The ones who love you, hurt the most
They make you feel like a ghost
They search for you, but your spirit is in the air
Maybe you're nowhere.

Or maybe if you're nowhere on Earth, that doesn't mean you're nowhere at all.

Maybe it only means you're in a happier place, a place where you don't have to struggle and gasp and sob out every moment of this existence like the ghost of a shipwrecked sailor on the harsh rocks that destroyed the delicate ship of his body, the ghost that keeps clinging to Earth despite the whipping winds that pull at its fragile wispy self, and all for what? It would be so much easier to let go and let itself be blown away, tossed upward and dissipated and ecstatically destroyed at last.

I am quite pleased right now.

- Today I voted for Martha Coakley to replace Edward Kennedy in the Senate. Go Martha!
- I also survived driving all over the place through one of the messiest snowstorms I've ever had the misfortunate to be caught in.
- The adorable cat I'm caring for, Zoe, is starting to actually like me. Maybe it helps that I sing "867-5309" to her.
- The dentist gave my teeth a clean bill of health today. Whew.
- I finally got home this evening to a lovely salad, a cup of good Assam tea, a blazing fire, my dad playing sea chanteys, four warm sleepy cats, and a very affectionate poodle.
- Then I made Mediterranean curry couscous. Yum.
- My Swahili textbook came in the mail today!
- This evening I sat down and got stuff done, first getting a great deal on a plane ticket to Berlin, then dashing off an email in my best friendly-but-formal German to the owners of a charming apartment there that I hope to rent.
- "Leave Her Johnny" is one of the most beautifully heart-rending songs ever, especially when sung by John Langstaff.

Life is good, even if I keep capitalizing the first TWo letters of words by mistake.

UPDATE: Martha conceded. Life has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. I can't believe MASSACHUSETTS would do this. I can't say any more right now. Too angry.

(diamonds and a ring of gold)

A glass rattles into a corner and someone looks at the dark potential of the commercial past and warns me. I never listen to warnings. You'd think they'd know by now. The guitar gets wilder and wilder until it's like some alien being in an epileptic convulsion of pointless angst, and the would-be Cassandra stalks away in disgust down some untamed alleyway. I would apologize for being so impossible, but I'm too busy doing impossible things.

(my story to remain untold)

Now the cellos come in, jerky and hesitant, footsteps down a padded hallway, everything gold-painted plaster in this frozen hotel, was it Grozny or Tallinn? I don't remember, nobody does, not through that haze. The smoky curtain of confusion lasted almost a decade and we emerged raw and pink in the sunlight, insecure about our nakedness, making wry comments and inventing new fads to cover up our nervous distemper. We always have to make some song and dance about it. The bony man so bent on self-destruction sat on my bed and told me that, then did something vaguely self-destructive and faded out the door. I didn't look after him. I was transfixed by the glimpse of the city that splintered through my window.

(your love not to grow cold)

The gold paint flakes off with a fingernailworth of effort, and the glass powders into white sand when it encounters a foot solid in the doorway, not letting that door close. Not letting me lock myself in again. I don't want to look up, but something from the past makes me raise my eyes, and there you are – head tipped, eyes behind shades considering something arcane as always, stubble blue on your chin, profile like some Norse god but with a devilish quirk to your grin that no god would dare display.

(you)

Is it strange that the feeling overpowering me is relief?

City of Angels

After the third explosion we ran for cover as usual, and took shelter at Van's place because it was closest, just down past Cole's Pacific Electric Buffet and three streets over, on South Alameda. At first no one talked for a few minutes. The image of a flying smokestack was still doing repeats in our heads.

"This is the sort of thing WE oughta get blown up for," Van commented, pulling some paper cups out of the cabinet and a case of beer from the fridge. His dad was out.

"Electrocuted," I corrected him.

"You don't get fried till you're eighteen," Raygun said. "They'd just send us to juvie."

Odie made a disgusted face at his "fried."

I glanced at her, and then said to no one, "Why do we do it?"

"Because we hate L.A.," Raygun answered immediately.

"We're gonna destroy the whole country at this rate," I said.

"Ah, it was never that great a place anyway." Van handed me a cup of beer.

"It's like we're creating the new Atlantis," said Minty, her eyes thin with imagining. "We'll get blown to pieces and fall into the sea, and in a million years there will be legends about us."

Raygun laughed. "Legends?"

"Why not?"

There was silence for a few minutes as we all pretended to enjoy our beer.

"We should do the Hadley Building next," Raygun muttered. "Buncha fat-cat idiots who work in there. They deserve to have their asses blown to high hell."

"Yeah, some guy with a corner office in the Hadley made up a reason to get my dad fired from the plant, and it worked," Van commented.

"Why'd he want to get him fired?" Odie asked.

"'Cause he's black, duh." Van grinned at her. "What, never happened to your folks? Maybe they keep a lower profile."

Odie frowned. The rest of us, three white kids whose parents had never been fired by a fat-cat in a corner office, all looked at the floor, or out the window.

"Nah, I think we ought to head out to West Hollywood," Van finally said with a sigh. "Detonate the Wiltshire Country Club and then cruise the Miracle Mile."

I smirked at his cavalier tone, and Odie looked disturbed. Minty liked the idea, though. "If we're going that far, why not just do Beverly Hills?" she suggested. "Those airhead celebrities could use some dynamite. And then we could hide down in Franklin Canyon if the cops got there too quick."

"Yeah, they probably would too," Raygun said. "Seein' as celebs are more valuable than the rest of us and all that."

Odie snorted, and Van raised a considering eyebrow.

"Screw that." I crumpled my paper cup and stared out the window at the smoggy, craggy skyline of Los Angeles. "Let's go straight to the source. Let's blow up the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels."

There was silence from the others. They couldn't think of any reason not to.

I'm not really here, I'm actually drowning in finals, you don't see me.

I just wanted to quickly let y'all know what I want for Christmas:

A vodka ice-lolly with a Chinese scorpion inside.

KTHXBAI

Here it is another December, and time for the LiveJournal Year in Review! Here's the first sentence of my first entry from each month this year:

January

Well, I'm sitting here in that same old snowy lakeside cabin, eating string cheese and drinking a Grand Cosmopolitan out of a paper cup, with the Rottie asleep in my lap and "Family Guy" on the television.

February

GOD, WHY DO ALL THESE RANDOM PEOPLE START FOLLOWING ME ON TWITTER?!?!?!

March

I just received a charming e-mail from a young French fellow who informed me he enjoys "original and hazardous people," and then proceeded to ask me if I physically resemble a black cat.

April

First of all, let me apologize.

May

JUST SURFACING FROM THE SUCKING (PUN INTENDED) WHIRLPOOL OF FINALS TO SAY THAT I'M STILL ALIVE BUT JUST BARELY STOP

June

Some nights there's nothing to do but gamble.

July

...I'm too tired.

August

I'm sick of death.

September

I cannot BELIEVE I did not discover Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog until now.

October

Coincidentally enough, just today (I am writing this yesterday) I suddenly remembered good old Boris, and proceeded to tell my hapless friend with whom I was eating dinner all about him and how horribly brilliant he is.

November

At the last minute I decided I'm doing NaBloPoMo again this year.

December

I woke up overheated and unable to breathe, threw the curtains aside desperately, and then stood in silent awe at the powdery white miracles floating before my eyes.

I woke up overheated and unable to breathe, threw the curtains aside desperately, and then stood in silent awe at the powdery white miracles floating before my eyes. Finally. Relief, then comfort. Priorities quickly rearrange themselves. No work till later. No clothes till much later. No food, no worries, no distractions. Something in me wanted to worship the snow. I had to fight down the urge to run out in it without a thought, without planning against the weakness of the body.

I've been out walking, sings Jackson Browne, and a longing for wood edging and bus lines and new ovens and kaleidoscopes and colorful wigs and songdust arises. We have so much, some of us, and we're blind to it all, possessions become nothing more than expected accessories to a functional, respectable life. So hard to pull away, or you can, but then you get labeled. Everything you do, you get labeled. You throw away what you own, and you travel to places where you can't understand a word they say, and you lose everything you loved, and you're sick just for the newness of it, or you write an old man's song from the heart of a fourteen-year-old kid, and people expect you must feel a certain way, you must be so unhappy. People worry about the right thing to say, when really that's the last care in your heart. It's not what you say, it's whether you say it at all.

Snowflakes. They're still coming down, and they change direction so they're blowing into my eyes no matter where I go. I come out wet and blinking and awed, and no one understands why I don't wrap myself up tighter, keeping myself warm and dry, just as if I spent my entire life inside, even when I'm outside. I don't even try to explain, for two reasons. The first is that I know my limitations, and many of the most wondrous things in my life are utterly beyond my capacity of language. I can barely trap them in words for my blog entries. I balance on the edge of permissible grammar and vocabulary and style most of the time as it is. The second reason is that I pride myself on my open-mindedness, according to my own definition of that quality. I can be perfectly happy to be misunderstood. Perhaps I even prefer it that way. I know what it does for me. If everyone thinks the wrong thing, I just smile to myself and continue to live like a gentle renegade.

When I come back in, to the warmth and the waiting materials with which I daily embody my dreams, it's still falling. I suppose everything could be falling, and then we'd never know. Even stillness can be motion in disguise. Even silence can sound like something else.

- Wednesday I left New York heading for Massachusetts.
- Wednesday night I went to see the gypsy, staying in a big hotel.
- NO just kidding, Wednesday night I went to see the doctor, got a needle stuck in me and then received my drugs.
- Thursday I went east to Groton to eat gourmet food cooked by my cousin the chef.
- Friday I went east again, to Worcester, to buy Mediterranean foods for my lovely cazimirtfarley.
- Saturday I went north to Vermont to do some Christmas shopping.
- Saturday night I went to "Beauty and the Beast" (the musical), with musical direction by the pater familias. The song "If I Can't Love Her" will now be stuck in my head forever. Wish I'd written it.
- Sunday morning I made the longest gift certificate ever. It was fifties-themed. It was almost as tall as me.
- Sunday afternoon I made a key lime pie with shadowa.
- Sunday evening the gift certificate and pie became part of my mother's birthday festivities. We had a damn good time.
- Sunday night I played and sang Bon Jovi songs with shadowa until the early early night.
- Monday I woke up at 5:30 and headed north to Vermont, then down through northern New York back to my midstate home.
- Now it's Monday night and I need sleep, bad.

ETA: unlocked for NaBloPoMo.

( Episode of Blonde: Reading Between the Lies )

ETA: Oh right, my entries need to be unlocked in order to be counted for NaBloPoMo, don't they... okay, here it is.

Sign on the Window

( It was almost sunrise. )