All the Horrible Girliness

I'm getting into the dark music again. I won't even tell you what it is, because I know some of you who read this are really into music, good music, better than the stuff I'm listening to, and you'd laugh at the cheesey shit I think is dark.

It's been years since I stayed up all night listening to music in my headphones, moving my head, feeling it well up in my ribcage.

posted by Samus @ 1:20 PM 3 Comments

Between the soup course and the entree

I'm in San Francisco right now, at my friend's apartment, having a lunch that started hours ago. I haven't seen The Bug all day. It was a long trip, stuffed in the back of my inlaws' Matrix with The Bug and my mother-in-law. I've been tired. Staying up all night. Playing with my inner life. Long story.

Anyway, I love it when California stretches out into long blank farmland. I've driven up here several times. It's just enough of a road trip for me. Once on the trip I smoked two cigarettes, as a measure of my independence. I threw the rest out. I've listened to music, loud, and sang.

This time, we're staying at the Ramada on Market & 8th, a seedy, dark block. Everything seemed dark. It's that time of year where you're surprised by the quick night. The Bug was restless and cold. He slammed his fingers in the drawer, poked at exposed outlets. His arguments could be heard from the elevator. The walls are thin there. I felt sorry for our neighbors when he woke in the early morning hours, screaming. He woke happier before dawn and that was that. I was glad when he left with his grandparents to ride the trolley, and I haven't seen him since then.

We were ill-prepared for the weather. It isn't bad for this time of year, but back in The Real O.C., we're still in shorts and tank tops.

I'm coming down from the drunk from the first few courses. There will be more drunk in the next two: still have pinot noir and port to go.

posted by Samus @ 5:17 PM 1 Comments

My favorite aunt died. I can't say that I feel bad at all, or even sad. It just feels like my ribs all turned to stone. It feels like I'm dragging around my chest behind me.

posted by Samus @ 6:51 PM 1 Comments

I read a Flannery O'Connor story. I wrote a reaction to it for class. Then we went through the story in class and now I feel stupid.

A Prayer For Owen Meany brought me to the class in the first place. I knew I'd reached the end of what I could do on my own. I guess I could have spent the rest of my life writing on an even plane but I want to do better each time. I was banging my head on my own ceiling. So I enrolled in the class.

It would have been easy to claim myself a genius when I found out I was the best writer in class, the hardest worker. Or maybe I could have felt fine when the teacher took me to her office and told me she didn't have anything to teach me (though she was talking about poetry, and even there she was wrong).

Instead, I am humbled every week, in every class, by what I have yet to learn. I am so late to the game. I should have learned all this ten years ago, but I couldn't have, then. I wasn't ready. Will I live long enough to write as well as I can? Am I even capable of reaching the heights I aspire to?

*

I was playing on that Jackson Pollock page and I made something pretty. I didn't know why it was so pleasing, so I showed it to Mister Aran. He is an educated artist and a brilliant visual thinker so I asked him why I liked it. He told me it was composed well, that the colors... went together right, or something. Maybe there was something in there about white space. Maybe I'm making that up.

He told me that Pollock made jazz visual. I asked if it was intentional. He explained that it was, but in the same way that jazz is intentional. Dammit, I can't explain it correctly. I don't know how to use words to explain jazz and Pollock and all of that is just me being frustrated at how little writing ability I really have. I mean I feel so wretched about it right now that I could cry, I feel the crying in the back of my nose, and it isn't even hormone time.

Maybe Mr. Aran will come into the comments and explain the jazz and Pollock thing for me.

I'm just afraid I will always be just one of those people in black, looking at it from the outside.

posted by Samus @ 10:20 AM 1 Comments