poem. Didn't bother titling it. See below post.

4. Ate a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Crunchy peanut butter. Enough said.

5. Answered the door for the UPS guy who was delivering the booze that my parents ordered from the wineries we visited while in Sonoma. The UPS guy who appeared to be in his 20s as well took one glance at my In-N-Out T-shirt and scruffy pajama shorts and glasses and asked, "Are your parents home?"

Me: No. [picks up pen to sign his little portable screen without him really offering it]

UPS Guy: Are you 21? [I have finished signing by this point.]

Me: I'm 22.

UPS Guy: Are you? [Believes me but is surprised] I just have to ask because the person that signs has to be 21.

Me: [Looks up at him] I know, but don't worry. My parents have been wine club members since I was twelve, and I've gotten away with signing for the booze since I was fifteen. Have a great day!

6. I went for a run. It was 85 degrees and sunny. I am getting into shape again so today's run was honestly enjoyable the entire way. I typically run alone with the soundtrack of my iPod. Though when it gets tough for me (in other words, when I'm gasping for what I feel will be my last breath on Earth), I try to distract myself beyond the music by pretending that one of my friends is running next to me while timing me and encouraging me to keep going. Sometimes, I just imagine that we are running together to catch up on life and I visualize myself talking with them where both of us are immersed in this great conversation we're having. It may sound crazy, but having my friends run with me (in my head) has helped me run through some brutally cold winters and awfully sticky summers. I mean, it's always fun to spend time with friends, right? Who knows, maybe you, scarce reader, have even accompanied me on a run before! But today you didn't because I didn't need you. I didn't need anyone. I wasn't gasping for my last breath on Earth; instead, I felt like I was just on a nice jaunt through nature. Though, I bet I'll be seeing you tomorrow.

6. I went to the post office to mail a wedding response card. I, one guest, "happily accepted." It took me awhile to fill out the card and write a lonely "1" in the blank. It's an out of town wedding so it's expected that I wouldn't bring a guest, but I couldn't help thinking about how I will be a single entity boarding Noah's Ark. I am 22 years old and the world is already in pairs. I wrote on the response card, "I have no guest, please sit me by interesting people."

7. I walked stinky girl, Prudence. She didn't poop. I'm sure my parents will have a nice present waiting for them tomorrow morning.

8. I Watched Project Runway.

9. I drank some sparkling Pinot Noir and ate Sour Patch Watermelon as an appetizer for my pizza dinner.

10. I watched The Mentalist with my parents and fell asleep in front of the TV like a 50-almost-60-something Jeff Waldman would do. I swear it's an inherited trait. Damn it.

11. I'm typing this blog post on my laptop while lying in bed because I couldn't stare at that emo poem at the top of the page for much longer.

Note: I love numbering things. I do it when I get lazy and don't feel like working in transitions. I feel like numbering my essays in college would have saved me a lot of time too. Alas, another lesson learned too late.

Proof that rhyme schemes beget emo poetry follows.

They say,

“With time everything heals.”
But although the years are wise,
Pain is not a creature that yields.

No, inside you he lies
in states either dormant or activated,
and during hibernation
he waited to be resuscitated by
new situations that emulated
old punctures and bruises
that once abraded your soul.
Though ephemeral they seemed at the time
within you pain has wrought his permanent hole.

Everything seemed fine,
but hurt is never truly abated.
It is only faded
into the background
of a vestigial vacuum
expanding, though still unfound,
until it rises again
as a phantom that impales you from within,
and you feel your old cosmic friend,
Pain,
here with his syringe.

“Be gone, I say,”
you recite in the words of a toddler at play.
And there you lay
temporarily protected by sleep
and your own naïveté.

Though, as you awaken the next day
there he creeps
and bores his boorish presence,
contributing to the internal fray
that withers your essence
as he makes his place to stay.

And you thought the hurt was gone?
Foolish—
it was only at bay,
and disappeared it had not.
It was there.
It is still here.
It always was.
You just forgot.

A Very Self-Indulgent Post

This post has been in the making for awhile now, at least in my head. It's a conglomeration of iPhone photos which seem to be my preferred medium lately, ha.

Jellybeans

Something great just happened: I opened my second desk drawer and found the tube of jellybeans I stashed away two days ago. I fear that I will enjoy this profound pleasure only once, as I'll likely finish the remainder of the tube while scribbling down my latest musings into my puke green journal. There will then be nothing left for me to rediscover. Even if I hid the jellybeans from myself again, I would likely remember where I put them this time.

It's almost as though that tube of jellybeans, or better yet, the eye-dilating and mouthwatering response that I conjured while rediscovering them has already converted into a memory. Perhaps you experience this same feeling when you see your crush (Ew, sorry for the use of the oversexed Cosmo word, "crush"). And depending upon your carnivorous propensities, or perhaps, hornyness, you just want to keep staring and building up what is to come or even what it might be by visually consuming the refracted light and natural shapes presented in front of you until it is just a reality, broken down and digested. Don't consume without tasting. Eat your jellybeans and have them too.

Don't convert reality into memories too quickly. Even when you think something is too good to stay, prematurely truncating the actual experience into a memory makes it seem less real. I have yet to even consume the rest of the jellybeans, and I already miss them.

P.S. Don't judge me by the color of my journal. It's not the color of my thoughts.

The End of an Era

Sitting in my one-bedroom apartment
bright in all its whiteness,
the burgeoning summer sun bursts
through the windows in slats of victory
and the worldly photos on the walls
gaze at me and revitalize
the past year of my life,
an experience that now
all seems a dream—
a totally distant,
wildly unreal,
entirely unforgettable
dream.

Tracking back to
four years ago,
I was a drowsy
and disheveled
girl making an ending
for the sake of starting
a new beginning.

Though,
even in the midst
of the picturesque finales
and sunny futures
that I created for myself,
my past was
a ubiquitous entity—

He had my secrets,
and taunted me with them
in the third person
like an auctioneer trying
to sell a story,
my story,
for someone else’s
consumption—

“Fifteen dollars for the tale about how J spread herself thin…”

“GOING ONCE…”

“…she cried in the privacy of her apartment on her couch…”

“GOING TWICE…”

“when pushing a brick to clear the rubble of her self-deprecating thoughts, she realized she had waited for nine month to hear back a simple, noncommittal ‘maybe’…”

“And SOLD to the gentleman wearing the blood-red necktie!”

The past’s presence
in my mind had me
mulling over trivialities
and morphing them
into monstrosities
to the point where
everything was just

insanity.

Yet,
the avaricious past,
despite its bilious color,
is brilliant—
cunning,
in fact.

His mockery,
or my perception of it,
taught me
to lavish in
obscurity,
look for the light,
and propel
myself
forward
further

into the dark night—
Blackbird fly.

Right now
in this moment,
I am finishing
the end of yet another era,
not just to put a cap on it
and call it caput,
but to close it ever so gracefully
with the clean click of a lock
as the door slides shut
on an epoch lived
not for mere survival
but with artistic vision.

Blackbird fly—
I see myself
in three months time,
I am on the brink
of a fresh school year,
untouched and untainted
but positioned in the posterior of success.
Blackbird flies into the light of this dark black night.

Removing my head from the clouds
and putting pencil back to paper,
I am going in for the kill.

The cutting past
has me welcoming
the darkness.

I am the Blackbird
singing in the dead of night

who has just been waiting
for this moment
to arise.

There's no way I can stop writing, it's a form of insanity.

Yesterday I had myself a little adventure and went to the Barnes & Noble (this sentence is to be read in a hick voice). I tried reading the first page of Room, a novel told from the perspective of a five-year-old, but could not move past the infantile voice. Never before had I considered myself a kid-hater, but blithely bypassing the insightful narrative of a kindergartner perhaps confirms it. Perhaps. Still, I hear Room is worth reading, and I'd honestly like to give the fictional kid protagonist a chance to wow me with his world view, but I just finished Bukowski's Women. And, after reading a novel laden with pus, crude words signifying genitalia, and (stupid) women, I need a break from the poet laureate of sour alleys and racetracks; I need a break from the atypical. I want some white froth in my life, and I want it to come in a normal voice without sexual innuendos. I have never craved normalcy.

Title quote from Henry Chinaski, protagonist of Women and Charles Bukowski's alter-ego.

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

I've realized something. The longer I go without writing, the harder it is for me to put pen to paper again, to recognize opportunities when they present themselves to me (that is, recognizing when I can exploit a given situation into writing), to open up my blog and type something in here that I feel is "worth posting." There's a difference between a piece of writing being "worth posting" and "worthy." Most of the stuff that ends up in my virtual niche I feel is "worth posting," but whether or not it's "worthy" the jury has yet to determine.

As I'm typing this entry I'm hating it. I feel like I have nothing much to say. Simultaneously, I realize that that's ridiculous. I think writer's block is a farce, and I haven't been writing simply because I haven't been trying. Art (and I'm not saying that my writing is art, but a degree in creative writing is a fine arts degree, so there) is in the pursuit. Hence, Jack London's quote is the title for this bumbling entry. My apologies for its rather pontifical manner. Actually, no apologies for this entry; that's lame.