currently: a look into what is currently going on in my head: a true story: based on fiction: JK

Currently:

*I cannot stop listening to Robert Johnson.

*I cannot stop thinking about going to Disneyland.

*I cannot stop looking at recipes and fantasizing about all of the different feasts I will make. Who gives a fudge (mmmm) if they are vegetarian/low-fat/low in carbs?! Not me! I want to experience all foods and become a major foodie. No, really. I really do. Life goal here, folks. That and going to Disneyland while tripping on LSD.

*The wacky spring storm last night might have made a wacky idea pop into my head and it has STUCK. It didn't dry up with the sun like the rain did. What's this idea? Well, it's not actually an idea. It's more of a decision. The decision is that I want to get married. Okay okay okay, maybe. Maybe. I've never really had the desire to get married and now the sudden desire ("desire" might be too strong of a word) may be caused by certain people in my life getting married. Like, "Hey! Wait up! I wanna join/fit in/not be left behind!" So perhaps I should examine this "desire" of mine first before I, you know, start proposing to people. TOO LATE!!! Ohhh Emmm GEEE!!! I've proposed marriage to people! I am such a weirdo!

*Can we always talk about food? I want to talk about food some more, but maybe I should start my own food blog? I want to turn my enemy (food, my body) into my best best best friend. And I'm determined as hell to make this happen. Lock up your cabinets! I'm gonna raid your house and eat all of your cereal! While naked! At Disneyland! Riding around in a giant, spinning teacup! Whoa. I could pour all of the cereal into the teacup and eat it out of the teacup. Oh, hey, I've had two cups of coffee this morning, by the way.

*The transition into one's 30s is rough, man.

*I talked to two important people in my life yesterday (one through text, one on the phone). These people are important to me for various reasons, but one major reason is that we all went through the hardest (and also the best) year ever together. I suppose I won't go into too much detail. I'll just say that it is miraculous that I can call both of them friends; I grew up so much after that year and it taught me that I still have so much more growing up to do. I hope to never be as unkind to anyone as I was to those two (and to myself) during that year. I vow to put kindness at the center of my life's mandala. I've said that before, right? Well, it's worth saying again.

*I want breakfast!!!!!!! So excited to eat breakfast!!!!!! I've said that before, right? Well, it's worth saying again.

fury/fall/freakout

You'd think I'd be familiar with, you know, technology-n-computers by now, especially since I grew up during the birth of the Internet (exiting the womb! in such a fine, bloody fury! hello, world! plug me in! sign up! log in log off dial up bzzzz!), but I still find myself absolutely clueless and freaked out when little changes occur on sites I frequently use - LIKE BLOGGER. This post pagey thingy is different and I feel like it is messing with my writing style and I don't even have the motivation TO write when I am so confused. I am not confused. I am just on drugs. And that drug is caaaaaffffffeeeeeeiiiiiinnnnneeeee! And Percocet. Kidding about the Percocet, unfortunately, because I obviously need one right this very moment. The heart usually beats INSIDE of the chest, right? You may correct me if I am wrong. I may be wrong. I am often wrong. Wrong or right? Is it wrong to write? Is it right to be wrong about being a writer? Maybe fake it 'till I make it?

Speaking of "faking it 'till I make it," maybe I'll just go crazy and start writing a screenplay/novel. Or both! I let fear stop me. Nothing else stops me from writing except for myself. I never feel emotionally prepared to go down that rabbit hole of writing - and I'm not talking about blog writing or tweeting or other forms of writing I do fairly frequently. I'm talking about the "serious" kinds of writing that I want to do, such as writing poetry or short stories or plays. Let me be completely immodest and annoying right now and say that I know I can write something absolutely amazing, but I don't want to. That is so much pressure. I crumble under pressure...

...but sometimes I thrive. Sometimes pressure gives me a pinpoint focus that in "normal life" I never have. Pressure forces me to get rid of the ground underneath my feet, ground that is usually unnoticed quicksand. When I'm falling down I am at least focused on the falling (aka the present moment). So maybe I just need to fall. But please let me fall with a pen in hand.

settle/solitude

Any other late bloomers out there or am I the only one?

I'm probably not the only one; still, it feels lonely over here.

I can say with quite some confidence that I am very unconfident in who I love. I am just beginning to uncover and discover pieces and shades of me that I wasn't aware were there. I do not know how to view this particular period in my life. Is it exciting? Terrifying? Super damn confusing? Beautiful? Maybe it can be all of those things.

But there are moments of panic followed by long stretches of despair. "Real life" sinks in and I wonder if I will always be alone. I am not the easiest person to get close to, I understand. I purposely push people away, people that I can see myself desperately loving. It could be the classic "I push you away so I don't have to get hurt later on" thing, but more so I wonder if I am just a loner. Like, an actual loner - someone who simply functions better alone and finds ultimate peace in solitude.

That being said, I am getting older (no shit) (even though I still get mistaken for a high school student cooooool). I feel kinda "past my prime." Really, folks, it's all downhill from here, at least in the beauty department. I also don't feel like putting in any effort to leave my house... But at the same time, I think I really do want to leave my house! And maybe just find a nice person with whom I can settle down! But I'm not ready to settle! But lord oh lord I don't wanna die alone. That's what we're all trying to say, but can't because we dance around the subject of death. As a lazy Buddhist, however, I am trying to remain open and confront all aspects of life, which include death. I also avoid it, though. I avoid a lot.

Stuck.

I can't force what won't budge. OR CAN I?! Tell me what to do, please. Tell me if I should hunker down and get hitched and have some kids and call it a life. Or tell me to leave and never look back. The extremes: it's all I've ever known.

warrior, grumbly, (parentheses), and the lion

For you, Blogger, I have broken my caffeine fast. No! You know what? I am not gonna take another sip of this Rockstar. Seriously. I have felt awesome being off of caffeine, so what am I doing drinking this at 9 in the morning? I've had maybe half of it, so that's 60 or so milligrams of the lion (I guess I just called caffeine "the lion"? huh.), which is the equivalent of a Dr. Pepper or something, right? Or Mt. Piss Dew? :( :( :( Oh well, Meggie not gonna get down on herself for succumbing to the lion's temptations.

Here's why I am so Caucasian: I talk endlessly about quitting caffeine; I eat hummus so so so much; I have a blog; the name of my blog comes from a Bob Dylan song; I dream of moving to Vermont and having cats.

Here's why I want to drink more caffeine: I can't leave a can half full (hey! optimist!); I want to finish a couple of books and write a couple of letters; I'm addicted.

Here's why this post is bothering me: it is fuuuuull of grammatical errors. RIGHT?

I'm up to about 81mg now.

BUT IT'S OKAY!!!

There is a zen saying that goes somethin' like this: 80% is perfect.

I'm trying.

I really am trying lately to be happier. I know I should just feel whatever it is that I feel (and believe me, I do), but I can also make a conscious effort to not fly off the handles (metaphorically and, well, literally) (not that I'm ever on a bike, sadly). I can make an effort to stay present, precise, peaceful. I can stop being a grumbly (grumbly! cute word) sourpuss to my family (sorry, family, it's not you, it's me) and start being a warrior. A warrior, you ask? I know that sounds a bit dramatic, but I urge you to read Chögyam Trungpa's book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior in order to understand what I mean when I say "warrior." I mean, don't read it just for that reason (or do).

Oh goodness. So many parentheses.

peppermint

Did someone once say or sing or write that everything changes, everything remains the same? Because I agree with him/her/it.

I want to write about all of it. About her talking to me, about them running into him, about me thinking about him, about us planning, about lying down on a yoga mat crying with my eyes closed hoping hoping hoping for someone to touch my forehead with gentleness and strength and peppermint oil and telling me that it will all be okay.

And they did.

I will write later. I have too much seeping into my brain (part of it is nostalgia/regret/confusion/delusion and the other part is peppermint oil).

I need to marinate for some time.

figs and labyrinths

See that girl with the diamond ring? She knows how to shake that thing.

See that girl with the fog and pearls? She knows how to be sooo melodramatic.

Cool! And here I go!

I get very uneasy when I feel like others are "tip-toeing" around me, perhaps because they are worried I will "snap" or be a grouchy doo doo head fucktard. And they are probably right. I need to be less of an asshole. Still, I feel like some may see me as "broken" and that I need to be "handled with care" just because once upon a time some doctor somewhere labeled me as "depressed." The label sticks. The label has kept me perpetually an adolescent. There's an imbalance; the overprotective married to the distant. Where is the balance within myself? Is it there? Can I unearth it?

And there is another thing, closely related to what I just described, that I need to unearth and resurrect. The feminine. For so long I have silenced what is inherent. I have shaved curves into angles and turned softness into hard, factual edges. Intuition fled. My cycle disappeared. I'm outside of a labyrinth, wishing to be inside, but not trusting the moon's glow. My shadows keep tricking me. I keep waiting for someone to point out the sky to me instead of simply looking up (and in) myself.

Loopy. I'm feeling loopy and lopsided and two-dimensional.

He didn't get it. I thought he understood me being away and needing space and I was kind of excited. But I was just a two-dimensional figment. Figs: they connote abundance and initiation. I remember a week after my biopsy, my body's tissue clumped together and escaped. It resembled a fig. My body rejects abundance; my body is waiting to be invited into itself.

This is highly imperfect and unfinished.

poets and stuck in the middle

I'm writing this post in between looking at so many Tumblr pages. Tumblr is more addicting than PCP. Okay, so I've never done PCP (not that I know of!!! could've been slipped into a drink of mine once upon a time! we'll never know for sure! who stopped the rain! creedence clearwater revival did! all of your dads love CCR, don't they?), but I bet if PCP is addictive, it's at least slightly less addictive than Tumblr.

I can't believe that my fingers know automatically where the keys on the keyboard are. Are my fingers god? Is god within my fingers? Does the entire UNIVERSE exist within my pinky finger? How many fingers left until we reach Babylon? God, that does not even make sense. How many cents does it take to reach a dollar? If we're talking about pennies, then 100. One hundred pennies. One hundred penises, floating through (cyber)space. Wanna cyber? I kid. No one cybers anymore, mostly because the hot lap tops that are placed on our laps (aka our GENITALS) have made us sterile and bored. We are more into mirrors than we are into skin-on-skin.

That last paragraph. Uh oh.

Poetry will always always always win my heart. If you know and appreciate poetry - like, you live it, feel it, let it seep into your fragile bones - I will fall hopelessly in love with you.

I already have! I have sorta kinda maybe fallen in love with a certain poet. I can't tell you who it is! Not yet. But I need to work my magic in order for this southern charm to bite my hook.

I'm goddamn tired. Goddamned or goddamn? God doesn't mind if we say "goddamn." Language is such a "dangerous weapon." Want me to explain that? Then buy me a drink and force force FORCE me to leave my room and I will explain it.

In the meantime, I don't know why I came here tonight.

doo doo and Jane Austen

Okay, who hacked into my blog last night and posted that cuckoo loopy freaked up piece of shoot? (Did you see how I censored myself? Shoot instead of shit! Criminy instead of fuck! Doo Doo Head instead of Fucktard!)

I feel like I'm living in a world surrounded by people who are living in a Jane Austen novel, but my own life is like a cynical Bukowski poem or perhaps a Brautigan novel. You know, full of cigarettes, whiskey, and an Asian women obsession. Actually, I don't smoke. When Joe Joe went outside yesterday for a smoke smoke, he asked me if I wanted a cig cig and I said yes, but only to put behind my ear while I read horoscopes aloud to whomever would listen.

My horoscope basically told me everything in my life is just dandy right now. Five stars!

Criminy, Gemini! Things sure don't feel so dandy at the moment. I ain't livin' in Austen's world, okay? And yeah, ham on rye does sound good right now. Minus the ham part. Rye bread, though? I believe I ate it every single day I was in Death Valley. Rye toast, omelette (does it make you mad I spell it all French-like? if so, why are you so angry? is there something bigger bothering you that you aren't confronting and instead you take out your frustration on the way I spell a particular breakfast food? i am truly sorry. capitalization? yeah, it's a bit erratic. are you angry that it's so erratic?), hashbrowns, and coffee. And stolen bottles of Tabasco.

I find myself wanting to copy/paste tweets into my blog posts for those of you who do not have a Twitter account because DAMMIT, some of my tweets have been so funny lately, especially when they get a little help from the Sailor. IFYOUKNOWWHATIMEAN.

Wow. That was pretty self-absorbed of me to say, right? But I need to start being more self-absorbed, right? Well, maybe "self-absorbed" isn't the right word (words? hyphenated word?). Basically, I just need to stop treating myself like shit. That would be a good first step.

Another good step? Eating. Always eat, Meg! Food is a friend and so fucking awesome. Whoops. I mean, food is a friend and so doo doo head awesome.

such a long, easy ride

sURE, CAPS LOCK, NICE TRICK.

Warning! Warning to all of you lonely web surfers out there! This will be the weirdest post just (never eat soggy waffles) west of the Mississippi. Mississississississi-pee-pee-eye.

The fuck.

Good god, I'm listening to James Taylor for some reason. Sweeeeeet buddha god, he is boring. We know you've seen fire and rain, Tay Tay, and we know it's because you were in a mental institution, but guess what? Lulu is singing about sucking on ding dongs and I think that's probably more legit.

Okay, let me start this ENTIRE POST over. So, I've brought you here tonight to talk about something really important. I can't even begin to guess what it is that I am about to type. Please! Don't stop reading! This is of the utmost importance!

Water.

death valley part 1

Spontaneous fragments from my week in Death Valley:

*I purchased small turquoise earrings so that I would feel "prettier." I have worn them once and may never wear them again. Okay, I'll probably wear them again. Still, earrings are not my thing. Painting my nails, also not my thing. Neither are shopping sprees, girly talk about boys (HA!), pedicures, teeth whitening, hairspray, shaving, or floral design. Nothing against them, they just mean nothing to me.

*I "stole" these ADORABLE mini bottles of Tabasco from the continental breakfast at one of the hotels. In fact, I "stole" a lot of breakfast items (that's why I always bring my big purse to buffets!) and even went back to the breakfast twice in one morning so I could steal more. I have so many oranges and packets of peanut butter!

*I fell asleep on a sand dune and on these goofy (in a completely sacred and beautiful way) looking rocks. I also fell asleep each night before midnight and had insanely poetic, slightly sexual, always foggy dreams every single night. So lucky! But where have the dreams gone? Where have all the cowboys gone? Good question, Paula Cole.

*Speaking of cowboys, we went to a cowboy museum in a small California town. It was dreamy. The Hollywood version of the Wild West is wildly inaccurate, but also slightly romantic (aside from all the let's-kill-the-Indians-and-take-their-land-and-let's-also-treat-women-like-meat stuff). I got to see this super decked out convertible that was used in the critically acclaimed film Twins. Why it was in a cowboy museum, I'll never know (unless I google it!).

*I kept running into these Oregonian lesbians on the trip and they kept seducing me with their braless, Subaru Outback, makeup-less lives. I know, I know. I know what exactly? I know that I don't know.

But I do know that I am hungry (of course), so I will go eat. Of course. And of course I will write more about Death Valley in the near-ish future. Stay tuned, little kitties.

stolen

She drinks her stolen soda out of a straw so as to not stain her teeth.

She doesn't really care about her teeth, actually. There was just a straw nearby. And so she thought, "That looks fun."

Straws and soda were just one (two?) way(s) to fill up some time (as if time was a large, empty box just sitting there smack dab in the middle of your mind, ready to not be so empty anymore). Stolen soda, though? Yeah. Just, you know, refilling when refills were not allowed or sneaking a can from her grandma's fridge in the garage. Little things like that. Nothing lightning's-gonna-strike you worthy. She figured she was just balancing out the universe a bit, seeing as she had been the victim once or twice in the past for this and that.

Sometimes she wondered what her father would think of her current crush. She wondered if all daughters sometimes thought about that, at least a little. She sometimes wanted to date someone just so her father would know that she was capable of having an adult relationship. But would dating someone in order to prove a point really be proving that point? Now she was confused. Confusion: According to her unfinished OkCupid profile, it was one of the things she couldn't live without.

Somewhere along the way, she began boldly claiming that she wants to be alone. Recently she started to suspect that her claim was simply a good old fashioned defense mechanism. If I can convince others that I enjoy being alone, maybe I can convince myself! Hey. Worth a shot. She took a sip of her ginger ale and was delighted to find out that the straw was a bendy straw. It's the small pleasures in life.

Somehow someone slipped into her life, even after her meticulous construction of walls and shields. This person drew her beautiful mountain scenes on her paper coffee cup. This person wrote her a heartfelt letter about roots and the desert and owls. This person pointed out Venus in the sky and told her what she already knew. She pretended she didn't know. She pretended she didn't know what was about to happen. She pretended to ignore that empty box that was quickly being filled with a future.

So she slipped away. She withdrew and withheld. She had seen the beauty of them, which bordered the eventual breakup. It was the same storyline that everyone that ever existed experienced and she was bored with it. Not with the person; not with them. She was bored of the box being filled with inevitable pain. She preferred the absolute meaninglessness of bendy straws and stolen sodas.

She still felt sorry. She bought little turquoise earrings to make her feel better, to make her feel pretty. She wondered why she had purchased the earrings and stolen the soda, seeing as the earrings were far more expensive than the soda. Perhaps certain things were worth paying for. Perhaps there was a cost for beauty.

Her dad would have thought the world of him.