The Night Starts Here.

Hello friends! So it’s Friday night. Today was payday, the planet didn't collide with an asteroid, and I came home to this incredible care package from my forever Valentine:

Now I’m wearing my sweatpants, sipping Valentine’s homemade booze and watching The Sarah Silverman Program. I’m not sure how this is my life, but it’s pretty fucking phenomenal. The chainsaw grumble of Doris’ snoring couldn’t be more soothing. As some of you may have noticed, yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I hope you felt loved in every single sense of the word, because I know I did.

This Valentine’s Day involved delicious food [note: I cooked, so maybe I’m a little biased], homemade caramel apple pecan pie, and amazing company. You guys, did you even know that caramel is a thing that can be made from scratch? Apparently it’s just butter, sugar and heavy cream. Or in this case coffee creamer, which is essentially the same thing as heavy cream? At any rate, it was fucking delicious. I ate my weight in baked goods, got a geography lesson, sat on Lew’s couch listening to stories about J’s mom and lemon jolly ranchers. I hugged Mo’ Money all the times because I could. All in all a successful night of low key revelry.

I didn't realize V-Day was such a loaded holiday for me until I actually thought back on the last few years. And then I had all the feels and maybe wept openly for awhile. It's cool, Doris didn't judge me too harshly. She was just mildly concerned. 

This is Doris offering to hold my hair back if I puke tonight. 

Last year Valentine’s Day: we ate greasy cheeseburgers at the Mo Club and watched a burlesque show. We went to frozen yogurt. I didn’t have a date, or I did but I don’t remember who it was because we were the Forever Alone Klub. We were happy enough being a little sad together. She wasn't talking to me, but I pretended that was ok. The year before that was the wine tasting. We were children in formal wear, but we sat at that table like adults. We ate the five courses and drank too much wine. That night she drove us home and couldn’t remember her hands on the wheel or her wheels on the freeway. But we made it to my house, and I remembered my hands on her body regardless. Remembered her head on my pillow.

Earlier, 2010: I met my forever Valentine over a beer pong table and I couldn’t remember her face the next day. We went to the Vagina Monologues, sat with my girlfriend and the girl I thought I loved. I adore Valentine. She has scraped gravel out of my teeth and loaned me her alarm clock. She has listened to me sob myself to sleep, and made sure I got to work on time the next day. I love her because sometimes I’ll be walking down the street and I miss her in a way I can’t quite grasp. That nostalgic aching sort of missing. We were different people when we knew each other.

I’ve lived in Portland for nearly one year. Last February everything I owned was packed into the back the Biscuit. One year ago I drove 582 miles to pursue my career as a rap artist. Clearly that is really panning out for me. But seriously, last year I left Missoula with no fucking idea what I was going to do with my life. And to be honest, I still have no fucking idea what I’m going to do with my life. But I’m paying my bills on time and I’m well fed and I’m writing poetry and ridiculous blogs semi-regularly. I’m still breathing, and some days that’s the bravest thing a human being can do.  

I hope you’re all still breathing. I hope you all know how much I love you. Seriously, creeps. My heart feels so warm and swollen every time I think about you. Thank you for sticking with me!

 All my love (and kitten pictures).

-b

Is This The Real Life? Is This Just Fantasy?

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.

Hello tenderhearts! I promise I intended to post this last night, but then Teen Jeopardy happened. And wine. Also I attempted to assemble an oscillating fan for all of the lesbian points. I’m still convinced there were pieces missing from that box. Seriously, what are you supposed to do when there’s no extension rod? As some of you know, this is my second unsuccessful attempt to get back on a Thursday/Sunday writing schedule. I hate it. There are so many things I forgot to share with you! For example, the other day Uncle Sam and Lady Liberty walking hand-in-hand down Powell Boulevard, because why wouldn’t that be a thing? This is Portland fucking Oregon.

I know I’ve been slacking on rehashing the mundane details of my life, but I promise I’ve still been creating words! I’m currently cobbling together my first book of poems to enter the Phantom Limb chapbook competition. The deadline is February 25^th so I’m in crunch mode. If you’re interested in reading some poems, let me know. I can totes hook you up. Goal: to have my original written works fully assembled in a real book with a table of contents and original cover art and numbered pages by July 1^st.

Lately That Cat thinks she’s a latchkey kid. Also because of the rainy weather her fur has been matting really horrifically. Solution? I tossed her in the cat purse and took her down to the Boulevard for a shave. Now I own a very small alpaca instead of a cat. Hopefully she feels better, because god knows my day drastically improves every time I blatantly laugh at her.

This is not Murphy, but there's a striking resemblance

Here is the story of my life: I didn’t have many friends for a long time and now suddenly I have several. So obvs I’ve been doing All the Things to make up for lost time. I've come to the realization (again) that this is not a sustainable lifestyle. Adulthood is a strange thing because one morning you can eat cake for breakfast but the next morning you have to do your damn taxes because government. One day you can watch Pitch Perfect four times in a row, consume 84 meatballs and drink 5-9 bottles of wine. But the next day you wake up in a panic at 7am because maybe the landlord is coming over, and the dog needs to be walked and hello hangover. My real adult life means drinking the good tequila J stole from her parents, saying “cheers to new friendships” then playing games geared towards elementary school children until 2am. Drunk cognizance is essentially the same as being 8 years old.

Also, in an attempt to grow at least one muscle I’ve started doing crossfit. Actually, I’ve started working out with Beastfit Nation because:

  

All they ask in exchange for a kickass workout is that you click through some ads on their website and perform one act of kindness per workout. The pay it forward movement is still alive and well! Thus far my good deeds have been “offer to babysit for free” and “pay for somebody’s parking meter”. Is that illegal? For some reason, my brain says that’s illegal. But it’s still a pretty great thing to do because nothing sucks more than parking tickets. Except maybe being shot in the kneecap.

I don’t really know exactly what I wanted to say with this blog except that I’m still alive. I have new friends and I think they’re fond of me. Maybe they’ll even keep me for a while. Tonight I’ll probably go sing karaoke with them because Pat Benatar is my spirit animal. Or I won’t, and that will be fine too. Somewhere over the last year I learned how to be alone. In fact, I got pretty damn good at it. Now I need to learn when to stay in and when to go out. Or just when to go home after going out, because sometimes you fuck that up. I guess in the end it’s another learning experience. And the lesson we learned? Don’t get to the bar too early, start drinking tequila, get cut off, and sing Don’t Stop Believin’ at karaoke. Seriously, don’t. Those high notes are a real bitch.

Happy Friday, you bunch of creeps! All my love.

-b

for one crowded hour, you were the only one in the room

Happy Sunday, my darlings. I hope you’re all alive and well, and managing to avoid the flu epidemic. Fact: the flu vaccine is only 62% effective according to this moderately depressing article released by the CDC. I’m currently lying in my bed trying to keep my lungs in my chest. But! Had I been a responsible adult human being and taken recommended preventative measures, there’s a 3-in-5 chance I would still have the flu right now. Full disclosure, my illness is probably sleep deprivation and not an aggressive virus. We’ll never know for sure.

Sometimes I write poetry. And sometimes I participate in events where said poetry is read aloud to real life people. And maybe they like it or maybe they don’t but they’re always gracious enough to pretend. January 9^th, which was already 11 days ago because the world is a surreal time-warped place, I read in a 3+3 poetry feature hosted by Stone Soup. The host selected three featured poets, and each poet invited an additional reader for a total of six poets.

You guys. All the feelings! I have a confession. I think I’m addicted to poetry. Standing in a room full of friends, strangers and everything in between with adrenaline singing in my fingertips and the microphone popping with words that came from my head… I don’t even know. There’s something transformative in the sharing. Like my body functions as conduit, but the word are what’s Real and Alive. I opened my mouth, closed my eyes and just let them become. Thank you, Stone Soup, for initiating me into the poetry family. Sharing a stage with so much talent was rewarding and much-needed.

How does one celebrate a successful night of poetry? Chopsticks, obviously. Nothing says “I’m an artist, goddammit” quite like karaoke, Wednesday night and Chinese takeout.

Chopsticks occupies a very specific segment of my heartscape. After the very first Stone Soup reading I attended, C invited me to Chopsticks for drinks. The walls are papered with polaroid snapshots, strangers’ faces like you’ve suddenly been dropped into real-life facebook. My human eyes take so much longer to process that much happiness than my restless fingertips do. We spilled stories back and forth across the pool table; sinking the past two years into corner and side pockets like memories could be corralled with the right geometry. That night I met Josh the Magnificent and tried not to stare while he feigned smoking a colored pencil. Chopsticks heralded the beginning of a Portland I didn’t know I would need so desperately. Also: karaoke seven nights a week. Obviously that’s a thing, because why not?

Things you don’t expect to happen on a Wednesday night:

·         A gaggle of gays head-banging to your rendition of Total Eclipse of the Heart.

·         A middle-aged man taking off his shirt and aggressively flexing his muscles in your general direction before dropping down and doing many, many push-ups on the dance floor. Don’t worry, he was escorted off the premises shortly thereafter.  

·         Hand-feeding your friend tater tots because she won’t eat them off the plate and you’re mildly concerned she might die if she doesn’t immediately ingest some form of grease and carbohydrate.

·         Drinking PBR in bed at 2am, nestled between your friends, all warm and sleepy until you can’t keep your eyes open anymore.

Altogether, Wednesday was a successful culmination of the many hours spent worrying, writing, swearing, re-writing and talking out loud to myself in inappropriate settings. Thank you to everybody making it possible to pursue my dream of being a poet. Or a rap artist. Whichever comes first.

All my love, creeps.

-b

Freedom's Just Another Word for Nothing Left to Lose

Hello weirdos! I’m writing to you from internet Station 9 at the Woodstock Public Library. Why you ask? Well, it’s not for the ambiance. Although the facial hair in this building is astounding. No, it’s because I’m a damn fool, and also I left my laptop on the stairs. The same stairs that I blindly charged up on my way to a friend’s birthday dinner last week. Turns out LCD screens don’t love being trampled? Learning all the things every day! Anyhow, my laptop is somewhere between Portland, Oregon and Smalltown, Somewhere. Shout out to my mother, who predicted my destructive tendencies and put a 1-year full warranty on the Samsung.

I hope 2013 has been exceeding your wildest expectations. Thus far I’ve managed to gain 4 lbs., spend money like life is Monopoly and shirk any form of adult responsibility. But more importantly I’ve eaten good food, danced like I know how to dance, sung all the karaoke and laughed more than I remember being possible. The sun is shining. There are poems humming in my fingertips. I haven’t cried yet this year. And yes, of course I still think about you, but only in that good aching way. The kind that reminds me I’ve still got a heart, not a dead animal sewn into my chest. The ache that leaves me clean.

Mostly today, I’m reassembling my life into some semblance of order. This includes mundane chores like grocery shopping, cleaning my bedroom, going to the gym and paying my bills. I know, I know. I’m living the fucking dream out here. But I can’t spend every day belting out 80s rock ballads until 2am and ripping paper towel dispensers off bathroom walls. It’s just not a sustainable lifestyle.

The past week was exceptionally nonproductive because 1. Lo visited this town and 2. The Stone Soup reading was successful enough to warrant insane celebration. Also I had to watch the Hunger Games four times. Had to. You guys, Jennifer Lawrence is just so perfect.

While I appreciate all of the things about Lo, I’m especially enamored of her ability to self-entertain. Namely because I worked 90% of the time she was here, grudgingly and distractedly. But each night she was there in my house, building beer can towers with Friend or waiting for me to feed her bacon sandwiches. [Note: shout out to ULOL for buying said bacon, and not criticizing the way I cooked it… too much.] While she was here she accomplished at least three goals: drinking ruby beer, thrift store shopping and eating conveyor belt sushi. I’m glad I got to participate in two of those three conquests. Lo, good choice on the blue dress. I hope you bedazzle the hell out of it.

Lo being here meant my bed late at night, talking about home. We talked about last winter, all the sad people burning their lives down. Rage catching herself with her forehead and me getting sent home from work because tequila. And it wasn’t funny, it wasn’t, it wasn’t... But we laughed because what else are you going to do? Sometimes the most absurd thing about life is just living it. We talked about the people that I know still exist because they have names and faces. Their numbers are saved in my phone and sometimes I see them living their lives through a computer screen. I wonder if they think of me, a name and a face living my life.

We ate too much, drank too much. We sang Bohemian Rhapsody twice, which seems completely necessary. We played Chuck, Fuck or Marry until we ran out of movie stars, cartoon characters and planets.

Jupiter, Mars and Saturn… Well obvs fuck Jupiter because size might matter. Marry Saturn if you like it enough to put a ring on it.  

Nostalgia ambushes me at the strangest times. Like when I’m drinking black coffee and the light falls just-so through the window and I remember Thanksgiving morning and the way my throat weighed one million pounds. Lew talks about the stars and I miss the way yard couch sagged under our weight, how we fell asleep before the meteor shower, woke up cold and covered in dew. Orion’s belt makes me crave small, bitter apples and heavily peppered venison jerky. Sheryl Crow makes me think California coffee shops and extra whipped cream, but only sometimes. Memory is a constantly shifting geography, hard to navigate, harder to predict. Lately my mouth aches for butterscotch and bananas. 

Lo, it was nice to go home without leaving my bed.

Many miles of love.

-b