Day 6: Second person coffee.

Well, I think that catching up is out of reach for me at this point, so I'm just going to pick back up at day six and try to stay on track from there.

I'm kind of digging how this turned out, despite the completely stupid subject  matter and my usual distaste for second person. I think it seems Miranda July-esque, which is all I could hope for, really. Btw, Bryan, this is what I want for Christmas. Signed.

Who knew that I had such a fraught lifelong relationship with coffee?

Um, I don't know why I started editorializing each of these writing challenge posts. It's like when kids start essays with "I'm going to write about..." Stopping that now.

...................................................

A Drinking Problem

You are five years old and your mother gives it to you once in a while with a lot of milk and sugar, like after family dinners on Sundays. You drink it happily and the adults around you find this amusing and cute. You say you want more of it. It makes you feel hungry and incomplete.

You are eight years old, sitting in the kitchen with your mother and your grandmother.Your mother is drinking it. Your grandmother does not drink it, you realize. You are beginning to sense a new dichotomy: those who drink it, and those who drink diet coke.

You are ten years old and it is Saturday. Your parents are busy all day with household chores. You want to show them that you aren't lazy like they think you are. Actually, you want to show them that you can learn to be less lazy. You notice that they drink it all day, non-stop. You make a big deal of bringing fresh mugs of it to them, wherever they are working. On one trip up the stairs with a fresh cup, the mug is way too full, so you instinctively lean in to sip the excess off the top. You scald your lips. You are shocked by how hot it is. You ask your parents how they can stand it. They hypothesize that, with time, the nerves in your mouth wear off.

You are fifteen years old and trying to do too much. It's important that you keep busy, but you're not sure why. You have no time and you are miserable, but you can't stop anything. You start drinking it in earnest, every morning before school. Sometimes you also drink it at night to stay awake so you can study and finish homework assignments. You already need it. You are only fifteen.

You are seventeen years old and you are training for a triathlon. You're not sure why. Your parents ask you not to, but you insist that it's important to you and that you must do it, even though you only have a Huffy mountain bike. It is summer. Your family is going on a day trip to a Mennonite cheese shop, so you wake up early for a six mile training run. Afterwards, you make a cup of it with powdered creamer, and, for some reason, it's the best cup of it you've ever had. Later, you learn that powdered creamer contains trans fats, so you never use it again.

You are eighteen years old and you buy a coffee maker for your dorm room. It is red. You can't make it taste as good as your mother can. You can't get the water to grounds ratio right. You wonder if you will ever enjoy the coffee of your childhood again. You drink the cold gray coffee from the cafeteria sometimes, instead. Also, you sometimes buy if from the campus convenience store. It comes in a plain white styrofoam cup. You are terrified of the freshman fifteen. You drink coffee instead of eating food. You work out too much. You sweat coffee instead of water. You stay up all night and the skin on your face feels raw.

You are nineteen years old, and you go on a date with a kid you've had a crush on for a while. You drink a lot of it and talk too much and too fast about yourself. You realize that you don't actually like the kid. You only like his glasses.

You are 21 years old and it is finals week. You have to write six essays in six days. You feel so sick and anxious that it begins to hurt your stomach, so you start drinking plain lattes instead. This is a very bad decision, financially, but you get As on all your papers.

You are 21 years old and you are in Mexico. They don't make it here the way they make it at home, so you have to settle for cafe americanos. You don't really like the way those taste, but you have to drink them anyway. You realize that you don't just depend on it to stay awake. You also depend on it to feel just normal and okay.

You are 22 years old and you are unemployed. You get up every morning and make a cup of it with your roommate's expensive Keurig. Then you drink it with toast while watching Bravo on your roommate's expensive plasma screen TV.

You are 22 years old and you are in Italy. Some days, you get it from a little vending machine. It comes in a paper cup. One day, you forget to get it (or are unable to get; you can't quite remember), and then you go for a long bike ride through vineyards and apple orchards. You turn off the main path to look at something. When you turn back on, you don't look both ways, and you crash into an elderly cyclist. He falls from his bike and curses you in Italian. You feel terrible and cry and cry. You blame everything on the fact that you went without it for one morning.

You are 23 years old and you read an article about a study whose results suggest that regular coffee consumption helps women fight depression. You think about your own habits and you think about your mother's habits. You think the article sounds true. You think about how your mother drank it when you were in utero. You think about how maybe you've been addicted to it literally for forever.

Day 5: Inspired by your favourite song.

So I missed yesterday's post. I had a work function until nine, so that's my excuse. I plan to do both day 5 and day 6 today to make up for it. First, Day 5:

The Graduate

Yesterday's prompt was: Inspired by your favorite song. I don't think I have a favorite song, so I'm going to go all Inception on this prompt and write, instead, about another time in my life when I was tasked with writing musically-inspired prose.

It was 2007. I was a senior, and my classmates and I were preparing for high school graduation. For some reason, we were supposed to pick a theme for the ceremony. This seems stupid and weird to me now. I mean, the theme of a graduation ceremony is graduating, right? We accepted it as doctrine at the time, and the theme we decided on was "The Lyrics of Our Lives," or something equally inane and saccharine.

The idea was that each speaker would base her or his speech on a song. The song each speaker chose (or, I guess, a sample of it) would be played before each speech was delivered during the ceremony. I was the valedictorian (Tangentially, I was also insufferable. You can read more about that here.), so I was expected to deliver one of the song-inspired speeches. Bright Eyes' Cassadaga had been released that spring, and because I was so cool and indie (No, I wasn't.), I decided that I would base my speech on the song "If the Brakeman Turns my Way," from that album.

Ostensibly, this song is about getting clean after a period of problematic drug use--a topic I could really relate to as a sheltered, brutally competitively nerd who was abstinent in every sense of the word.

No but seriously, I guess I thought it was relevant because of the idea of "our fates are beyond our own control" that seems, at least to me, to be conveyed by the lyrics.

I can't remember exactly what I wrote, or exactly how I incorporated that song into my speech. I'm pretty sure it was full of the typical graduation speech cliches: It's our last summer of childhood! Do community service! Shit like that. The more I think about it, the more I think that the only "brakeman" related aphorism in my speech was "I'll see you all again in 2017, brakeman allowing." My god, cringing forever.

But it turned out to be a good thing that I didn't more heavily incorporate the song into my speech because:
a.) the songs were not, in fact, played before the speeches and
b.) it was, in no way, made clear to observers that the theme of the ceremony was "The Lyrics of Our Lives" (or whatever).

My friend Jourdan was the salutatorian. He chose Saves the Day's "This is not an Exit" for his speech inspiration, which, I'm pretty sure, is about offing yourself. Anyway, I do remember that he read actual lyrics from the song during the speech.* Sort of like:

"Tonight will be the night that we begin to ease the plugs out of the dam." As I stand before      you today, class of 2007, blah blah blah..."And all the wasted nights and empty moments in our lives are flushed away as we sway with the rhythm of the waves bobbing us up." High school is over, and it's time for a fresh start. Blah blah...

I remember thinking that it was probably pretty confusing for all the Southern West Virginian observers. They were just there to shout "Git it Baby!" or "Go Bubby!" or something like that as their graduates received their diplomas, and then all the sudden they had all these strange lyrics coming at them with no context.

However, no one questioned any of it afterward. Nobody was like, "What was that shit about the brakeman and unplugging dams?" I guess, then, that the takeaway of the whole experience was that people don't actually pay any attention to high school commencement speeches. And that's good to know, considering how terrible mine was.

Anyway, thinking about all this now makes me wish that I could go back in time to graduation day, sneak into the Beckley, WV armory, punch my former self in the face, and deliver this brief and to-the-point valedictory speech instead:

Good afternoon, class of 2007. I just want to say that am sorry for all the hyper-competive, short-sighed, and generally mean things I did and said in an effort to get honors and titles that meant nothing. I am sorry that I was held up by authority figures as some kind of aspirational role model, when I was actually just a high-strung, spoiled, judgmental, jerk. Basically, I was wrong about pretty much everything. I should have relaxed and just hung out and been a teenager, just like a lot of you said. I'll soon come to understand all  that. Also, within four or five years, I will never see or talk to 99% of you ever again, which is probably best for everyone. So, I won't be seeing you all in 2017, or at any other reunion. Best of luck to all of us.


*Yes, I am embarrassed that I remember this.

Day 4: Dialogue Only, Please

I've got nothing tonight. Dialogue is the worst, and I suck at it. Also, everything I write seems to start off strong and get terrible, so this time I tried to think of an ending and then reverse engineer a beginning.

Anyway, I've actually experienced this phenomenon a couple of times before, with someone carrying on a conversation with me in crazy dream logic while they're asleep. Fortunately, nothing this weird was said, though.

...................................................

Hey, come in here. This is so weird. Watch. He's sleeping, but he'll respond to anything you ask him.

What? Really?

Watch.  John, what day of the week is it?

Eh?

Hey. John, what day of the week is it?

It's September. Now it's over and we have to start going back to school, right? All us kids that saw it.

What the hell? September? He is so out of it.

Try it. Ask him something.

Okay. John, what are you doing tomorrow?

Tomorrow's a day. I've been busy busy busy. But now it's over. Haha.

What's funny, John? What are you laughing about?

Oh, the balloons. I can't believe we got all of them out there. It's sad, but it's funny.

This is so weird. It's sort of creeping me out. What the hell is he dreaming about?

Hey shhhhh. Don't wake him up. Oh shit. Just got an idea. Hey John, what do you think of Marty?

Marty with the pretty pretty hair?

Yeah, sure. What do you think of her?

She's a Marty. She has her hair and everything. I'd known her for a long long time.

Yeah. Do you think she's cool?

She's so cool, yeah. It's so sad about her.

What the...

Shhhhh. What's sad John?

It's so sad what happens to her. To Marty. And then the balloons though. They were nice at least.

Dude. Move. I'm waking him up.

Hey. Chill out. He's just dreaming. John, what happens to Marty?

It's so sad. But no one can stop it. It just happens. And her hair. I can't believe the hair everywhere.

Why can't anyone stop it, John? What can't they stop?

All of it. None of it. Nobody saw it coming from anywhere. And then there was hair on everything and it won't come off. Marty. Marty's hair. You know, all her long hair? And then we have a sad day with balloons.

Fuck, John. Wake up. Get up right now.

Whoa. What the hell, guys? What is the problem?

You were saying crazy shit.

What, really? 

Yeah. It's honestly freaking me out. What the fuck were you dreaming about?

What was I saying? I wasn't dreaming anything. I mean, I don't remember anything. It's good to see you though, Marty. For some reason, It's a relief to see you right there.

Day 3: A genre you've never written in before

This one could be interpreted several ways, but I'm going with a genre of fiction I've never written in before. At Bryan's behest, I've chosen fantasy. Please enjoy this super serious tale of intrigue and warring kingdoms.

Arwen Aria Hortense Moonbeam, one third warrior queen, one third fairy queen, one third regular queen, ruler of  the kingdom of Cogglegrog, sits in her royal bedchamber combing her ass-length, wavy hair. There's a knock at her chamber door.

"Enter please," she instructs. Her voice is sexy, yet powerful. Also, she has a British accent.

Behold, it's Glennon, her resident soothsayer/former gypsy, master of all things omen and portent. Glennon looks pretty much like you would expect: wrinkles, hooded velour robe, scepter with a clear glass orb on top, etc.

"Your highness, I fear I have an unfortunate portent to bring to your attention."

"Please, deliver the bad news. Be quick! Get it over with!" Arwen Aria Hortense Moonbeam has a pretty low tolerance for bullshit and small talk. She generally credits this character trait for her success as a ruler/warrior/fairy.

"A vision has just come to me in my little orb thingy. It appears that the Splorglordians are invading from the North. They come on dragons, unicorns, very large serpents, and some other creatures that appear to be a mix of all three. I fear that they will be approaching the edges of our kingdom within a fortnight."

"Our kingdom? Seriously? It's like I give you one velour robe and you..."

"Alright. Sorry. They will be approaching the edges of your kingdom within a fortnight. Anyway, I'm afraid it gets worse. Apparently, due to some really unscrupulous stuff involving your late parents the Warrior/Fairy/Regular King and Queen, the Splorglordians believe that they have a claim to the throne of Cogglegrog."

"What?"

"Okay so, things got pretty hard to follow near the end of the vision. I mean, the orb is pretty small and the resolution isn't the best but, it appears that Thalmar, their ruler, may be the late King's son. So because Thalmar is male and everything, and because, you know, patriarchy..."

"But wait. My late father the King had tons of illegitimate sons. I've easily defeated all of their bogus campaigns for the throne of Cogglegrog. Why does this Thalmar person believe that he's so special?"

"Because apparently, he's not illegitimate. According to their story, he's your full brother. I've never told you this before, but, a few years before you were born, your mother gave birth to a male infant. He had some really weird deformities. Like, I hate to sound insensitive, but basically he looked like a frog. Your mother, being very vain, was horrified. She had her henchman take him away. She didn't even specify where. She was just like 'Ugh. gross. Get it out of my sight!' Your parents then told the people of Cogglegrog that the baby had died at birth."

"So Thalmar the Splorglordian is claiming to be the frog baby?"

"Yes. That's what I'm saying."

"Okay so, what I'm really dying to ask you, Glennon, is: Does this Thalmar person still look like a frog now? Or is he claiming that...his condition...just sort of cleared itself up? Maybe saying that a magic spell, or, like, some enchanted forest animals or something took care of it? Or...?"

"Yeah. I mean, it's unclear. The orb's zoom function wasn't really good enough for me to make out Thalmar's features."

"Alright. Well, that is very very  gross. But's it's okay. I'll take care it, just like I always do. You are dismissed, Glennon. Thanks for letting me know."

Following Glennon's exit, the chunky and rustic-looking chamber door bangs to a close. AAHM resumes her grooming, a look of cool and smug competence disguising the anxiety and turmoil building just behind her silvery fairy eyes.

Because the truth is, the people of Cogglegrog are just not the brightest bunch. They're gullible and foolish and easily swayed by an emotional appeal. And they rarely, if ever, vet their sources of kingdom news and gossip. Honestly, if weren't for AAHM's tireless efforts and amazing combat skills, they would have all died at the hands of the Ogres of Gorzot years ago.

AAHM's no fool. She knows how this Thalmar the Splorglordian story is going to sound to the people of Cogglegrog. A rejected and orphaned child rises to power in a foreign land and then comes back to his home to reclaim what is rightfully his? Fuck. They're going to eat it up.

She puts down her alabaster hair brush and rushes down the tapestried hall after Glennon.

"Glennon, fetch me Moreblorb." Moreblorb is AAHM's Secretary of Propaganda.

"I have an assignment for him."

Day 2: Facing the fear

Residue 

He never noticed his world shrinking until it was already so small that he found himself bumping up against it's edges. That was happening today.

He needed to wash the dishes badly. They were piled everywhere: on top of the microwave, on the radiator cover, obscuring the stove burners. The sauce pans were crusted with the remnants of mashed potatoes and other, less recognizable, things. They would need to be filled with water and left to sit, but where?

 He could barely walk around his small efficiency without knocking piles of dishes over, so he'd assumed a sort of hunched position on the floor in front of his computer.

He was beginning to feel ridiculous and guilty, like one of those poor people whose psychosis becomes the subject of public ridicule on that awful reality show "Horders." Time to get up.

He started to stand, but his fingernails snagged the carpet. He returned to hunching. Before he could do anything else, he would need to clip his fingernails. He couldn't stand to do any even vaguely manual task with his fingernails that long.

He didn't know where to even begin to look amongst the piles for his nail clippers.The very thought of it overwhelmed him. He'd have to go to the drugstore and buy new ones before he could even start on anything. But damn. That would mean a shower first. There was no way he could leave his apartment with his hair all grease-slicked into these odd and disturbing peaks.

He started to stand again. On his way up, his field of vision narrowed. He stumbled forward a little, his body not yet fully vertical. He remembered that he hadn't eaten anything all weekend really. Well, anything besides Cheetos.

He decided that what he really needed was some food, maybe some coffee. Surely, with proper nutrition and caffeine, the tasks before him wouldn't feel so blown out all proportion and  gargantuan and impossible.

He covered his very bad hair with a toboggan. Okay, that was progress. His coat and keys were right were he'd put them after work on Friday afternoon.

Just open the door and walk out. Nobody cares. Nobody will notice you. There are thousands of people walking around out there. Some of them probably have greasy hair and disgusting kitchens. Nobody will notice you, seriously. This will only take a minute.

He tried to remember when he these sorts of pep talks first became necessary.

He wondered if he was actually crazy.

He opened the door.

He made it out of building without seeing any of the other tenants, which he had expected. He pretty much never saw anyone else in the halls. That was lucky and good, but sometimes it made him feel even weirder. So few people had even ever seen the interior of his apartment. He tried to count them: His mom, his dad, the odd friend here and there. It was definitely less than five. That, plus the apparent lack of other people in the building, made his apartment, and thus the hours he spent alone in there, feel not completely real.

It was warmer than he'd thought it would be on the street. The sandwich chain where he knew he could get quick takeout was maybe two blocks west of his building. There was a steady stream of people heading east down the sidewalk. He wondered if there were always this many people on the street on Sunday. He wondered what time it was.

He tried to look at each person's face for just a second and then look in front of him, the way he imagined a normal person might. He found that his timing was very off. He couldn't quite remember the appropriate ratio of face glances to forward glances.

He decided to stop with the face glancing all together, but then he worried that he was hunching and scowling. He thought people might assume that he was homeless.

Finally, the warm commercial glow of the sandwich chain was upon him.

He was very grateful that no one was going out as he was coming in. The correct formula for determining whether or not to hold the door open (let x represent the distance between person a and the door, then add .5 for every grocery bag, infant, etc. person a is carrying...) was was too much for the universe to ask him to recall.

He approached the counter and said hi to the girl behind it before he could stop himself. The "hi" came out scratchy and too deep. It occurred to him that he hadn't spoken a word out load since Friday morning.

The girl smiled at him from beneath her visor.

But shit, he didn't know what he wanted yet.

"Ahhh. Just a minute." He stepped back and sort of off to the side. The menu was just far enough away that he had trouble seeing it, and as he squinted up at it, it occurred to him that others might confuse his "trying to see" face for a "thinking comically hard about what I want from the sandwich shop" face.

He moved back in front of the register.

"You ready?" asked the girl.

"So can I get half a (long pause as he squinted hard at the menu again) Tuscan turkey breast sandwich and a cup of broccoli cheese soup."

"Sure. Can I get a name?" she asks as she punches the order into the register.

"Um to go please. And a cup of coffee."

"Uh okay." More punching. "And your name?"

"Uh John." Something about the abruptness of his short name made him feel the need to preface it with an extra syllable.

"So is that A J O N,?" She asks.

"No. Just John. Sorry." He cringed and wondered what kind of person got their own name wrong.

He paid with cash and was careful not to touch the girl's hand as he handed over the coins. But maybe that was the wrong thing to do. Maybe normal people touched the cashier's hand, or at least didn't actively try not to. Maybe purposefully avoiding her hand was aloof and insulting.

As he walked toward the takeout counter, he comforted himself with the thought that, soon enough, he could steel back to his apartment with his soup and maybe clean up a little bit and become a normal person again. He was trying to convince himself that with a shower and a warm meal, the horrible fog that was muddling all his interactions would lift and he could look a person in the eye again without wondering if he was doing it wrong.

Another girl with another visor placed a brown paper bag on the counter.

He couldn't tell what name she had said. It sounded like John. It could have been Jan. Jean maybe? He looked around. A lady stood in the corner. She wasn't making a move. He smiled at her. He felt like maybe he looked frantic. Did they normally complete to go orders so quickly here?

Maybe they did. He grabbed the bag left and the building.

That wasn't so bad. No, it wasn't. Nobody thought anything of me. I was just another patron. Just another guy buying soup. Everyone was too wrapped up in their own thoughts to care if I looked at the menu too intensely. Yeah, she definitely said John.

He unlocked the front door of his building, but before he could ascend the first flight of stairs, he was gripped  with dread.

He knew what he would see before he even opened the bag. Jan's (Jen's?) almond chicken salad where his turkey sandwich and broccoli cheese soup should be. He was a monster.

30 day writing challenge: A place that you love

Bryan's picture from Canaan. The woods in my story wouldn't look exactly like this, but close enough.

Pollen

I can't believe that I remembered where I kept the key, but I open the slatted door of the corner hutch of my childhood bedroom and there it is, hanging on the hook where I left it probably ten years ago.

The keychain is some kind of clear round stone, the kind you find at a beach gift shop.

"Well yep. There it is," I say to her, looking up from where I'm kneeling if front of the hutch.

She follows me outside and down the wooded slope that functioned roughly as my childhood back yard. We always referred to this area as "over the hill." The "hill" is not nearly as steep as I remembered it. It's amazing how you eventually grow up to dwarf the landforms that loomed so hugely throughout your childhood.

And I know she's having similar thoughts because she says, "That time when we spent the night out here and heard that creepy sound? That thwack thwack? It was like we had to run up a mountain to get back home? How funny."

She's developed that habit of making all her declaratives sound like interrogatives. My linguistics professor calls it uptalking. It's supposed to signify a lack of confidence or something. My first reaction is to start to hate her for it, but I squelch that quickly enough. Honestly, I do it too. And anyway, and I'm glad that, after all this time, we can still think the same.

After about fifteen feet of gradual decline, the ground levels out. The forest floor is covered with debris and thorns and I love that this, and not some well-manicured, jungle-gymed lawn, was where I was sent to play as a kid. There are a few huge flat rocks down here, roughly five feet in diameter. They always made it easy to pretend that this was the bottom of the ocean. In fact, this part of central Appalachia was the bottom of the ocean at some point during pre-history.

When I was high school, a tree fell during an ice storm and cracked one of the rocks completely in half. That had been a jarring duel lesson in impermanence and geological change.

We cross a small shallow gully--what was at some point either a creek or a mining road--and then we are at its door. The real tar shingles of the roof are sagging in a way that makes me worry, and the plastic taped over the windows droops in some spots.

"Still standing." I say. We smile at each other.

A wind chime hanging from the eaves is too choked with spider webs to make noise anymore.

I unlock and open the front door (Only now does it strike me as hilarious that the twelve by eight foot fort is also equipped with a back door.) to a time capsule covered in pollen.

"Oh my god! Our anorexic hammock!" She's talking about the perplexingly narrow hammock that bifurcates the fort's one-room interior. We always thought it would eventually stretch out width-wise. It never did.

It looks almost prideful, hanging there all abandoned and yet un-dry rotted, like a lady who got old but not fat.

A small plywood table is covered  in bird shit. There's a dead robin behind it. Luckily, it's too cold outside to smell.

Amazingly, miraculously, a purple sparkly inflatable chair remains fully blown up in the corner. Its compatriot, a green sparkly inflatable chair with a cartoon frog face printed on the seat, is less fortunate. It slouches, deflated, beside its purple brother, chosen at random to be the victim of the mysterious cruelty of passing time.

I notice some molded plastic lawn chairs--purple and green as well--and I remember that we had actually chosen a color scheme for our play fort.

She's staring at the southern wall, the wall we (how funny to talk about the twelve-year-olds who did this as "we") had covered with disposable camera prints of ourselves.

There we are lying in our bunks at summer camp. There we are in our long john pajamas in my living room. There we are seated behind a cake at my ninth birthday party.

"Oh no! I was so dorky looking," she says.

I'm surprised to say that she's right. She was dorky-looking. She had big teeth and thin hair and round wire glasses.

But I only remember her as completely, enviably, beautiful, all thin willowy limbs and huge green eyes. All the boys we knew fell in love with her instantly, large teeth and glasses or not.

The pictures are starting to yellow and curl up around the edges. Some of them have fallen to the floor, failed by the balled-up masking tape that was once enough to hold them. How can it be that the pictures of our adolescence are aged and yellowed? Are we not still young?

"Maybe we should take them back up to the house before they get any more damage. I mean, it looks like this pollen will probably wipe off." I say it like I'm not convinced.

"Yeah, but that just feels wrong somehow, like stealing."

Again, I see that we can still think the same.

We were always finding things in the woods around our fort: an old rusty roller skate (the kind that would have had a key), a tiny porcelain doll's plate, an old plastic toy gun.

We loved it, but we were confused by it. How does stuff get left out like that, in the woods, for decades?

I lock the door and we leave the pictures, the blow-up chairs--all of it--maybe for forever. I'm not sure but, I think we leave them for two dorky-looking twelve-year-old girls. Maybe they are our ghosts. Maybe they are our heat imprints. Maybe they are our residual psychic disturbances. Or maybe they are the "us" of a different, future generation, two more Appalachian girls who are, like we were, half wilderness explorer and half interior designer.

And I guess we understand the origins of the rusty roller skate, the porcelain plate, and the gun a little better now.

Something Different

In an effort to write something that isn't a melodramatic contemplation of my current life, I decided to seek out a 30 day writing challenge.

I found this one here after a brief google search:

Day 1:  A place that you love.

Day 2:  Facing the fear

Day 3: A genre you've never written in before.

Day 4: Dialogue only, please.

Day 5: Inspired by your favourite song.

Day 6: Second person coffee.

Day 7: A day in the life of your favourite comic book character.

Day 8: A place that exists only in your mind.

Day 9: El Diablo

Day 10: The Interview

Day 11: A moment in history.

Day 12: Your passion

Day 13: The place you grew up.

Day 14: In the style of a favourite writer.

Day 15: The road goes ever on

Day 16: How an event from yesterday could have gone

Day 17: The Ocean

Day 18: The taste of your favourite meal.

Day 19: The day of randomness - use a random page from Wikipedia to inspire you!

Day 20: A place you want to visit.

Day 21: First person blind date.

Day 22: Night

Day 23: Standing at the precipice

Day 24: The City

Day 25 A poem.

Day 26: Something you witnessed today.

Day 27: A snippet from a novel you want to write.

Day 28: Second person bank robbery

Day 29: Blue Powder

Day 30: The End

So, Oliver Davies, I hope that you don't mind that I'm totally jacking your writing challenge.Just want you to know that I like it because: 

a.) It's broad enough that none of the topics seem boring to me.

b.) It almost allows me to completely avoid writing any poetry.

But wait! It gets even better! Bryan, the pretty good cartoonist behind wvisformonsters.tumblr.com who also happens to be my boyfriend, has agreed to simultaneously do a 30 day drawing challenge. Whoever gets closest to actually completing his or her respective challenge in the allotted 30 days is the honorary More Creative and Interesting Person in the Relationship. Obviously, the stakes are pretty high.

Day 1 is tomorrow!

Have You Ever Noticed the Many Ways in Which I am Awful?

I really hate the way I sound in my last two posts. I can't help but imagine them being read in a whiny voice: "Waahhh I had to clean up after peeeepppuuulll. Waahh moving doesn't fix everything in your lifffeeee." This is why I've been having trouble writing lately. The things I write are sort of making me hate myself.

I've unfortunately reached that plateau on the journey to improved self awareness where I am really really good at identifying the things about me that are probably annoying to others. For example, if I really really like an anecdote, I will tell it over and over and over and like sneak it into conversation whenever possible. It's a lot like Brad Stand and the chicken salad/Shania Twain thing.

Or, semi-relatedly-like when I want to show someone something funny/interesting on the Internet, I assume this supremely obnoxious body posture and facial expression while they watch it. It can only be described as expectantly smug.

Or like lately, I keep on jumping all over people when I perceive their comments to be even vaguely misogynistic. I am giving feminists everywhere a bad name. And the worst part is, my extremely kind and loyal friends will go out of their way to be like, "No, that entirely insane thing you just yelled at that man was totally called for. You shouldn't feel bad about it at all." My god. They are saints.

And I'm sure you've all noticed how I just generally talk a lot. Like I monopolize conversations. I have a response and often an accompanying anecdote for every damn thing somebody says.

Some others:

• I talk about my cats a lot.
• I am really really bad at curbside parking.
• I walk really really fast and purposefully around the office. It could probably be described as "storming."
• I am hypocritical and contradict myself a lot in day-to-day conversation.
• I have like a trillion "hobbies." My interest in each is so diffuse and ill-focused that I will probably never be good at anything or accomplish anything. 
• My knowledge about a lot of things that I claim to know about and care about is embarrassingly facile. Basically like this:

• I complain about going to the grocery store.

So, how is that, knowing what I know about myself, I am able to maintain any level of distaste for a large portion of the general populace?

I realize that I am awful. Just like everyone else. Brb, ascending to the highest level of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Everywhere I go

There I am.

I knew this, but, will I ever really know this?

How I Spent My Summer Vacation (Plunging the Clogged Toilets of Other Peoples Children): Part One

I had resigned myself to a second summer in a row of unemployment when I received a call I didn't expect. It was a follow-up interview for a job that I had applied for back in May. Because I went so  long  without hearing anything back about it, I just assumed that I didn't get it.

I was happy and relieved to get the follow-up interview. I had signed a lease for a place with rent I could barely afford and was eager to make some money. 

My new boss explained that I would be working "front of house" in the cafeteria of a children's summer camp. Just setting the tables, restocking the salad bar, sweeping. Sounded like a piece of cake.

"We also might schedule you for cleaning once in a while. Hopefully we won't have to."

"That's fine. I cleaned bathrooms at my high school job. I don't mind," I replied. Mistake number one.

When my new boss  asked me how much I was looking to work, I told her to load me up with hours (mistake number two).

I have been extremely lucky when it comes to employment history. Never before have I had a truly terrible job. 

In high school, I worked front of house at a live outdoor theater, cleaning the bathrooms, taking tickets, and operating the concession stand. This was actually an incredibly sweet gig. I worked for my cousin-in-law and with my friends. During the show, we would roam the state park in which the amphitheater was located. We were almost always overstaffed and days off were abundant and easily requested. Also, there were only two bathrooms. Bliss.

After that, I worked as an office aid for my dad, who is a property lawyer. When I tell people about this job, I always veer toward the dramatic. Like really dramatic. I've been known to compare my dad to Meryl Streep as Anna Wintour (err "Miranda") in The Devil Wears Prada. And, in my defense, there was a time when he really did ask me to locate some lonely piece paper (which he only vaguely described) in  a entire store closet full of barrister boxes, each of which was stuffed with file folders. Very Miranda.

But if I'm being honest, the job was, most of the time, pretty mild. Some light filing, some data entry, some dictation. 

This was followed by a plethora of University positions--science camp counselor, new student orientation aid, research assistant, journal editor--each job cushier than the last. 

And finally, I was a temp in an IT office. In a lot of ways, this job made me miserable and lonely, but let's face it: I came in late, read blogs for a embarrassing large portion of the day, and never got yelled at even once.

My pampered bourgeoise ass was in No Way prepared for what was waiting me at the Camp of a Million Sorrows.

First, a few things about the camp: 1.) It is expensive, meaning, the children that attend are overwhelmingly wealthy, and 2.) It is huge, meaning, close to 600 campers at a time. All eating at once, all needing juice and peanut butter and margarine packets and ketchup and more fucking cream cheese and caviar and perrier and golden nuggets, like, yesterday.

I think that it's also important to mention that I wasn't actually employed by the camp. I was employed by a catering company that it contracted by the camp. 

This setup created a very "us against them" vibe, at least for me.

And truly, truly, every meal was like going to battle. 

When I try to explain to people what made this job so terrible, I can't find the words to adequately express the press of 600 children at the salad bar and the "peanut butter station" (a table that we kept stocked with peanut butter and jelly ingredients and fruit all day). The children were extremely competitive about food procurement, which led to some maddeningly inappropriate and annoying behaviors. First, they would not move away from a salad bar or PB station item long enough to let me restock it. I would have to fight my way through them to give them the shredded cheese or grape jelly that they were so desperately clamoring for. Additionally, they could not take one fucking extra second for civilized behavior. They ripped the bread bags at the PB station open because they didn't want to waste time untwisting the tie, grabbed cartons of milk or pitchers of juice off carts while I was still wheeling them out, and threw garbage into trash cans that we had not yet had the chance to reline after hauling the garbage out.

And I guess the garbage was actually partially our fault, because we should have learned, by that point, that the meal time battles were as much about defense as they were about offense. We should have known that kids were going to throw trash in the unlined cans and not left them unlined for even a second. Because you had to do that, to determine how the campers could use things you left out or provided against you.

It was exhausting, setting up this huge cafeteria for a meal, serving the meal, cleaning the huge cafeteria up, and then doing it all over again. I think this was the fist job I ever had that actually made me physically tired. Holy privilege! How could have gotten this far through my life without ever experiencing that before?

And actually, that exhaustion--that feeling that you had actually earned your money--felt pretty nice. I use to come home from my cushy office job feeling angsty and irritated as all get out, absolutely seething with dissatisfaction. But the sore arms and aching feet that marked the end of a day at the camp  felt weirdly wholesome, and i returned home with the simple happiness of having had a defined task to complete and completing it, I happiness that all my amorphous and vague office work could never provide.

Windows into the Past. Smeary Ones. With the Blinds Only Partially Opened.

I’ve been in Beckley for the past few days. Unemployment frees up a lot of time for family. On Sunday, I went to dinner with a branch of the family that I hardly know: the progeny of my dad’s mother’s siblings. (So, they are my second cousins? This is confusing.) My dad’s mom (my Grandma Emma) died before I was born. I’m not exactly sure how long before I was born and I’m not sure why. Something liver-related maybe?

Anyway, it turns out that she had like eight siblings, so there are quite a few second cousins(?) who, in turn, have children and grandchildren. I think I was vaguely aware that these people existed, but never before had I attempted to create a mental “family tree” that pieces that branch of the family together before this dinner.

During dinner, one of the cousins mentioned that many members of this branch of the family lived together in the Paint Street House in a multigenerational situation for a while. The Paint Street House. I’d always thought of this house as my (late) paternal grandpa’s. He died when I eight or nine, and he lived in this house for most of the time I knew him. He was very into fruit trees and had all kinds of them in his yard. He and that house are just so synonymous in my memory. It’s kind of blowing my mind that it’s actually more accurate to think of the house as Emma’s.

This discovery has really changed my perception of my grandpa. It seems weird to me that he moved in with his wife, her mother, and her intellectually disabled sister (and possibly even more of her relatives?) when they got married. But maybe this wasn’t weird at all in the 50s?

The older I get, the more I realize how little I know about my family. It’s so funny because it’s not like my parents are deliberately secretive or are purposely trying to obfuscate some sketchy piece of family history. I’m assuming that their lack of info sharing is coming form one of two much more mundane places. Either a.) the information does not seem interesting to them, and therefore they do not share it, or b.) the information seems obvious to them, and therefore they do not think to state it.

But back to the Paint Street House. It’s this tiny house in a neighborhood that has sort of deteriorated over the years. Growing up, I was always equally fascinated and terrified by the basement, with is dug out and unfinished so that the walls are all craggy and earthen.

When I think of my family origins, I think of my dad’s family, which is actually to say that I think of my dad’s dad’s family, which is very much to say that I think of this very intimate and modest little house and its basement and my grandpa’s trees and grapes and his tendency to wear sweat pants all the time and never throw anything away, and never buy anything either.

But no, it turns out that all of that was wrong. This weekend, I met all of these people. They were blonde and loud. They live Texas and Florida.  And they are wealthy (or I’m guessing that are, based on their appearance and mannerisms). Their children are counselors and television actors and all kinds of things. And many of them (the cousins) actually lived in the Paint Street House at some point.

I am a white, American, middle class, post-Protestant person of unspecified European ancestry, which is to the say that I have a tendency toward naval gazing and a latent and oft-denied obsession with my identity. And part of my identity is “where I came from,” to use a phrase that I hate. And where I came from, is, figuratively, the Paint Street House. But my conception of the Paint Street House was incorrect, which means that my conception of “where I came from” was, too.

I wonder if my (hypothetical future) children will know as little about my parents’ lives and I know about my grandparents’ lives?

Upswing

Time Warp

Found a old notebook with some sporadic "journal entries." From one dated March 28, 2010:

When people ask me what I aspire to be, I'd like to say, "I think that ambitious people are the most dangerous people on the planet. I think that ambition is one of the most dangerous forces in the world. I wish to be one less ambitious person. I wish to reduce the number of ambitious people in the world by one. It's my dream."

To 21-year-old me: You'd be pleased to know that excess ambition is the very least of your worries. Also, improve your handwriting. It's terrible.

 Good to know that while it may seem like I am unmotivated,  I'm actually just fulfilling my dreams.

Dream Salad...and Other Things...But Mostly Dream Salad

Via this blog, via google image search for "dream salad"

Dream Salad
 I have always been fascinated by dreams. Apparently most people are not? I've heard people say that dreams are the kind of things that are only interesting to the people that have them, and no one else. I disagree! I have a bad habit of asking people about their dreams, and then badgering people for ever more details until they want to kill me. If you want to talk about your dreams but are facing an unreceptive audience, get in touch with me.

Why do I love dreams so much, you ask? Well, I ask, why don't other people love dreams more? Personally, I am amazed that my unconscious mind can devise nutso scenarios that my conscious brain is not even aware of.

I started writing my dreams down in a little notebook (sporadically) this winter with mixed success. The idea is that you wake up and immediately record your dreams while they are still fresh in your mind. But I'm really lazy, so I never wake up early enough to have time to both record my dreams and get ready for work. Normally I record my dreams once I get to work. Sometimes I wait until even later in the evening. Sometimes I even put it off for a day or two. Invariably, I forget a lot of dream details. But then, dream details are almost impossible to capture in words anyway.

So today at work, I was recording a dream I had over the weekend in my little dream notebook. The dream begins with me in the cafeteria of my elementary school. I am eating a chef salad out of a beige plastic bowl (reasonable). There is iceberg lettuce, and boiled eggs, and cheese, and ham. When my dream pals and I finish up lunch, we go exploring in the school's old creepy basement (not reasonable). We open a door and unleash a dark force that can only be described as a Shadow Lion (not even sort of reasonable). The Shadow Lion chases us, and we try to hide in a library (reasonable, but my school did not have a library), the perimeter of which is entirely surrounded by a narrow catwalk (not reasonable). The Shadow Lion gets into the library and chases us around the catwalk, but it eventually gets stuck behind an obstruction on the catwalk (not logical) and my dream pals and I get away.

But I don't want to talk about fictional Shadow Lions. I want to talk about real salads. This little detail was fully elucidated when I recorded my dream today. Suddenly it occurred to me that, at some point, my elementary school actually offered salad as a an alternative to hot lunch. It was real! The long forgotten salad option!

So what happened was: I remembered something in my dream that my waking, conscious mind had forgotten! Or, in more imaginative terms: My dreams were sending me messages from my past! Or something. I don't know. But I feel like this is profound. Not the salad, exactly, but what it represents.

There are a handful of settings in which a lot of my dreams take place. Now I'm wondering if these places are actually real places (or at least representative of real places)  I went to (or saw?) as I child that I no longer consciously remember. For example, I've had a few dreams that take place in a museum with a sand sculpture and a big hour glass. Maybe I actually remember a museum with a sand sculpture and big hour glass? Which elements of my dreams are ridiculous fabrications of my mind, and which are ridiculous memories? Wow. So many new dream layers. THINK ABOUT IT.

Blogging
So. I'm starting to think that this trend of personal blogs (of which I am casually participating) is seriously the worst thing. Even I, with my amateurish, rarely updated, prefab layout-ed blog, have found myself turning disturbingly inward for blog content. Some introspection is healthy, but I think that I, at times, am partaking in lethal levels of self-involment with this blog. And I don't even include pictures of my face!

Oh, the face pictures. So many, on every post. And the staged photoshoots of, like, picnics. And bike rides. And walking down the street. I'm so confused by this. Sometimes I see pictures of bloggers crossing the street. Do they stop in the middle and ask someone to take their picture? Do they set up a tripod? In the middle of the street? I just can't imagine it, and I just wrote like 400 words on dreaming about salad!

I think that having a successful blog has the potential to change how you look at the world (in a bad way). For example, I was reading this really terrible (but popular) DIY/fashion/lifestyle blog the other day, when I came across a post titled something like "10 ways to wear a scarf." It was like: Tie it around your head! Tie it around your neck! ect, ect. You just know that the blog author, desperate for content, was putting on a scarf when and thought to herself, "Yes. That's it. This will work."

And then in the comments, all these girls are like "Wow. So inspirational. I never thought of wearing a scarf around my neck before!" But what I think they really mean (whether they know it or not) is "I never thought that you could write a fucking blog post about how to wear a scarf and publish it on an income-generating blog." Because yeah. Now that I think about it, this is really kind of brilliant.

It just seems like you'd reach a point where you'd start  experiencing the world in terms of what could potentially be, or could not potentially be, blog content. So instead of going on a whimsical picnic and then blogging about it, you go on a whimsical picnic so you can blog about it.

I am no where near that point because a.) I write one blog post a month, b.) maybe two or three people read my blog,  c.) I don't include pictures, and d.) I don't really write about the day-to-day. But it's the principal of the thing, of writing about the details of your life as though someone would want to read it.

I started writing here when I was really lonely and did not want to drive my remaining friends away with my bitching and inanities. But now I have, miraculously, managed to meet some new people and I find myself with less of a need to take my Europe stories and dumb reflections to the internet. I had pretty much resolved to delete this blog when the salad dream happened. The internet needed the salad dream.

So, I guess the blog will remain, new content pending whether or not I have additional incredible epiphanies that must be shared. But, I will never include pictures of my face. Never.

Social Media and Me

It is 2012, and I go online to learn how to be. So now I say and write things like "lady friends" and "because ___," omitting the pronoun for trendiness. And when I feel really overwhelmed by my hatred of something, I proclaim that "I just cannot." I learn a whole new language with its own grammar and its own idioms, but pretty much none of my friends and definitely none of my family speaks it.

And I also learn that striped sailor shirts are appropriate in any situation and probably no one can ever have enough. And that matte nail polish is slowly being replaced by shimmer nail polish on the hands of all the cool (but adequately self-effacing) girls.

I fall in love with the babies of strangers and am shocked by the changes in strangers' lives. And I look at rage-enducing things for hours because the anger feels so good. And I look at stuff I hate for hours because it is really stuff I want. And then I open my mouth to tell real people about it, and I learn that this requires that I speak in a weird pidgin, an inelegant mixture of my new language and my old one. But then I realize that it doesn't matter, because real people have no idea what I'm talking about regardless.

Stuff that Happened in Europe: The Hostile Hostel

I really don't know how to write this post without sounding like a overpriveliged, sheltered, boring, spoiled American, because I'm getting ready to complain about minor inconveniences. After some brief contemplation, I've decided I'm just going to go ahead and write the post and sound like all those things, better judgement be damned. But I'll include a warning, because I'm considerate like that:

Warning: If you have a low tolerance for first world problems, do not proceed beyond this point. (I will totally understand.)

SO, at the end of our harrowing night train experience, we arrive in Trento, Italy. Trento is a smallish town in the northeastern part of the country, and although it gets its fair share of tourism, it is not exactly on most people's Must See lists. Morgan and I put it on ours because it is the town that our paternal great grandparents are from, and we are not immune to that pitiful white American desire to get in touch with our ancestoral heritage (even though I pretend that I am, and I will probably secretly mock you if you have a celctic knot tattoo).

It's really early when we get to Trento, and I'm sleepy and overwhelmed. Tento feels tiny compared to Vienna, and I think to myself that maybe this is one of those places where everyone knows each other. I have this feeling--the same one I get when I go to parties and bars now, the one I used to get when I went to church or family gatherings with my friends when I was small--that I don't belong here, that I have no right to be here, and that everyone knows it. I feel like someone may walk up to me at any moment and demand to know what I'm doing here. I have no idea what I'm doing here. I want to leave, badly.

We search for the hostel (the Ostello di Trento,* if anyone is planning a backpack trip) and find it without much issue. As we wait in the lobby, a group of maybe 20 blonde children emerge from the hostel. For some reason I assume that they are Russian orphans, probably because the girls are wearing little triangle shaped kerchiefs on their heads. A man and lady appear behind the lobby desk, and we ask them if they speak English.  They tell us that they do. I explain that we have reserved two beds and thrust my reservation confirmation forward.

They seem sort of confused, but eventually allow us to pay them. They explain that we can't check in until 2:00 pm. I feel like they are smirking as they say this. I'm sure that they actually weren't.

I am hungry and tired and wondering why I decided to come to this place, and I really really want to go somewhere where I don't have to interact with anyone and just read blogs or something for a while and regroup. Instead, I sleep on a bench until 2:00 pm while the Russian orphans play soccer  in a nearby park.

We go back to the hostel and get our room keys. The hostel is pretty huge, but I assume that they only have a couple rooms open because my dorm is pretty full but there are never very many people mulling around the building. There are four sets of bunkbeds in the female dorm. Two girls who appear to be younger than me occupy one set. I'm not sure what language they are speaking, maybe Romanian? Another set of bunkbeds contains two older Asian ladies. They are both napping. One is naked. A third older lady of unknown national origin sleeps on the bottom bunk of the last set of beds. We share one bathroom, which really isn't a big deal except that I can't communicate a bathroom schedule with anyone. I basically just resort to getting up really really early every day to ensure that I would be able to get in.

I guess the weirdest thing about this arrangement is that my doormmates are always in the room. Always. The Asian lady who was napping naked when I arrived naps naked a lot. The older lady of indeterminate national origin occasionally does exercise videos in front of her bed.  The only exception is that the Romanian (?) girls leave every night wearing clear high heels and tube tops. Probably, they are going to Italian nightclubs, but I imagine that they are hooking because it makes the story more interesting.

Morgan didn't bring an alarm clock, so I have to go to the male dorm and knock on the door every morning. One morning, I learn that one of his roommates has stolen his damp towel. Probably a mix up? Fortunately, Trento is absolutely packed with high end outdoor equipment stores (serioulsy, it is), so it's not hard to get a replacement.

More of an inconvenience is the hostel's single washer, which requires nine freaking euros for one load of laundry. If the desk guy and desk lady were not smirking before, they definitely are now. As we wait for our laundry to dry, we read in a lounge-like room, accompanied by more old people. Seriously, there were so many old people in this hostel. And orphans, so many Russian orphans. I hope they were all adopted.

*Hey look! My review is on there!

By the way, Trento is seriously beautiful. You should definitely go there, but maybe just stay in a tent or something.

Blah Lazy Fluff Post

Right now I'm working on (okay, thinking about) a post about cartoon food and post modernism and the comfort of sterile public spaces, but until I sort all that out:

Twelve Scandalous Confessions!!!!

1. I have a personal Netflix account that I only stream on my laptop. I use it to watch embarrassing things.

2. I got a new supervisor at work, and she's been keeping me pretty busy. Even though I talk  about how I'm "self actualized enough to not need a job or career for personal fulfillment," the added responsibilities secretly make me feel a lot better about myself.

3. More frequently that I would I like to admit, I mistakenly believe that a person staring out the window/at at TV/etc. is staring at me. I am extremely flattered and then greatly humbled.

4. I think I used up all my willpower during my perfectionist years. I can't make myself do anything even vaguely unpleasant anymore. Including getting up in the morning. I was late for work so frequently that I just decided to tell everyone that my hours are ten to five.

      4.1. I let my coworkers believe that I'm a student so that they expect less out of me at work.

5. Sometimes I think that I'm on the verge of a personal literary breakthrough. (This might be the most embarrassing one of all.)

6. A bag of recycling blew off our porch last week during a storm. I avoided picking up the bottles and boxes for like five days, and then the stuff was gone. Did our neighbors clean up our yard?

7. I don't put laundry away anymore. I have a clean clothes basket and a dirty clothes basket.

8. Sometimes I become convinced (By advertising?? By blogs I read?? By advertisements on blogs I read??) that a certain product will solve all the problems in my life.

9. I can't decide whether or not having a blog is stupid.

10. I think that I am nice on the surface, and then mean just underneath the surface. And then nice again under that. A mean sandwich. With nice bread.

11. Occasionally, something annoying happens in my house. Maybe a shampoo bottle is sitting in the shower empty or some belonging of mine is out of place. I instinctually get angry at my roommates before realizing that the annoying thing is actually my fault.

12. I am really happy right now.