from the foggy shores of the Alleghany

Yesterday I became conscious of the fact that I’ve been ravaging my fingernails (and fingertips) with my teeth for a long time, and maybe even fifteen years. And it occurred to me that maybe I should find the strength to control myself, and put the soft stops on the damages, so that I am not constantly leaving tiny circular bloodstains on random fabrics and company letterhead.

But I keep forgetting to be on the lookout for my teeth, and it’s only every once in awhile that I will re-realize my new task, and look down at my hands in shock and horror, to find that the teeth had been there while I was away, and I am ultimately discouraged.

I guess it’s an obsessive need to whittle. And since I don’t carry little knives and pieces of wood, I decide to whittle my fingernails, and I attack a sharp edge, some irregularity in the tip of the fingernail, and I work at it, and as soon as I am satisfied with it’s disappearance, there are two more irregularities that have arisen in direct consequence of the prior task (or whatever).

So, dilemmas.

-

I helped to move my younger brother’s things again. They moved into a house just outside of Baltimore. I figured out that I have very little strength, but I make up for it in my strange ability to summon endurance above and beyond what I think I should be capable of. And so I help to carry sofas and boxes of china from sunrise til sunset.

And then I am ruined for the rest of the week, in a boring hotel room outside Pittsburgh, waiting for something to happen.

-

I am trying to organize a bachelor part for Chad on Saturday. We will rock the Rockchester. Not quite like old times, but maybe as close as we care to be to old times.

And then I will spend five long too long days in WNY, trying to think of something grand to say for another bestman toast, and wondering if I’m much of a bestman sort of man.

I have even emailed Sarah Slean, requesting her presence for an off-the-cuff sort of duet for Chad and Erin, so I wouldn’t have to think of quite as much to say. But I haven’t heard back from her yet, not even to be told that I have no shame, or not as much as I should.

-

And after I get back to Virginia in a few weeks, I will go back to work, in my old job, just like nothing changed. I will slouch in defeat and ill-respite. I was close to being offered a job in Orlando, and finally drew up the courage to say out-loud that I had no interest in going, that for now I will be calling Richmond home and nowhere else, even if that means I have to carry on with the same dumb job, even if I have to quit the behemoth company that loves to give me massages, sooner rather than later, if I can get up the ambition to look around.

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I have known Adam since the seventh grade, and from probably tomorrow onward, he’s going to be a Dad. We should all say hi to Adam and Manda and Madelleine. It's all pretty spectacular.

froth & speculation

dear journal,

won't you be my favourite overgrown path? how i saw a tree through the forest, once? didn't we know a forest, once? i would go into, when i was lost. i would walk with sticks, slide between branches, grit my teeth, rubbish tangled in my hair?

sometimes, journal, i am trying to conjure a ghost of myself, and trap him in a glass vial. it's all for superficial reasons, journal. he's no better than i am, but i admire the things he can do. he seems to have epics and allegory and obscure tragedies bleeding from his fingertips. i know that he doesn't, but i can't help but conjure, and trap, and ask to tell. what we have in common, journal, is that we are both deluded, and we are both backwards-envious.

forests is the old-fashioned way for getting lost, journal. nobody's hip to it, anymore.

journal, it was 10:15 at night and the record had run out, and everything was eerily quiet, and allofasudden there was a softsoft buzz, and i got scared, but eventually i knew it was my voicemail, and it was a message that was 4 minutes of complete silence, and i am standing in the middle of my eerily quiet apartment, listening intently to a message that had nothing to say. i think i listen too much for things that will never have anything to say.

there are washes of the transverse, sometimes. won't you be my favourite overgrown transverse wash, journal?

be kind to me, and i will be asleep, to keep my shadows off of the walls. if i have to get up, i will turn off all of the lights, to keep my shadows off of the walls. just be kind to me, journal. i will be asleep, and i will try to dream of being your favourite overgrown ghost of myself.

allegory was unrecognizable, sipping a cappuccino in a fancy coffee shoppe on a Thursday evening, inside from wet sidewalks, outside from company and talk, his legs crossed at the knees, like a truue hipster, across the table from a girl named kara who drinks mint tea. it is almost all accidental. he speaks with a new vocabulary.

it is worth a trillion dollars.

when allegory leaves to go home, the sidewalks are still wet, the forests are still far away and absent of lost souls, everything decides to be in cities, everything decides to stop interacting with the unfamiliar, everything grits its teeth, rubbish tangled in its hair.

dear journal, every ghost was un-conjurable. the passed is past. only scraps and traces where the fingertips had been. soluble evidence in the solvent of transverse washes, winds and rain and forgetfulness and boredom and getting old and pouringpouring rain and torrential rain and getting old and forgetting and boredom and a trillion decibels of dissonance that gets more and more difficult to hear, and only beautiful in retrospect.

it is 10:51 PM.

Handy with a battle axe

In the last 72 hours, my rate-of-intake of lettuce has risen so dramatically, that I may be temporarily capable of photosynthesis.

Sunshine? It tastes like chicken, my friends...

As I've mentioned, my physiology is decrepit, and so I am KICKSTARTING IT WITH SALADS.

And also lots of vitamins. And gingko-biloba, because of my tendency to feel more and more dumb lately.

The goal is to nutrify my blood, and hence wash my brain in plentifull blessings.

I think it will work.

-

I am the office manager this week. I have been solving steam turbine problems, and playing a lot of Kingdom of Loathing. [An adventurer is me? Okay!]

I have not been looking at employment opportunities, as I should be wont to do. 'Wont' is a strange word. And appropriately underused.

I am already getting my Thursday office responsibilities finished quickly, and I am listening to classical music softly within my cubicle. The presence of classical music, with the occasional NPR news break, makes me feel not only more intelligent, but ultimately refined.

-

All of the other cubicles have framed photographs of the cubicle-owners' favorite living things. These are mostly spouses, children, and dogs.

I have decided to frame photographs of my favorite spouses and children and dogs, and place them strategically in my lackluster cubicle. I have already put quite a bit of thought into what particular photographs I will choose, and right now I am leaning towards this:

[photo later]

-

i would like a cold day. a cold day for coats.

hi. it's me. i was gone for a long time, but now i'm very back.

i would like grayskies, cold and coats, collars up around the neck, chapped lips. you would stand on a shore and admire the ocean because you liked the part in that movie where they said that the ocean has no memory.

the reasons don't matter. we are old enough to take some time to not worry about all of the reasons for a while. we can say to ourselves, "it's about time. so so long."

now. here. this.

that's a play on "now hear this", which is a general request or demand for an action to be taken. "now. here. this." is like a pointing-out of a very very present but somehow inconspicuous urgency.

now we are old enough. here is the place that we will go. this can't get monotonous, or else.

this is a justification for still being in the world. here is where i stake a claim. now that time has figured you out.

this is a picture of you jumping over a lawn sprinkler as a child. here is your change. now get out of my house.

shock me. make me feel better.

now that we're here, what is this for?

"in love, or what seemed.." was really crossed-out.

my coat is in the closet. it is acclimated to the air-conditioning. all rooms are stale. we all breathe in unison. equilibrium takes a long time, but it's always imminent.

it will: it will. definite.

it's tragic, that people can't even point out what they've gotten too accustomed to.

for me, i guess that it's the times, but i bet that i'm wrong. i bet that it's actually the space.

-

i would like a cold day. a cold day for coats.

Terrence, Puncher of Flounders

My travels have been exhausting again, a little. I got back home from Texas very late on Thursday, and by Friday evening I was in Philadelphia, at Jeff and Marcy's place.

Jeff and I boarded a fishing boat at 7 o'clock Saturday morning, and headed into the strip of Atlantic Ocean that makes up New Jersey's edge.

The boat had thirty-five people on it, and most of them were psyched about fishing. I was more interested in just being in a boat on the open sea.

It was fun at first, because the boat would pitch up very high waves and smack down onto the surface again, and rough wake would smash against the hull, and volumes of water would splash onto us, and some of us got more wet than others, but it was a lot like an amusement park ride.

But then they found a good spot for fishing, and the engines shut off, and the boat stopped and the fishermans dropped their lines in the water. And the boat rocked and undulated and undulated and undulated and undulated and undulated.

I got maddeningly sick, and eventually threw up my digestive contents into the heaving Atlantic. It was just a bunch of bile and what was left of my two cups of coffee, though. I think I managed to absorb the caffeine before the ocean took it all back.

I used to think I had a very strong stomach.

Alas, my physiology seems to have nosedived over the last ten years, since my invincible teenage years. Everything makes me sick, it seems like. Whether it's movie theatres or oxygen-depravating crowds or the stench of bait and the UNDULATING ocean, I will get sick.

If I find out that roller coasters make me sick nowadays, I will throw up my hands and trade in my anatomy for a new one.

I REFUSE TO BE FRAIL!

Maybe I should take a whole lot of vitamins on a consistent basis. Or maybe I should have a healthy diet. Maybe if I take better care of my physiology, my physiology will take better care of me. Less caffeine would help a lot too, I think.

Also, while on the fishing trip, one of the guys caught a flounder (a big flounder) and after they managed to get it off of the hook, they dropped it and it flopped violently towards me, and then I think I jumped back and shrieked.

It was not my proudest moment.

Terrence was the boat's second mate, and he came to my rescue, though. Terrence held the flounder down and then punched it very very hard in the head, and the flounder stopped floundering. I guess it was the most humane doom he could deliver. Terrence must have punched seventeen flounders on Saturday. I guess that I wouldn't be too surprised if the entire flounder population of the world got together and ganged up on Terrence someday, and punched him until his ribs were broken. He has certainly not made any friends amongst the Paralichthys Dentatus.

-

But this week I am the office boss. Because there is no one else around. I will field the telephone calls and sign for the FedEx packages. I will try to not abuse my new power and authority.

Besides that, I just don't know.

Thinksickness

I guess that I am prone to panic attacks in movie theatres. I almost passed out yesterday while trying to watch the Manchurian Candidate with my parents. I would start to yawn incessantly, one after another, and my skin goes cold and clammy, and I am fidgeting nervously, and I have cold sweats, and I am lightheaded, and not thinking clearly, like being too drunk, and I feel queazy, like one switch away from throwing up.

I think that maybe I am claustrophobic. Or some other subtler phobia.

The last time that I remember was when I saw "The Ring" with Nora and Lindsay, and I just assumed that I was scared sick. Maybe I was.

But the Manchurian Candidate wasn't that scary.

Also, there was the time I was out at a bar with Jeff and his friends. And we all had to assume I was too-drunk off of two Budweisers. I had to go sit down in a Main Street shoppe doorway, with the Wellsville police force giving me looks as they drove by.

And there was the time in fifth grade chorus practice that I stumbled out of the second row tenors and interrupted a teacher for the first time ever, so I could ask to go to the nurse's office, and my vision was fading out in a yellow haze on the way, and I almost fell over.

All of these places were crowded. Although I've been in lots and lots of other crowded places with no problems.

So maybe it is a combination of factors.

Like how I'd had nothing but pancakes and an ice-cream sundae to eat yesterday, before the movie. A mal-nutrified brain. I don't know..

Also, I am always very very tired lately. There isn't a part of the day where I don't feel like taking a nap. Maybe that has something to do with it.

I don't want to get on a plane in a few hours. I want to get on a bed. A bed in a chilled room, with thick blankets and thick pillows. And fat napping cats. And the slightest scent of cinnamon. I don't know why the cinnamon.

Oh, pillowss..