The Paint

The music video from MGMT's "Time To Pretend" makes me feel weird. Something about it makes strange colors inside of me and I can't pinpoint what it is. Some kind of old feeling, high school, the prospect of the world, the Korg, the skatepark, the bend in time. I suppose whatever it is is the reason why they are so popular right now: paint being poured of a bucket, one straight solid seeming line, but when you grab at it, you pull away with an empty hand a different color.

The Love Show

All day I've been laying in bed listening to all the shows on This American Life that are about love. I've been doing it a lot lately. Every time I go to the website, I scan through the archives looking for the ones about relationships, specifically and hungrily. I have no interest in anything else. I've even listened to the same shows twice, even three times that I had heard over the past year, picking out small parts that I remember, anticipating the ending again and again. Especially the ones that suddenly make me tighten up and tears burst out of my eyes uncontrollably. There is a knot in my chest, not a pain, just a sudden connection between the mind and the heart, that pulls till the fibers slowly uncoil. Each time I react differently, each time I feel a slight change.

Usually it's the memory; the sentiment, that does me in.
Trends: parents and children, death, lost love, and moments of true love: JOY.
Trends: monologues, short sentences whispering a pained name, reasoning without reason or emotion.

"Hey! I wanted to introduce you to my wife and my son!"
I looked over, forcing a giant smile on my face, turning down the volume of the show about a mother and her son.
It looked like a small cloud rained all over my face.
For a second she had a worried look until I mentioned that I had been listening to This American Life and gave a textured laugh. Hearty soup.

I was laying on my bed tonight listening to a 70 year old man read poems about his dead wife. The part that made me tense up suddenly was the gentle memory of her pulling up to the house with groceries in the trunk of their Saab. I imagined it was fall and the car was red.
Just like that. Simple. True. Gone.

This morning the story was about a beautiful man who loved an ugly woman, and, as you could guess, the roles switched:

..."Go on and leave, you ugly bitch," he says to her, and as he says the words, as one by one they leave his mouth, she's transformed into the most beautiful woman he has ever seen. He says the words again, almost tenderly. "Leave, you ugly bitch." Her hair is golden, her brown eyes deep and sad, her mouth full and affectionate, her tears the tears of love and loss, and her pleading, outstretched arms, her entire body, the arms and body of a devoted woman's cruelly rejected love. A third time he says the words. "Leave me, you disgusting, ugly bitch." She is wrapped in an envelope of golden light, a warm, dense haze that she seems to have stepped into, as into a carriage. And then she is gone, and he is alone again"...


Laying there, going in and out of the story, I imagined you. Finally.
I remembered what it was like to be in love. I've been trying for a while, searching desperately for years to find that innocent happiness, only stuck at lonely dead ends and painful defeats.
Not today.
Today, we were on a bus, we were walking down a cobblestone street, we were in a forest climbing branches, we were laughing at a dinner party, we were standing in the middle of a beautiful city and I looked up at you, into your face, the world a blur, and told you I loved you.

Yes! You! Future you! You whom I've never met or one I have, you who exists now as something tangible, fresh, sweet, true. You from the past or from the future, from this life or from the next, whenever it may be, it is you. The one that feels like a warm blanket, the one pulled right up to my nose. The one who loves me most ( the one I love truly).


Tonight imagined you walking through my door. You climb right into bed with me without taking off your shoes or your jacket. Your clothes are cold, your are fingers freezing, yet you wrap them around my warm stomach and I take my hot hands and press them over yours.
With my eyes closed, I turned my head toward the ceiling, out of the blanket, my lips slightly parted. I imagined the cool air on my lips were yours and the space between our mouths pink and soft, like a petal. You hold my damp face, stick your hand into my chest, holding my heart genlty like an antique tea-cup, and through my eyes, pour in warm, warm love.

Show excerpt from "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story"
by Russell Banks

The Cookies

There was a knock at my door. He was standing there with a silver rose made out of screen mesh. The kind of mesh that you put in windows.
"Wow! You just made this for me?!"
"Well...I made it, " he stumbled over his words, "I made it. It's for you, for the cookies." That meant he must have made it a while ago when he had nothing to do but sit around his friend's apartment all day long. At least he was productive with his time. I wonder why he was making mesh roses, this Jersey boy with a soprano voice and a gangster exterior.

The manager of my building, a big eyed black and white mix with a Jersey accent, always had a sad look on his face. Once he came up to my apartment, very stoned,a giant smile, and told me about an idea he had for a movie that involved everyone in the building. Once he talked about his brother and how he never got a hold of him even though they lived in the same city. Once he told me about wanting to go to a baseball game.
"Aww, you need a best friend, don't you?!"
"Yeah."

Last night I made cookies and then gave them away to the people in my building. I was feeling sick and cold, and I wanted my apartment to smell like a home with a mother. To be more specific, I wanted it to smell like burnt cookies, like Mandy' house-my best friend from elementary school. Her mother was always making cookies. The brown tupperware, the kind with a silver star on it from the 70's, was always full of cookies or her mother would just be pulling a hot batch from the oven. She was always on a "diet", quiet, unhappy looking,and always, always making cookies.

"Christine! Christine!" I heard two singsongy voices echoing down the street. My hands were full of groceries and a large mixing bowl. I looked out from the steps of my stairs and saw the twins; my manager and his best friend, the rose maker, who had come to visit and ended up moving in with him. In his hand there was a very small ziplock bag with a tiny amount of cubed chicken, the amount some people would leave on their plate or give to a dog.
" I don't like wasting food, you know?"

The Poppers

Pop, pop, popopopop, pop.

I woke up to the sound of stars falling and crashing against the pavement.
Then, I realized, it was the sound of poppers. Poppers popping on the street below Cat's balcony. It was 4am.

The Wish

"Look at those kids! They're so cute!"
Two little boys were standing in the cold water screaming and hopping up and down in the waves. I looked around for Cat. She was walking ahead of me, too far away to hear. Next to me was a woman with long oak brown hair, lightly wavy, and tossed by the sea breeze. I turned to her.
"Well, my friend is up there, so I'll just say it to you: Aren't those boys cute!"
She smiled and caught up to my pace, there was an open bond.
"Yes! I've been watching them, they've been screaming like little girls! It's so funny!"
I looked back at the boys and thought about how it reminded me of being a child and screaming at the top of my lungs in joy. Then I realized I still do it when I'm playing. Little high pitched yelps of joy that I would sometimes stop and ask out loud why I was so girly and why did I scream so much? The guilt of being too much of a pussy. Where did that come from?
I laughed and pointed at two other children in front of us.
"Little kids are so beautiful!"
"I know," she replied, thoughtfully, "it makes me want one so bad."
I gave a little chuckle and thought about wanting children. Not right now, but someday.
We walked a little more in silence. Cat was in her own world ahead of me to even notice us. The woman seemed a little melancholy, lost in thought, and I looked at her to say goodbye.
"It makes me wonder...I'm 8 days late..." she said, her tone a little sad, but with a hesitant laugh.
I looked at her,smiled, and said, softly, as I sped up my pace,
"You're happy?
You ARE happy.
Everything will be alright."

The wind blew her loose dress around her stomach, and, for a minute, it looked like her belly was swollen and full of an unsure wish, a wish growing into something much larger than her or I.