I've recently been reacquainted with a boy I knew of from high school. I say, "knew of" and not "knew" because I can't actually recall any sort of conversation that we might have had the entire four years of it. The strange thing is that he seems to think he knows a lot about me. He makes statements about my incredible intellect, my humor, and my personal strength. And I have to stop myself from saying, Really? Because, to tell the truth? You don't know me at all.

He's kind though, and it's nice to have someone be kind to you. He seems to be fairly transparent and somewhat self revelatory. I appreciate that. And I like the knowing of things that I wouldn't have assumed based on an outdated file I'd written sometime in the mid-to late-nineties. But I can't quite figure out his intentions. I mean, is this just one of those, You seem to have grown up and gotten a lot better looking over the last decade, kind of things? Is this one of those, I missed out on the opportunity to know you because I missed out on the opportunity to know a lot of people and maybe I should've taken more time, kind of things? Or is it merely one of those, It's the middle of the night and you're actually someone who's awake, kind of things?

In the end, I don't suppose it matters much which it is. Because there's always a place for being reacquainted. It's strange though, to suddenly be spending hours typing to someone that you didn't know anything about but have been aware of the existence of for quite some time till a few days ago. And then they ask you if you want to go golfing with them or play tennis and it just adds another layer to the question.

So I've gone and canceled my cable TV. My marrow-sucking is ready now to attain heights before unimagined. This is truly a Great Age.
Soon, you'll find me entranced by trash swirling in breezes and making out with an arbor of choice. My clothes will be made out of grass and I'll dismantle my car and stick daisies in the tailpipe, a monument to the new peace between nature and industry, even if that peace is only forged on my little eight feet of streetside curb. I'll change my name to Serena Joy (ten points to anyone who catches that reference) and begin talking in a smooth cool voice about auras and energy and karma, a voice like a quick swab of rubbing alcohol on a wound. I will wear flowers in my hair and I won't even be in San Francisco.
Also it should give me lots more time to ramble on and on on the Internet. Something for everyone, see?!

I was invited on the spur of the moment this past weekend to go to visit my friend Josie in her hometown of Edon, OH. I've been there less than a handful of times in the last decade but every I go I am reminded again how much I adore that place.
And this is Edon.
There’s only one bar and two stoplights, but a myriad of trucks and farming equipment. It’s a place where all the men flirt with other people’s wives, no one gets divorced, and everyone has babies that they leave at their mama’s for the night so that they can head over to the Honkytonk, where if you’re a young woman you have all your drinks bought for you and if you’re a man of any age you buy them. People buy their beer in twos and the boys flirt by asking if that’s your natural hair color and if it is, say, I like it. I can’t stand it when girls dye their hair up or get them highlights in it. They stay up late drinking beer on Saturday nights and still get up for church in the morning, where their little cousin is singing in the service. And it’s beer straight away. The bar doesn’t even have glasses, they serve the occasionally ordered screwdriver or jello shots in clear plastic cups.
It’s a beautiful town, simple. A town that just feels like home no matter where you may actually be from. A town where if you want to give someone who’s fallen on hard times money, you have an auction where people buy things they don’t want, much less need, just so that they can donate to people who wouldn’t take charity.  Down the main street, drivers honk their horns and wave out their windows and those standing in parking lots know who it is by the flatbeds they’re driving, and everyone has a title. In a place where everyone knows everyone, they’re all related. Instead of introductions of This is Susan or Jimmy or Beau, it’s This is my sister-in-law or The boy I went with in junior high or This is my wife’s brother’s boss’s dad.
When you wake up in the morning, all you can see out your lace curtained windows are miles of fields waiting to be sowed broken only by the occasional farmhouse or barn. And when you go out at night, the men stand around talking while the women dance to a country band. Teenagers to grandparents socialize at the same place. They talk about Edgerton or other places that just don’t measure up and insult each other’s favorite tractor brand. And the kids ride miniature John Deeres around their living rooms, with family portraits on the walls and framed sayings like, Home Is Where The Heart Is. The men are farmers or drive big rigs. Their wives make a homes out of houses with multiple porches sporadically sat down on a country road.
And I love it. I love this town.

I just wanted to share this subject line from a MySpace message I received today (yes, I am One of Those People), because it's delightful to me for some reason. Here goes:
I like the pic. librarian. hmm that's sexy and turns me on. and I'm a stranger.
So upfront. Like, Make no mistake, lady, you don't know me. But I'd like to know you, biblically, if you catch my drift.

I wish!
I've been warring against a migraine all day and I have to say, I feel like I finally know what those unlucky saps at Valley Forge felt like.
(As a side note, since headaches encourage my stupid TV watching to an almost unholy degree, I have an America's Next Top Model on and believe it or not, none of the six contestants left know what the word "aloof" means. Sigh.)
On the plus side, I got an appointment to have someone do my taxes at the last minute. Huzzah! Unfortunately I have to bring my 2007 tax returns for both me and my mom and I have no idea where either of them are. So. This leaves me two days to panic and tear my apartment apart trying to find them, then to finally realize that I've probably shredded them or thrown them out and be royally screwed. Ahhh, the joys of tax season.
In other news, anyone got a brilliant novel idea? Cuz I'm in a stealin' kinda mood.

I just got out of my three hour French class, and it was divine. I think I'm in love. All those "c'est"s and "voudrais"s. Heaven!

And as I was walking down the stairs and out into a cool spring evening, it struck me suddenly that I knew these stairs. What is it about a college campus? The way the air smells, the non-skid strips on the linoleum steps, the weight of books carried over the shoulder. It's like being in a Meijer: once you're inside, they're all the same place. And it was a good familiar feeling strolling down the overwide sidewalks basked in dim street lights. L'amour, my friends, l'amour!

In other news, I still haven't heard from Simon, so I thought I'd do a poll. You vote! Yes! You! Can!

Here are your choices. Simon hasn't talked to me in three months because:

a) He was a victim of that vile creature, The Economy, and is on the street, looking so bummy that they kick him out of the library computer lab?

b) He joined a religious cult that forces him to handle snakes and accidentally got bitten by one that paralyzed his vocal chords and/or all of his limbs?

c) He's rebuked society and decided to live off the grid, building himself a shack in the wilderness and refusing any kind of technology?

d) He was kidnapped by alpacas who took him to a remote part of India where he freed himself, slaughtered them in their sleep, and is now in foreign prison and/or on the lam?

e) He's more of a jerkwad than I was expecting?

Personally, I'm leaning towards b).

But when it really comes down to it, what are you going to do? Pay some private eye to track down his whereabouts, sell everything you own to emmigrate to Europe, show up one night at a place he frequents and when he rebuffs you, break into his house and put up pictures of yourself all over the walls and furniture and burn love threats into his lawn? Pleeeease. That never works.

So I'm going to be blase, because what choice have I got? Besides its wasting too much of my time and I'm too hot and awesome to pine. Pining is for trees and cleaning solvents, and I'm neither.

So the downside of things is that I recognize that some of my efforts are futile. But in the plus column, I got to talk with Ellie this morning while I was cramming French into my brain! Which was really nice and I remembered how much I used to enjoy his company those few months we were nestled together in that square mile of space at UUJ. He's still one of my favorite people. Unfortunately I'll never get to hang out with him ever again as long as I live.

So I was completing a writing prompt assignment tonight for Writers' Grope, and it really stirred up some things. The assignment was to write a letter to someone who had signed your high school year book and, since I can't find my high school yearbook, I had to go off my memory and in my memory the person that I would have treasured signing my yearbook the most would have had to have been Keith Lane (<--- wow, that's a lot of variations of the word "had".) For those of you who don't know, and I can't imagine why any of you would, Keith was this big nosed, deep voiced, cocky boy from Texas with green eyes that I went to school with from like eighth to tenth grade or something like that. I was crazy in love with this kid. Or thought I was anyway. But through the course of writing this letter, I started to think about and remember a lot of what was going on in my personal life at the time and it occurred to me that I have had a pretty duplicitous life for pretty much the entirety of it. I plan on maybe getting into this more with my independent blog, but I was wondering if that's a common thing? What are the things we've never told anyone?  And is now the time to tell them?

If anyone is interested in adding a new community to their already overworked and straining online backs, you can check out Writers' Grope. It's supposed to be an online writers' group where people can post and have their work ripped to shreds by the other contributors and avoid having their tears on display as they might be if, say, you were meeting at a coffee shop. Saves everyone the trouble of pretending that their mocha venti is just too hot.
On the bright side? I'm the only one who seems to be on it at present. Which is kind of my fault to begin with so I shouldn't complain (although I probably will anyway). Long story short, I forgot to post in in for the last four years. Oops. But the whole idea would be worth it if it was only people chiming in to help ruin my own dreams of literary greatness . . . !
Give it some thought, eh? And get back to me?

The bad thing about being me (or I should say, the bad thing about living where I live) is that, especially in the spring when the evening breeze is at it's nicest and lightest and most effervescent, it sucks to leave the windows open. And that's because of all the jerkwads who walk by, talking loudly, smoking profusely, swearing like sailors on their way to a prostitute depot.
It's finally happened: I've become an old white man. And here I sit on the porch exaggerating the lengths to which I had to go as a boy to get to the general store and how I never once had a piece of candy till after I was married. Sigh. I really thought that would have taken more time. Ahh, well.
In other news, I'm still looking for work and I think I'm going to try doing some writing prompts that they have on the JulMoWriMo website. Get myself in peak writing shape for the big to do later this year. Also, I'm going to strangle my adviser if she doesn't get back to advising me soon. I'll put the lid on 'er proper! WHY does it have to be this way? WHY must it always come to fistycuffs? When I just want to know if Basic French III will meet my blasted requirement so I can never have to deal with this woman again?!
Such is life at present.

My gramma told me today, when I went to pick up my mom's mail, that if you tell your dream to someone before breakfast it's bound to come true. And in the few hours sleep I was able to lay claim to this morning, I dreamt of Simon. Now I just wish there was someone I could tell.

So it turns out I've finally found a minion to go to Europe with. Rawk! Now all I have to do is save up thousands of dollars and finish school and I! AM! OFF!!!

Anybody else want in on the deal? We're not leaving until October?

I am so totally resurrecting Writers Grope. Buh-lee' dat!

It's the perfect time for it, as I'm re-entering a manic phase. And now to spend the rest of this early morning painting masterpieces and cleaning all my floors with a toothbrush.

I may suck at keeping up to date on here, but I'm doing a somewhat better job of it over at www.ubermarianne.com.

Just thought you'd like to know . . .

I'm not interested in epithets.
I've come to despise cliches.
There's a place somewhere between grief and despair that has become familiar to me. Too familiar. I shouldn't be here. This is nowhere near where I should be.
But here I am. And here also is a jumping off place. A steep cliff from which ledge I cannot see ground below.
A place from which I want to jump.
A place from which I will jump.
My foot will catch the edge, and a few pebbles will plummet into the vast unseeable. My breath will deepen. My pulse will thunder. My eyes will close and my arms will spread. And I will lie down, impossibly, held by a bed of unrestrained air.
I will let myself let go of everything. I will reach towards hope. I will rest in faith.
And then I shall fly, through Love.

So apparently my last entry was 73 weeks ago. How kind that livejournal takes such an interest in me. To pine after me so much that it recalls the day I last wrote to it. Ahhh . . . inanimate adoration . . . how I've missed you.

I'm going through this horrible time of late, where I can't help thinking people are at first totally great and then ten seconds later I hate their guts. Its like this strange sort of giddy cruelty that I can't seem to shake. What do they call that when you're moody and can't get enough pop tarts and see everything in absolutes???

Oh yeah: "rampant immaturity".

Crap. I keep hoping I'm past that.

Awakening.

where the crap is my phone???

I need a freaking JOB!!!!!

I

am

sad