Two Weeks...

I've been busy. The time goes to impressing bank workers with my knowledge of salad dressings, classmates with my ability to destroy my own life, and friends with fragments of a meaningful life. Most days don't count anymore. No fire in my head, no fire in my heart, no fire in bed. I'm relying on things I did weeks and months ago. No one can keep track of what I contribute. I'm as stagnate as the beer in glasses scattered around the room. But they grow mold. I grow nothing. It is all empty bottles, residue and religious candles. I make calls I shouldn't and neglect the ones I need. I pray for familiar faces and voices, if praying is a pattern you repeat on most Tuesdays and the occasion Monday and Friday. I don't bathe. I don't clean. I don't wash clothes. I don't care.

Someone told me a bill needed to be my top priority. Above eating? Above drinking? Above fucking? Above writing? Above the band? Above my heart? Above all the bullshit I put here trying to look smarter/more attractive/more interesting/more together/more anything?

There are less then two months before I hit twenty eight.

The damn cannot hold.

A Tale of Two Cities

in which the two cities are actually people

I am sitting at my desk in the early evening. It's MY early evening; it is one in the morning. The champagne bottle that was started yesterday is almost finished. I just put on XO by Elliot Smith. It has been a while, a long while, since the last time I listened to this record. But I am trying to figure something out about it, him and some people I know.

Now let's begin.

And don't forget: it is WAY more fun when you are vague.

I know a woman with soft features and a young face. I also know a man with hardened edges and years carved onto his skin. I have just recently found out that she loves Elliot Smith as much as he does.

Now Mr. Smith is not central to this thought I'm tumbling towards the ground with.

No. But I am VERY interested in how one person could attract two different people.

Funny thing, I just got it.

There are things I know about this woman and this man that don't surprise me. And there are things I keep learning that astonish me. And that is what this is all about. We decide what shoes everyone will fit into, and what we know about them. We are wrong all the time.

Funny. I didn't see this here.

I'm trying to think of the next line, the next thought, and I am suddenly walking into a bathroom at a McDonalds in Oakland.

I can't put names to all of the faces in the restaurant with me, or faces to the names I hear. But I know its me. And an ex. And a step dad. And maybe a cop. But he might not be there. But I'm pretty sure he is. We're going to a hospital to pick up my mom. But first I/someone else had to piss. This bathroom keeps jumping to the front of my mind.

I don't care about why the man and women I know both love Elliot Smith. And I'm not worried why the Oakland bathroom keeps coming up.

I just know that in a few swigs, when all the champagne is gone, I will get out of this chair and slide into my bed all alone.

And I am OK with it.

Tonight I have Mr. Smith to keep me company. Maybe I'll figure this out yet.

the distance between us is minimal, from myself to my heart is miles

Things are things. Feelings come and feelings go. Possessions break down. Suns rise and suns set. The world turns. Our savings gain and deplete. We consume. We waste. We rot.

That ran through my head, over and over and over and over. The room and my head were spinning in a sea of champagne. Someone was pulling out of my driveway, I could see their headlights on my blinds in my window.I didn't want them to leave. But then I did. I took off my shirt and pants and threw pillows back from the floor onto the bed. I put on a mix. I pushed off the sheet, I pulled up the comforter. I arranged the extra pillows around my body like women who had yet to have enough of me. The light was off and the room was blue from the computer screen.

Things are things. Over and over again. Things are things.

I revealed a crush that had existed. Or it hadn't existed. It could have been made up. It could have been the adding of layers to a thirty-one second thought while standing next to someone in a line. Or it could have been consuming me whole, just under the surface. But, really, that is not the case.

I opened my phone to make things right, with the recently departed, and realized nothing had gone wrong. I pushed forward thinking "NO! She doesn't understand!", but what was there to understand? That tonight I sat in the yard and told her things I have told someone else in her chair days before, and will probably tell someone new the same things again in a weeks time? That this excitement I was feeling in seeing her exists only in the pursuit, and that once I see her the excitement fades? That someone somewhere would give much more than I am willing to part with someone of lesser quality than her? That I honestly don't really care?

Things are things.

And they are. And everyday people are creeping closer to sharing the label of things. And is that good? Or bad? Or neither? When do I start assigning worth to people? When I know there names? When I know there phone number? When I know their house? When I know how there heart breaks?

Things are things. Heartbreaks are heartbreaks. I love the people I love.

I need to stop thinking I I am some sort of hunter/gatherer and get back to falling in love.