outermost (the post about aliens and ice and smoke)

Greetings! Welcome to my blog! Welcome to Internet Land! Where all of your dreams will come true, all of your time will be wasted, and all of your naked photos will be hacked and sent around the world and maybe even into space. Aliens might see your boobs! But then again, aliens have probably already seen it all. X-ray vision and whatnot. What? Is this not a good beginning to a blog entry? Well, pish posh. Whatever. I've forgotten how to blog. Is blogging passé? Should I be Snapchatting and/or Skyping instead? I think I should probably be sending out smoke signals for the extraterrestrial creatures up there in the celestial skies and tell them to stop being perverts. Maybe I should also chew on some ice.

Yes, I've been chewing on a lot of ice lately. This could mean one of about a dozen things. I could be sexually frustrated (HELL-O!), anemic (OH CRAP), dehydrated (WHO ISN'T?!), or anxious (DUH). I guess those are just four things, not a dozen. Look, I never said I was good at math. But guess what? I'll say it now: I am terribly wonderful at math. Not even joking for one damn second. I was the top student in my COLLEGE math classes! I even went on a date or two with my math professor AFTER I was out of his class! I know that last thing has nothing to do with my math skills, but it does have something to do with my dating skills, which I do not possess. I possess little to no skills in the world of dating. But man oh man, I am more than capable of plotting ordered pairs on a coordinate plane. Sexy? Uh, yeah. I don't blame you if you want to chew on a bucket of ice after reading about my mathematical skills. I don't blame you, but I won't kiss you. Yet.

Hmmm. So I guess my blog has abruptly shifted from being a place where I write vague and poetic musings to a forum for my descent into madness. Let it be! And so it shall be! And I will lose followers by the post, but I will gain lost time. Weird how you can gain while you lose, huh? Weird how time is just a construct and numbers are erotic and I am neurotic and aliens are paying attention to my smoke signals. It is strange, though, because I do not know how to start a fire. How can I send the message without a flame? Apparently I am. Apparently someone out there is reading this. Apparently madness is still expressed in a sane way through the tidiness of words and (mostly) complete sentences.

So will you, aliens of the Internet (whom I love), continue to read my smoke signals? I can almost promise you that I have more coherent things to express. I will have to express those things at a later time, however. I have to go to recess! Seriously. I get paid to play with 5-year-olds. If there's one thing I've learned from working with children, it is that they too are aliens. Aren't we all? But heaven help me if they ever read my smoke signals. Pssh. Like those goofballs can even read anything beyond the word "cat." Give me a break. (And give me a chance?) (Also, while you are giving me a chance, will you also give me a very large container of chewable ice? Thanks, you adorable space inhabitant you.)

the return

Hi, Reader! I say "reader" instead of "readers," because I'm skeptical of there being more than one person who reads this blog. Okay, there are probably three of you suckers, maybe four. But definitely no more than five.

Time has passed! I have disappeared! I did not actually disappear -- unless we don't quite know when we disappear until we look into a mirror and realize we are missing not only a face, but a head and a body and maybe even our arms. Our feet and hands, however, remain. And our smile. We have turned into the Cheshire Cat while at the same time being curious Alice and the aggressive Queen, looking for a head to chop off.

I did not stop writing. I guess I exist if I write? So I've been existing, not disappearing. It's just that I've been writing FICTION and PRIVATELY. Privately fiction. Private Eye fiction. Not private eye. I am simply private about what I write when I feel like I may be on to something... Not that I necessarily believe that my idea(s) will be stolen, but because I feel like I have to keep the sauce in the pot boiling before I take it off the stove and show it off to everyone in the dining room. Keep it in the kitchen until fully cooked.

Other than marinating/sauteing/frying/baking/filleting the strange and surreal stories that seep out of my brain, I have been doing a lot of walking. And reading. I read while I walk, which makes me the weirdo in the neighborhood who reads while she walks around the park in circles. Who is this odd blonde creature with over-sized sunglasses and a shocking shoulder tattoo? Why is she such a nerd? I wonder if she is secretly a drug dealer and is going to the park to give children candy laced with cocaine? Kids don't need cocaine. That last sentence will be the title of my second memoir. My first memoir will be titled, "Do Kids Need Cocaine?"

So I read, walk, whisk up words in a mixing bowl (yolks included), and push around a kid in a wheelchair. Oh yeah, I now have a job. And it's a "wheely" good job! Kidding, it's not good. At all. Okay, so helping children is wonderful. They are ill-behaved germ bags who are on rare occasions amazing humans. Overall, though, I look at this job as very super incredibly temporary. For one thing, it doesn't pay well -- and we all know that it's all about the, uh, scrilla. I also feel like I am not "utilizing my talents." But seriously. I have this English degree and I can whip up an Ionesco-like one-act play in seconds flat, but put me in charge of a dozen 6-year-olds and I become the dumbest person in the room (which is pretty bad because 6-year-olds are pretty dumb). I'm beginning to realize that I don't give myself enough credit. I settle for what is easy and safe because it is, well, easy and safe. I don't have to worry about being crestfallen or groundless. But oh how I've forgotten how much I value vulnerability and bravery. Vulnerability IS bravery. It's time I take a chance on something and go after what may seem impossible, yet soul-fulfilling. If there's anything I've learned from teaching kids, it's that the impossible usually ends up being possible and worth it. I've also learned that kids hate vegetables and love sneezing into the wind.

I don't have a point with this post other than to update you on ALL THINGS MEG. Meg! The girl who sneezed her dreams into the wind and ended up infecting the world! Get ready!

fine

Our lives are libraries and everyone has a card. Some items checked out are never returned. People have their reasons. They forget, they lost it, they planned to keep it from the start. Some items are valuable. Sometimes it's worth it to pay the fine.

Our brains are banks and we're running out of deposit slips. So we slip some money under the table and face the day with the confidence that we can pay without an account. Hiding cash under your mattress won't help if you're sleeping on the floor. Having cash in your pocket doesn't matter if you're standing naked.

And a part of us is a prison, but which part? Our hands, our feet, our shoulder blades when they ache after a night spent on the floor? It's hard for me to locate where we stay locked up because we aren't locked up together. I cannot see you over here in my isolation. How long of a sentence did we give ourselves for committing the crime of being human? How do we punish ourselves? More importantly, how do we redeem ourselves?

Being both the warden and the convict is confusing. We have the lock, but we forgot where we hid the key. Did we lose it? Maybe in an act of desperation we sold it. Some items are valuable. Some items draw more money than the account holds. Sometimes we have to surrender and plead guilty.

worlds

I shut out the world because there's another one spinning in my head. Two worlds do not make a right. I have to choose which world I will inhabit. The one inside is full of empty spaces and traces of people stranded in my memory. Their faces appear here and there, but I've become remarkably good at looking away. So you say your world has mountains and oceans and forests? Mine is comprised of filing cabinets and drawers. I receive, create, recall. You create, react, crawl. Who has it better? It's a draw.

But sometimes I find myself constructing rocket ships out of old cardboard hidden behind the filing cabinets. It's a cardboard ticket out of here, a passport to different planets. Is there time to turn the ship around, time to plan a different course? Of course I have my hangups. I have my ghosts that live on the coasts of oceans that do not exist. What am I willing to discard? Who am I willing to abandon?

At night I close my eyes and stare at the sky I've set up. Where do the stars start and where do they end? For now it's still a blank canvas. For now I hoard my cardboard for something better. For now I shut my blinds and wait.

receptor

A diet of expectations and calculations does nothing for the taste buds. The appetite is still there, not satisfied, sitting in a chair waiting for flesh to show its face. Where are you, meat? Don't be a coward. Don't disappear between a bun. Let me tear into you, bite after bite, raw and stripped from the bone.

Because I can't keep existing on air, on what's missing. I can't feast on famine. It's the juice that I need, the thickness of truth found in muscles. Give me proof on my plate. Give me a divine mess.

But in the meantime I'll continue assigning different tastes to different regions, I'll keep certain openings so small so that anything passing through must first dissolve. I won't solve my hunger problem. I will create chain reactions instead.

One day. One day I will dine, relishing in the rarity that has always been. Until then I'll keep chewing on the common.

week

Every Tuesday night I dream that I am holding myself as a baby. I am a fussy baby. I do not want to be held. But I go on holding and hushing and soon I fall asleep in my own arms. And then I wake up.

On Wednesdays you can get free pie at Village Inn. I used to go there with friends, back when I had friends. We would go after band practice, back when I pretended to be a musician. I only drank the coffee, mug after mug. I gave the lemon creme pie to my mom. It made me happy. I was hungry.

Thursdays are now when we are supposed to look at old pictures of ourselves and share them with people we don't know online for all the world to see, if only the world cared at all. They don't. And we don't really, although we all want to be seen at least a little. We all had bad hair in 1st grade. But let's take a look anyway.

Fridays used to mean something.

Saturdays are either the laziest or the most productive day. Pajamas until noon versus the entire garage cleaned out and swept. Mine veer off the path and lead me to everything sinful for which I can repent in mere hours. That's the way to do it. But let's keep it our secret.

We've all felt the Sunday dread. Whether it's sitting in a pew feeling itchy or remembering that Monday lurks around the corner, ready to suffocate and crush you. But there's brunch. At least there's brunch.

And I didn't mention Monday only because I forgot. I started this with a dream on my mind and dreams don't happen on Monday. Monday has been whitewashed by Sunday. Monday is blank and hanging out by the copy machine.

Lean in a little bit closer and maybe you'll fall into tomorrow.

tightrope

She preferred the tightrope over the feather bed. I do not know her history well enough to tell you if she preferred the knotted rope over the death bed. I doubt that she did. I doubt she found herself locked up in her thoughts with only one grim escape. Because she wrote. She told stories and released the characters of her creation to create their own lives within the lives of others. She knew how to let go, not smother. And she probably wore excellent hats with feathers and ribbon.

And here is my thought: What if I just jot down the pieces and build the puzzle later? I expect a finished product from the start, but that design has no support and will simply collapse under pressure. There will be no picture, only rubble.

I need a net. I need a place to land when my footing is off. I will lay it out and then stand upright and walk. Where I end up, I do not know. It does not matter. The art lies in maintaining balance during the tension. The art lies not horizontal. The art tells the truth standing up.