i'm mad at the things that i can't change
i'm afraid of the things that i can.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Saturday, February 9, 2008
The man walked in the other room and saw a bowl full of snails.
He walked around the bowl, around the lockers and the piles of socks left across the room and peeked inside the thin glass dome. He peered at the wriggling, writhing little tongues inside as they kissed slowly.
What are you? How did you get here? the man asked.
We are snails, said the snails. We are here to suck your blood.
The man's eyes grew wide. His heart grew faint and his blood was soft and thin, like the clouds at night. His hand slapped the side of the bowl, sending it spinning off its perch on the table, sending it spinning off into space and rolling through the air and crashing and cracking into the hard floor below.
Ah but now you have set us free, said the snails as they twisted and wallowed around at his feet, their slime pierced by broken glass.
Now you are ours.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
Saturday, February 2, 2008
Protest, pt 2
So yeah, there's no way this story is getting finished before the Illinois primaries, but I am making some progress. Below is an excerpt.
Here's the first part of it: A Protest against Heavens.
And that was how we, all of us, wound up spending our spring break not in Panama City, not in Key West or Tijuana or Prague or even home with our dear, loving parents—no, no, that was how we, all of us, got roped into spending our spring break in Kay’s room slowly gluing together 4,000 popsicle sticks into tiny crosses. It was maybe the best spring break of our lives.
She had pushed her bed up against the wall and was sleeping at PJ’s so that there was more floor space in which to turn her bedroom into a factory. A tiny cross factory. And there we were, all sitting Indian style in a semi-circle around a miniature mountain of popsicle sticks. We called it Mt. Zion and laughed because it was ironic and irony is funny, we thought. We passed around the four glue guns we had between us and listened to Patti Smith on our stereo, dear sweet Patti Smith, as she screamed her fucking heart out 30 years ago, and we agreed with her when she sang “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.” Oh man did we ever agree with her because Patti dearest was on our side and we were on hers. She was against heavens and so were we.
We slowly dismantled Mt. Zion, whittling it down and passing it through our hands, through our hot glue, reforming and recombining it and casually turning it from a mountain in our center into a crater around our perimeter. The crosses piled up around the corners of the room and leaned upright against the walls as they dried, becoming what we could only imagine was a military graveyard dedicated to the sacrifices of patriotic gnomes in some tiny, forgotten woodland war. They were spilling out of plastic bags, crunching under our feet when we got up to go to the bathroom or to step outside for a cigarette. They were beautiful and Patti serenaded them with our confused rage.
Splinters were a problem and so was Craig, who would only show up half the time and then usually not sit in a circle with the rest of us. We agreed that his productivity was low and his attitude was worse. He pulled Kay away for private conversation in the hall which we could never hear, even though we paused Patti to try to hear better, paused her just as her band was coagulating into a cathartic climax of noise and words and ideas. This rankled PJ, whose face was healing quiet nicely by this point, but we couldn’t tell if he was disturbed by Craig or by our silencing of his music.
Here's the first part of it: A Protest against Heavens.
And that was how we, all of us, wound up spending our spring break not in Panama City, not in Key West or Tijuana or Prague or even home with our dear, loving parents—no, no, that was how we, all of us, got roped into spending our spring break in Kay’s room slowly gluing together 4,000 popsicle sticks into tiny crosses. It was maybe the best spring break of our lives.
She had pushed her bed up against the wall and was sleeping at PJ’s so that there was more floor space in which to turn her bedroom into a factory. A tiny cross factory. And there we were, all sitting Indian style in a semi-circle around a miniature mountain of popsicle sticks. We called it Mt. Zion and laughed because it was ironic and irony is funny, we thought. We passed around the four glue guns we had between us and listened to Patti Smith on our stereo, dear sweet Patti Smith, as she screamed her fucking heart out 30 years ago, and we agreed with her when she sang “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.” Oh man did we ever agree with her because Patti dearest was on our side and we were on hers. She was against heavens and so were we.
We slowly dismantled Mt. Zion, whittling it down and passing it through our hands, through our hot glue, reforming and recombining it and casually turning it from a mountain in our center into a crater around our perimeter. The crosses piled up around the corners of the room and leaned upright against the walls as they dried, becoming what we could only imagine was a military graveyard dedicated to the sacrifices of patriotic gnomes in some tiny, forgotten woodland war. They were spilling out of plastic bags, crunching under our feet when we got up to go to the bathroom or to step outside for a cigarette. They were beautiful and Patti serenaded them with our confused rage.
Splinters were a problem and so was Craig, who would only show up half the time and then usually not sit in a circle with the rest of us. We agreed that his productivity was low and his attitude was worse. He pulled Kay away for private conversation in the hall which we could never hear, even though we paused Patti to try to hear better, paused her just as her band was coagulating into a cathartic climax of noise and words and ideas. This rankled PJ, whose face was healing quiet nicely by this point, but we couldn’t tell if he was disturbed by Craig or by our silencing of his music.
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