Every day brings a ship,
Every ship brings a word;
Well for those who have no fear,
Looking seaward well assured
That the word the vessel brings
Is the word they wish to hear.
RALPH WALDO EMERSON
Author: approximately
Someday, Sometime
Sometime when days unwind
Time digresses and happenings upon
Layers of lost you, finding me
Wielding, embodied minds
Tangled in phone lines,
Combating space, seeking sublime
Simultaneous notions, simultaneously mine
Someday, sometime.
This is very relatable,
This is really true,
This is so entirely beautiful.
This Break
Not even relaxing, and hardly enjoyable — I’m just dreadfully lonely.
Nightlife
GARBAGE JUICE. REDDISH-ORANGE, TRANSLUCENT and PUTRID, creeping across the kitchen floor. Febreze the area to disguise the scent, too tired to care. I’ve been in heavy rotation — homework, Sex in the City, Internet, Pretty Woman. Lots of productivity here, lots of progress.
I’m tired of eating candy bars, it’s all I’ve been doing for three days straight. I’ve been entirely too lazy to run to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread, so I’ll settle for cereal. Boredom set in hardcore this afternoon, so I made my roommates’ bed and rearranged the refrigerator. Last week’s pancake batter is this week’s bacteria farm. The dishes are still dirty so I run them through a second time. I lead such an exquisite, daring life.
I’ve never seen ‘Pretty Woman’ before but I’ve been told it’s a very good flick. Julia Roberts, Richard Gere, Macbook Pro and I — together this evening, eating candy bars and drinking ice water on the living room floor, the garbage hanging out in the adjacent corner. A Swivel Sweeper infomercial flashes across the screen and I wonder who the hell is calling in for a facking mop at this hour in the morning. Fack. The people that order those at 3 a.m. must be the mysterious people of the world. The ones that are seldom seen, who sulk in the shadows of the night in front of their glowing TV screen, praying for a gadget that can lift their troubles on high, wipe away the dirt from under their feet, and remove the smell of garbage juice…
I’m going to bed.
Distraught
It’s not so bad
It’s not so bad
It’s not so bad
It’s not so bad
It’s really not that bad
It’s terrible, no
It’s not so bad
It’s not so bad
It’s not so bad
It could be worse.
And I keep marching forward.
Why Didn’t I Think of That?
I CROSSED PATHS WITH one of my favorite instructors today, the man that put up with my mediocre drawing habits during freshman year.
We generally greet one another in a timely fashion, but today he followed my stride, questioning how things are going with graphic design.
“Great!” I told him. “I love it.” He expressed his approval, before I interjected. “I just wish I knew how to draw better.”
I don’t remember much a word that followed, except that it was collectively, infinite wisdom. At the end of what was roughly 30 seconds of some of the best advice I’d heard in quite a while, he claimed, “Keep a sketchbook with you wherever you go, and just draw. You’ll be surprised what ideas you can lift from your work.” With that, I thanked him, we walked in silence for ten more strides before he turned into his office, to continue his greatness.
The thought was on my mind all day, why I hadn’t started sooner. Now that I have heard it from the Great, I have all the more reason to follow through with it. I generally jot down thoughts, sentences, words, or ideas that I see in a small notebook I carry with me. I’ll even go to the length of describing things in words, in detail…but never draw them. This is something I am going to work into my daily routine.
On a more disheartening note, I had every intention of making a trek back home this weekend over our long “Fall Breather” break. To my chagrin, my incredible place of employment thought it clever to schedule me on the very three days I asked for off. Needless to stay I am stuck in Moorhead with a ton of homework. Talk about a VACATION, I tell you what… there’s nothing more replenishing than 6 days of stir fry and writing philosophy papers, by myself mind you. I expect that campus will be somewhat vacant, which means most people have incredible places of employment that gave them the days off that they asked for. Hmm…
Alright! That is all.
Panzer-man, panzer man, O You —
I RECITED THIS POEM my freshman year of high school for an English class. I’m not certain why I chose Sylvia Plath. She is dark, somewhat cross, and she took her own life at a fairly young age. I have nothing in common with this woman, but am interested in her writing style, the structure of her poems, and their imagery. As angry as she was, she was truly wonderful at what she did.
I really never forgot about this poem, for some reason. It weirds me out, but I think it is so deeply ingrained in my memory because I rented a cassette tape from the pubic library to help memorize it, and listened to her recite the poem over and over. I can recall the exact articulations in each word, how the lines flowed and led into one another — and still recite it just so. Viewing this gives me chills!
I suppose the reason I bring it up again is, I was contemplating reciting it for an assignment in my writing class. Then I read it again, and decided it’s best left in my freshman English class at Bishop Ryan — and simply too vexed. People would think I was an angry little woman.
Sorry, Sylvia.
Ring the Alarm
IT WAS DURING AN IN-CLASS WRITING EXERCISE TODAY that my magnitude of pathetic surfaced, becoming all too clear.
We’d each written the beginning of a short story on an index card. The name of the game was to create a conflict, then pass the card to the person next to you so they could contribute to your story by adding a climax. Finally, the card was passed to a third person to create a resolution to the conflict.
I wrote a paragraph of nonsense about hitting a cow on my index card, then passed it to the person at my left. When I received a new index card, I created conflict in a story about a little girl by injecting a creepy man offering her candy.
When the final index card came to me with a two paragraph conflict written and I was forced to add a resolution to someone else’s story, I didn’t know how to approach it. The story had begun with a dude named “Jake” who’d been stressing about his first year of classes. His biggest concern seemed to be that he wouldn’t be able to find his Chemistry class on the first day of school (if only life were this easy.)
The second person had written on the index card something to the extent of a fire alarm going off, and Jake seeing tons of people rush out the building he was supposed to have his Chemistry class in (he found it.) Amongst a large group of unfamiliar people he approaches a girl (described as wearing sweatpants and a baggy sweatshirt…hmm…), who makes a wisecrack about how the fire alarms always go off in the dorms, too (freshman).
Faced with the decision of making the story violent and gory as other students had done to previous stories, or coming up with something slightly more upbeat appeared to be the conundrum. What did I do?
What DID I do? I made a freaking lovesick fool out of myself. Behind the two previous paragraphs, I scribbled some sappy hubbub about how Jake and the girl in the baggy sweatshirt ended up engaging in an epic conversation, and Jake skips his first Chemistry class to talk to her. As if this weren’t bad enough, I went to the lengths of making the entire scenario into the speech that the best man was giving at Jake and Baggy Sweatshirt’s wedding. SHIT. All out of a fire alarm, that for all we know was pulled by Johnny McStoner on his way into class (for the sake of me writing 1/3 of said story, I’m stating that as the cause of the incident.)
I don’t know why — I DON’T KNOW WHY I did this. I know how much the instructor hates shit like this. I know. I was planning on writing my 6-page short fiction piece on a young couple that fall in love in college, sit in one another’s company at restaurants long enough to eat two meals, and sleeps on golf courses. Or something. That was, until she announced to the class how sick these things made her. Change of plans, I’m writing about a mentally disabled boy instead.
But really. Really!? Did I have to throw myself to the wolves like that, to display myself as a hopeless, pathetic and longing fool? I did — did I ever. I didn’t even beat around the bush. I’m really that pining.
So while others may take satisfaction in their tall tales of decapitation and meeting perverted hobos in jail, well — don’t get me wrong here. I love these things. Violence and corruptness, I’m all for it! Bottom line: When troubled with the decision of good vs. evil, you bet your bottom I’ll be a softy for the romance.
Meanwhile, the wolves consume me.
Dude Part-ay
STANDING IN LINE FOR LUNCH TODAY, I couldn’t help but overhear the two dudes behind me.
[Girl passes, says hello to Dude 1]
DUDE 1: (to girl) Hey.
DUDE 2: Is that [so-and-so]?
DUDE 1: Yeah.
DUDE 2: She’s pretty hot.
DUDE 1: Yeah.
For reasons I cannot justify, I found it comical, amusing to say the least. Dude watching is one of my favorite activities. Not literally, as though I stare longingly at men all day long waiting for them to say something remotely jocular — just — literally. I love watching dudes.
Which kind of makes me wonder, and at the same time, fear what dudes say when I walk away.
[I pass, say hello to DUDE 1]
DUDE 1: (to me) Hey.
DUDE 2: Who was that?
DUDE 1: Uhh. Heidi’s sister?
DUDE 2: Oh. Her hair is fucking huge.
DUDE 1: Yeah.
This is why I stay home, and eat bowls of cereal in front of my computer, and make friends with cameras. I’ve been told that I’m “cute”; then again, kittens and Precious Moments figurines are cute, too. That makes me feel that I am worthy of being in the giveaway section of the classifieds, or have a twenty-five cent sticker slapped on my rear at a garage sale. Which is better than being un-cute, I suppose, and much better than being fugly. I’ll take it!
I was overjoyed to walk past the television yesterday and see that it was “Douchebag Boyfriend Week” on MTV’s Parental Control — prime dude watching! I get cheap thrills out of pretending to act surprised when the ditzy, all-too-familiar grade-A cliché “girlfriend” goes crawling back to her weasel jackass boyfriend, especially after he has treated her parents like tools. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around what a woman finds attractive about her boyfriend leaving her to walk several miles home in heels on their anniversary, or dudes belching for that matter. In the words of my best friend in an angry state, “that girl doesn’t deserve parents that care about her.” That rings about as true as the show is painfully scripted. Ye-ouch.
On that note, the most exciting thing to the hour:
Now I be blogging nerdy. But typing really pretty.
Over, out.
approximatelyes.com 