6-15-05
9:51 pm

I won’t lie about it. Whenever I write something, I’ll look back at it a few days later and absolutely hate it. My role models as of right now:

Dasha, for her cosmic pen
Tony, for his sunflower camera and silver-tongued guitar
My photo teacher, K. Vergis, who has the patience of a saint
Teachers in general, who were once kids, but now are dying because of us
Pocahontas, for showing me how beautiful things can be

AND

Natalie Wood, for having big brown eyes that cheer me up every time I look at them

Here is something I wrote (years) a few days ago, which I was really proud of, since I tried to show how exaggerated all of our lives are on paper, and how even in the exaggerations there are stretched truths and scattered breaths. I was also trying to show how in our lives, in Jane Austen’s life, in a daffodil’s life, there’s this balance we’re all trying to obtain, but can never really obtain it. Everything is too extreme. Mrs. V said I might be the guy to find the balance. Well fuck, I’d like to be, but I don’t think I’m even ready to sing yet.

I’ll leave you with this, and a note saying, “I’m not going to write for a while. I’m just going to read and read and read until Santa comes back and rescues me from adulthood.”

STYLES:

A. TRUTH

I’m graduating next Friday. I’m not going to give a speech. I’m leaving everyone I never knew with nothing. No kind remarks, no cruel insults, no compassion, no love, no handshakes, no memory. Three months ago I was so motivated to make everyone around me understand how truly beautiful people are and how we should always be sincere and never sarcastic because no one can be hurt by sincerity. Looking back on the conversation I had with Trish, how happy it made me feel, how motivated I was afterwards, I can’t believe nothing happened. No beautiful works of art plastered on the walls, hanging from the ceiling, no poems or photos or smiles anywhere. No one would appreciate any of it. They would probably even laugh at it. Was I wrong to be so optimistic? I don’t know, maybe. It made me so goddamn happy. I really believed I could make people feel wonderful about life. If not for the first time, when they were children, when there was no prejudice, when smiles where everywhere, when their tiny little delicate little claylike little fingers minds spirits faces clean assholes rupturing from the ground oh god oh GOD… I could feel on my face I could run with my arms spread out like wings and feel like I was flying and people would smile because I was just a kid and you can’t do that when you’re old, but I think you can anyway, I think adulthood is just something we made up when we lost that spark in life.

Fuck. People don’t need to be saved do they? I’m being stupid. Vivacity surrounds up, can consume us, but I, the deliverer, the one Snow White called the self-titled Savior, cannot even see it, am blinded by my own red-streaked hands. A lot of kids are truly wonderful, beating bleating beeping, look! I can already feel their warmth. Looking up at that big white board with the hangman games scattered all across it – proof of what I thought was lost.

Maybe it’s just these kids, these personalities oh no, am I forgetting…


B. LIES

It snowed last night, but it was warm snow. It wasn’t cold outside, and when a snowflake melted on my tongue it tasted like chocolate and my body tingled. Pocahontas was there too, holding my hand. We smiled together, drinking hot chocolate with the fluffy marshmallows, drinking hot chocolate at the warm hot perfect temperature, drinking hot chocolate that made us feel good.

The moon was smiling at us, smiling its crescent smile, showing us its round face like the balloon I used to ride while I was small the big balloon-faced pig attached to the carousel, spinning me around the world as if it were nothing and I really believed it was and I was and you were. For the first time in my life, I felt alive, not looking at myself in the snow globe but shaking it healthily my heart could beat with the earthquakes and god, I wasn’t Henry Fonda or George C. Scott anymore. I was alive, more alive than Kubrick imagined, and all I wanted was to save it, was to lock it up in a chest and keep it forever, I’d kill John Smith if he tried to take it away, because I was in heaven and I didn’t want to lose it. Pocahontas smiled at me, and my eyes rolled back and I slept.

She kissed me in the morning and then –

Well then, she made me some pretty delicious pancakes.


C. WHITE LIES ABOUT THE LIE.

I first met Pocahontas at that coffee shop down on Second and Main. She was wearing this crazy little Indian outfit- this tight brown dress with all those strings or cords or whatever the hell you call them hanging off the sleeves. I don’t remember how we started talking, all I remember is her giving me her phone number and me thinking, “Wow, this girl has the most gorgeous green eyes I’ve ever seen.”

D. INTERJECTION

Pocahontas is a real person. I have never met her outside of these crazy dreams I keep having. Goldilocks is also a real person, and I have been dreaming of her more and more and more as days go by. Snow White is the only one who comforts me though. Goldilocks threw porridge at my face and Pocahontas is moving to the other side of the country with John Smith. I asked her what she was going to do about the teepees and she asked me to keep them safe until she came back. We’re going out for coffee before then though. I think she likes her coffee with three extra sugars.

E. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE WHITE LIES

The truth was, her name wasn’t Pocahontas, it was Kimmy. She had this raspy smoker’s voice, and was holding her baby in her arms with a lit cigarette in her mouth. She kept on muttering these crazy things like “Oh God, the Reds, the goddamn Reds!” or, “Shit, shit, shit! My fucking baby is eating my fucking arm off!” Christ, she didn’t even have green eyes. She had these awful, beaty looking things, colored like garbage. The truth was, Pocahontas was this girl in a Disney movie I saw a few years ago when things were different. I met her at the premier of the movie down on Main, and I got her phone number. Turns out Kimmy and her were cousins. Unlike Pocahontas though, Kimmy had a hole in her throat. When Kimmy was compared to Pocahontas by those around her, all she could way was,

“Well shit, that fucking bitch doesn’t even have her goddamn period! Fucking Indian bitch!”

F. ONE LAST THING

If at all possible, plant as many trees and flowers and plants as you can, and make it so indoors and outdoors are the same thing. It’s getting hard to breathe in here, but it’s too cold out there. Luke-warm hot chocolate doesn’t seem too good either. I don’t know what I want.