New Blog Soon

Get excited.

It's about love. The sequel to my birth.

I put my pants on to go the bathroom

and I shouldn't have to.

Let's write a poem

Let's call it something inspirational
or unique
or mythological
or traditional

Let's make it about
the insufferability of modern existence
simple contentment
love
things that are outrageous

Let's put it in meter
like Shakespeare and them
or invent our own
and call it something new

Let's abandon all rules
like we know what they are
like they repress us
and craft our own

Let's create a whole world
of meaning of words
of desolate love
and tragedy-comedy

Let's finish the thing
stuff it in a drawer
then pull it back out
and sign it like that

The Paradigm Shift

So I thought I should post an actual blog, as opposed to my self-serving pieces of fiction. But it's fun, is it not?

Okay, so let's talk. Future. What is the future? My mom keeps pestering me about this abstract concept of having a "job" after college. First off,  such things do not exist. Fairy tale. More likely to find a unicorn after college. So of course I keep trucking in my absolutely esoteric academic focus: writing.

So let me validate myself a little. I'm not going to be so vain as to say that I think I'm just damn good enough to make it on my own, off the written word. It's hard to get people to pay you for what you do with a pen, or a computer keyboard. Like everyone else who wants to make a living off this type of stuff, I'll have to secure myself a "real" job (pfft. unicorns) and just write on my off time. This most likely won't relate at all to what I'm doing in school now, but I think I like the idea of that. I want to spend a few years, maybe a decade or two, pulling my head out of my ass enough to look at everything around me and gain a sense of what the grounded world looks like. I think if I just nosedived into writing as a career, I'd get completely lost in my interiority. I've been in these places, and it's kind of scary to just keep falling into that pit of contemplation.

I don't know. I think I saved a boy's life. He was this sixteen-year old at a Halloween dance party, and he had that hallowed look in his eyes. And me, on some kind of high of happiness and feeling the thrust of life, I gave him this speech. He probably affected me more than I did him, actually. This was probably the first time I'd actually felt like I'd touched someone. I'd removed myself from myself and actually listened to someone else. All night he'd been very annoying, and I'd been telling him to bugger off or whatever. Then I entertained the thought of listening to him, and I don't know. It felt good to just be totally about someone else for once.

Words! I touched him with words! Words aren't really anything in themselves. Once you start giving them agency you lose the ability to manipulate them. You become their slave, and you fear doing them a disservice. Words are really the bridges we build. Like, I have these thoughts in my head, and I want to convey those thoughts to other people. So what I do is I sit down and I write my thoughts on the page, and maybe, hopefully, someday someone out there will happen upon this bridge. Even if we're far removed in space and time, there will be a connection made between us. This is the "meaning" of life, in my book. We're here to relate to each other and form deep relationships with people. Life itself is so full of tragedy, and so we build these connections to each other as a way of creating our own meaning. We define our own "meanings" of life by the relationships we form.

I want to do this. I ramble a lot, and I tend to be redundant, and I can't ever really articulate my thoughts out loud, but I feel like I can connect to people, or maybe just learn to connect to people, through writing. I feel like both of my parents had all this energy boiling up inside them. From what I can tell they both have this intense interiority. It's beautiful and passionate in one way, but sometimes I think they kind of self-destructed because they never found an outlet for this. Instead they tried to fit themselves into social molds they felt comfortable with on the front end and just boiled over on the inside. Even if I just end up telling the story of my life and of the people around me, and this just sits on my bookshelf while I go on forming a family and hopefully starting a career, I think I can be happy. Writing is often tormenting, but I've found the pay off to be so much greater than the pain on the front end. Interiority on the page becomes beautiful, where on the inside it holds the capacity for ruin.

I think these are the reasons I'm telling myself it's okay to take years of very expensive school to craft something that's not strictly utilitarian. It's a process of self-aggrandizement, sure, but I think it's necessary. It's the reason I started this whole blog thing to begin with. To call it therapy would kind of dust at the top of the iceberg, but I think it's a worthy summary. What's the end of this writing? I'm not sure.

I do know that it feels right. When I finally admitted to myself that this was what I was going to try and do with myself, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief. I remember the night I decided this. I was walking over to Fido's to have some coffee with Ellen, and the world suddenly felt full of purpose and brightness where before it had just been a burden, a forest that I had to wade through and cross my fingers that I'd taken the right path. Paths, paths. It's not a path thing. It used to be a path thing. Now? It's fearlessness. The future's hazy and more unpredictable than I can imagine, but I don't fear it. I feel like I have a sense of purpose, and that no matter where I go or what I do, I'll do just fine because I'll be happy.

I do feel happy.

The Girl and the Book and the Ice Cream Truck

Don’t listen to the birds. Don’t smile at the wind when it brushes against your bare arms, or when the sun warms your face just to the degree that the boundary between you and the outside disappears. Don’t laugh at Katie’s joke, her eyes lingering on yours to see if you thought she was funny. Pretend you don’t notice as you continue reading, brandishing the cover of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn to Katie. Maybe she’ll get the idea.

“How’s your book?” she asks you. Guess she didn’t get the idea.

“Good.”

“What’s it about?” She grabs a finger-full of her hay-blonde hair and stares at it while she twists.

Put the book down and fold your hands over your lap. “The beauty of literature is that it can’t be summarized, you see. Sam Clemens—I mean, Mark Twain—he’s a genius author. He creates this world in only so many words, and it pops up in my mind. I don’t see words running around each other, I see trees, and a river, and a young boy and his friend.”

“Sounds neat. What do the boy and his friend do?” She’s involved her other hand at this point, creating intricate twirls around two fingers on each hand.

“I guess since you’ll probably never read it, it wouldn’t be bad to summarize it. I won’t do this for every book I read though.” You raise your eyebrows at her. After she nods, you continue. “Basically, it’s about a boy named Huckleberry. And he frees himself from people who are trying to control him. And he goes down a river, just him and his friend, looking at the world and having fun. It’s on a river.”

“Sounds interesting, I guess. I don’t like to read much though. You know who I like? Beverly Cleary. She’s a wonderful author too.”

You grin to yourself and pick up your book again. In the corner of your eye you see your mother approaching the back door.

She pushes open the back door and leans her head past the three little steps between the kitchen and the patio. “Dinner’s about ready, Lainey. You enjoying yourself? It’s much nicer out here than it was in your dark, stuffy room, isn’t it?”

The leaves in the sky are shimmering with the wind, and the sun makes everything a golden-yellow color. Yeah, mom, you say. Great. Beautiful day.

Now she turns to Katie. “Dinner will be ready soon. Why don’t you girls go wash your hands.” Katie pushes out of the chair. But before she goes in, she pauses. Her ears perk up. She jerks her head around.

“You hear that?”

“No? What is it?” You look up too, and the wind pushes the pages of your book together in a slow fan, but you don’t notice. Five kids that look to be about your age run through your yard to get to the street out in front. You finally hear what they all must have heard—some notes carried by the wind. You didn’t hear it before, but now you listen. The ice cream truck. Last time he came it was the beginning of summer, but you only know this because Katie ran to your house after the USA red white and blue ice cream had already dried sticky on her hands. She turns around to you, her eyes wide and her smile growing ever larger. “I’ll pass,” you say. “I’m coming up on the end of this chapter and I want to finish it before dinner.”

“Come on, Lainey. Don’t be boring.” She runs around the corner of your house along the same path the other kids took.

You force a loud sigh, but Katie’s too far away from the house to hear you. You close your book and rush around the corner of your house. You see Katie and the rest of kids crowded around the ice cream truck parked five houses away. They look silly out there, jumping and screaming for something that’s probably not even as good as the ice cream in their fridge at home, but you run faster toward them anyway. You run and you run and you’re getting closer to them, and the closer the get the faster you run. The wind is whipping past your ears now, and the music is even louder. A smile breaks on your face. And you cough up a laugh. In fact you can’t stop laughing. Even as you skip up to Katie you can’t stop the laughing.

And now you’re running back to your house with Katie, the marshmallow eyeball melting on your tongue. Katie’s dripping her ice cream all over her hand, the blue running over the red running over the white. You might have scolded her, or you might have suggested that you walk. To savor the flavor of the ice cream.

You lift up your strawberry-chocolate fist and slurp up the bits of ice cream melting across your hot skin. You take it all in.

The Inescapable

Morning streams in through the window veiled by a pale, translucent curtain across a square room with squarely-kept bed sheets and watches and notebooks and pens and maps sorted neatly atop dressers. In this new morning I am created. I am first short on the pillow when he raises his head, until he stands, and I stretch across the floor and up the wall. I cross the room with him all the way to the bathroom door. In the sheltered, windowless darkness of the bathroom I disappear.

The day passes much like any other. I follow him from meeting to meeting. He discusses Railowsky business, and my mouth moves in conjunction with his. He greets his guests, and I extend my flat claw towards theirs. The others and me, we touch. I feel nothing.

Eventually night comes. He might be in his well-groomed den, out in California commissioning new railways to be built, or at the River City Hotel seeking some company for at least just tonight. In these hours he pushes me to the corners—dulling lamps and closing curtains. He shuts doors, walks along walls. If he had left a bathroom light on from a hurried morning and I am cast starkly against a back wall, his breath will jump. He will curse at me, with the same mouth we used to gain three hundred more miles between here and Arkansas. I am silent.

After a few moments he steadies himself and I tumble after him quietly to bed. I tip this way and that, drunk from a long day of following and obeying, of fulfilling everything that had been cast before me with perfect precision, with no protest.

With his last move he extinguishes the last bedside lamp and rests easy, as I have gone. There is no light to create me, and no eye to see me. Perhaps for these reasons he can only sleep at night, when the darkness closes in around him, and all that’s left is just his own singular self in the room. He won’t say. But for eight hours I will wait in anticipation of my creation. In the morning the man will have forgotten that I am here. He will glance up from his pillow and wonder whether today will be the first day he can evade his shadow. And I will be there to reassure him that today will be just like yesterday, and we will continue our happy and comfortable life together.

What the fuck is this

Love? What the holy fuck. It's god awful. It's consuming.

It's a drug. Maybe it's worse than a drug, but I'm too young to know. When you have it, there's nothing in the world that feels more natural or more warm. Love lets you know there's a reason to live, it gives you reason. But then it's gone. And like a drug there are withdrawals, though I have to say I've never really experienced drug withdrawals. Maybe I'm wrought-iron. But love, when it's gone you feel nothing but a vacuum of existence. You, me. I feel empty. I keep looking for something to fill that, and maybe that's my biggest flaw as a person. Maybe that's the core of my issues with my mother, because she never showed me the kind of everlasting love that comes with family, the kind that everyone deserves. I've seen it in other families, had a taste for it, but it was always a tease. I knew it was connected to my own sexual relationships, and that it was superficial at best (even if genuine).

The problem is lust can fill that hole almost as well as love can. It can make you believe anything. The kick is that it's temporary. In the end you realize you're just as alone as you were before. The difference is someone else is there, feeling lonely, trying to use you to fill their hole too. And this looks to be the most unlike-Love thing that can possibly be.

Create something for yourself no one can take away. Perhaps derive a form of self-love, just not the narcissistic kind. Maybe I need to seek a constant state of serenity and contentment rather than chase the highs and lows of romantic love. Or perhaps I need to seek both, but if only one have the former.

Bah. This is too much work.

The Entire Month of July

I don’t know why I remember this one summer night more than all the others. It’s pretty typical of the summer I’ve had so far—all of us kids meeting up in the parking lot behind the tennis courts. It’s the park where me and a guy came years ago to escape parental restraints. Over there, by the chain-link baseball backing we got close to kissing but never did. Tonight, though, Daniel and Andrew are tossing a Frisbee back and forth. I’m leaning on the trunk of Andrew’s car, the cigarette smoke wafting its way up to my eye no matter how many times I try to match the direction of the wind. Andrew’s just caught the Frisbee perfectly, and his eyes blink over in my direction. He looks back to Daniel and thinks I didn’t see him. I gaze past him too, not wanting to admit I’d been watching him either. The sky is a shit brown behind the clip-art perfect skyline the woods make, and I don’t care that it’s pollution from the power plant across the lake that clouds our view of the stars. The Frisbee hits the pavement and makes a god-awful scraping sound. Daniel grins none-too-innocently up at me as he brings the Frisbee off the pavement, but I know he’s playing the part of a lady killer with only two goes at sex under the belt. I raise an eyebrow and a corner of the mouth back at him, continuing our little game of false seduction. I toss the cigarette butt behind me. My hand feels empty and restless. I focus on Andrew in front of me. He’s talking something about what to do tonight. Like every other night this summer.

Broken up, again

This heart's already been broken. Broken up, broken in. We single ladies like to imagine ourselves as wild horses, as fast and carefree as what I imagine the wind is like on the prairie planes. At least, John Wayne's fine figure and whip-around hair seemed to show off wild winds like that. No, it's just loneliness that I feel right now. There's no more "Andri and ...". No texts or missed calls on the phone. I'm not waiting to get away from home with anyone. It's just me, sitting here, wondering if tonight will be any different from any other night. TV. Aimless driving trying to figure out something to do. Yeah, they're all the same. This takes me back to middle school, actually. I'm now living in the same room I had back then, and I can remember all those nights I imagined what it would be like to have friends. I fantasized about boyfriends, though my imagination couldn't stretch far enough to see that kind of thing happening. It's the same solitary one-ness that I have right now as I had back then. By now I should have made myself a fortress of some kind of friendship, something impervious to changing boyfriends. I should have been kinder, and wiser, to all the people who tried loving me and just ended up rejected. This childhood hell I'm living in right now, maybe I deserve it. I just don't know where to go from here. I can't see a pathway back up, but I guess I'll just have to force my way. Throw up some ropes, dig out some stairways, something. There's always a way, right? I just need some time.

I just need some whiskey.

At War with Nature

Thoughts from last night. Rough, but hopefully logical enough.

Darwin revolutionized human self-awareness when he said all beings existing here on Earth survived because of a perfection attained through evolution, natural selection. If a species were alive and thriving, it was because its specific genetic combination matched its environment. Humans, too, had undergone evolution like this. From monkeys we learned to walk upright, craft tools, and become the super species we are today.

Yet we humans are different. We build cities, make art, ignite industry; everything we do stands on a tall stack of technological advancement. What made us so different? Many scientific studies show us humans as having a good intellect, to be sure, but one that doesn't necessarily surpass that of other animals. Some of them have been said to have even greater intelligences, like the dolphin. Self awareness, perhaps, has allowed us to become so great. However recent findings have shown other animals to exhibit similar behavior--an elephant can paint his own portrait, for example; even use his imagination to put a flower in his trunk. So what makes us so different? What part of the evolutionary process led us to create cities and launch off the planet? Taking imagination into account, there is no bounds to the human experience.

Consider for a second the imperfection of the human race, at least biologically. If Darwin says that each species thrives because all genetic mutations that were unideal for survival led to that species' extinction, then why must so many of us wear glasses? Surely a caveman who couldn't see his prey in the hunt would have eventually starved to death, or even become the prey himself. If natural selection were in effect, the genetic mutations that results in blurry vision would have been annihilated long before humans even began harvesting wheat. Consider also our hairless form. In winter we clothe ourselves in heavy jackets and still suffer from sickness; in summer we wear clothing as skimpily as possible and douse ourselves with ice, water, and juices. No other animal does this. They can grow a thicker fur and burrow in the snow, or fly south for the winter, or go into hibernation. For humans there is no biological mechanism to withstand the extremes of winter. Even with our clothing and housing, humans are just barely capable of withstanding all the Earthly seasons. If the human form existed before sweaters, as it must have, then how did we survive?

If humanity defies the laws of evolution and natural selection, then how have we survived? Even thrived so much so that our current crises most relate to annihilating other species and polluting nature. Why are we so dangerously different from everything else on Earth?

The answer is the question.

Why have so survived if we are so different, and so naturally unequipped to deal with our environment? We are unequipped to survive nature, so we create our own. We are different because we modified; we created an artificial nature. The human form was unable to naturally cope with the extremes of winter, so before our extinction we were able to craft clothing to keep us warm. To craft the clothing, we had to make tools, extract wools and furs from the animals we hunted. We had to teach each other, and learn. We had to make a system of writing to pass down this knowledge that went far beyond our instincts. With our houses we made our own environment in which we could live comfortably. We made roads to guide us from one establishment to another, to connect us to the rest of us. We made cities to fortify against natural disaster and created economic systems through which we could support ourselves even in drought or flood. And technology is our communication. As complex and fantastic it is, at its core technology is our means of talking to one another, of sharing and learning. If our fragile bodies someday succumb to overwhelming natural disaster, technology will be able to withstand everything and perhaps serve as a testament to our existence.

We live because we defy evolution. We were too fragile to survive on our own, but instead of waiting for evolution to take over, we created our own nature. We altered our bodies, we created concrete jungles and asphalt rivers. We outsmarted evolution. Now we are at risk of completely overtaking nature with our own artificial brand. Either the Earth must change, or we must.

What is this shit

Seasons change, people grow.

But every day looks just like the last one, and I keep trying to remember what makes you different than before.

I think truth looks something like this. I think it also relates to the thousand Facebook groups entitled "Middle School Emotion That For Some Reason I Still Think Is Important."

There's a lyric that goes "Nothing ever happens." Actually, the full lyric is "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens." We work so hard all the time to ensure that nothing happens--we graduate, we plan things, we go to school, we study hard, all to ensure that nothing bad happens. We take all the safeguards, yeah we do. Nevertheless, things do happen. But they're not really what happen. Because yeah, there's some singular event that breaks up monotonity and throws you into a twist. Yet that's not what gets us the most, is it? It's all about what happens after something happened. The fallout hurts so much more than the blast, and perhaps it's this that we're trying to safeguard ourselves against. "I don't want things to change because then I'll have to deal with change, and I don't like that." It sounds crazy when you say it like that, but I see myself falling into this trap all the time. It's incredibly painful to consider some fundamental change in my life. But would it be so bad? If Heaven's the place where nothing happens, then hell is where everything happens. Don't want to go to hell, so things must stay the same. Heaven shouldn't be the ideal though, because stagnation is perhaps even worse than all this.

Which is to say...

A Story?

What's this? A short story?

I know, I know. But this fiction workshop class has got me finishing a few things.

This story, "A Painting on the Wall," is not what I wanted it to be, but it is what I submitted to the class. The curse of deadlines, yeah?

So here it is for you to seeka now. Enjoy it, maybe. Tell me what you think. At the moment I hate it so I thought posting it like this would help. We'll see.

I'll also post the changes I wanted to do later on, after a while. For now I'll let it sit in peace and be whole.

A Painting on the Wall

A stack of fading novels, a dresser, a bed-side table, and a white wooden door marked the four corners of Carey Dufin’s bedroom. In the center of the room, on the four-post bed, Carey sat among a littering of papers, CDs, and clothes. A knock on the door echoed flat in the room.

“Yo yo yo what’s going down, Carey?” A blonde leapt through the door and jumped on Carey’s bed. “How come you didn’t answer my texts?”

“Hey Allison,” she muttered back as the blonde cleared a surface to sit on. Carey paused. “You texted? I think I lost my phone.” She shuffled through the stuff on her bed. “Damn. Where is that phone? I can only keep track of something so long as I don’t need it.” She tossed her body over the side of the bed and shuffled through a stack of clothes on the floor.

“I’ll call it.” Allison dialed Carey’s number and rested the phone on her knee. “So now that I’m here do you want to do something? I brought some green. Aaron and the guys are going down to the dam tonight, too, if you want to do that. It’s right next door, maybe we could do both?”

Carey popped her head back up and thrust the phone in the air, its ringtone blasting through the room. “Another successful rescue.”

“So? What about tonight? Girl party? Down to the dam?”

“They’re going down to the dam? Is that what you want to do?”

“Yeah. I think they’re smoking too. I don’t know, I figured it’s been a while since it was just us.” Allison scanned through the text messages on her phone.

“You sure this doesn’t have to do with Matt?” Carey asked, looking through her eyebrows at Allison

“Are you kidding? He was boring in the first place. I only got with him because I was bored. Then I got bored with that. Whatever. He’s not going to be there anyway, I think he found some boring girl to go out with the Phonic Grill.” She looked up at Carey. “Make a decision—are we hanging here or at the dam?”

“Alright. We can hang here. Just give me a few hours to get my shit together. I’m going to have dinner with my dad tonight, I think. He’s been getting nostalgic on me lately so it’s best if I just give in and act the sweet little daughter.” Carey looked to the corner of the room with the novels, feeling guilty because she hadn’t read them. She would probably read the first and last pages of the book. Everything else could either be forgotten or made up.

“Well do you mind if I keep the stuff here? It still weirds me out to be riding dirty. You know.” Allison reached into her purse and withdrew a little plastic baggy of green clumps.

“Absolutely.” Carey grabbed the bag to examine it. She put it back down on the bed. “Come back around nine. We should be finished with dinner by then.”

Allison got off the bed and gathered her things in her bag and threw it over her shoulder. “Keep that phone glued to your hand, okay Carey?”

“Yeah yeah. And you don’t go stalking Phonic Grill.” Carey raised her eyebrows at Allison.

“Shut up. You don’t know me.” They laughed.

Allison left the room, shutting the door behind her. The room again became quiet. Carey fell back on her bed, flung her hands over her head, and let out a grand sigh. Her right hand hit the baggy. She pulled it in front of her face and rotated the green inside. Looked like two grams. Definitely enough for the lightweights.

She got some rolling papers out of her bedside table and rolled a little joint. Just a little one, Allison wouldn’t mind. The stuff was pretty decent too, so it wouldn’t take much.

The skunky smell filled her nose, and she forgot what it was like to smell anything else. As a faint cloud of smoke filled the room, Carey felt herself take a step back from reality.

Pulling herself off the bed, she went over to her window and struggled to push the heavy thing up. She’d taken the screen out a few years ago so she could sit out on the roof. The neighborhood, the stars, the trees; they all formed a grand panorama for her daily life. They didn’t change much, but neither did she. Then, ten years later, everything looked bigger and time-worn. The window gave, and the smoke left the room slowly.

The tree outside her window, the tree that had been there since she was little, shimmied in the breeze. She used to imagine she would use the branch as a launching pad once she developed the ability to fly. By now she’d forgotten how to wish for the impossible, but the tree branch stayed there in her window. It greeted her in the morning, and beamed in the light that shone out her windows at night.

A gust of wind shook one of the leaves loose and pushed it inside the window. It hit the floor, danced each side hit the ground and then took off. It slipped under the door. Carey stared at the now empty floor, trying to picture the leaf again.

Carey opened her door and followed it to the other side, but it had disappeared. Only two possible routes for it to go in the hallway. She looked in the bathroom, where she had once sailed the seven seas looking for a golden treasure. Her voyage had failed back then; she hadn’t been able to find the box with golden baubles. She had lost the battle with the great Cyclops that protected the treasure. Definitely no dancing leaf here.

The other possible route, the only remaining destination for the little traveler, was down the steep stairwell. When she was younger she feared a black pit lurked beneath every stair step. She would leap over as many steps as she could, no sooner than a toe touched the cold wood of the stair. These things were irrational, though, and with age Carey had learned to walk slowly and gracefully. There were no bottomless pits, only stairs. No dangers, no falling. Only stairs.

As Carey rounded the corner into the kitchen, she saw her father sitting at their small glass table with a plate of peas, corn, and pork chops in front of him. Still no leaf. The buffalo of a man perched carefully over the glass table, his mass levitating in the air above a small white plate. He was putting his knife to the chops when he realized she’d entered the room, and then put it back down on the table.

“Everything’s on the stove if you want to make yourself a plate.”

“Oh, okay. You don’t have to wait for me. I’m just going to heat up some soup.” She reached into the pantry and pulled out a can of vegetable soup and dumped it into a saucepan.

“So what are your plans for tonight? I saw Allison leave earlier. I didn’t know you were still hanging out with her. How’s she doing?” He picked up his knife and fork again.

“Uh, good. Just trying to finish high school.” Carey turned her back to her father and stirred the soup with a spoon.

“Carey.” He put his fork and knife back down on the table. “Why don’t we talk anymore?”

Carey felt his big black eyes pounding against the bag of her head. “What do you mean? We talk all the time, Dad.”

“Not like we used to. What about our philosophical debates? You still think about all that stuff, don’t you? I gave you some books. I thought you might like them.” He paused, and chuckled to himself. “You used to have the greatest imagination. One time you locked yourself in the bathroom and just pretended for hours that you were navigating a ship through the high seas.” She knew his eyes were glazing now, looking at the past as if it were some painting on the wall.

“You punched a hole in the door trying to stop me, Dad. You were mad at me. You’re forgetting that. You always got mad at me for pretending.” Carey turned away from the soup and looked at the buffalo man still hovering over his plate.

“It was for your safety, Carey, and you’re forgetting that. I have nothing against a wonderful imagination. Just don’t get hurt.”

“Don’t get hurt? Everything to you is ‘getting hurt.’ I’m not going to live like that.”

The buffalo got up from the table, his chair sending a loud screech through the kitchen. “Maybe you’re right, Carey. You’re just my little girl, I guess, and you’ll be gone soon. You’re already gone so much.” He put his arms around her and squeezed, and Carey let him. She didn’t put down the spoon.

“Okay, let’s debate something.” Carey pulled away from her father and turned back to her soup, nearly boiling by now.

“Chicken or the egg?” He stood back and crossed his arms.

She looked skeptically at him, then focused on the soup again. “The animal kingdom. There was no ‘chicken’ or ‘egg’ except as defined afterward when the two were already fully developed.”

“Atta girl.” He returned to his plate and finished his meal in silence.

Carey made her way through the thicket of woods that separated her house from the park at the dam. She and her friends had worn the path thin, but tonight she was walking alone. The full moon cast an eerie, blue-white glow, making each turn look much like the last one. Carey half-considered the moon to be bewitching her path. Unlikely. One more turn and she’d probably be at the park

When Carey surfaced from the thicket, she saw four tweedle-dums hanging their feet over the stone embankment. She hid behind a tree that stood solitary nearby.

“Goofy, goofy, did the bed-man crawl up and over the waterside wall,” she whispered after the boys. “Boo!” She jumped out and threw her hands in the air.

“Care, that you?” One of the boys got up and walked toward her.

“Has anyone ever told you that you walk like a cowboy, Aaron?” She bypassed him and sat where he’d gotten been sitting. “What’s up, guys? How’s the moon treating you? Anyone paler than they were before?”

“Hey Carey,” the boy to her left said.

“Hey Jack. Do you want to do something fun tonight? Any of you suckers want to give up the nightly toil and meet an adventure head on?” She jumped up and assumed a captain’s stance, gazing upon the wild seas before her.

“What did you have in mind?” Jack and the rest looked up at Carey.

“Who knows what’s in the mind. It’s a bunch of blood vessels and neurons firing. That doesn’t matter. What I want is to make a grand discovery.”

“I don’t know, Carey.”

“Come on. You know how many times we’ve been to this park? For all the time we’ve spent here, we’ve only ever sat right in this spot.” Carey looked out on the lake again. The stone wall that sat just above the water’s edge let her look out on the water, forming a flatter than flat glass surface. The moon’s reflection dripped from the sky. This one spot in this one park. It was the only place to see the lake like this, and the moon. “I mean. Yeah, it’s gorgeous. But are you satisfied with that? Let’s go forth and conquer! Seek gold! Become great where once we were destitute!”

Aaron grabbed Carey from behind, put his arms through her arms and linked his fingers together around her stomach. “You’re captured, captain,” he whispered in her ear.

Carey pushed him off. “Get away, you ruthless cowboy. Your kind can’t know what it is to feel the passion of the sea, to seek honest adventure. Back and forth with the cows all day, guitars at night. You know nothing of noble exploration and discovery.”

“Come on, Carey. We’re just chilling. Want to chill with us?”

“I’ll seek my profit elsewhere.” Carey stomped back into the woods, a realm that was definitely worth knowing.

Allison blocked the path back to Carey’s house.

“I thought I might find you here. Lose your phone again, missy?” Allison swayed to one side and put a hand on her hip. “I ain’t no holla back girl.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I just, got lost I guess. My phone got lost. Probably up in that heap of a room.” She smiled an apology, raising her eyebrows. “But good, you’re here now. Listen, Allison. We’re going on an adventure.”

“Did you bring the green?”

“Yeah. I rolled a few joints for us earlier. Here.” Carey handed her the joint and lighter.

“So, what’s this adventure about?” Allison lit the white paper, burning the end orange-red.

“I don’t know, but we’ll find it.” She marched off the path and through the underbrush of the thicket.

Carey slashed vines out of the way with her knotted staff as she climbed, the slope growing steeper and steeper the further on they went. Further behind, Allison dusted the ground with powder that raised the vines and the undergrowth again, as natural as they had once been and healthy enough to flourish.

“If I remember correctly the Crags of Damnation are just around the bend, leading us directly to the Great Cave. The Cyclops wouldn’t dare follow us there.”

“What if we just go back to the clearing and sprinkle stuff around us, so we’re immune, you know?” Allison breathed heavily behind Carey. “And I’ve got the munchies. Can we find some magic berries or something? Ale?”

“Don’t lose hope, Allison. He can’t gain on us. If there’s a treasure at the end and a beast in pursuit, then this is our path. Seek only forward, and see only success.” She quickened her pace, beating her staff rhythmically into the ground.

The pair surfaced from the woods atop a stone precipice, looking over a rushing waterfall. To the right, rough crags formed a precarious staircase leading up to the Cave.

“Is that the Big Cave?” Allison bent over, catching her breath.

“Great Cave. Yes, it is. Allison, can you taste it?”

“What?”

“You know, like something that’s in the room with you. Success is in the room with us. We can taste it. Yeah?” Carey resumed her captain’s stance.

“Yeah I can. Alright, let’s do this.”

The two of them scaled the crags one at a time. Below them dark pits warned against a dreadful tumble. What a dreadful tumble that would be. But if they went on, slow and careful, they would reach the top alive and well enough to go on even further.

Breathing much heavier by now, Allison and Carey had scaled the crags and ascended in front of the Great Cave. The cave breathed calmly with the coming and going of soft winds, so slight they caused only the smallest shiver.

“I think this is it,” Carey said, trying to look past the darkness of the cave. She couldn’t see anything. “Keep on, move forward, I guess.”

Once inside, Allison pulled out the lighter and sparked its flame. As they neared the back of the cave, they saw a tiny dwarf sleeping on a stool with his with a pet owl beside him. Carey shook his shoulder.

“Mmh. Hmm. Oogh. Yes. I’m awake. I’m awake now, see it?” He opened his eyes and looked up at his disturber. “Who are you?”

“Uh, I think I’m Carey. Who are you?”

“What? Oh, well I don’t guess anyone’s asked me that before. Who should I be?”

Allison held the flame closer in an attempt to illuminate the man’s face. “What do you do, mister?” The flame showed his scraggly beard, broken glasses sitting atop a crooked nose, and a hat with a hole where it bent.

“I tell stories, fair lady. This is my owl. He seeks out the stories from above and returns to me.” He reached down to the now-attentive owl and petted its head. “Now tell me, what’s your story?”

“I think we’re in the middle of one, actually. We’re seeking a treasure. Have you heard of it?”

The dwarf laughed heartily at this question. “Yes, I think I, ooh hoo hoo.” He stopped his sentence to laugh again. “Here, I’ll take you.” The dwarf stood up, still only reaching about waist-height, and revealed a fist-full of shimmering powder. He then stepped onto the stool and filtered the dust through his fingers onto their hair. The flame extinguished, the cave went dark, and the world dropped out.

Carey opened her eyes in a clearing. The morning sun beamed through the tops of trees and formed shifting patterns of light on the ground. Tiny fairies, no bigger than specks of dust floating in the air, flew inside the shafts of sunlight. Some landed on Carey’s head. A shower of leaves fell on the far end of the clearing.

A dwarf with all his stories of travel and the forest, a treasure chest overflowing with fair dresses and gold jewelry, a tree trunk exquisitely hollowed out, and a portal in the shape of a birch tree’s trunk formed the boundaries of the clearing. She grinned. A pounding sound echoed in the clearing. Looking over at the birch tree, Carey saw her father’s head peeping through.

“Carey, honey. I made some pancakes if you girls are interested.” He walked into the clearing and kissed Carey on the forehead. As he walked back through the door he shut the birch tree behind him.

A text message reminder buzzed on her phone. “No smoke tonight? Where are you?” Guess that was from last night. Probably should have kept her phone on her. Things worked out in the end.

Carey pushed off her covers and shoved her feet over the side of her bed, landing among some papers. A breeze brushed by her, making her shiver. Allison slept curled up on top of the covers on the other side of the bed.

Carey walked over to the window and looked outside to see if her neighborhood was still the same as it’d always been. A few leaves laid at her feet, probably from the tree outside. Spring made everything wild and windy. She picked up the novel on top of the stack, stuffed it under her arm, and climbed out onto the roof.

Alright Goddamn

Allow me to scream here for a few moments.

My roommate on the other side of the room is convulsing in some kind of shrieking seizure of happiness. I'm not familiar with this. Maybe she's dealing with stress.

I'm getting to the point in the semester when I'm chalking up all my inability to do elbow-grease school work to the tyranny of my professors. Who knows. All I know is I'm damn ready to be out of here, out of school in general. Sometimes I wish I could just go and work at Dollar General all day, but I know that wouldn't work. Stress is my lifestyle choice. Why? Probably something that makes me a bad person, like how it makes me feel superior to other people in some way.

It seems like everyone's motivation in life is to become somehow superior to someone else. Maybe that's my cynical viewpoint and it's overly simplistic. It's got to be--else how do we explain love? How do we explain parenting. Sure there's some hierarchy, but it comes out of love, right? Even if put cynically, parenting comes out of a perverse self-love that makes us see our child as a version of ourselves that has the chance to do it right.

Where does this desire to be superior come from? I'm in this class right now where this professor keeps harping on courtship and rivalry, and oh how aren't they really the same thing after all. Bitch please I've got conspiracy theories coming out my ears just give me a coffee and your full attention and I'll prattle at you for so long that the entire world seems like it's out to get you. You against the world.

Yet there's something to this rivalry thing--she talks about how rivalry is the whole same-but-in-the-opposite-direction from courtship. These two happen when we notice someone we're similar to, and the distinction comes when we try to either draw them closer or distinguish ourselves as superior. Okay, modern life. We don't use those words anymore. The ideas stick to me, though. Like I think about the girls I hate the most, and they're probably the ones who are most like myself, just gone awfully wrong with bad intentions and malevolent desires. They're evil I promise. I'm surrounded with people like myself so I want to make myself seem superior if only to seem different. Difference is better? Maybe.

I've been coming to the realization that my mentality is very much Me against the world, I'm a one-man army with the purest cause. I don't know. Am I just voicing what it's like to feel interiority and feel protective over my own identity? Are others just more fashioned to see themselves primarily as social beings. I've always been a loner, so it's very likely that's where I get all this stupid interiority. I actually used to play with my navel.

Also. I find myself kind of inventing my childhood. Re-interpreting, if you will. It definitely wasn't coherent, I can tell you that right now. There wasn't any grand thesis that said "Andri's childhood will be a symbol of rejection and isolation, the cause of her tragic self-protectionism." I generally construct myself as a sad character in the movie of my life. My fiction professor said he did the same thing too. I pity myself, but I consider it horrible charity (as well as a form of claiming superiority over me) when someone else pities me.

My hair barrette says "Made in France." I learned to use the word "francophile" as a derogatory remark recently (Andri, learn some new words. Read a book sometime.) which is a new fun kind of way to insult people, but it also kills a little bit of me that still wants to image I can live the Parisian bohemian lifestyle. We have these foolish fantasies, but should we give them up just for that? Do I have to be so "real" all the time. Haha, I feel so street compared to these Vandy kids. GOD are they naive. But then the hipsters are just stupid too. I don't know. Don't judge, you know.

Get some sleep fucker.

Also, I agreed with myself that this would be the last meaningless post about my fee-hee-heelings. From now on, solid material with purpose! Or was that the French Revolution?