Writer's Block: Pick and Stick

 Pick and Stick

If you could only eat one kind of cuisine—Mexican, Thai, French, Italian, Indian, Chinese, etc.—for the rest of your life, which one would you choose?

Indian. I fucking miss you, Indian subcontinent. </3

being here

 So, I guess it's possible to be homesick when you're only a few hours away. This is hard. I wasn't prepared to come back to the United States and then be torn, again, from my bed and my friends. I wasn't ready to get my cell phone back and then drive out into rural Minnesota, where I don't get any reception. I wasn't anxious to leave my city again, just at the moment when I needed to be there most.

Apologies to Annie, but it's going to be really tough for me to not be able to spend anytime hanging out with my friends before she comes. It's definitely not her fault, and I don't blame her, but I just need some space to get re-acclimated to life here, and it's going to be weird to go through that process with her.

It's 12:06 AM right now, and I've been asleep since before 6 PM. I'm kind of hungry, and I'm not sure that I wouldn't fall asleep as soon as I lay myself down, which seems good. Overall I still don't think jetlag is as hard to deal with as people made it out to be, but I can see how it would be pretty awful.

Today was Dave's funeral. The pastor's sermon about Dave walking around in heaven was absolutely dreadful, and I hope that it didn't affect my dad too much. I know that, in his position, I would have hated someone blathering on about that if I had just lost my brother unexpectedly. I've gotten pretty skilled at using the drone of others' voices as a background noise for my own meditation, so I was able to do that. I wonder if other people picture death as a green tent. I'm working on a poem about this that will start,

Death is a green tent

He was buried next to Mary Lou, and as we were driving to Garfield Cemetary in the funeralcade, memories of her burial came rushing back. It was like I was reliving her funeral. This is, ultimately, what I think small towns are, these communities that live and die together, and support each other always. I can see how it would be claustrophobic to live in one, but I can also see the parts that would be wonderful.

I just started a blog on blogger.com to post up all my journal entries from India. I'm so grateful that I have those, I'm never going to forget what I saw now. It's all recorded and preserved so neatly.

Speaking of paper, I want to order things from Little Otsu when I get home. I'm not even sure what, or why. I just want to buy things from there. I don't know if my trip to India is making me more materialistic, or what. I certainly hope that's not the case. When I was there, I missed making choices that I knew were environmentally friendly to a certain degree. It didn't seem like there was a lot of support for people doing that.

I want to be back in India, tonight, watching the solar eclipse. I want to travel to its mountain villages and see the sacred sites. I want 4 o'clock teatime. I want The Hindu, Lokmat Times, and the Times of India. I want train rides and the Metro. I want to be back.

In other news, I'm re-evaluating my poetry skills and finding them not too lackluster. Am I talented? Am I alright? I'd like to collect all the work I'm proud of and do something with it before I leave for college.

Speaking of college, why haven't I found out about my roommates yet? I mean, what the fuck, New College? I thought I was coming home to that! It's late July and you still haven't let me know who I'll be living with? This is not OK.

So I guess being in Minnesota makes me doubly homesick, for India and for Des Moines. And I guess I also decided I'll go browse Little Otsu's online store, eat something, and then turn in for the night.

But I really want to see my friends.

that old feeling

 I find myself waiting, again, for some magical mind-blowing marvelous new adventure. I'm as patient as I can be, I try to push down the restless energy that fills me, but I need something wild.

Luckily, I've learned how to make my own beautiful dreams come true.

In Happy Valley

 

Looking down, I can see everything that comprises your little town, this sacred place in your formation where you have been born and martyred and raised again. There is the bookstore-coffeeshop where we drink our tea and peer out the window at the feet of the passersby. Across the loathsome football field is the high school where you fell into love and its entailing poverty. Your ex-girlfriend, we speak of her while we attempt locked doors and try to climb through windows. We're looking for a way in. But your hallways are barred to us, so we wander slowly back down the paths that brought us.

On the corner is the skate shop, boys with shaggy curls out front doing tricks. I see you tense. "That one looks like Johnny, I thought he was in Texas. He does jumps just like him, oh, I can't see him! Can I stand behind you, will you block me from his view til he goes back inside."

"Babe, it's not him, there's no way it's him. I just saw his face, and it's not him."

You recover. You tell me about your deaf boy, that he taught you to sign and how he smiled just for you. Sometimes, you say, he'd put his hands over yours to keep you from speaking so he could look at your eyes. Those were the times you were most in love.

You tell me how he brought you up five stories to this same parking garage, the first time you'd been. The mountains. The church steeple. The place where he scratched your initials into the rail.

I watch the clouds pass. I examine your face, which is never far from grinning. I find such impossible beauty wherever I turn.

Goodbye poems

 These are for people I won't see again.

1. This is about a boy who was a dinosaur who I loved with every fiber of my being.

There is a boy, gone from this place, who means a
great deal to me. He was that rare friend who
needed nothing. I remember the hardwood floor,
unyielding and creaky, underneath my back on
those nights (my parents would say "mornings") when
we talked and dreamed and pondered. The way the
line made a scratchy noise in the abyss of my
ear; the way we both prepared for the inevitable
exhaustion of my phone battery. I knew he was
leaving, because it was what people did and I had
learned to expect it. But impending separation brought
us closer. There was nothing to lose that wouldn't be
lost eventually, anyway.

2. This is about a girl who made me laugh so hard, with bangs like pretty late-night magic.

His watery eyes, the veins bursting their blue-blood,
And he doesn't resemble his daughter. Blinking,
Bright-eyed, she bounds to unlatch the gate. Wander in.
Watch as she leads me down stairs I've known. Big
Empty space, fill with our voices as she piles cloth-
Scrap after cloth-scrap into billowing recess of plastic,
Wonder at handsome stubble friend eyeing me from
Corner. Oh, do come out and play, won't you, won't
You, oh lurking friend of beauty? She is still
Yours. Magic sweater can't change some things. I'm
Not in all that I'm pretending, watch me disappear.

3. This is about the last person that I wanted so badly I knew it was already over.

Goodbye to feeling my tongue become cotton in my mouth when I see you.
Goodbye to your red glasses.
Goodbye to the way you said my name so deliberately.
Goodbye to your hair.
Goodbye to baking you cupcakes.
Goodbye to the possibly dirty joke you made.
Goodbye passing windows trying to catch a glimpse of you.
Goodbye to the night with the knife.
Goodbye to four shots.
Goodbye to hopeless fantasy.
Goodbye to your name.
Goodbye to writing about you.
Goodbye, grrl.

4. This one is about my last boyfriend forever, the one I will never share an apartment high above the dirty city with.

you were my perfect love best friend brother
who ate my naked legs
and laughed when i kissed your ear
you were something magic i couldn't do without
when everything was wrong
and i wanted to pretend to be someone else
you were my perfect-est love
with your pale skin and your bony ribs
and i don't want anyone else to be you.

notification

I lost my cell phone.

I'm very unhappy.

A song I can sing

 Current Music: She and Him- You Really Got a Hold on Me

I don't think I've entirely figured LJ out yet. I mostly use it to post (usually) bad poetry, and lists of things I've done/want to do/books I've read. I guess it's supposed to be something like a diary accessible to others, so here goes.

I guess I'm making this entry since I'm in such a good place in my life, and I want to have some sort of memento from it. Everything's just genuinely so chill right now. I've figured out where I want to go next fall: New College of Florida. I think I'm going to send in my deposit sometime in the next few weeks. This morning I woke up, went to school, and talked about India for all of first hour. My ex is spending two months there this summer, which is going to be incredible. Then, I sat on one of the verrry comfy couches and read some more of Brother Karamazov, which is a pretty good book so far. I think, if this isn't too pretentious, that I understand some of the things especially Alyosha is going through. And Fyodor just makes me laugh. My best friend came to pick me up, and I gave her one of my delicious vegan mint chocolate chip cupcakes I baked last night. They are so good! They almost look too pretty to eat, they have green mint frosting and chocolate ganache on top and I love them. (If you're looking for a cookbook, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World is my new fave.) The rest of school was alright, I had a test in Macro that was sort of difficult, but then I spent the rest of the next period just chatting with my Environmental Science teacher, who is easily one of my favorite people ever. She told us about working in a hospital in the seventies while she was in college, which was cool. Then after school, we had a dance meeting and that was fun. I went to Ritual and had delicious tea and some good times with my junior friends. I'm going to miss them. It's always hard when I realize too late that I've squandered the time I could have spent getting to know really amazing kids, but I guess that's life for you. And that was my day.

I haven't written anything creatively for awhile, partly out of boycott against my creative writing sponsor and partly because I haven't had that much to say. I feel like that might be changing soon, though...

::sigh:: Everything's just so beautiful right now. I wouldn't even know how to begin to ask for anything better.