As-Seen-On-Sidewalks...

the most wonderful name--Rodney Valentine...the owner--a decaying 67 year old man with a cracking wit and botched hands....he likes his black coffee in hand just as soon as he's through the door...he's always reading political novels, or the obvious classics....he's not afraid to talk shit about Dickens, Camus, or Steinbeck...he wears a windbreaker 364 days out of the year...the one day he's not, he's wearing a canvas.type fishing jacket with stained pockets and sleeves...his glasses are a 1/4'' thick...he's the tallest old man i've ever seen, which makes me wonder just how mammoth he was before the shrinking of old age got to him...

yesterday Rodney Valentine honked at me from an enormous white Ford f-150, swerved into a handicapped parking spot, and practically fell from the dangerously parked truck's open door...normally when i'm around old people i extinguish my cigarette as quickly as possible...in hopes, i suppose, that they won't have time to judge me...with Rodney i kept right on smoking through our entire conversation..Rodney, you can tell, is just too tired to give a shit...he shoved a small weathered book at me...'The Plague' by Albert Camus...we had discussed it the day before, but i hadn't expected him to brave downtown just to gift it to me so soon...

Rodney-'here...take it...read it or don't..i don't care...just make sure i never see it again..'
me-'did it offend you that much?'
Rodney V-'oh no...its just that once i get rid of a book i never want to see it again...thats the rules with books..you never put them on a shelf just to have them..you read it...or you don't...and if you don't, well, you give it to someone who might...or might not...i don't care...but that's just the rules...'
me-'Rodney, i swear to you that after this day you will never cross paths with this book again...i just can't believe i'm seeing you so soon...i thought you would take your time.........'
Rodney-'ah hell i wasn't just comin down here for that...although i'm glad i saw you...its these damn taxes...these damn tax people...i keep filling out these forms and they keep sending me new ones that look just like the last damn batch i filled out...i'm starting to think they're just trying to mess with an old guy..'

it took us 5 minutes to go 5 feet and i loved every detail of it...there he was in his windbreaker, pumping that gnarly fist in the air almost with every syllable...he was wearing a hat today...and his conspiracy theories were getting him so riled up that, had i been walking at my usual, twenty-three year old pace, he might just have kept up with me...

case and point--i love my grandpas...

memory #47,926--early march 2004..

she calls me and i was already thinking about her so conversation is a stride i step easily into...i'm anticipating her calling me 'hun' at the end of our talk...i'm on a roll, spitting out my best off hand material, her laughter bounces off sattelites, rolls through the tiny holes in my phone's speaker and washes over me...warm...its an eye blue sky...the sun is beating down on my virgin german skin and already i'm turning pink after three minutes of exposure..meet for coffee? perfect...sit side by side? wonderful...good conversation and maniacal crosswording? i think i'll marry you. ...be there in eleven minutes, i say...she's smiling...i know it...'ok.'...and today she calls me 'sweetie'...my stomache does a triple back flip launching itself into my intestines where it swings hammock.style...i'm there first, at the coffee shop...i talk quickly to my friend Ricky behind the counter...i move around too much in social situations...it makes them uncomfortable...god, i'm awkward...within two minutes she's standing behind me...when i first met her (all of a week and a half ago) i thought a lot about how tall she was...its the third time we've hung out...i'm positive she's shrinking..something seems off about her as she orders her chai...is she uncomfortable? what is this? her, nervous? i grab a crossword from the pile of miscelaneous daily paper sections...i swat at her playfully while she finishes up with Ricky and the chai...i wonder if she thinks i'm being confident...the bench outside is crowded so we have to huddle at the end...emphasis on 'Have To'...we each light a cigarette...of course, the rest of the events, as they were spent in such close proximity to her skin, were a blur, and too short, and can only be summed up in feeble keywords...

racing for gold...panning for ore...

am i speaking in a secret language...is it a series of ciphers and the box didn't contain a decoder ring...because i have to tell you , this lost in translation bullshit is really slaying me...my throat is raw from private time pillow screams...i keep calling my mom and hanging up on her as soon as she answers..i carried the woman through most of my (her, our) upbringing i don't know why sometimes i think she'll have suddenly decided to read the manual Maternal Instincts and How To, At Least, Fake 'Em if You Don't Got 'Em....i accidentally called my grandma earlier...i hung up on her too...not because i don't love her...and not because she's in any way like my mom...i just didn't realize i was calling her, thought i was calling my girlfriend, and panicked when i was about to say, 'hi honey-pot' and realized my honey-pot does not sound like that...

post: sorry granny...

exhausted like a pre-teen...

i put water on for tea...i started the shower...i moved my face soap, my brown glycerine bar of face soap that melts if left in water and fascinates me endlessly, from the tub's rim to the shelf with the tiny fake sea creatures...it's less likely to melt here...i took my shirt off...untied my shoes...yes, in this order...always in this order..and began to spend my usual time standing on the toilet seat examining my body in the mirror..[always leave the pants on]...i do this before and after the shower...and it never really looks like me...or...the way i look at myself, it gets lost somehow in translation...two things are happening...a person is looking at a person, two strangers randomly eyeing one another...and i am looking at them, looking at me...in reality, its me comically perched on top of a toilet, or sometimes (in extreme cases of self examination--or depending on the layout of the bathroom) the counter top straddling the sink..reel to reel...life as a movie...always a spectator...oh, if these walls could talk...the problem with today is...i received a text message in the middle of my critique..beep beep....i had to shut off the shower...i forgot about the tea water...and now i will have to start all over again....one damning text message and my routine is thrown off...i've lost 24 minutes of my day because i refuse to ignore the phone, i have to wait and see if there's a response, and i can't continue with my pre-shower antics out of order like that....

succinctly, ocd is a terrible killer of time...

overly illuminated: eyeball sensitivity Part One....

a funny thing to add to the list of 'Things That Will Inevitably Make You Feel Ninety'--drunk late night texting...how does something i've grown to love for its lovely detachment now have a central part in my next day regrets...oh the remorseful text...is it better to just call and sound like an ass...or is it better to text, sound like an ass, and seem decidedly illiterate...

yeah...

next time i'll call..in the least, slurring has the chance of soming across as charming--it's like, 'look i'm vulnerable', right?
----

i remember stealing it from the dresser...stuffing it into my sock as quietly as possible...Troy was on the television, practically muted, orlando bloom was scurrying around on the ground in circles....this was after it took me 23 minutes to leave the bed..the comforter crunching...the matress crunching...the pillows...the whole fucking bed was suddenly full of autumn leaves and broken glass... i was a stop motion character...if you had just opened your eyes you might have laughed..i mean really laughed...instead you lay there, the sharp exhale, the lengthy inhale...i brought up the diet pills and you did your best scorpio impression of someone who doesn't really notice those around them...suddenly i get the big glassy eyes that say 'what?'...the mouth pinched and a little ajar..shoulders high...its like someone ran in the room and hung a big neon green sign on your face that blinks at me---'APPLAUSE'...'APPLAUSE'...after that i went for the aloof approach..giving up on the seemingly endless conversation that was running its way around the track, finish line to finish line...just lap after lap after lap of the same repetitive shit...so, the arms crossed (no one's home, go away) and my stare set intently on the glowing tv (no, especially not you)...you went to the bathroom three times before you finally gave up the sighing and looking at the side of my head, and traded it in for the dramatic 'roll away'...the heavy throwing of the body from one side of the bed to the other, which never seems like much unless you're having it out with someone, and then it's seismic...and as long as i'm not crying it usually really makes me want to burst out laughing...i guess just because i'm a virgin to it...i've never found that dark little thing in me that says, 'oh, i got it! grab the corner of the duvet as tight as you can, and THRUST your body with your might towards the wall. one look at your back after a movement like that and she'll be reeling!'...modern dance and it's role in modern arguments...once i had it balled up in my sock and i'd spent an ample amount of time holding my breath in order to hear yours i left you alone in the room...i spent the next 4 hours wandering around the front rooms of the house..sniffling...grinding my teeth...wondering who would have a conversation with me at 4.30 in the morning...a nice conversation...who might meet me in the dark...in the street...smoke a cigarette with me..not ask me about relationships or why i was up at this hour...just someone to walk with...dialogue like a Vonnegutt novel...crisp, sharp scenery like a comic book...
its too bad manifestation only goes so far...

ribbon cutting at an angle...

this is somewhere shortly after i chased a small orange cat through the house, using a much stronger voice than any 6 inch whisper, or 12 inch conversational...it, the cat, has for the last month or so, been creeping in and out of the house at whim...criminal activity in diminutive form..pisses me off...i belittled the tiny animal the whole way to the window which is propped open by a blue pen--his usual point of entry and exit...the window stays open like this for the Spoiled One, alluding to her grey cat i call Puma, her grey cat that is half the size of my late black lab and so earned his name...this is where we had a stand-off, the orange villain and i...although brief, i managed to cleverly sum up the reasons behind my ill will towards him/her in a brilliant monologue involving a lot of swooshing hand movements and some extra tonal theatrics to boost the tension in the room...having said my peace, i let the handful of pens, i'd been clenching in my write hand, fly...like 8 scaled down lawn darts they clattered around the back door and the orange bastard was out the window...

we do this about 3 times a day...