Just a Song Before I Go

I'm actually not singing, nor am I going to anywhere. You might say that whole song-title posting title thing was a huge-ass lie. Whatever. I just figured that it was time to blow the dust off this blog and I couldn't think of anything else to start with. With which to start.

First: Ken Henisey, you are more than welcome to internet stalk me and I may or may do the same to you occasionally.

Second: Last week was the worst week ever. Monday, I tried to watch Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip only to see Friday Night Lights. Studio 60 was apparently on vacation, and while the other show was interesting, I was less than pleased. Then, on Tuesday, I got a parking ticket when I was parked in a perfectly legal fashion. Weds, I was diagnosed with an ear infection and rather than oral antibiotics, I got ear drops. Can I even begin to express how much I hate ear drops? Yeah, it's partly because of the coldness, the muted sound, the having to lay on my right side while they do their magic, when I am a left-side or stomach sleeper. More than that, though, I'm fairly certain that my fear of ear things stems from watching Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan when I was little. At one point, there's an earwiggish thing in Chekov's ear that allows Khan to order him around, but I still have a visceral reaction to anything in my ear.

Anyway, Weds. night I get another parking ticket from Officer 199, whom I'm fairly certain has a vendetta against me now. I can only say--BRING IT! Then, on Thursday, between class and rehearsal at Moreau Seminary, I arrived home to use the hated eardrops only to hear my tire wheezing. Yup--flat. The good thing was that I am amazing and, having practiced with my father for just such an occasion, was able to change my tire. But now I'm driving on a donut. THEN on Friday I had a completely awkward run in with the best makeout buddy I've had to date. And his girlfriend. Who, unbeknownst to me at the time, was his girlfriend when we were messing around. Suffice it to say she spent the entire time on Friday avoiding my existence, and he wasn't much better. Pretty sporty week from start to finish.

The good part, in all honesty, was an absolutely amazing evening at the Club LaSalle with Greg. We went on Thursday and had martinis and port and a nice cigar...just lovely. And also the Vision mini-reunion after Folk Choir mass this Sunday. Though, since it was Sunday I think it probably counts as this week, rather than last week.

Third: I've been watching Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network all evening, and it's pretty hilarious. ESPECIALLY Futurama and more especially The Family Guy. That is all.

Fourth: Spent the evening working on prose poetry documenting the trip from AK to IN. See samples below.

Fifth: have new website/eshop thing. www.lushgrammar.etsy.com. You should go there.


Song of the moment: "Winter"~Joshua Radin

Driving South,
Day 1


these are not my mountains their scar tissue like stretch marks between crests red from iron or alpine tundra on fall fire 8000 acre burn where fireweed and new willows look like gems among tombstones arching white stakes will we be like this in eight days in four thousand miles after two countries this morning we laughed because the truck drove past our rest stop because the truck drove past a new bathroom smelling of bubblegum because we were two women alone and literally a hundred miles from anyone and the truck drove past while you were looking at grey water runs past this ashed cemetery in the Yukon and I wonder if we will still be there once we get there if we will still laugh or if the teeth in our smiles will be nothing more than grave markers for things unsaid if our pictures will lay us bared teeth and all if I will be sad when you leave when this silver bullet is unpacked and empty and I so want to miss you when you leave

Driving South
Day 4

oil makes the world go round and for a day it was our axle the one that almost didn’t turn the wheels when we left Junction 37 to drive this lonesome road between A and the Bend we didn’t have the rules that we had when we hit Fort Nelson

Nugget City was a lump we drove past on the way to better things because isn’t this whole road one way or the other a way away from something to something better and lingering in the middle just causes problems just makeks you think that maybe it won’t end or that you never really began so we skipped as much of the middle as we could all three days of it skipping like stones from small town to small town until Edmonton then Montana

Rancheria too passed but like a kidney stone the worry small at first small but calcifying as the miles passed and the needle dipped and dipped and dipped past half past a quarter and for the first time on this trip we prayed we prayed in tense small voices that sounded like insults like don’t talk to me like I already know what you’re going to say but if you so much as look at me these eyes will become rivers on an empty road grey blue highways down a fat cheek and then we will stop and the car will the car go again will it start as though the world begins and ends when the engine turns and maybe today fuck the sunrise maybe today it does maybe today hinges on that turn not of the world but of this key and how damn many miles to the klick less or more or less and what the hell good is calculus if I forgot the math of miles to klicks of measuring how to get where I want to go without killing us in the process without doing something stupid and killing us in the process how many lives how many lives to the click how many

giddy the only word was giddy as we coasted into a one building town a single pump so old we had to pay with cash to a person to someone who didn’t ask where we were going because everyone but him was going somewhere else I almost filled the tank with laughter almost fell out of the car and this time the weakness in my knees had nothing to do with four hundred miles driving stick and thank God this person never got on with his own life because we would still be here would still be wanting to be anywhere else but not today thank God not today

Driving South
Day 8


eight days on the road and we are still afraid of trucks still afraid that when they are close they are closing in that they will push or crush or any of a number of horrors only we know about but refuse to say and it takes five minutes before we realize that this trucker is acknowledging our four thousand miles our license plate that starts or ends the game that no one sees in Illinois is nodding at what we know that we know never to stay in east anything that there’s a reason people move west because it is brighter and makes us feel less pale and less corn fed and less and less and even though he has no idea where we are going he has been where we have been has known that fear of sailing off a highway in Alberta wind of days of corn and a lack of mountains that feels more like a lack of drapes in a bedroom like leaving the lights on during a one night stand like meeting God and knowing whether or not he smiles and we actually want to be here we want him to know and after eight days we wave to the truck that honks at us outside of LaSalle ,after a night in East Moline that swelled my eye lids like bodies in a river and I knew that I would miss you I knew that this time I would cry when you left and I knew that finally it was okay to let you leave that I would drive you away and not turn to dust that I still had tears enough to drive me home

Be Warned: This is a Goat Entry (cf. May 25 entry)

Well, for the second time in as many nights, I'm getting off the phone in tears in someone else's house. I haven't cried this much since my last old movie marathon. Last night was...anyway. Tonight was dealing with something I haven't been on the receiving end of in a while: parental disappointment.

Don't get me wrong--the 'rents aren't arms-up shamed by me or anything. No, they're more subtle than that. I called for my weekly check-in-at-the-house phone call, which unfortunately hasn't happened in about two weeks. And I called in the middle of "Studio 60" for them, which was crappy on my part. I forgot that it's at 10/9 central and apparently AK counts as central. (What really bites is that, while I remembered that Steve and Michele don't have cable/tv reception, I forgot that I had shows to watch, so I will have to catch up online tomorrow.)

So I'm on the phone with my parents. My father's computer is acting out again, so he's a little distracted and irritated: understandable. Mom's a little distracted by the show and the fact that it's 9:30, which is kind of late for her. She's usually asleep on the couch by now. I talk about the fact that I'm housesitting for Steve and Michele, which leads to discussion of Steve needing the vacation because he's been a little tetchy in choir, which somehow then led to a confession of my newly-claimed back-row status.
*Sidebar: The back row has always been where "the cool" kids sat; the ones with all the good quips and fun antics in choir. Until this year, I had not been "back row," and have recently been reveling in it. Before you say it, yes, I realize how juvenile it is to care about cool points this late in the game, and I know I'm far beyond the high school age after which this should cease to be a concern. But I...really like being one of the cool ones, for the very reason that it took so long to get there. So there's that piece of baggage for the goat.

Anyway, no big thing in the conversation and we move on. Until about twenty minutes later, and after a variety of topics, my dad, who has been silent for a couple of minutes, pipes up with "Did you ever think that maybe Steve counts on you NOT being back row?' Talk about conversation bombs. Dammit, here I go again. "I mean, you were saying that Steve has been frustrated, and you're making jokes in the back..." It's like the man can see in my head and I hate it. I hate the hypocrisy of it all--a month ago I was bitching about lack of focus in the choir, particularly in large rehearsals, and how it makes us look and sound bad, and have I done anything about it since? No. I have added to the problem. Knowing exactly what I was doing the whole time but refusing to care because I was being a rebel and breaking the rules: something I generally don't do because I'm fairly bad at getting away with it.

Worst part of it is, I know Steve counts on me, not for my voice, but because in the past I have been a focused member of the group during rehearsal. I have been the shusher, as it were, and now I need to be shushed. And I've seen the disappoinment and a little confusion on his face when he looks at me, and I've brushed it off. Because being funny is, apparently, more important to me than his respect. How feking lame that is. What a slap to the face after everything he's done for me.

Now that I'm wallowing in self recrimination, I think it's time for bed. Better outlook tomorrow, though I may need to count a few goats to get to sleep.

Truth of the moment: Just because you have a guilt complex doesn't mean you've done nothing wrong.