Friday, August 29, 2008

Barack = Progress



I wanted to take notes on his speech so I could tell my kids what it felt like to have so much hope in one man....but I fell asleep. He came on stage and thanked the audience of 75,000 a couple dozen times before they could contain themselves, accepted the candidacy, promised change...and I fell asleep.

My mind is already made up, he needn't stage another speech, he has my vote. I love to hear his voice and dream of what it will be like when I have insurance, when I can afford my kids college tuition, when we ban Hummers and run out of solar panels....but I am just too tired...and I fall asleep.

Thursday, August 28, 2008

That poor girl....

So we’re on the way back from Brooklyn on the A Train. After the first two stops this bum walks onto the train. Long gray overcoat, ashy elbows, brown paper bags, and lots of phlegm. So we play it off like he’s not there but then the smell hit. GOD DAMN! He pulls a half-eaten chicken leg out of his brown paper bag, a chicken leg that was right out of the hot garbage. We sat and watched him. Watched the spit trail from the dark meat to his chapped, scabby mouth. His hands covered in dirt and his nose dripping with snot, we watched him enjoy his garbage, wash it down with some Snake bite brew and use his half jacket as a towel for his lubed up hands. So the train stops and he grabs the pole with his greased up, wormy fingers to stand up and half spit up, half vomit outside the doors of the train, then stumbles back to his seat.
The shine of his palm prints glisten in the flickering lights of that now even dirtier subway and at the next stop a girl with long, brown, beautifully flowing to the top of her buttocks hair, hitches a ride in our car. In slow motion I see her eye up the available seats and decide to stand against the pole that our man chicken fingers had a tight grip on minutes earlier. It was like static electricity. Her hair wrapped around the pole attracted to the greasy circles of chicken spit the fingerprints had left. Our reaction: you know that video clip of the guy who’s kickboxing and his leg snaps in half on a shin kick…and then he tries to stand on it because he doesn’t even realize the treachery his leg has just endured…watching that. The "ooooh" followed shortly after by the even worse, "OOOOooooo!" We clenched our fists and watched with every wave, every bump, every motion of the train, more and more hair find its way to the pole and swim around in the filth of the now soundly sleeping homeless man across from us on the A train.

Mia Cara Rick....

We met at JFK airport in September of 2004. We were on our way to England.

I want to write down every second of the moments we shared before we knew that we would fly home together hand in hand. Walking to the gym together to get a pass to workout, eating across from each other at the dining hall, having sex in hostels...but some of it I have to keep as our secrets...ones that only we will forget to remember.

There was one night back in ER we spent up talking and talking like we usually did….and he left to go to sleep. I had this rush of emotion and I just couldn’t think straight. I wrote down all of this in a note. Asking him questions, telling him that I was just as apprehensive as he was but for all the wrong reasons. I was pacing the room, note in hand, trying to decide whether or not I should slide it under his door. Is this childish….a note? Should I make him uncomfortable giving him this impression, what if it ruins what we already have after just 72 hours? What if this is too good to be true? Every word that he says is just perfect, his face, his lips, his BODY….his passion for such simple things…his passion for EVERYTHING that I dream about. I walk to the door, pull myself together and stand looking in the mirror…and I actually whispered to myself out loud…."This is it….placed right in your lap….he’s…" A KNOCK AT THE DOOR.

And it opens so abruptly I almost scream. I can feel that its him, I’m just cursing myself for not hearing his door open so I could have been prepared. I only hope that he’s come back to grab my waist and the back of my head and pull me toward him with his strong arms for a kiss to make me melt right there with his beard brushed up against my cheeks, and finally feel all this perfect love whisper its way entirely out of my body…

"I left my journal…." he declares as he just breezes right past my sweaty forehead.

"Oh."

I wasn’t nervous. He always made me feel just right. I was just tingly….from head to toe. I wasn’t embarrassed that he may have caught me whispering to myself in the mirror….because I knew he did the same thing….and that’s why I knew that I absolutely had to give him this letter.
So….cowardly enough…I waited for him to return to his room and slipped it under his door minutes later. I went back to my room. Paced. Laid down, stood up. Looked in the mirror. Wrote in my journal. Thank God I could write in that journal, I lost track of time. He must have snuck out of his room again because I didn’t hear any doors open or close….a shuffle in the hallway…nothing. Then I feel him outside my door again. Only this time his shadow shoves a note under my door. I waited a few milliseconds….knowing that he had returned the gesture so the note wouldn’t be all that discouraging….and leaped to the door grabbing the note. "For Theresa’s eyes only xoxoxoxox" I hesitated…only because of the previous question of perfection. It was as if nothing else in the world mattered anymore but falling in love with him. It was my other half! The one that would make me laugh until I couldn’t breathe for the rest of my life, the one who would throw flour in my hair while he makes me pizza with his solid hands, the one who would take pictures of me when I wasn’t looking, the one who would let me fall asleep in his arms every night and run his fingers through my curls, the one who would tell me secrets and stories about all of our dreams and memories, the one who I could NEVER EVER be without. I could breathe better than I ever could! Just looking at his handwriting made me certain, like I had seen it before as a child or in a dream, and even then it made me an idealist! I was in complete control of making my life flawless…Brilliant! The note answered my questions and left some for me to figure out on my own…which I did seconds later and am still figuring out today…. He was the one person who would share moments with me… No matter what happened next, having him with me was all that mattered. I wanted every second to be filled with him…boring ones, exciting ones, sweaty ones, small ones, sad ones, stupid ones, hysterical ones, crazy ones…every single time I thought about my life from that point on I wanted it to remind me of us. Every time I think back about some memory I wanted him to be in it, no matter how big or small. I would make sure that my memories would be flooded with him….every single day…. and that’s just what I’m doing.


So, when Willy asked me if I believe in fate...I couldn't just say yes or no. I told him that I am grateful for it…that I don't understand it, but I thank God for it. I also thank God for control over my life. The control that lets me fall in love over and over again every day.

I'm gonna be a famous author!

Driving home today I decided that I have the potential to be a famous writer....poet...no a famous author! Or, maybe, that I am destined to be a famous author, whether in this lifetime or after I am dead. A snobby Van Gogh, one who predicted his placement in Target and Wal-Mart frame sales....and how pretentious would he seem, if Van Gogh had predicted his fame. If he knew he would be hanging in some dorm room or worse yet, in a first-time apt. owners living room on cardboard with the plastic still on and no frame....would he really be stuck up? Would he be proud? Going off track...

My reasoning behind it is rather magnificent...and would you expect anything less from a self-proclaimed (for decades to come), soon-to-be famous author? Reason being....my face twitches. I mean, I have strange, uncontrollable facial twitches..."quirks," someone who is attempting to humor me might call them..."quirks"...but they are clearly twitches, rather absurd and embarrassing twitches that I have slowly come to fall in love with after basing my fate on them. Some in the forehead, others in the nose, crunching and cringing them....wiggling my ears, unable to relax my face. The muscles just won't stop...and for these reasons you will see my countless memoriams (First to read: To Rick- for making me stay in Ormskirk) published by Penguin books....or maybe it will be Vintage Publishing....we'll see who gets wind first and offers me the most money. But there I will be...the first dead writer to assume public acclaim from beyond the grave.

These are no ordinary twitches mind you...these are the kind of twitches that only visionaries have...ones that other people gawk at and wonder why they are there. Twitches...habitual twitches that scream addiction and abnormal behavior, as a good writer should. I even make excuses for them...to myself obviously, no one ever asks about them for fear of social discomfort. When I wiggle my nose, I tell myself it's because of a hard buildup inside, some stubborn boogey clutching to my nose hairs...that I have an itch, a drip of sweat, anything. But I have done it for years. Ever since I can remember, I have had this uncomfortable nose twitch. This, paired with social anxiety (enough to make my dog blush), roseacea and a substantial lack of short-term memory, I would say I am one world renowned book short of bi-weekly therapy sessions...

The rosy cheeks, (doctors and makeup specialists like to call it rosacea), they have always been a great way to make everyone around me uncomfortable too. It doesn't even have to be in public or at a podium, I can be in the car, alone, belting out lyrics to an incredible song....stumble on the chorus and my face turns as red as your pants (If you're wearing bright red pants, you know what I mean, if you aren't, shame on me for banking on your good fashion sense)....Poetic huh? You thought I would go with fire engine....or rosebud...but not me....I already told you, I'm destined!

Not just the upper cheek bones either, this is red to the brim...past the hairline. Red ears, red arms, red all over indisguisable!! It's quite an intense feeling, one that I can't imagine living without...but oh how wonderful it would be...to have the simple confidence that would allow my skin to maintain a milky white hue when I tell a simple joke....or even just speak after a long silence.

It has taken me too long to realize just how amazing I can be. I will immediately pick up smoking and other bad habits to ensure my success....