come downstairs

I drove through bridges and tunnels,
alleyways and crowded streets
to meet You in a shady hotel
on the bad side of town;

an occurrence once repeated earlier
with two other girls.

Though this time was different.
I wasn’t lying when I said
“Because of You, I burn brightly”
and then You began to cry

Perhaps this should have waited longer but I really need to update. I just got back from a trip to New England and have finished a short story that I’ll be putting up here soon. For now though, a 50 word story from a few months ago when it was still really cold.

From my whiskey soaked room and mental state I can see the masses outside on the campus, hunched over and walking through the snow. They are cast as black figures, contemplative things, with the lights and their shadows stretching over the small clearings cut by sidewalk and piles of snow.

The drain sucked ravenously at the water

leaving my feet and body an island.

With the water gone, I was left

Soaked

with my thoughts

“It’s hard out here” said Richard as he popped antacid pills and took a long pull on his cigarette.

“Rich, you know you can’t smoke in the mall” I said looking nervously at him.

“Sometimes you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet. I break one of the mall’s little rules but I take care of the bigger ones,”

Richard was a former administrator who had suddenly quit his job and decided to be a vigilante mall cop. I didn’t know Richard until his outlaw days but I could imagine that he was the quiet type. Generally he only talks to the unfortunate victims that he takes into custody and even then he doesn’t say much then. Suddenly I heard movement.

“Let’s go.”

Richard was off, and I was trailing behind him scanning around trying to get a grasp on what was going on situation-wise. I looked up ahead at the Cinna-Bon stand and I knew what Richard was going to do. My stomach dropped.

I saw a young girl, probably about 11, eating a Cinna-Bon brand cinnamon bun looking around as if she could sense the danger she was in. Richard took a leap at her, feet first into the girl’s stomach. She dropped like a lead balloon. Gasping, I ran over the both of them and as Richard stood up and looked at the victim I asked him what she did wrong.

“Drug smuggling”

“What?”

“Yeah.”

Richard rarely makes a whole lot of sense.

we were lost

it was dark

you babbled away,

lit up by the car stereo.

I tried to remember

Most of my favorite worldly possessions are stowed away in various places in my car right now:

Cameras and various lenses

A Beckett book called Murphy

The various plates and cookware that I used during the school year in our awesome apartment

My ipod

and soon my computer.

I cooked myself bacon and eggs this morning because I didn’t go out to eat with friends last night. I thought I deserved a little treat for making an awful decision. I am normally fearful to eat eggs unless they are scrambled, but I ended up making fried eggs. I cooked them the wrong way, though, so that the yolks ended up being like the yolks in a boiled egg. I am normally fearful of those boiled egg yolks, their fast discoloration and questionable odor turn me off. I ate them anyway.

One of my best friends is in London right now, she didn’t see me graduate. Most of my other friends are at home, but too far away for me to easily hang out with. I feel like a fish out of water.

Spring has sprung. Enjoy it.

I was recently interviewed by the famous Glen Binger (of Lo-Fidelity, 50 to 1, Broad Set Writing Collective, and The Only Blog Ever fame) and answered the following questions. I thought I would share the questions and answers with you.

Glen: What do you want to be interviewed about?

Me:I want to be interviewed about how great I am. Rather, I would like to hear about it, but you ask me questions about how great I am.

Glen:2. Too bad. How do you feel about your writing? What about your photography? You’re also a very talented cartoonist [which you should start posting on your blog], what do you feel towards that, as well?

Me: I feel like I need to improve my writing a lot. I have developed very little as a writer because I have only written for school and stuff. My photography I’m pretty proud of, but I probably need to develop more that way too. I don’t feel like a cartoonist though, it’s something I used to do all the time (and the first way that I learned to really express myself but lately I don’t do it as much. It’s also a bitch to put on blogs.

Glen: 3. Do you ever see yourself doing something in the future other than what you went to college for?

Me: All the time.

Glen: 4. Ideally, what is your ultimate fantasy?

To have statues made in my honor made of material that will withstand the apocolypse in 2012

Glen: 5. What have you been listening to lately? Any favorite bands or artists that have fueled any of your present work?

Me: Good question. Andrew Kaspereen got me into the Knux and they’re really cool rap/indie stuff. I’ve been into the Knife since last year but I just got into the Thermals, good indie rock. I am not a fan of bands that do not start with the.

Glen: 6. Favorite book? Favorite author?

Me:Favorite book right now is “No One Belongs Here More Than You” by Miranda July, but my favorite author is Franz Kafka and will be until I die.

Glen: 7. If you had a super-power, what would it be?

Me: Flight. Or the ability to look super sexy and influence people.

Glen: 8. What are your plans for after graduation?

Me: Dying, hopefully. Graduating is making me antsy and nervous

Glen: 9. Where do you see yourself in thirty years?

Me: Dead, hopefully. Or having a nice teaching job with a wife and kids. If I don’t have that I would like to be travelling as a photographer or something cool

Glen:10. Where do you want to live?

Me: These questions are really difficult. I think I would like to live in Boston soon, but somewhere on the West coast before I die. Something cool has to be going on over there.

Glen: 11. Do you get any inspiration for your photography from your location?

Me: Sometimes, but it’s generally about the people I’m with. Cos I generally bring people that I really like to photograph and I want to show them as people

Glen: 12. When you started Lo-Fidelity, did you think twice about what it could turn into?

Me: Yes. I wanted people to love me and my friends

Glen: 13. Why did you start Lo-Fi?

Me: I was bored and wanted to read something new.

Glen: 14. Is it ever going to be taken off hiatus? I know a lot of people are still waiting for Issue 3 to be mailed out. I guess I’m asking if you think there’s going to be a future for Lo-Fidelity.

Me: I would like there to be, but I don’t know. It’s a fuckin’ recession out there.

Glen: 15. If you had to choose between being a Jedi or a Sith Lord, which would you choose?

Me:This might be the ultimate question. Probably a Jedi but practice Sith stuff on the side.

Just as a side note: Lo-Fidelity is the literary zine that me and Glen started some time ago that I have been too lazy/busy to put out the much cursed third issue.

Things that I just did:

1. Stood on my chair
2. Criticized Andrew on his tie-tying technique
3. Stood in the bathroom and pounded on the wall
4. Looked at text where my friend Ashley described her family as “like me when I’m cranky and drunk”

My life is filled with interesting sauce but I am bored right now. This is a picture of my friend Pete. He is not Pistol Pete but some people refer to him that way.

Ashley watched her cat watching her drink water from in a champagne bottle and noted the curiosity in its eyes. “Today may be strange she thought” as she walked out of her third floor apartment into the world below. Casting aside any thoughts of foreshadowing, she started to walk down the street to the liquor store to complete her errands for the day. She was living in a city (she wasn’t exactly sure of the name) and was finding it difficult to adjust. Before she had moved here, Ashley figured that she could get along pretty well with anyone; whenever she was walking the boardwalk on her old shore town she knew the appropriate grunts, coughs, and glances at the ground that would ease her stunted social skills. Now that she was here though, people seemed to expect different things from her.

Anyway, with her eyes planted firmly on the ground, our heroine didn’t notice that she was going to walk right into a sandwich display and narrowly avoided it and continued on her way. She was not a few yards away before she heard trumpets and singing. Turning around, she realized that there was a procession waiting for her. Confused she asked “Are you guys playing for me?”

They answered back the way a freight train hits a tractor trailer: “YES!” By this point a very excited, very large man came out of the sandwich shop and grabbed Ashley’s hand and held it above her head like she had just won a fight with Oscar de la Hoya. She was ecstatic and confused: what had she done? All she could think of was narrowly avoiding the sign, but that was worth none of this. Perplexed, she let the situation carry on.

“YOU. ARE. A. WINNER!” the large man exclaimed with Ashley’s hand held high. As she forced a smile on her face, Ashley thinks of all those disaster shows on television where survivors recount their thankful tales of physics giving them a break. Almost feeling like one of those gracious survivors Ashley snaps her hand back from the sandwich shop referee and marches back to her apartment to drink the wine she kept in a cabinet; alone in her room where no one would accuse her of being anything but herself.

There is a valley, and in this valley is a town, and in this town there are kittens made of chocolate that frolic in the valley on a cool summer’s day. Eating these kittens brings warmth to your heart, and you will not be sad again for a period of 6 lunar cycles. Your breath will be perfect, your teeth shiny. Instead of poop, you will excrete rainbows into kindergarten classrooms. You will not have to shower. Eating these kittens though, is forbidden.

There is a guardian of the valley. He is the only resident of the valley. The town is empty.

This guardian is a very forbidding looking man. He seems to be in his late 40s and wears a stained singlet and has patchy facial hair. He may have scurvy or jaundice. He wanders around the village constantly crying because he can hear the kittens playing and being beautiful, but he could never catch one because he has no eyes. If he caught and ate one, he would be cured forever.

Scientists are trying to figure out how to help the guardian. It is believed that the valley is somewhere between the Himalayas and the Andes. It is a difficult valley to find. If this man was cured he would breed these chocolate kittens so that everyone in the world could eat one every 6 lunar cycles. He would not sell them, he would give them away.

It is nearly vital that this man finds a fucking kitten and eats it.

However, there is one final caveat: when the cat is being consumed it lets out an ear piercing scream reminiscent of early Pink Floyd records. It does not stop making this noise until it is completely consumed. During this scream you will remember every bad thing you have done in your entire life.

The guardian has done only one bad thing in his entire life. He set the valley on fire when he was a small boy by thinking dirty thoughts about women.