"home" without the quotes

i wonder if/when coming home will feel strange. right now it just feels like a relief. i don't know yet if this is just a honeymoon period or if i really like it here better but for now i feel happier; calmer. but maybe in a few days i'll be sad and bored and lonely. i can't really tell you.


tonight was the first time i've really even thought about it. sitting in my living room after watching closer by myself and i looked at my cat and thought, "oh yeah. i'm at home." except it doesn't really feel like home. but then again it doesn't feel like not home either. i'm still living out of a suitcase right now but everything is fucking familiar as hell.

i feel like i was going somewhere with this post when i began but now i have no idea. anytime i sit down to write anymore this happens. all my ideas escape me and i'm left with this ADD version of my old writing. a frantic shadow of what i once was.

i'm leaving today

three weeks away from this city should do me some good. but i'm scared to go back. i know that i won't be happy there either and then i'll have to come to terms with the fact that it's not NY and it's not NYU and it's not the people here - it's me.

my room did not get all the way clean. there are still dirty dishes in the sink and on my desk and on the table but you can see the floor now. i hope to get back before my roommate and finish the deed.

there will be people i will miss. a few. and i may come back and i may not. i probably will. there aren't really any better options at this point.

i really don't want to go try and hail a taxi and then rush around the airport getting my bag checked and boarding the plane and such. i really just want to sleeeeeeeep. but i guess i got a solid six hours and i'll be fine. still i wish i wasn't traveling alone. it's  the most lonesome thing. then again i kind of like it.


well, guess i best get going. see you soon naptown. goodbye new york.

honestly

i don't want to be in college anymore. i can't function like a normal person and college just amplifies that. i rather try and cut it in some minimum wage job at this point.

i don't want to talk about "you" anymore. i want to forget about "you" forever. i want to exist seperatley from all that "you" is, says, does.

i don't really care about anyone. i'm just as selfish as everyone else i hate. i don't feel anyone really cares about me either. this is both terrifying and comforting.

i want to disappear. i want to cease existing. i don't want to have to feel anything anymore.

honestly, i want to die because i'm already only half-alive.

midnight coffee, with cream and nostalgia

I miss the sound of your voice but when I check the calls on my cell phone I see it’s only been four days since that night I called at four thirty in the morning. I was having a panic attack; couldn’t sleep. And you picked up the phone. I loved you that night when you didn’t judge me but just let me lay everything, all my craziness, out on you. Still I say I hate you for silly reasons. I am insane. I am so insane with you. I didn’t know who else to text as I sat awkwardly across from my roommate and my friend as they melted OxyContin over a spoon. The whole process unfolded as I sat stumbling on my computer. It starts with the inexact science of breaking up the pill, melting it, and adding water. The next step is scarf around the arm, pulled tightly to push up the veins; followed by the finding of the vein and the insertion of the needle. The needle is pulled out to see if you get blood and if you do then it’s push push push the needle all the way in. I asked you, “Have you ever seen anyone shoot up before?” You texted back promptly with the reply: “I wont have this conversation.” When did you get righteous all of a sudden? I don’t understand your moral code. I don’t understand your intentions. I don’t understand you. I explain I’m not really choosing to watch. You don’t text back. And then the stupid line slips out of my fingers and onto the phone subconsciously. I hit the send button without a thought and the “I hate you” message is sent through satellites to you, 700 miles away. Later I apologize with a picture text of a tiny Menorah with four candles and a paper snowflake in the background. “Sorry for being mean. Happy Chanukah” it says. You must think, no, you must know I’m crazy. Like I told you at four thirty last Saturday - sitting in the B staircase and shivering - and like I’ve texted you a thousand times, I want to come home. My room has turned into some kind of pseudo-heroin den - a dorm room version complete with a spoon caked in remnants of oxy and blood in the basin of the sink. Papers and clothes and dirty dishes and shoes and trash make an obstacle course of the floor. Strands of Christmas lights are taped chaotically to the wall. Some are only put it up halfway. Pictures of porn are taped on the door. My wall is a collage of posters and clippings from magazines. My roommate’s side has posters, art prints, and some piece of art a boyfriend made her out of a record arranged on the walls anesthetically. I am driven crazy by the clutter and the chaos. I can’t focus, I can’t work. Tonight I’m dealing with it by ignoring any schoolwork I should have already finished to listen to music, half-stoned. Tomorrow I will probably go back to my constant state of panic. I will probably attempt to clean and become agitated. I will probably not finish my work. At this moment however, I don’t give a fuck.

split existence, you've got a hold on me

we talk about moving to nebraska and having seventeen children. you say you already know the perfect place. i say seventeen is a lot of names to think of. coco, cricket, icky, buckley... but still you do not love me and i turn my back to you and stare at the wall. you don't want my visit to end like this. what am i thinking? i tell you but you don't return the favor and eventually i fall into a light sleep. when i wake up later i panic and just want to touch you. i turn over and kiss your sleeping mouth. you wake up and kiss me back. and i feel closer to you than to anyone else but i guess that's really not saying much.

we drive past all my old haunts on the way to your apartment and i tell you stories of every place we pass. sitting in that parking lot on shrooms. buying supplies for garlic mashed potatoes and macaroni casserole with becca at that kroger. i don't tell you how i once stopped at that gas station to buy you cigarettes. actually my friend bought them. i was only seventeen. but i think about it as we drive by.

i am surprised by you. surprised by how you text and call me so regularly. surprised by how you pick me up after work even when you have to work again early the next morning. surprised by the two R.E.M. cd's you buy for me at half price book. handing them to me and saying, here these are yours. surprised by how your hand brushes my hip in the aisles of cd's. and how in your room you kiss me without prompting.

my mom says i don't look skinnier but you can tell that i am. and i notice that you are skinnier too. you're always afraid you're dying. you've already made your funeral mix. i'm always afraid i'm going insane. i've already planned my suicide. you ask me if i'm happy and i say no. you say you're pretty happy now and i can't decide if this is reassuring or devastating.

when i'm sitting in becca's house i think i can't wait to get back to ny. i think that at least things are a little better there even though it's not easy to explain. i could say because my friends at home are all doing heroin but my friends here do heroin. and meth. and all kinds of other drugs. but i guess there's something fatalistic about indy. here i don't know where i'm going or where i'll end up and even though that's scary and frustrating. but in indy there aren't as many possibilities.

once i'm back in ny i start to go crazy again. i feel like i'm in a constant state of panic. i might fail my classes. and then i'll have to go back to indy. maybe that's why i'm going insane here. because it's not permanent. or maybe it's the impending failure. following me like my shadow. breathing over my shoulder. growing stronger every day i skip class and don't do my homework.

three more weeks. three weeks to try and save myself. three weeks until i see you again. three weeks until i can finally breathe again and three weeks until i can have real feelings again because here in ny every emotion is somehow cheapened and the time passes faster so that i can barley keep up.

cccccccccccccc

took a subway with my roommate to times square tonight. there, somewhere near 45th we found the venue her friend (glen) was playing at. a little hole in the wall that smells like all those venues smell - like old cigarettes, sweat, and mildew. it's completly out of place in the upper side of manhatten really. her (glen's) band played and it was great. there was mad good energy. i was kind of drunk. the feeling from the lines i did in more dorm room was pretty much gone. but i danced around until a thin layer of sweat was on my skin and my hair was moist near the forehead. outside the cold air was so refreshing as it dried my sweat. i felt alive again.


now it's three in the morning and i can't sleep. my nervous system is too stimulated. i feel slightly agitated but at least i finished my gender and communications midterm. let's not talk about schoolwork though. that's just bound to be depressing.

false sense of comfort

i am already restlessssssss. i am already tired of everyone. i have already lost all motivation when it comes to school.


the only times i actually feel guilty is when i do something by accident. or i do something and undesired results ensue. i don't feel guilty often. but when i do it's torture. i try to talk myself out of it by thinking, "it was an accident. you didn't mean it." once it's there looming over me though it's hard to shake. everything takes on an ominous feel and i just want to go home and sit in front of the t.v. for hours.


there will be some moments that are forever branded in my mind, whether i like it or not.

happy halloween (or why i can't go home anymore)

you wake up too early. there's still that metallic like taste in your mouth, or maybe just the memory. hungry but food just doesn't taste the same. jaw clenched.


so far from home. so far from anything stable. life has taken on a new kind of temporal feeling. (but wasn't it always this way? nothing ever stays the same).


masks and masks and masks and we're all always wearing masks. everyone on the street is wearing costumes and it's just a very different crowd than the usual upper class families of the village. it's almost more real, more authentic. i jump in stranger's pictures. a woman tells us, "be safe."


next morning and i feel like a deflated balloon. everyone back home is so proud. but i am failing. and no one here cares.


on mischief night we go to brooklyn only to find the party is twenty one and over only and so we go back and as the subway is going over the bridge and manhatten is in sight (it's all lights and tall buildings and mechanized beauty) i breathe a sigh of relief. even if i hate it here, i could never leave.

torrential downpours

i try to be happy. even when there are torrential downpours and unfinished papers. but at times i am paranoid. i think everyone is only pretending to be my friend. they're all secretly plotting my downfall. no one actually cares. they leave me out on purpose. is it because i don't bring enough to the table? is it something i did? (is it someone i slept with?)

when i say torrential i mean sheets of rain that you can't avoid. i'm talking cats and dogs. i'm talking it's raining men those drops are so thick. it's like a fucking monsoon out there. i'm looking at it from my window and thinking about my unwritten paper and i can't breath. two hours until i have to leave for class and i'm writing the wrong thing.

and i just want a certain guy who is 700 miles away to call me again. i love to here his Indiana twang through the phone.

it takes more than this to make sense of the day

taste in the back of your mouth where toothbrushes can't reach. even Listerine doesn't get rid of it. "it takes more than milk to get rid of the taste." slight discomfort today. slight uneasiness. just a slight bad taste in the back of my mouth.


i want to roll in leaves. i want to wander around Central State. i want to go to apple orcheries (orchards). i want to carve a pumpkin. i want listless fall afternoons after high school when it's still hot and there's nothing much to do.



so much to do here. so many concerts. so many friends. so much homework. "it's all happening!" so much heavenly temptation. so little thought.


just read this. it's so flat. now read this:

but i really love oaklandon. with its quaint houses with lit windows for eyes and the smell of fresh cut grass and the woods and the sounds of bob dylan coming from the car and the gas station and the cvs and the kids on the sidewalk and the wind whipping through my hair as the sky fades into the night.

and before that sitting in my grandmas backyard surrounded by trees and peace and hearing nothing but the birds chirping. and the sunlight fading and everything looks more beautiful through the warped eyeglasses of childhood.

and falling asleep in the car like i did when i was little as soon as we hit the highway and all the dream-like happiness of my grandma's community falls away to four lanes and overpasses.


that was june 17, 2006. i've lost touch with the soil.

conversations with william cullen hart

Will: But we fucked up that remedial English class because we were smoking pot and not in college

Jeff: Right

W: Now we're not in college are we?

J: So how do you move on to that new place to shop if you haven't taken that remedial English class and you've got these pieces to the puzzle that won't fit together and your parents are like . . . eating blood wafers

W: Grow sideburns

J: Sideburns?

W: They really help

J: Really?

W: Yeah. They give you that distinctive look

J: They do

W: Like standing out in the crowd. They really do. And I . . . that's why I don't think I fit in

J: Because you don't have any sideburns?

W: I can't grow them

J: Why not?

W: They just always don't look right, I just cut them off

J: That's terrible

W: See the problem is you can't find the puzzle with the guy watching "Price is Right" and eating blood wafers. See, they have one with your family, you just haven't been to the right place, you haven't seen the ones - it makes it easier to put together when it's your family members face right there, right in front of you in puzzle pieces. It's just that you don't know the fat man. But when it's your family . . . you realize what it's all about

J: But you see, I bought the puzzle with the rat on the treadmill and the farm and the, uh, decapitated goats

W: That's the problem. You have to get the ones with the wafers and the bloody trousers and your family

J: But I've already got all these puzzle pieces that are stuck together now, that are a part of me now, I mean you can't say like, once you become part of the puzzle piece you can't really separate yourself from it anymore

W: So that makes you an artist

J: I know but, I've got to get some more puzzle pieces

W: You're an artist. You make your own pieces. Use wafer, use pieces of wafer, use pieces of thumb tacks

J: But what am I going to do with all these weird puzzle pieces that weren't even supposed to be part of me in the first place? I mean I tried to keep my eyes open, I tried to like, be very aware of what puzzle I was buying and when I opened the box I tried to be very aware of like, the pieces and make sure all the pieces were what was on the box. But then I shoved the pieces together and it was too late! It was all these disjointed like, body figures and I tried to convince myself it was a flower but it was not a flower, man! It was not a flower! And -

W: You know why right? I'm telling you, I know the answer and it's this: do you remember when you were talking about putting the thumb, the push pin and the blood

J: Right . . .

W: Doesn't it all make sense now?

J: No!

W: Did you, did you find the sideburns in the puzzle?

J: No!

W: They're in the bottom, they're taped to the bottom. Can I use them? Can I please staple them on? That is the key

J: You can do whatever you want. What you don't understand is that I thought it was a flower. But it wasn't, ok? It was part of the rat on the treadmill and it was this dude's legs watching "The Price is Right". Ok? And it was part of the blender. And I - I convinced myself for so long that it was a flower, I mean I spent years and years and years convincing myself that these puzzle pieces added up to a flower when it wasn't at all and then once I woke up I realize: how do I trust other pieces? How do I take new pieces and put them together with this much you know, vigor as I once did? Because what if, what if they're not a flower either, they're just like -

W: They've got to be animal pieces, they might be animal pieces. Pieces of goats?

J: Well, that's what I was trying for! There was like, a rat and a goat in the whole thing and the goat just like didn't have any hands

W: And you bought this at Wal-Mart?

J: And that's all I wanted. That's all I wanted, I mean since I was a kid. Since I was a kid! And you know, and it was just -

W: So you never have gotten the puzzle together?

J: No . . .

W: Ever?

J: No . . . they're all these disjointed pieces that I convinced myself to be flowers

W: You have a serious problem, young man

J: I know I do. But I don't think I'm much different than anybody else. I bet everybody else has got a bunch of like, pseudo-flowers in their pockets that are really just pieces of this weird puzzle that aren't supposed to fit together

W: No

J: I mean I hope I'm not alone in this thing, you know?

W: You are

J: Well, it sure feels that way, you know when I go to the newsstands and stuff and read the magazines and everybody seems to have their flower so perfectly put together, you know? Because what they do is like, they can take you into a studio and they can take your photograph and make it look like you've got pieces puzzled together really well, you know, and they can do anything these days. They way you package -

W: It's all computers. They've got their shit together

J: Right, they can make it look like you've got your flower together when you really don't. But it makes the people who don't have their flowers together feel really small and insignificant

W: You are . . . but that's what makes all the difference. You're an artist

J: But I'm not insignificant. Because my flower isn't any more pressed together than anybody else's flower. I mean, and I guess if I had a record company or something that could like take my photo and make it look like my flower was together then I'd be ok, but I'm not, I don't want to do that because then all these people with their flowers pressed together would be coming to me like, treating me like I was someone who had my flower put together when I don't, and it would be a big lie. And then I'd be doing Swanson TV Dinner ads when I was 15 and be real smug and commit suicide on the Brooklyn Bridge. There wouldn't be much point in that, would it?

W: No . . . you're an artist. I've told you a hundred times. You see, the part that you don't understand . . . . what is there to not understand? I, I, it's so hard for me to explain it to you because, I see that you, you're a bit off actually

J: I'm very off. I didn't realize how off I was until I pulled my pieces of my puzzle out of my pocket and saw it for what it really was

W: Did you try tape?

J: It was stuck together! I wish I could pull them apart. If I could pull them apart it'd be ok but I can't. They're stuck together

W: I see

J: Now I came home and showed my folks, and I was really proud of my flower and that's when I realized . . .

W: You should be in college

J: I should be in college, yeah

ragamuffin curls

my hair is overgrown. i don't know where to get it cut here and besides i probably wouldn't be willing to spend the money. plus, i'm secretly afraid of haircuts. so i just let it grow.

stalactite ceiling mold that drips upon my shampooed hair

tripping in NYC...everything moves. collapsing by the Washington Square Arch and watching everything pulse with color. the trees are breathing, the leaves are twirling in unnatural ways. this is not real.


moldy brown spots on the ceiling of our bathroom. medicine cabinet behind the mirror that remained unknown till just this Friday - a whole new set of shelves means a lot in such a small space.


still doesn't smell of fall - only of car exhaust and fried food and laundry. the park is mostly closed. a chain link fence blocks off the shortcuts that i would take on the way to class.


my friend and i laughing in the tiny elevator full of strangers. i've got a pot and four packets of ramen. he's got handfuls of stolen candy. the victim of the theft is asleep like a bum, on top of his covers. his jacket is still on. some motherly instinct tells me to cover him up. but i refrain. i stay away and listen to him snore and steal his candy.


inside the record store, everything still new and confusing. my mind is in too many places at once and there's records everywhere. i'm tripping over them. my eyes can't stay still. genuine new york accent from the depths of the store says, "what do you think of iceland?" female voice answers, "oh, don't start this again." gray man with glasses asks me, "you need any help?" i walk outside and contemplate taking off my sweater. it's so warm.


i finally feel at home. i see the green canopy of my building and the smokers standing outside and i know i am home. i collapse in my bed early in the morning and i am happy.


still at times a restlessness rises into my chest and i want to run and scream and the nice thing is i guess i could. no one would notice here. i am invisible.


i am so far away from everything known. someone could wake me up and say, "the last two months have been a dream." and i would nod and believe it as a truth, thinking, "what a strange dream." and really, what is the difference?


new york is not beautiful in the fall. not anymore beautiful than in the summer. nothing really changes. buildings are building are buildings. they don't follow the seasons. and here i am - "i change slowly, softly, plainly, blindly." Like the trees that arch the road back home that must be orange and red and yellow by now.