Egress/Regress

happy new year's

hey guys, happy new year's from Ca$hville.
just taking a break from being amazing to give you my dad's response to an email I sent him to let him know I had bought a copy of Undercover Brother for him and Pasty.

From : Slim
Sent : Friday, December 31, 2004 8:35 AM
To : samantha
Subject : Re: undercover brother

Solid!

Love,

Dad (aka The Man)

nashville skyline

Many times I've often prayed
In the darkness of my night,
In the brightness of my day

Just so you guys know, I'll be in Nashville, TN, until Sunday, January 2nd. Have a great New Year's kids.

divine

I'm not a big fan of Christmas carols. They're a bit shmaltzy for me, and Bing Crosby scares me. But today I heard (twice) my favorite part of any winter holiday song. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear is maybe my overall favorite, but it can't beat

Fall on your knees!
O hear the angel voices!
O night divine!

It gives me chills every time, regardless of who sings it, Christina Aguilera, Ms. Squillace, or my tipsy Aunt Ginny.

eulogy.

I have separated myself from this enough to post it.

related to the Lawrence poem I talked about, and some other things you probably have no idea exist. elements of this have been or may end up in something else, but maybe not.

I could no more kill this soft-bellied snake than I could stop the way I look at her. Repress his hissing no more than I could erase this memory.

I'm petrified of impending bitterness, a snakebite. No longer relishing cool scales on warm skin. She is the uncrowned queen of my heart.

Your avoidance freezes and your eye burns. Disregard this human education- it's brought you nothing but a loneliness that pulls apart your sense, an emptiness somehow heavy in your throat.

Just look at me, if only once. I want to kiss the marks all down your neck, love you closer than a razorblade.

The voices in me never said, deny this.
I have unlearned so much in your downcast look, learned a thousand times the small curves of your neck. An organic fire- the memory of your breath is golden. Unlearn your cold stares here. I wouldn't lock you out at night.

You're a sickle, I'm a river. You're a crown fire, a frozen shoulder. I am the lonely high water mark.

costume & quote

this is just to remind myself for future costume reference: Gothic Peter Pan.

today in rehearsal- John, our director, spawned a typical quote:

"Damnit Casey! My semen is pure horse tranquilizer!"

a snake and joan of arc

I'm slowly moving my way through piles of work. some things I'm working on:

a paper about Snake, a poem by D. H. Lawrence.

The voice of my education said to me
He must be killed,
For in Sicily the black, black snakes are innocent, the gold are venomous.

also, some writing about this painting

Joan of Arc, by Jules Bastien-Lepage

and this book
Demian, by Hermann Hesse,
and why I love them both.

I do this a lot.

I'll fixate on a handful of songs for a while.

Everything changes - Matthew Sweet
Without you I'm nothing - Placebo f/ David Bowie
the speed of pain - Marilyn Manson
here in my room - incubus
21 reasons - frank black and the catholics (and basically the rest of this album)
blackout - muse
hunter's kiss - rasputina
televators - mars volta
unmade bed - sonic youth
palm sunday - the standard
the blankets were the stairs - sunny day real estate
northern star - hole
southern belles in london sing - the faint
spring-heeled jim - morrissey

i'm such a fucking namedropper.

lessons in being green

For a long time I didn’t understand jealousy. You love me or you don’t. The wandering of your eyes or the cracking of a joke wouldn’t alter my beliefs.

My lips are chapped, but I am learning. It’s mostly missing, and absence and all that. You’re not a bad teacher, but the lesson is hard and my metaphor poor. My exams are coming up.

mustard story

I wrote this in the past month or two, I'm sending it as a writing sample to a couple of schools. I like it. Inspired by mustard and Raymond Carver.

The blacktop was hot beyond the baseball diamond. Sarah fidgeted, waiting for the game to end, shifting from one flip flop to the other. She had no interest in the score, but this summer, like every other she could remember, Darwin was working at the hot dog stand. She remembered, years ago, one of a pony-tailed throng, older brothers’ baseball games. They had giggled in line, no vegetarians then, waiting as he filled their cups with Coke. He slathered on ketchup and mustard, dark hair hanging in his eyes. The girls were that tender age, first beginning to laugh about symbolism, and whispered things about him they didn’t understand.

Their older siblings had known him. Sarah’s brother Jack had gone to school with Darwin for a time. But that was before Jack had joined the military. Now Sarah hardly ever saw her older brother. When she did, her father’s jaw got tight and her mother seemed pale.
Back then Jack had gone to his brother’s baseball games– Jamie, middle child, third baseman– because back then Jamie was around. So Sarah would come along, making eyes at the tall and quiet young man, band t-shirts beneath his dirty striped apron.
She was waiting for him now, light glinting in her eyes from the departing cars. Half-blinded, she saw him walking with a cigarette, idly untying greasy knots.
“I’ve still got a few things to do,” he said. “Pete wants me to clean and lock up.” She nodded.
“I’ll keep you company.”
They held hands, picking their way through cigarette butts and bleachers. “We won,” he told her, indifferent. “Oh. I guess that’s good.” A small pause before he replied. “No one comes to see a losing team, and empty seats don’t sell hot dogs.” She nodded.
He pushed his shoulder against the door in the right place, and it was hot inside. The smell of meat and baseball gloves seemed to get down her throat and in her eyes. She held back a slight cough– you think she’d be used to it by now– while he pulled the shutter across the counter window. Eyes adjusting, she released his hand while he got out the Windex. “So what d’you want to do later?” he asked, spraying down the counter. “I don’t know, see a movie maybe?” She felt distracted.
“Okay.” She eyed the shelves with their streaked glass doors. There were hot dog buns in numbers most people never see, looking sickly in the dim light. Industrial sized tubs of mustard and ketchup. Jamie had once convinced her that this stand used those little packets you get at fast food places. She had imagined immense caverns, cold and underground, filled with small mountains of white and red and yellow plastic, leaves you could never jump into. He had been a funny kid, Jamie. Not much of a student, but smart as hell just the same. And he had been proud of his speed, a constant challenger. Too proud, she now knew. Poor kid. When Jack had found out–
“Baby?” Darwin’s voice interrupted her thought. He had come over to throw out bits of brown paper towel, wet and stained blue from cleaning. “You okay?” She nodded. He pushed his hair back with his hand, narrowed his eyes just slightly, looking at her. She kissed him, a blissful distraction from such scrutiny, pressing her tongue between his teeth. He resisted for a moment, as if to say something more, but she slid her hand beneath his shirt with cool fingertips. He pulled tight against her, breaking the kiss to run teeth and tongue along her ear, doing his best not to damage her earring. He’d been chastised for that before. Unclasping her bra, a breathy whisper, surprisingly gentle for his low voice. “I can never feel close enough to you.” The small room and its distinct smell lost focus for her, replaced by the feel of countertop on the backs of her knees. She was quiet.
Later on, in their apartment, she was doing laundry in the kitchen sink while he slept. Her gaze kept pulling back to a picture, framed on top of the fridge. Two brothers, the same eyes, arms wrapped around each other grinning. Her best friends. The focus was terrible, their faces blurred yet the branches behind them were perfectly defined. She had barely known which end of the camera was front back then. She had barely known a lot of things.

typical afternoon

since college shit has been taking over my life and most of my writing ability, I might as well post some of the things I've been writing for it.

my supplemental essay for Bard College:

School– a blur of classes, raised hands, sidelong glances, inventing new methods of shorthand. Final bell, the end, le fin, get out.

Ten minutes of precious free time, spent at locker doors and snack machines. Rehearsal starts. The plays change, but the core group, the basic schedule, it remains ever-present, a structure to work within. This time around it’s a student-run production of Hamlet II: Better Than the Original, a modern comedy version of Shakespeare’s legendary bummer. Two and a half hours of running lines as a promiscuous Queen Gertrude, laughing ‘till I cry, then home. Macaroni and cheese and, finally, a nap. It’s always been easier for me to sleep in daylight.
I dream about Rasputin’s ghost, returned to pursue an acting career. I dream about an angry pack of wolves running rampant across the countryside, controlled only by my friend-turned-vampire, Christie. I dream in sketchbook animation, riding in a bus past a crosshatched landscape.
My mom wakes me up for dinner. Occasionally I exchange a hot meal for a few more hours of dreaming. If not, dinner table conversation runs the gamut. There are conspiracy theories and tales of high school antics from my father, my mother’s explanations of biology or family trees, my kid brother making noises like a pheasant.
In my room again, I build elaborate paper castles, organizing my work. I like to make lists and then discard them. I like to write essays with my mouth full, do my reading wrapped up in blankets at dusk. A few hours of homework, interspersed with phone calls, bad poetry, Internet communication. At some point, after unintelligible things are scribbled off lists, there is the camera, or the “personal notebook” (I prefer this ambiguous term over “diary”).
So many pages, pictures, chocolate chips later, I start to get sleepy, calculating the too few hours until school. I call up my best friend to say goodnight, nine hundred eighty miles away. I’ll convince him to move closer one of these nights. A lot of mornings, I wake with the phone propped against my cheek, or lost somewhere in the blankets, and smile as I stumble around again.

we idolize each other's faults

so my glass is always sad, but you're half empty
you need someone else to fill you

I'm beginning to realize
I could write to you every day
a page or more of subtly sexual criticism
would it ever stop feeling special?
-I'm beginning to doubt it

I'm nervous about scorpians on lightswitches,
cursing around children,
and saying something dumb in front of you
I've noticed dramatic pauses don't translate well to other mediums.

my mother's heels are clicking in the driveway.

you're a pile of pages and the color green,
you're a series of list that I'm always revising
I am a bad translation of your poetry

our affections are metaphors, our attentions are prose.
we are a green ray and a red sign
passing through a laser sky,
lights reflected through library windows,
and the idea of a borrowed book.

local max/min

I am reaching the local minimum.
in this interval everything has come crashing down.

there's some strange comfort in the idea of hitting rock bottom. there's no place to go but up, right?

fuck, I'm breaking the promise I had you make. a hypocrite in all available senses.

my left eyebrow is slowly growing back. i'm trying to resist the urge to pull it all out again, sigh by sigh.

to a friend, I'm sorry.

to a lover, I'm sorry too.

to myself, I have nothing to say, except I hope you get through this.

there is so much to be burned away.

this is can not be a transformation, this is destruction, this is recreation.

I'm fucking lonely I say, and I thought I heard the same complaint from your lips. I did, but it wasn't meant for my stupid eyes. I crumble.

tick, tock, tick, tock

time feeds on my heart, grows fat and lazy and I no longer feel it.

I want to be numb, I want it all to go quiet. that's a fucking lie.
I can withstand Dylan's stream without drowning.

I'm falling apart, I'm falling apart. this heart, condemned. not to hellfire, to wrecking ball. my new old soul is scaffolding and front porches, the kinds that wrap around in New Orleans.

you have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?
or if you do- I'm too selfish for my own good.

...

tired, but not bad, a day of school and rehearsal, pleasant though too little sleep.

repercussions playing tonight at the rec center. rock that?

i am going to nap.

6 46

The world is so beautiful in pre-dawn rain.

getting up to turn the lights off, sitting down to stare at the sky. soft, beautiful music sent from a friend, matching the quiet roar of rain. The window opened up a crack so I can hear it, the sound of a car passing by. Parts of the world are waking up. Parts of the world are awake, and the breeze stirs something through my air, dusts or feathers or snowflakes.