And many more

Happy Birthday, Matt! :)

"The sky hides the night behind it, and shelters the people beneath from the horror that lies above." -Paul Bowles

Damn good coffee...and hot!

I was sitting at the kitchen table attempting to do my Ciceronian Discourse assignment with fairly limited success. My yellow legal pad was covered with a variety of drawings, from das Unheimliche (a cross between a home and a toaster oven) to the bourgeois fear of a new class nestled cozily in a Heart of Anxiety. With some stretching of the imagination, they might appear Ciceronian. At least, that's what I'm telling myself. I was staring at the clock which read 9:45. It read the same thing approximately 10 minutes earlier when I looked up. The second hand was ticking on the same second over and over. It's 7:52. And as I sat with my cold nose pressed to the side of my Shakespearean insult mug filled with hot apple cider, the thought of Zombie Jesus as the uncanny doubling of Jesus Christ brought to me such a warm and fuzzy feeling of contentment, I can scarce describe it, dear reader. As if the prodigal doppelgänger had finally come home, had finally found the place where "the other" and the self meet, and, with a fearsome start, realized that they are both the same. I heard Agent Cooper in my head saying, "This must be where pies go when they die."

File under "H" for "Huh?" 5

File name: question
Contents:Me: Do I italicize plays? Steve: Put it in quotes and underline it. Bold the first letter.

File name: raceya
Contents:these slow-footed apostles will never outrun me

File name: It sung
Contents: I was very fond of Ivanhoe as a child.

File name: pplstrange
Contents:I keep thinking you're going to say something about the guns of love disastrous. We're all gonna run for Watchmen and find out it really isn't the Flying Nuns who watch them.

File name: An open letter to Cthulhu
Contents:
Dear Cthulhu,

Remember when we talked about you in my uncanny novella class? Remember the creepy pictures of the water nixies? Epic, my friend, epic.

M

File name: responsibility lies
Contents: I'm counting on you all to keep me honest, and you're doing a pretty shitty job.

File name: gone
Contents: She was so desperate, she hired someone to remember who she was.

File name: doyoureallywanttoknow
Contents: In a fight, who would win: Zombie Jesus or Robert Blake?

File name: blueberry
Contents: my prophet has no idea how much i miss him

File name: food
Contents: Whenever I order pizza online, I see the "Special Directions For This Pizza" field, and I always feel like filling it in with "Cut into rainbow shape and then arrange pepperonis in the shape of a hammer and sickle. Pineapple smiley faces."

File name: lahra
Contents: Laura: or maybe it's a bit like the deity can only be photographed in certain ways?
me: yes. you see normally you just see light... like when moses's face turns all glowworm, ya know?
Laura: yes, like the burning bush
me: quite. and what was it that followed them abouts for like 40 days... was it a mini tornado or something? Hehe
Laura: pillar of fire
me: same diff

File name: no idea
Contents: It’s almost Easter and I pop a speckled malt egg into my mouth. I say, “Jesus dies today. But don’t worry; he’s coming back on Sunday.” Stever says, “The Bible would make a whole lot more sense if he just died—if it just stopped there.” Maybe I’ll watch Passion of the Christ today like I imagine churches all over the United States (sent complimentary copies, no doubt) are watching it as well. Chunks of flesh flying, blood seeping everywhere, and this for the adults and kiddies before they hunt eggs. Your Lord and Savior, El Shaddai, Emmanuel. God is very much with us. You can buy him for $19.99.

File name: oncemorewithfeeling
Contents: My father and Steve (his, not mine) sent Ella (my niece) books and Sesame Street finger puppets for her birthday. My Steve gave Ella a Thomas the Tank Engine Duplos train set. Cookie Monster staged Anna Karenina, throwing himself onto the track: "I just can't take it anymore. Cookies are a 'sometimes food.' Say goodbye to Seryozha for me! Oh, what is C for anyway?!" It was quite moving.

Story of my life

It's Paddington Bear's birthday. I played Paddington Bear in a 4th grade production of "Paddington Turns Detective." I wore a trench coat and a hat that were too big. I carried a suitcase, and I solved the crime. Mr. Brown had lost his marrow. How very British of him, I know. At first, I just assumed someone removed his bone marrow without his permission--some kind of sick trafficking of human body parts. But no, it was just a vegetable. Discovering this was a weighty disappointment. It is the curse of homonyms. You get your hopes up, and then you discover that you've devoted a good deal of time to memorizing lines so that you can wear an absurdly large coat and hat while standing in front of an audience of parents, searching not for mislaid human tissue as you had hoped, but rather, for a prize-winning winter squash.

Investigating some malfeasance

Earlier this week I dreamed that I was in the library and a very large man punched me in the face. Repeatedly. Until I woke up. By the time I woke up, I didn't really care he was punching me in the face. I just stood their taking it, keenly aware of the fact that it didn't hurt like it should, so I was probably sleeping. It is not the best of ways to wake up, nor the most facilitative for falling back to sleep. I would prefer dancing sugarplums. They're creepy, but at least fairly benign.

Yesterday, I dreamed that I was showering and while washing my hair, spiders began to crawl out of the walls and out of my hair. Then my hair fell out in clumps. I didn't scream. I just sighed and woke up.

There are pumpkins outside all the grocery stores. The makeup aisle endcaps have fake eyelashes and black and orange nail polish. There are more and more of those days when it could rain at any moment, and probably will. I used to play Castles: Siege & Conquest. A lot. I've been reading about Writing Center theory. I have thoughts; I just don't feel like articulating them. I have no motivation. I've never been to the circus. We all knew this paragraph was gong no where.

I seem to have overloaded myself with things to do. 4 upper division courses. 1 seminar course with activities that are not difficult, but are time consuming. 14-20 hours of work. A horrible need to get off my ass and apply for grad school. There are also a lot of WC things I just haven't accomplished. 6 hours of sleep a night if I'm lucky. On the a happier note, this week I got a scholarship, renewed my FPP, applied for graduation, and read some really good individual lines of poetry, although I didn't really enjoy the entire poems. I need to spend the weekend accomplishing things, playing catch up. Week 2 and I'm already feeling fucked. You can't win 'em all, I know, but I'm not sure if I can even win enough to save face.

With respect to Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I used to have this book about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I was in 7th grade. It was one of those ones you get at a library book sale. Old with a lot of pictures telling his story. It had a crispy static-loving dust jacket. I bought it. I read it. Well, I read it over and over. Nobody had checked it out in a long time. And it had a quote that I have never found translated quite the same anywhere on the internet. It said that no matter how mad the world may be outside, Christian or unchristian, this world, this beautiful world, is quite indestructible. That always stuck in my mind. When I was having a child. When 9/11 happened. When the economy needs to be "shored up." Ha. I always think of that quote, and I linger on it, and I wonder why, and I think it's because I don't believe it. We can destroy the world. It is destructible. It's no wonder we try so hard to protect it. I wanted Bonhoeffer's certainty. I wanted to believe that no matter what we did, no matter how fucked up things were, this beautiful world was quite indestructible. But I could never believe it. And I wanted to know what he knew that made him think so. What world was he talking about?