coasting with (or without) condiments

On a Wednesday I found myself staring at a Heinz Ketchup bottle next to an isolated glass pepper-shaker.

Where's the salt?

San Francisco was built over a roller coaster, sort of the way a roller coaster was built over Woody Allen's childhood home, and as time's gone on, there's been a natural desire to expand the coaster - make it bigger, higher, more dangerous and threatening. In nearly a blink, the coaster's developed new arms and legs, with more cars and more people riding it for all it's worth. The unstoppable progression has stretched the city out like a prostitute in Amsterdam's Red Light District. It's pushed and pulled while the structure in missionary has tried to contort, and without knowing it, while sitting pretty in my apartment, my apartment has bent and twisted and ebbed to accommodate the coaster's new, updated and fashionable position. I'm riding on God's big progressive amusement mobile.

And today I'm up on the high end of the track.

WEEEEEEEEE!

Then I realize I'm looking at ketchup on a waxed table where people have etched their names with dried out pens and swiss army knives. There's no salt.

Tomorrow will be different. Maybe I'll be on the down swing. If only I had the guts to put my arms in the air and enjoy the rush of the fall!

But it's out of my control. I never asked to live on top of a coaster - yet here I am. Up and down. Riding it out. Minding gravity.

panicked on pink carpet

"Mom!!! Mooooooooooommmm!!!"

She's downstairs in the kitchen. I don't know what she's doing but I know she's ignoring me and giving too much space and freedom to a 3 year old. I'm the youngest child of three, the only girl on top of that, so most of my friends are make-believe.

"MOM! Someone stole my perfume!"

Finally she's coming upstairs, wiping the lathered dish soap off her hands and leaving a bubbly trail on each level as she ascends to my grand zone of discontent; she has learned that within a certain amount of time my pleas turn into desperate cries and demands for immediate action, and in her all her lemon-scented motherliness, she senses my clicking time bomb, thus left the towel by the sink.

She enters my room - all bordered with hearts on wallpaper by the ceiling and stuffed animals strung from hooks around my closet door. I'd do just as well with GI Joe's duct taped vicariously, but I'd never tell her because she designed my room herself. She comes in almost silently as my sight in this moment remains fixed on the open bottle of Tinkerbell Perfume with only drops of green coagulated liquid remaining. Her silence yields:

"What IS it, Meredith?" a little annoyed but motherly and patient underneath.

"Someone stole my perfume! There used to be more of it!!"

The smell lingers everywhere like fragile evidence. It's a little sugar, a pinch of magic and dash of fruit. It's a scent that gives me energy to play and reminds me of my zestful age. But I can hardly see the translucent image of a pixie girl on the dainty glass bottle without the limey liquid brimming behind it.

Maybe a ghost came in through my open window and snatched it!

Maybe my brothers are playing a mean trick on me!

No no, Shandra (my best friend whom Mom says has rebellious tendencies) must have poured it out. She was over here the other day. Ugh. I hate her.

"MoM! Someone has stolen my perfume. Look!"

"Are you sure, how do you know?"

"...well, it's GONE! I left it here and now there's nothing left," I say, disregarding the green pixie girl driblets puddled at the base of the bottle.

"No one's stolen it, Meredith."

I'm not satisfied with her response. Why doesn't anyone believe me when I report such disasters? "How do you know it's no one?!"

My throat is getting tight. Needles are rushing to my face from inside me and they're turning me pink - I'm becoming camouflaged within my little girl jungle of a room - I want to shout and cry my way out of this invisible state and convince the world, "I'M NOT STUPID! There was perfume here last week and now there's not and I LOOOOOOOVE my pixie perfume! It's mine! Someone took it!"

But I don't say anything.

I just look back up at her with squinting eyes, the aroma is still looming and taunting me.

"You left it here?" Mom asks.

"Yeah, I think so."

"Cap off?"

"Yeah..." I whisper, the word trickling off into space with the worry and assumption that a cap off meant something other than letting Tink breathe.

"It evaporated, Dear."

"It WHAT?" I entrust that's another word for stolen.

"That's what happens to liquids when you leave them out with the cap off."

"But... WHAT? Why?!"

"It's just what is."

"It's.... gone? ...forever?"

"'Fraid so."

"Well where's the green, then?" I look around my room for spots and shades and clouds of neon lime and watered down grass colors - I look on the pink sparkled carpet and the pink painted walls, on the ceiling and on the mom-made quilt flat upon my bed. Nothing seems out-colored.

"It evaporated, too," Mom says.

She walks out and back down the stairs. I don't know what is so important she has to get back to and leave me stranded. I feel lied to and tricked. I feel like the world stole something from me, not just from the little vessel my pixie called 'home.'

Confused, frustrated, sad... wait, slash that, EXTREMELY sad- I want my perfume back. How could it be gone forever?

I slam my window shut. Stupid air. And I return the cap to it's bottle hoping that will make the air put some of my sweet liquid back, then I sit on the floor with my knees bent, my back against the bed; I'm small enough that if my mom walks by again, she won't see me crouching, and she'll think I evaporated.

My skirt is revealing my scabbed skin and my purple polka-dotted underwear, but I'm not concerned with that in the least.

I want what was taken from me. Tomorrow I'll look again.

in it for the long hall

My apartment is an oven. It's only 60 something degrees on the west side of San Francisco and most civilians are sporting light jackets or fuzzy sweaters as that classic late September breeze rushes past Ocean Beach and straight through the streets all neatly aligned in alphabetical order. My prayer flags are dancing in the sunny evening air out on my balcony which makes me smile and mutter aloud, "that's cute," but from the other side of a thick sliding glass door, my living room is steaming and incubating a harsh smell - some sort of confused collaboration between life and death - the reality of my roommate's stray hairs rerooting in stained 80's carpet and a fossilizing glass of tea breading new life on the tv table right next to me. The sunflowers I bought two weeks ago emit an odor only to be mistaken by stale sex and over worn insoles, but they still look pretty damn good so I'm trying to overcome, and the best way to breathe through this sweltering and stuffy situation is to slide that moldy framed glass door a little to the left to let a column of freshness press into my brave reality. The vertical blinds, now closed to keep the blazes out, are waving in the little bit of wind streaming through the happy column, and on the other side of my kitchen the shadow of the blinds' movement is strobing on and off, hypnotizing and seducing me into a situation I know not yet. I'm sorta looking forward to what is secretly bound to happen.

Not surprising to my dear, devoted readers, my most recent situations have lacked luster and good cheer. The synapses between my neurons have been gathering too much of my good things and holding them hostage to the rest of me, leaving my fingers to curl back in bitter hostility - deep and dark blog postings, the unfortunate result. (And you think it's uncomfortable for you?)

It's a long hall to go down to get to where one really ought to be. I realized that in the bathroom of The Little Shamrock on 9th Ave and Lincoln. It's a great lil pub, but dang they've got a long john; my tiny and spirited bladder urged me forward, over the slippery, scum tiles, past the boring-forest green painted and surprisingly untagged walls, to the toilet of no return. In the end I was relieved, and on my way back out, after accidentally splattering extra strength dial soap against the wall and managing to lather only a bit of it between my palms, the sincerity and realness of this particular loo dawned on me.

Going to and through shit is a long hall.

No matter how antsy and ready I am to find my destination on this crazy self-defining or defeating journey, I still gotta walk that green mile and deal with the now. I gotta embrace it if not simply laugh at it. I gotta breathe it in to fill every pocket of my lungs as if to hug the only moment I've ever got, no matter how crappy and stale and moldy it's revealed to be. Sometimes the Ultimate Now is a closet to shit in and sometimes it's a stretch of fresh air pressing into a clutter-fucked and over-incubated apartment of depression. Either who, when, where, or way, it's a hall I'm gonna walk down.

Earlier today, before the shadowy light show on my kitchen cabinets, I found myself at a Safeway I don't usually attend. With cart and grocery list in hand, I further found myself shoulder to shoulder with my dumpy, miserable excuse for human life ex-boyfriend's best friend/roommate. We were both deciding on a good cheese, and that kind of thing takes time. So in the unbearable awkwardness of the moment, in a situation we both tried to deny, under a cool, confident smirk, I billowed and beamed. When he finally picked out his American 2% singles and turned towards me to get by, my undirected smirk grew a little wider. I imagine young Charlie going back by bike to his own long hallway of an apartment on 27th Ave, gitty to tell Douche-Bag who he just saw in the dairy aisle, and explaining, "Yeah, she actually looked really good" before continuing his gripe about their equally lame, only stirred by drugs and scratched vinyl lives.

Checking items off my list and strolling down the food lined halls for any loose items, my smirk remained in full tact. I was certainly surprised that cyphering over cheese next to a brief moment in history produced such exponential momentum forward in my search for understanding... I guess it's proof that past pushes into future and you can occasionally use a run in with the enemy to appreciate your own internal allies.

At this point, the sun has completely set; the wind's died down and the smell of steaming death by sunflowers has settled into my realized apartment. It's still warm in here, warm enough for bare shoulders and sockless toes. When this sentence is over, I'll walk down the hall to the bathroom and hope my insights stay put: finding the Now is a long hall to go down, always has been and always will be, but it's unarguably worth the time.

4 things that make me smile

imaginary means

A pack of gum cannot replace the cravings I have. I feel like I've given up my right and left legs respectively to overcome my addictions, and still, they are wielding within me, tearing me up and begging me to go back to the way things were.

When I had two firm legs to stand on.

What addictions?
Dating.
My childhood.
The snuff of the Midwest.
Ink dribbling out my fingertips.

Some of these things I've given up voluntarily, while others seem to have been unexpectedly torn out of my grasp. I've embraced certain addictions to overcome the one's in which I had no control, and I've slept all day, stayed up all night trying to adopt a way to comprehend my careless, ego feeding yet self defeating actions.

Dating is an addition that is gone because it needs to be. Because I've depended on it to assume the role of 'adult' and to get to know this venue of a city. It's gone because I'm only happy when I'm with someone, imagining love and hope and freedom; without the flirtatious emails and dinners and butterflies keeping me company, I am blank. 1st dates have been my prioritized hobby. Now that's a problem.

I used the behavior quite intentionally and simply to catapult myself away from my past and into a dream. I was scared like a run away child when I arrived in San Francisco, so I got into some things that weren't healthy as an escape from reality. I abandoned my home after all, this was my decision and my fate, so I continued to take all the yellow brick roads to no where, not realizing they led me so deep and far away from where I truly longed to be.

In the Pacific Time Zone, I had to quickly learn the steps to independence as if it were an intricate foreign dance everyone else seem to know innately. I've always been the girl in school the teachers deemed "wise beyond her years," but that wisdom failed to support my wobbly legs and dizziness as I two-stepped my way around the new world. So far away from familiar sights and sounds, I took a big bite into adulthood and lost my childhood forever. It's been a mistake.

Realizing what I've done, I've become frozen in my uncertain adult form. When I look in the mirror, I don't recognize the body I carry. I don't recall the things that make me happiest, and I don't have the flexibility in mind or limb to sketch my thoughts on paper in translation of the new reality. I can hardly work with this panic, so I try to spend as much time as possible in one position - staring into the mirror, deep into my irises, trying to see who's in there running the show. Then I'll sit next to the reflection and look at pictures from my past, from my crawling stages through high school prom, and I wonder what happened to get me so lost.

With all this in mind, the recent days have gone by in a blaze, and my greatest accomplishment has been to sit within the wild of the fire without a hope to guard me. It's left me like a burnt marshmallow. My skin is on fire and aching to the point of wanting to scrape it off by whatever means necessary, and inside I'm gooey and soft and completely apathetic to the world. I'm not as much cool on the inside as I am numb, and quite uncomfortably so.

Where are my addictions now to pull me through this harsh, blackened and juxtaposed mess? Where's my mom? God I know that's pathetic, but it's a trip to the woods of Lodi Township, or another reckless round of online dating and showing men my home videos. I've gotta do something to get my pens to work again.

Until I find a way out of this numbness without falling victim to vice, I'll aimlessly walk the streets and avenues avoiding eye contact with everyone who comes merrily in my way. I'll imagine robbing candy stores. I'll imagine shooting up with the crackies in allies. I'll imagine myself ignoring the flashing red hand at the other end of the intersection as my body floats right into traffic. As I said, I'll do anything to scrape off this ache and burn that surrounds me. If my imaginary means are painful and damaging, at least it's a distraction from first dates and childhood memories.

word vomit. mind tramp trash.

The INFJ individual is gifted in ways that other types are not. Life is not necessarily easy for the INFJ, but they are capable of great depth of feeling and personal achievement.

michigan seems like a dream to me now.

it's the sound of a voice that says, 'HERE I AM, AND FUCK YOU IF YOU CAN'T UNDERSTAND IT.'

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, made to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars...

and DANG do I stand and reach and yearn and bellow! this is a stream, a river of consciousness racing through me and coming out my eyes as i try to see these words forming on my screen, on your screen. i feel a tingling within my body that i don't think i'm producing on my own, it seems to be coming from somewhere else and i am simply a receiver of information, translating the messages into a human language that will still go completely misunderstood. RAH! i'm alone out at sea and my skin and bones act as my vessel. who knows where i departed from, and GOD knows i want to know where i'm going, but at this moment floating on emotion, all i am are these racing vibrant random exploding fluid words lackluster in punctuation

i've walked barefoot across ocean beach and i've stared out across the pacific, i've trailed up the coast while watching white globes of fuzz from the past dandelion blossoms float abound the pebbly path carrying wishes, and now, where i sit, i have golden gate bridge with a perfect white sailboat beneath it but a little to the right, and these waves... the most beautiful, enforcing yet pliable, majestic waves stretching across an infinite blue and gold plain that sometimes slide into the rocky beach like sex in silk sheets, while at other times they crash and drum against the already diluted boulders, making the sky and peace around me jerk up in fear of thunder and lightning on a clear day.

i cry in my sleep because i can't get back to my past, my carefree and open and loving adolescence. i miss it like you'd miss a loved one who was kidnapped and never found, and you're sitting around waiting for a long awaited conclusion to an infinite, pageless book. in the days of humid summer nights and long runs and hoods of our crappy little hand me down cars, my friends and i lived free and wholly in our dreams. treading close the those memories strikes at my heart strings like a harp on C major and all i can do is cry out the vibrations.

i must get back to living in my dreams. i must break and crack open so i can go back to smiling at strangers on the street without fear and a backup plan. i want to hug the air around me, no matter where i am, and feel uninhibited with joy. i want to beam out the lost soul within my skeleton so that others and anyone can see there's still a light on in here ---

---i'm repairing, refurnishing my heart, and i hope to open up completely again one day. soon.

it's just a little depth and burning dreams for your tuesday's deep dark afternoon.

Where have all the flowers gone?

On the tips of my toes, I'm teetering a fine line divided by three - contentment, anxiety, and absolute frustration. Like most things, I'll start from the end and go backwards.

Why is it so cool to be so bad? Is everyone innately bad, or is it just these bloody Californians? And how can people front and mask themsleves as progressive, conscious, aware beings if they have no moral fiber in their spines? I feel like I'm pretty damn open and liberally minded, and on this level I assumed that California would be a fitting state, but somehow openness and the desire for a collective good have become surface layer qualities disguising the collective's corrupted, self-induced evils and destruction, and everywhere I go people are shooting up - proud of their resumes brimming with drug experiences, unprotected public sex, DUIs, nights in jail, and obvious lies. Where have all the flowers gone?

I am so sick, I am so f-ing tired of being surrounded by people who are this vaingloriously tall upon their match-sticks. I mean, COME ON San Francisco! We, the people, are pressed to be the progress for the rest of the nation; if word gets out that all our great ideas come from acid trips and a few rounds with the unbathed homeless, and all our confidence is a product of the most chugs during impetutious popped collar episodes of "never have I ever," I fear I'll be dragged into the tow and become a dangerous part of a double-life society. We'll save the environment and the mentally ill by day, and recklessly party with them by night as we toss our ciggarette butts into the bushes and out of mind.

I know too many yoga instructors who drive drunk, and too many teachers with warrents for their arrest, and too many folks who are out of the closet but keep their anger and addictions and egocentricity locked in a chest.

Where are the pure in heart? Where are the innocent? I want to learn from them. Until I am surrounded by their peace and clear intent to better themselves and all the rest, I cannot rest; I'll continue to cry in my sleep.

This is my frustration, preceded only by my inabilty to catch my breath and my nervous hand guestures when I speak. While so vexed and turned off of my neighbors, I still find myself eager to impress them. At work, I clock in and out as a temporary employee without health insurance, who must go eons beyond the outlined expectations to ensure a little job security; each day I am reminded that I'm under the magnifying glass, being ever-evaluated. The anxiety that's produced from it all follows me through the streets and avenues and tails me like a shadow into my sheets at night. I dream in shallow breaths and burrowed eyebrows. I thirst for calm, but I munch on cheez-itz instead.

When I wake in the morning, Apollo greets and asks of me these questions three: Who are you? What do you live for today? Why are you here?? But as I pound my alarm into silence and stumble to the bathroom, I avoid the answer. I do not know. I am trying to make something of the days and of myself, but since there's no clear aim in mind or way to measure my success, I live in deep fear that I'm just not making it good enough, moist enough, or sweet enough for anyone.

In a bucket of vulnerability, I confess that I'm worried the life I'm baking has already gone cold and hard and stale. My anxieties spill from one topic to the next: I'm not compassionate enough. I'm not quick enough. I'm certainly not pretty enough.

I am nothing enough.

So I'm haunted with worry, and exhausted with frustration, and I'm starving within a lonely shell. The words of the past's great minds echo in here, "Carpe Diem! Suck the marrow out of life!" But I misplaced my straw and seem to be sucking at everything else anyways.

This is exactly where I am when I teeter to the other dimension of my fine line. Contentment is a sneaky bastard, and just as quickly as it appears it'll fade away, so I haven't yet put a load of trust in it. Though, when it's here, it is trascendentally beautiful. I forget all the other muck I mirk in daily and my attention goes completely to it. It's the giant flock of birds twisting and turning together in a spontaneous tango with the wind; it's the sliver of pink that lasers through the fog when the sun sets behind it; it's the smiley face tagged on cement next to a rain puddle...

When my angst and nerves and loath get the best of me, the best of me is at least gotten. It's out of its locked up chest and getting a good shake in fresh air. There's nothing not to smile about with that.

Pretty much I'm just a confused, tipsy-turvy mess of a girl. With days like today, days like I've had, I can't tell you which way is up or what door takes you out. If I had a choice, I'd pick door number 3. Maybe that's the door all the flowers are hiding behind.