body language

you lean forward and away.  i try to convince myself that it's not me.  who wants to think they are the one to make another pull away?  i'm giving you lots of room, why don't you just lean back?  you lean forward intently as if having some deep conversation with the road in front of you, reflections of the double yellow lines and the white passing lane steady streams a message.  are you arguing?  are you trying to understand why it is you are here traversing this road again?  you are perfectly still like a model and i'm attempting to draw you.  is your back sore?  must you sit that way because of developing kidney stones?  why do you watch the road so?  are you afraid of going off course?  are you hoping to?  are you simply drawn to the light like we all are, even if the light is artificial?  you seem troubled.  you remove your hands from under your chin to cradle your cheeks.  what is the road telling you my beautifully still muse?  you gentle creature, you deep brooding thing.  perhaps you are not here at all, space cowboy, perhaps you are beyond the road, outside of this particular journey.  you're in a star somewhere else.  you are posed as a melancholy thinker.  i've nailed it, yes?  but i've got you all wrong haven't i?  all wrong, like an artist who just can't seem to draw hands.  except this is more debilitating.  hands you can hide behind the figure's back, or under a desk or in a hug.  but a mind?  where can you hide a mind?

2011 in a Blogshell

not every day has been accounted for in writing, but most have.  i've looked over the morning pages to try to remember what really made up each month.  so much happens in a day, in a month and of course, in a year.  here's a short list for me to remember and for anyone else who is interested in where i've been and what i've been doing.

January: Still employed at Sun and Sea and Hairy Monkey Books.  I'm extremely bored most days and know that I need to work on finding a different job.  I try to supplement my part time work with some part-time tutoring.  This falls through.  I even interview at my old elementary school to see about becoming a substitute teacher.  This also falls through.  I continue the Artist's Way which I pursue like a religion.  I draw wheels of balance to see if my day to day living is healthy and full.  I find one area lacking in particular: my social life.  I attempt to be-friend a girl at work, but it doesn't really go anywhere.  I throw myself into my writing especially on the novella, The Letters.  I do meet interesting characters at work inspiring pieces for my blog.  I begin to look into MFA programs. 

February: Roseanne Barr visits Hairy Monkey Books.  I stand in the longest lines I've seen at the mall to fill out an application to work at Safeway.  The doors close before I ever get to fill out an application.  I waited for 4 and 5 hours respectively.  I get a second interview for a dental technician position.  I go to Ross and buy fancy shoes and dress slacks.  I put on make-up for the first time in years.  I do not get the position.  I entertain thoughts of becoming a professor.  More research into graduate school.  Superbowl sunday with my grandfather.  I have to work so I miss the first half.  But i make it home for the second half.  The Steelers lose :(  I'm fired for the first time in my life from Sun and Sea and Hairy Monkey Books.  I have poor customer service apparently.  I'm silently overjoyed to be out of there.  I become obsessed with Chelsea Handler and watch as many of her clips on youtube as possible.  I also buy her book.  It is hilarious.  Watched some roller derby.  More writing.

March:  Pounding the pavement looking for a job.  Jobs are scarce.  I start my newest writing project: a love story about a hopeless romantic.  The project is more or less fictional.  Looking for jobs is miserable.  So many applications.  Life feels mundane.  Then in the middle of March, a break from Home Depot working as a sales associate in the building and lumber department.  Still working on The Letters

April:  Have to get used to the guys I work with in Building and Lumber.  They don't take quickly too me.  Plus I must learn all the products and their proper uses.  However, I make friends soon after hire and pick up the product information fairly quickly.  It is hard work and I do lots of running around in the store.  Loading 10 or more bags of cement for a single customer begins to strain my back and at the end of the day I'm fairly tired.  However, I get recognized by customers who write positively about me in their comments surveys.  Rains steady for 2 weeks, but feels more like 3 months.  I get a call from PTA.  I interview and am offered the crew leader position for the invasive plants program.  The pay increase is great and I will be able to work outside.  I take the position instantly.  My last day at Home Depot is the 28th.  Still writing.

May:  Start work at PTA.  At first it is good as I'm taken under the existing crew leader's wing.  She leaves in the middle of the month and I'm stuck with my new co-leader.  We do not get along at all.  It is a rough transition with some personalities that are difficult and even down right mean.  I do my best, but I feel close to awful most days when I get home.  It has never been this difficult for me to make friends.  I wonder if I made the right decision.  I register to take the GRE.  Continue work on the relationship novella (still without a title) and it's really starting to take shape.  I begin my character study on a particular person and compose several short pieces.  My attempt to write as I discover, to dictate the layers of the individual.  This will be a reoccurring theme. 

June:  Working conditions not getting any better but I'm getting smarter.  Learned my endangered natives and figuring out the system within the organization.  I wish to be with a different department as I do not seem to bond with those within my department.  Don't know who to trust and debating who I should go to with my myriad of issues.  My story is really coming into its own.  Applied to Vermont Studio Art Center residency.  Start writing on the commute to work.  Trying too hard to befriend a strange and stand-offish creature.  Really productive writing month.

July:  Camping trip for work.  While out in the field that week, we get along well.  I have high hopes for our return.  Upon return things resort back to normal.  I'm not too happy.  Made crew work out in rain even when they didn't want to.  It was important.  We finished our task.  I made a decision and stuck with it.  Another very productive and fruitful writing month. 

August:  Things getting slightly better at work.  Getting a system, understanding some folks a little better.  Take my mother to an America concert for her early birthday.  It was one of the highlights of my year, especially our dinner watching the sunset.  That was pretty awesome :)  Accepted to Vermont Studio Art Center with partial grant.  However, without a full grant, I knew I couldn't jeopardize my job so I decline the offer.  Contemplate getting Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" tattooed on me.  I become ever more frustrated with a certain acquaintance. 

September:  My friend Stephanie comes to visit and gives me a much needed break from all the hostility at work.  It's nice to have a friend my age around.  We do all sorts of things around the island and go to Maui to watch my Aunt's halau compete.  Stephanie even makes biscuits that are hot, just out of the oven when I get home.  awe...  I take the GRE.  ugh...

October: Back to the grind and this will be my last month of employment with PTA because I was on a temporary contract.  I hope I get hired back but I don't want to assume anything.  I remain in good graces and finish out my time.  My last day is the 21st.  I pick up The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying.  Totally changes my perspective.

November:  I join a gym so I don't go crazy during my time off.  I get really into bike riding and happy for the workout, the vistas and some quality time alone.  I try to work on my writing but I do more bike riding than anything else.  I contemplate a trip to the mainland, but I don't want to miss a possible interview or anything.  I even contemplate a short stint at SCA but even the shortest stint would require more time than I have.  I get the interview and get the job with a slight raise.  I start again on the 28th.  I stop taking my journal to work and use a small notebook instead, one I can fit in my pocket.  Much better.  Much safer.  GRE scores are okay, ready to apply to schools.  But not... 

December:  Don't apply to MFA programs, unsure if now is the time.  Back at work.  Things looking good with certain troubled colleagues but then things turn a bit sour again.  Christmas holiday.  Went to company Christmas party.  Interesting experience.  Went to parents for Christmas holiday.  I made it through.  I love my mother and thank her for helping me through.  Buy a fishing charter trip for my folks and I as a Christmas gift.  We sail in January.  Still writing.  Saw the bardo realm for what it was.  Nearly missing the van twice and had to run for it.  Submitted a section of the story without a title.  Called it Something Like Entropy.  Have high hopes and am crossing my fingers.  A quiet New Years.

slight sight

standing under a koa tree with stars above, i saw that we are destined for more.  beyond.  the bardo was revealed to me.  the tree was real but not.  it was a cut out made of paper.  odd, tree makes paper and paper makes tree.  i got the sense that i was being pulled up to the stars.  it was as if i was existing in the present at the same time that i was existing in a memory.  i was living in a memory.  i saw the transitory nature of waiting on the side of the road for a van to take me.  i was standing in a memory, a waking for a moment from the present dream, the dream life or the life life.  i'm still uncertain which.  i was breathing in a memory as if present was already past and i had some kind of far reaching, far sighted perspective. 12/27/2011

some other body

The body talks with a mirror.  Cups of tea standing in for whiskey.  Shameful.  Cheap.  I’m in a hot parlor with some lovelies from down south, way down, way south.  There are snifters from world war II in their hands as they hand down orders from a sour puss debutant.  We can’t be helped.  None of us will make it out of here alive.  We can only hope to be resurrected or some bull shit like that. 

Remember when you ran over the tulips with your bicycle?  You were too old for that thing anyway, boner wagging in your pants.  You wanted me then didn’t you?  Wanted to take me down hard, south, mouth, puss, paw, south paw, sour puss, mouth.  Couldn’t deflower me, cause I could run real fast, had to take it out on the tulips.  I bet your mom was pissed.

I taught you to sway dem hips like I never do at home, but like I promised to do to you, you who laid waiting under a black light lit poster of Janis Joplin.  To the bathroom to take out my contacts.  I’d rather not see what I’m doing.  Meanwhile you picked celery strands from your teeth, say you’re going to eat me alive.  I locked myself in your closet.  I didn’t want to die.

happy face

i want to write something happy for a change.  i close my eyes and watch the pasture come into frame, growing up in image just as its very contents grow up toward a blue sky.  clouds, white, ethereal things and a small white dog, fluffy and excited, blots out the frame with his exuberant close ups.  i'm smiling behind the camera.