a blog about nothing which i will never proofread. (which/that?)

tonight in harlem we were on the roof and we heard a car crash. that was nothing. then another -- louder -- so we went to look: a police car, crashed into a chased car, then maybe twenty cars rushed in, two men got arrested. a plethora of undercover cops in puffy coats, lights & noise. we need loudspeakers on 125th to play ave maria, handcuffs need opera.

handcuffs need bedposts. i've never had bedposts. of all the bones in the body, my favorites are wrists and hips. then fingers. of all body parts: hands.

i think every tuesday night (or monday, wednesday, thursday) i'll sit down and write about nothing. tuesday top nothing. earlier, i wrote something: a sunday top ten. i don't like it enough for show & tell.

i have a chronic shortage of ibuprofen. i should deal with headaches/mylife more maturely, like a grown up. chocolate is forever, i'm still eating it. many of my nearest & dearests got born in january or march, which requires rubber cement and cardboard. i haven't spoken to my mother in three weeks. we'll pick up where we left off.

i didn't like my fortune, i gave tinkerbell my cookie. last year i didn't go anywhere, this year i'm everywhere but here.

*

the other night, i was talking to tara about the rainbow depot, other trivialities, and suddenly i opened my mouth and said --

me: "sometimes i just want to scream and break my walls open."

tara: "why?"

me: "i don't know, sometimes i feel like this room just remembers too many things, i just want to smash it! i want to kick the walls!"

tara: "so many crazy things happened in this room ... literally."

[i like the idea that pauses can be pregnant. that giving birth is sometimes speech not life.]

now memories replace memories, old memories become well-oiled stories with loose ends waiting in wings. new sheets, new people, old people with restored minds, new books, new socks. still i keep the bottom sheet, the softest sheet. it's just so soft, it's so hard to get out of bed because of that sheet. sometimes other reasons. now; it's just that sheet.

*

crystal and i stood at the edge of the roof where we could see the cars, lights, cops, criminals, and the standard neighborhood hooligans who flood the streets for such events. a woman was wailing, two men held her (undercover or real/uncovered?) and one said: "that's him, there he is," pointing at the criminals. the cops shined flashlights up at us.

me: "they think we're the fourth gunman."

crystal: "it's the grassy knoll."

we retreated down and indoors where my roommates were at the window. then they said to crystal: "welcome to harlem!"

*

some parts of my life are sweet, like my bottom sheet or lemon drops. other parts are solid like bones. other parts are mushy like organs. other parts are air and planets that swirl around me and i can't figure out for the life of me which parts are authentic and which are just talkative comets/ambitiousrocketships. either way, isn't the moonlight lovely. isn't the moonlight terrible.

the roof makes me feel alive because i've never jumped off it. when i'd say i thought of such things: that was drama. not the feelings, but their respective actions. i like long, flat islands, or rather, the dream/drama of them. me in a boat.

memoirists keep making things up, they should just write novels. that's novel. my book is honest. maybe it isn't. maybe i'm copying someone else's words from accidential memory, i'll need a fact checker.

"a fat checker," susan powter said when we showed up for her yoga class at nine, not eight.

the internet is space you can call up if you want to, like photographs or a song you once knew by heart. it's virtual reality (the one we've been dreaming of) without helmets, it's Tomorrowland, specifically oriented dreamscape. books are hard and solid like bones, i mean, like moans.

*

the air was cool we snuck into the swimming pool you dove headfirst
i waded in
the scent of chlorine upon our skin

*

something haviland & i often spoke of was how much we'd like to need nothing. little self-sufficient spaceships. i'd still like that sometimes, but i know it's not true. besides, it's better this way: for example, i have good friends. some of my friends are not only friends but also miracles. i even have a friend who's not only a friend but a miracle and a blessing.

*

the stars were bright, the water clear,
i felt your heat, as you swam near
i held my breath, you held my hand
moving away, further from land
the moon was full, everything blue
the water stilled, reflecting you

*

have i mentioned that life is good? my water tastes like soap. sometimes skin tastes like soap.

i liked zipping through the canyons with haviland & cait, driving out to malibu sans traffic. i liked that we (natalie & cait & alex & I) made it past the singing bears and then down the flume alive, soaked & smiling & squeegee, and then dashing past tom sawyer island to get out before they cut the lights. i like wide eyes, i like wide full futures.i'm not sure anyone (not even me) knows how different it feels to stop daring my heart to attack. truth or dare: dare, always the dare, and then, maybe, wait a few months (close your eyes) and then and then, right, the real secret is, and then: truth. i don't know it.i'm a fundamentally ridiculous person ("you need to stop using that phrase, marie"). i'll never shake the feeling that this self-indulgence is wasting everyone's time. the starving children, and so forth. the handcuffs, the crash and the direction of sirens.

sometimes i'm alone in an unfamiliar room and think i could be anyone (now, later). sometimes i'm well aware that's a clichè, is the real secret. i find that feeling less scary then i used to. i'm more scared that i'll be a cockroach tomorrow morning than of guns or car crashes. i don't feel obligated to control traffic.

does anyone else worry you'll love a person just like you love a song -- completely, on repeat, and then ... boredom, or bad memory?

*

i'll finish my book by june first. and then.

* floating right here with you next to me gazing at stars, we drift silently

*

possible titles:
Sancho Panza - Behind the Music
my word verif is wtf just happened
me and being

*

Cait: "Sometimes you're talking about something, and then, an hour later, you'll say something else about that same thing, and I think, have you been thinking about that same thing all this time?"

Me: "Yes."

Cait: "Isn't that exhausting?"

Me: "Yes."

* late at night, the air was cool we snuck into the swimming pool i went under and you followed let's not think about tomorrow

*

What I've Been Reading:
the best first lines of a poem, possibly ever ...

I love you too
don't fuck up my hair
I can't believe
you almost
fisted me
today.
-Eileen Myles, "Dear Andrea"

*

A few weeks ago I had a lot of feelings and decided to eliminate my website. semicolon is making a new one, she's got all kinds of visions to put into practice, she knows what she's doing. I just need a bio. It's me, so it's an auto-bio. I know what happened, I've been here this whole time, I'm pretty sure I know what I did too, and what's worth mentioning, but I also feel

Anyhow, I do not know who I am. I've got some hyperlinks to some stories, essays, etc. I published stories about fucking, even the ones that weren't about fucking were also kinda about fucking.

*

When I was little, I was mostly scared of being kidnapped. Every summer, my father installed the screen windows. "If anyone tries to kidnap you," he told me, "I will wake up. I'll hear the kidnapper cutting through the screen windows." I'd imagine daggers slicing dirty cool metal screens and a sound that spoke to fathers. I trusted that.

*

possible titles:
before my head exploded, i wrote this book
i think uh huh her is a real band and i like their music
it's likely i accidentally plagiarize stephen dunn
i wrote about you, but i changed your name
this book is actually true i swear
after he died
i hate los angeles so much it hurts
this week in corrections
this might be boring but it's got a nice spine for your shelf
my spine
your spine
our spines.
everything is perfect now.