A Cage (short story for screenwriting class)

Today there’s another weird bug in the shower. Mom and I have been killing them for weeks. There seems to be an infinite variety, today it’s a spidery one with a tiny body and legs like strands of hair. This one has a stinger. I splash it but somehow it floats on its thin legs and circles around the drain for a bit but then Mom drops a cupful of water on top of it.
She lets the water run over the crime scene for a minute, watching the spot where the bug was, convinced, she says, that the bug has left a poison residue that she might absorb through her feet.
I’m watching her, sitting on the closed toilet seat.
She tells me that she thinks there’s an army of bugs under the bathroom but that they come out one at a time because these are the scouts.
“No one who ventures up that drain ever returns…” she narrates in her narrating voice while she shampoos her hair.

Outside the sky is white. I’ve taken a book out here with me and am sitting on the lawn like a confused sunbather waiting for the storm. I’m breathing in the air like adrenaline. I let the wind flip the pages of my book. I read that page until it flips to a new one and I’m piecing together a message that I pretend the wind is sending me.
My fingers are red and hard to bend but I’ll wait here until the wind blows so hard that my heart speeds even though I’m not afraid and the first snowflakes melt on the page and make bubbles of ink in the text.

Inside Mom is sitting in the middle of the almost empty living room, in the middle of the white shag carpet. There’s a white coffee mug beside her, ten minutes ago it was triple espresso.
“Your eyes are twitching.” I tell her.
“I know,” she says, “I'm working on it.”
We hear the kitchen door open and close and feel a fleeting draft. Mom says nothing but tightens her grip on the carpet.
“Maggie, I was trying to call you.” says my aunt Louisa, appearing at my shoulder. “No ones answering the phone.”
She brushes past me into the room she smells like snow and chemically perfume.
“Anyway, he’s dead.” She says looking down at Mom
“Who’s dead?” Mom asks calmly, eyes closed.
“Donny, he was… What are you doing?”
“She’s trying to overheat her brain.” I explain, “She drank a lot of coffee and if she can get her eyes to stop twitching…”
“How did he die?” Mom interrupts without opening her eyes.
“He was old.” Louisa says absently, she’s trying to leave.
“But how did he die?”
“He was sick.” My aunt is always trying to leave. She is only ever here when she’s between other places.
Mom’s leg starts bouncing against the carpet. She closes her eyes. I turn away and go to the kitchen.
My aunt follows a few minutes later. She sits down across the tiny table and begins, absentmindedly to sip from the white coffee mug she’s apparently just confiscated. She crosses one leg over the other and the foot on top starts bouncing.
“Who died?” I ask her.
“Donny.”
“Who was Donny?” past tense, I think.
“Maggie’s canary.”
“Oh.”
“He was at Grandma’s, your mom hung him from the shower curtain rod.”
I know she means hanging in a cage but I think about a tiny bird hanging by a tiny noose, tiny feet twitching.
“You should try to get her out of the house.”
I nod.
“She needs to do things.”
“She does things.” I think about the bugs.
Louisa raises her eyebrows. She means a job. Mom needs a new job. Louisa takes another a sip of Mom’s coffee.
“So you’re going out tonight?” she asks, noticing the makeup on my eyes.
I nod.
“Will there be boys there?” Louisa likes to think that she’s the cool aunt who I can tell things to.
“You can tell me anything” I remember her swearing, the day she noticed that I had shaved my legs.
“Yeah there’ll be boys.”
She stands up suddenly.
“What was in that coffee!” She’s opening and closing her palms probably in time with her racing heart.
She grabs her black shiny bag and red scarf from the back of her chair. She hasn’t taken off her coat.
“Bye.” I say. She puts the red scarf around her neck and throws one side over her shoulder.
“Have fun.” She reaches for the doorknob, which is right behind her in the tiny kitchen for a second I watch the snow falling behind her then the door slams shut.
I go back to the living room. I stand in the doorway and watch Mom warring with her twitching eyes. She’s sitting up perfectly straight. Her little hands are white and she’s twined her fingers into the rug and is holding on as though the whole picture is upside down and she and the rug are flat against the ceiling.
“I’ve been feeling a little guilty,” I say, “about killing the bugs.”
She doesn’t answer.
“Mom? Wanna go somewhere?”
Silence.
“Maybe tomorrow you can shower alone? They never come back once you drown them. I think it’s probably okay.”
“Donny’s dead.” Mom says, eyes closed. “He hung himself in the shower.”
“You hung him in the shower.” I tell her.
“But don’t you see him in a little bird noose when you think about it?” Her leg starts twitching again.
“No.” I say, “He was in his cage.”
She opens her eyes for a minute and looks at me.
“Yeah I know.” She says
“I’m going to a party.” I say
“Will there be boys there?”
“Yeah.”
“You know, they’re probably scared of you.” She says.
“What?” she’s looking up at me, which makes her eyes look huge.
“You should kiss them.” She says “Don’t wait for them to…”
“Mom?”
“Mmm?”
“I don’t know. Never mind.”

The party’s in the basement of the last house on the block. It’s the house where most of the parties are held and there are red chili pepper lights that blink out of sink with the beat of the music. I like to try to make the two pulses line up it feels like holding repelling magnets together.
Tonight there will be a boy leaning against the yellow wall. I’ll lean against it too, too close to him. He’ll swallow, look over his shoulder for a rescue. I’ll smile and put my hands on his cheeks. I’ll kiss him, it’ll only last a minute then I’ll pull away.
He’ll stare at me, stare like tasting. He’ll put his hands on the wall on either side of my head. I’ll stay there as long as I can, staring back while his eyes blink black and red with the lights.
I’ll like it there, between him and the wall but I won’t let him know. I’ll break free, duck quickly under his arm, find the bathroom and press my face right up to the mirror.
I’ll take someone’s coat from the pile near the door and put it on, it’ll be too big.
Outside the snow will be frozen like ice. Behind me, near the ground, the basement windows will throb with the red lights and the bass from the stereo. The cell phone in the pocket of the stolen jacket will buzz once. I’ll step and slide as lightly as I can across the surface of the snow; back and forth before the house, pretending that the lawn is a lake, waiting for tiny cracks, hoping not to fall through.

Dream: In which Maya, Eliza and I look for a theme park, I drive across the Bear Mountain Bridge, and then I kill a baby.

First mommy was driving and Maya, Eliza and I were in the car, they in the backseat, me in the front. We were on that winding highway along the side of a cliff above the Hudson river. Maya and Eliza wanted to go to a theme park, so did I, but I felt bad that mommy was going to drive us all the way there even though she seemed happy to do it.
When we got to the end of the road I was preoccupied. I think I was looking at my ipod of some other thing. Mommy said something that I didn’t hear. When I looked up mommy was gone but the car was still moving, as though it were on tracks- I mean as far as my dream self was concerned it was sort of on tracks because I wasn’t worried that anything would happen until we had to make the turn onto the bridge. The turn was coming up and mommy still wasn’t back in the driver seat.
I, as I feel I have done in lots of dreams- in any case my dream self knew just what to do- held the wheel and turned (a bit too sharply and a bit to close to the railing and a plummeting fall to death) onto the bridge. I was thinking that nothing bad would happen unless we had to slow down. I swung one leg over to the pedal and placed my foot over the break. I wasn’t sure that the pedal that my foot was over was the break and I didn’t think we needed to slow down yet so I just left my foot there.
The bridge was sort of like the under level of the GW bridge, but with more turns and lower railings and a walkway down the center which mommy came running down.
When she got to us I was about to put my foot down on the break but suddenly she was there and she put her foot on the break and everything was all right again.
I asked her where she had gone. She said she had walked across to the ATM on the other side of the bridge to check the balance of her credit card. I saw that a credit card and a receipt were stuck in her bra. The receipt had rain spots on it and I realized it was raining. I thought of how quickly she had stuffed the stuff away while she ran to us.
We crossed the bridge.
We went into the traffic circle and turned off at Bear Mountain Park.
Maya and Eliza complained that this was not a real amusement park. I agreed but somewhere in the back of my mind I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t. I told them that there might be some rides over- here- or –here. We looked for rides. Maya and Eliza had on their creepy giggly faces which i never know what to do about.
There was a baby that suddenly latched itself onto me. I thought its parents might be the parents sitting on the side of the path nearby so I played with the baby near those parents for a while and crooned about how cute he was in their direction and they agreed but then I realized they were the wrong parents and I wondered where my babie’s parents were. This went on for a LONG while that I’ve forgotten the details of. Then one of the woman pointed and said she thought that that man coming into the park was the baby’s dad so I picked up the baby, the baby was naked and suddenly I was scared he would poop on me, and carried him towards the dad.
When I got near enough to talk to the man I put the baby down and asked him. “is this your baby?”
And he said “what baby?” and I realized that baby had run off.
I told the man that I had been watching his baby but now the baby was gone but he could go find him now.
I thought- that’s not any different than if I was never here- he lost the baby, I found the baby, I lost the baby- he still had to find the baby- I didn’t.
But I helped him look everywhere for the baby.
We couldn’t find him. The man took a long stick and started to hit me with it. It broke in half and I took the other half and hit him back saying that this was not my fault and I was sorry I had gotten involved.
This part gets hazy but I think we went back towards the entrance of the park and my dad was there and I explained to him that this man had lost his baby but it wasn’t my fault and now he had hit me with a stick- we were still holding our pieces of stick. I don’t remember if my dad said anything. Then I remembered that there was a pool and asked the man if he had looked in the pool. He hadn’t. He was going to go look when I told him, no, I’d look.
I went to the pool. There were all these little girls in the water. “Is there a baby in the pool?” I asked them
They giggled and said there was.
With that I knew that there was a dead baby in the pool but I still didn’t admit that in my next question-“where is he?”
“Over there and-“ one girl giggled and spoke for the others “someone ate the dead baby’s foot.”
I didn’t look for the body, in that way that you know something is there but you don’t look at it but it is so present that you might as well have looked. I walked back to the man standing in the entrance of the park and said “I have to go now. He’s in the pool.” And left, I mean, woke up since I had been becoming vaguely aware that it was a dream for the whole second part and with that last awful bit I decided I had had enough.

INFO: I’ve been told that driving in dreams represents life. Like- if you are driving you are driving your own life, if someone else is driving they are driving your life as it were, if you are driving off a cliff with no breaks--- yeah… you get it.

Info 2: my mom keeps telling me that hurting my feet is about “taking the next step.” Like- going to college tomorrow and last week I jumped off a fence onto a root and hurt my heel and I’m limping…

Info 3: babies in dreams are supposed to be like… your ideas and goals. Other people’s babies are… other peoples dreams and goals. Other people’s babies dying… other peoples babies getting lost… other peoples babies clinging to you… Getting beaten for loosing other peoples babies…

Info 4: money is kind of freaking me out lately. Like the lack of it AND the spending of it when there isn’t a lack of it. Probably because I’m afraid of the lack of it. And because I’ve been spending a lot of other people’s money what with going to college and all…

Info 5: I’m going to college tomorrow.

Serendipity

moved max into his apartment in new palz.
we drove the uhaul truck home. i like driving in trucks, they bounce.
we stopped at a stop & shop and bought fruit.
while we were checking out i got a text from lydia
Lydia: are you in a stop & Shop
Me: yes.. ...
Lydia: Hahahah

i was looking around expecting to her see her.
but he friend was there, a friend that i dont know but apparently met me once.
the friend texted lydia and lydia texted me.

last night we watched Serendipity and as john cusack searched for and grasped at tiny bits of information about his lost soul mate i realized that no one could loose someone else so completely like that anymore. he would just look her up on facebook. with only the information he had... british, career, what she looked like- no problem.


"By benign fate the message goes astray that would tell romeo of the plan. he hears only that juliet is dead-" says shakepsear in Shakespeare in love.

... definitely impossible.

almonds

There's nothing to eat here.
Today I've eaten almonds.

Waving

I'm in the cafe at B&N. The man in the grey shirt looks over his shoulder at me. It’s that kind of tick of a look, the kind that you cant control.
Its all right man. I know the feeling. I try to hide it behind sunglasses, that way I can let my eyes go where they please…. That way they ones i stare at don’t notice that I'm looking-
O man, come on…
He’s switched his seat, got up and is now sitting on the other side of his table, he’s watching me over the top of his magazine.
Man, your so obvious!
…maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I should be so obvious. Next time I’ll take my sunglasses off, let the one i stare at see that I'm eating him up! - like candy, like colors, he’s turning to gooey sticky paint as my eyes slurp him towards me.
But if he saw then he’d know.
The glasses are also really nessessary you know, for other reasons. Really. The wind is blowing and if I take them off my hair will get into my eyes. The sunglasses stay on.

“Ai! Ai! Ai!” says the baby waving at me from his stroller.
I wave back.
The waving is the problem.
No waving.
My silent screaming eye searching is one sided.

some third person on my lunch hour in washington square park

There are little girls, behind the boy. the girls are maybe nine or ten years old. They’re wearing one piece bathing suits and scooting around the fountain on those skinny scooters that are so small that you can fold them up and take them in your backpack on the ferry to fire island… all the other bicycles have to go on a separate boat- the freight boat, which goes back and forth only once a week, inconvenient for the cyclist who is only on the island for the weekend.
The boy is sitting straight backed to avoid leaning against the uncomfortable backrest of the green bench, his hands are resting over the academic looking, but possibly poetic marble notebook in his lap.
She sits down across the path from him, takes a novel from her bag and watches him over the top of it.
The man in the round glasses and the tucked in white t-shirt, sitting to the left of the boy, on the next bench, is watching the girl.
The girl is uncomfortable and tries to lean in a way that doesn’t dig the clasp of her bra into her spine. she is waiting for the boy to open his notebook and write something down. She wants to imagine that he is writing about her.
The man in the round glasses and the tucked in white t-shirt is watching the girl.
The boy stands, puts his unopened notebook under his arm. He wanders over to a stone bench near the fountain where he lies on his back placing the notebook on his chest, under his crossed arms like a teddy bear or, she thinks, like a very small light lover.
The sun has shifted slightly over head but she hasn’t noticed. She looks away from the boy and sees the man in the white t-shirt, his face is turned in her direction. The lenses of his glasses, opaque in the glare a moment before have turned clear and now she can see his eyes and sees that they are closed.

Listening to Lyrics

I love the shins. i have loved the shins for years.
i have never had any idea (well a bit of an idea but not a lot of an idea) what they are saying...
i looked up the lyrics.
and then imagined a 19 year old boy slouching into poetry class at 8am and reading this poem to the room.


"Pressed In A Book"
by the shins

(Read it first then listen to the song here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3LonXfRDMs&feature=PlayList&p=C67BA1FCB06EFD17&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=17 )

Doted on like seeds planted in rows
The untied shoelaces of you life
Nutured all year then presssed in a book
Or displayed in bad taste at the table
Problems arise and you fan the fire
While there's a wild pack of dogs loose in your house tonight.
Cut from bad cloth or soiled like socks
Add it up and basically people never change.

They just talk and make plans in the dark
Or make haste with ideas that can't help
But creep good people out
As you talk to me too much you're assuming
We don't always want what's right.

Did i strike the right set of chords? you're annoyed.
The goal is to ignite you then move on.
You feel ill at ease. you got no squeeze.
And the wise cracks won't make you more stable.
You've learned you lines to scale and to time.
Why must i remind you now i'm only less able.
Cut from bad cloth or soiled like socks
We're ordinary people we can't help but to change

As we walk and make plans in the dark
Or make haste with the boy who can't help
But creep good people out.
As you talk to me too much you're assuming
We don't always want what's right.

Two fallen saplings in an open field.
Snow padding gently on an empty bench.
An old woman's jewelry lying unadorned.
Colo nesting robins allied for the first time.
I know when you hear these sappy lines
You'll roll your eyes and say "nice try".

waiting

"its dawning on me that everything i am and everything i do is my life.
"like this isn't just a practice run?"
"yeah. yeah exactly..."

today i am someone who ate a whole grapefruit. i cut it in half, ate one half with a spoon and cut the other into three sections. right now my hands are sticky. right now i am a little sweaty and also upset that i got my hair cut and now have bangs which i thought i wanted but don't want now. i am someone who does not want bangs. i am someone who has bangs.
i am someone with sticky fingers.
i am someone who has interesting dreams. i like my dreams. i like hearing about other peoples dreams. i like it when Katrina sends me hers on facebook but i always hope to see my name in them.
i will be a film student.
right now i am someone who is waiting. i am waiting to be a film student and i am waiting for my hair to grow back and i am waiting for my hair to grow long.


i am someone who loves poetry but not the wordy kind.
i don't have a very big vocabulary. i wish i had a bigger vocabulary even though i really don't like big words as much as small words.
today i decided to pack but didn't. i ate three pieces of buttered toast. i woke up at twelve. I'm wearing my pajamas.
today i am someone who is waiting.
i am hungry
i am tired
i am angry at men
the men who used to be boys but now i title "men" because i am angry at them for that. for becoming men.
i am frustrated with the air conditioner
i have sticky fingers
i am hungry
i am typing
i am blogging
i am hoping someone reads this and not knowing why they would
i am thinking that that was a self conscious and bad thing to say
and so was that
i think i am practicing
i am waiting for the event
but its started and all Ive performed for eighteen years is waiting.
I'm slouching
i can feel my stomach on my stomach
i am trying to tell the truth.

quote:
"the world is your exercise-book, the pages on which you do your sums. it is not reality, although you can express reality there if you wish. Your are also free to write nonsense, or lies, or tear the pages."
- Illusions: adventures of the reluctant messiah by Richard Bach

Dream

first soli marielle and i were planing to string white lights along andover the path by holder house and the main house.
mr fredrickson and ms veraka were the two teachers in charge of giving persmission for things like that and they didnt want to let us.
but we were doing it anyway.
soli and i put tall polls into the ground and we had both climbed on top of them and were attaching the lights.
then
suddenly (dream... heh)
it was halloween and dark and i was on my grandmas porch and brittany raglin and james and raina and MAGGIE SMITH (who i think was the same person who ms veraka had just been but was also McGongal =)
we were eating a halloween feasty thing around a big table and we were all dressed up but i dont remember as what.
there was a hurricane coming.
we all knew it was coming but no one was allowed to, or could, do anything about it or in preperation for it like RUN for example until it had actually arrived.
i knew we needed white lights.
it was like somehow we needed the lights as some kind of precaution... it was halloween and dark an
i knew we needed white lights hanging over and around it.
so i went into my grandma's house which (dream) was now my house and went into my moms office where she has white light hanging in the windows (in real life)
i started to take them down. i got one string and wrapped it around my neck thinking that i would tangle it but not knowing how else to hold it while i took the other one down.
i knew i should be taking my own white lights which are upstairs and there are more of them and they are mine but i knew they were all tangled and so i didnt want to bother with the untangling.
i ran outside to my grandma's deck again. the party was still going on in the dark.
i started to attach the lights to the walls.
maggie smith watched me.
i tried to attach the lights to her lol like pin the to her dress cuz she was standing in a place where i had nowhere to attach them in that corner but she backed up before i could touch her.
she was watching the storm which was brewing in a swirly cloud overhead.
my mom was standing with her. i stood with them and listened to their conversation holding the end of my string of lights wondering how to plug it in.
maggie was talking about her silver glasses and how she didnt want to take them with her when the storm came bacuase they were delicate.
she said she would give them to me
then she handed me a string.
i had thought she was talking about the glasses but apparently she was talking about the string.
my mom said it was time to go. maggie smith left (harry potter style, billowy cloak) across the lawn.
my mom and i were going to follow her, somehow it was important that we not be noticed.
but then i put the end of the string of lights (which had a boxy thing on it) against my chest and the lights lit up (i watched iron man last night)
i had expected he lights to be white.
they were red orange and green. scary
with that the storm began
my mom said now it would be harder to leave because i had turned on the lights and now everyone could see me.
but we left.
we ran
she ran to the pool house which i knew was full of chandeliers and i thought it would be a bad place to be cuz the floor was shaking.
but she said to meet her there and then we would leave. i had to go to my dorm room which was in the next building and get m stuff.
i ran into Brittany and this kid from nyack that i dont know who was breakdancing in the lobby as the floor shook.
james was making jokes about this
raina was waiting for someone.
maya and eliza ran past me and said things i couldnt understand but i thought must be important but i had to leave.
everyone in the building was running and everyone was someone i knew.
cut to (dream left out details)
in a grocery store that is also in the dorm building
everyone has carts theyre filling up with rations for the storm the store is dark and the floor is shaking.
lizz man passes me
i need to find a dvd for my mom and i to watch and it has to be really good or one we havnt seen. i get persepolis.
then looking for food
then i wake up.

City Sitting

this week we are in the city. house sitting and cat sitting in sarah's apt.
im sitting here staring down the multicolored cat, lulu. im alergic to her which i only discovered last night and now im avoiding her which is why she staring me down which is why i am staring back.
she is sitting between me and the window.
last night i watched a half naked man walk across his apartment which is across 77th st. he walked in and out of one window and into the next window, turned off a bright light, left on a dimmer one and sat on his bed, looking straight ahead for a while before he turned off the other light.
"maybe he could see you." says my mom this morning
"i was in the dark."
"you could see him."
"i couldnt see anyone in a dark window who wasnt moving."

i'm waiting for my mom, shes moving the car from its spot to a different spot.
from here i can see the stairs, they go up four steps and then twist two steps to the right and then go up another four steps and then there's Leo's room, Sarah's son. Another three steps, turned to the right and theres sarah's room and a bathroom and the door the apt's bit of private roof.

a few nights ago soli adam and i were walking back to my house after lying in the feild behind it with a brass candleabra and the stars. when we passed it i pointed at my bedroom window and pointed out that you can see right into my room and that i have no curtain and often change right there and never really thought about before.
there is a red glass star in my window. it is a candle holder, a tea candle holder, a red glass capartment for a tea candle that i bought at TJ Max for only three dollars because its broken and the door doesnt open so you cant put a candle in it. anyway its read and glass and a star and it was glowing.
"katie i think your a city person." soli stated based on my red glass star.
i think thats good evidence.

i love cities. and apartments and small globe lights from IKEA that sit on the floor like large mushrooms and get too hot to quickly.i love avocado and salt and french tea made of blue leaves.

last night we saw the move "Adam" at the Angelika theater. it was a very very beautiful movie. i loved it. it ended with two of my favorite songs by my one of my favorite lullaby like indie bands*
it was the first movie in a very long time that i didnt think about and analyze and dissect while i watched it... well only once: there was a scene that was very dark with dim orange streetlight light on the edges of things and tips of faces and i stepped out of the story for a few beats to decide weather or not i liked that. i did like that. a lot.
but that was the only time. i promise. otherwise i just love the story and the characters. i hardly even noticed the actors! and they are my two favorite ones in the world! really! Rose Byrne and Hugh Dancy! my all time (i mean my this week's) favorites.
rose looks just like my mom... really. and hugh looks rather like my dad. and Adam, the character who has asbergers acts a lot like my dad. heh
what im trying to say is that the movie was very very intersting and apsolutly the kind of thing that i would be able to sit through while thinking my own thoughts about and still enjoy. but i didnt! i just enjoyed it!

i think there are very few people who know what im talking about in this paragraph and i think all of them are filmmakers or critics.




*"Cant go back now" and "somebody loved" by the Weepies.

Men

A man with my brother’s voice and the empty eyes
that boys have behind sunglasses,
invisible pretending to be innocent
eyes, is sitting on my back.

His eyes reflect me back to me,
reflect a silver warped me, like sunglasses.
and each time he blinks I disappear

and reappear with more makeup and
a tighter bra and higher heels, and
thinner legs and then he blinks again
and I'm me again but then he looks away.

And “look at me!” I say but when he does
I see myself in his eyes again in that awful wrong way.

And my best friend called me last night.
he said he missed me but I didn’t believe
him since he's busy dating my best friend.
“you stay with me.” I told her weeks ago
“ill keep providing you with my men.”

We drive to Florida, they and I,
My men and my friend who falls in love with my men.
We drive for hours to Florida behind our sunglasses
Behind the tinted windows

We watch the night
where the production plants in new jersey twinkle
like so many tiny windows into a dwarf city
Where so many tiny furnaces are glowing golden

In the backseat my friend and my man look at each other
in the front seat my man and I say
that the power plant looks to us like a dwarf city

Or maybe we just ride in silence
and the lights reflect in our mirrored lenses
while we think the same thoughts and
smile with our lips together
while we already know what we’re thinking.

And in Florida the house is made of glass
And my friend and I stare at the stars
Lying on our backs in the sand
And we hand understanding back and forth like favors.

the featureless forms of the boys
walk away from us down the beach
“I promise I understand.” We say
like favors, like the men I give her,
lend her… Like the words he gives me
lends me…

“The Sky Inside Me”

The sky inside me looks like the round ball of my brain floating in sunset colors and I am very small lying on my back turning my head to the side and tucking my chin to my shoulder to glimpse the horizon past my feet.
…Lying on my brain and suddenly I am the cinematographer wanting more yellow-orange sunlight, less misty ocean spray light.
I am asking my staff to add mountains to the distance, which they do and then- what if this were all to take place at midnight and the sky inside me is black and there are stars and my hand that I hold up in front of my face is a silhouette of a hand?
My staff listens intently and nods. There is an echoing bang of someone pulling a lever that suddenly shifts the scene to what I had seen in my head.
So what should happen here?

I stand. All I am is the clicking of film through the camera, eating up the light. I've forgotten that I had a hand a moment ago. I defiantly don’t have a hand now.
So what should happen here? I have no idea. I'm like those huge production companies with all the money who manage to make Meryl Streep look like a fool because they have her but- what to do with her?
I walk towards the starry edge of my brain which is wet under my feet like tiles around a swimming pool, and thin soft moss has covered pieces of the mosaic and look- my feet are leaving footprints in the moss! Something I did not know could happen.
But what should happen here?

I look up and see that the stars are not stars at all but little fireflies, blinking and whizzing across the sky inside me, above me, where I stand on my brain.
What a perfect location. I sit down and trace a mosaic bird with my finger.

I stand and tell my staff to catch three fireflies in a jar… make one of the interns do it.
The skinny girl wearing skinny jeans, a nose ring and thick-framed glasses darts forward slipping a bit on the wet tile in her eagerness to impress. She holds the glass jar up high and whirls it round catching not three but five little stars.
“okay,” I tell them as she hands me the lighted jar, “I've got it.”
I hold the jar up “dim the lights.”
That echoing bang and they’ve done it.
“find me a little kid, big eyes.” They bring me Freddy Highmore and I put the jar of fireflies on the ground and Freddy sits before it.
“three bells.” Yells the eager intern.
“action!” I say
it will be silent so I continue to talk
“close on his eyes, watching the flies. Do you think you’ll get any of the detail in the tile? The mosaic?”
they promise me detail, mosaic.
“check the gate.”
Echoing bang and then darkness

I'm lying on my brain looking past my arm, my foot at the sunset colors of my inner sky.
All I am is a clicking camera. If I said before that I had hands I lied. I only want to eat the light.

The Moment He Turned Back (In Florida)

This morning we waited on the beach for the sun rise and then
as we drove away the sun shone in the review mirror,
winking between the trees in, what i felt was, a kind of angry abandoned way

like we had waited so long to see it and once it arrive we were done with it.
only waiting for the moment of arrival, not the arrival, once it arrive it was over.

there was a man jogging on the road and as we passed him
he a did a little cirlce turn on the sidewalk and headed back the way he had come.
maybe tommorrow he'll make it to the next corner
but today he onlye made if about halfway between the two traffic lights.

do you think he thought of me?- the anonymous observer, usually personifed by the opposite sex,
noticing the moment when you, the thinker, give up and turned back in your jog?

i dont know how far he had come. i dont know if the moment of turning back was much too soon
or if his thighs already bruned with miles of effort
I only saw him turn back.

Home

ive been home from florida for a few weeks now.
ive been feeling a bit lonely after spending that tropical week completly surounded by friends.
i realized the solution to the lonliness would be to move in with one of my friends. they could go to work and not even hang out with me at all but when i came home i would come home to somwhere where someone was and when they came home they would come home to where i was and no one would be lonely.

i want to go to college,
"enjoy your summer." said the film conservatory junior waving to me as i left orientaion with my bag and my pillow.
i grinned and waved.
"no really." he held my gaze and nodded once at me as he said: "really enjoy it."
they tell us we wont have any time for anything resembling a social life.
no jobs, no parties, no study abroad just MOVIES!
theres a part of me that hopes i fall in love at school.
theres a part of me that hopes i fall in love with everyone and am never alone and have people holding my hands and sharing my pillows and whispering secrets all the time.
theres a part of me that hopes i dont get to know anyone and just sit in my mind and make up movies and make movies and imagine myself into magical places.
that last part of me is not so confident in its existance.
that last part might be terror disquised as indiference.
i like option two the best.
sharing pillows...

i might be in a triple.
"three beds, three dressers, three desks and two closets. you'll make it work."

Abby, Brogan and I on Subways

Abby and I took the bus from the bottom of Summit on CR road. i waited for her to get to the bus stop with my mom in the car and my mom told me stories about her college experience. lately i feel really stressed when i dont focus on college- backwards i know...
if i let my mind wander to... say... the terrifying concept of my second day interning at Big Beach Productions in Noho where they lay on me such immpossibly tasks as answering the phone and reading screenplays...
but it really is stressful- my first day, last friday (i go in on fridays) i read the script of "Jack Goes Boating" its Phillip Seymore Hoffman's directorial debut. it was the saddest story- i mean really. i almost cried and also, being in the middle of my first terrifying 10 to 6 day in the american life of office work, i was feeling a bit awake to the pointlessness of life. i mean, i could go for four years to film school and end up behind a desk doing everyday what i am doing this summer every friday; having opinions on other people's work and asnwering and connecting other people's phone calls.
and the screenplay was about this man, jack's, sad life. In the white loft office, listening to clicking of the secretary infront of me and the intern behind me, listening to Jack and his friends in my head, imagining jack as P S hoffman who i have to say makes me feel like im going to cry the minute he walks on to the screen- dont get me wrong i love love love him as an actor but- hes just to fucking talented. and when your that talented and playing charecters that are that pathetic its painful to the audience and... anyway last friday i read the screenplay and listened to the clicking and started noticing the way i was breathing
and hearing the moisture in my lungs
and feeling my heart working
and seeing bright white pulsing
and it wasnt pleasent.
I tried to explain to Abby as we waited for the bus.

"i feel like everything is going to go wrong."
"wow thats not like you."
"i know!- wait your not being sarcastic right?"
"no."
"yeah! i know. like i felt like you wernt gonna show up. and now i feel like were not going to make the bus."
"katie we're sitting right here."
"i know. and-" suddenly scared i stand and dig in the pocket of my tight jeans- i have to stand to dig in the pockets. i find the ten dollars that i put in my pocket for the bus. "i have to like hold this in my hand." i tell her "othewise it will go wrong and i wont have it."
abby understands.

Abby is going to college in salt lake city. they have a good Ballet program there. on the bus i ask her leading questions
"were you like so much better than everyone at the audidtion?"
im trying to figure out if the program is really prestigious. i think it is. i think abby is a really extraordinary ballet dancer but i want her to say she is. it will even out the way i keep saying my program is so prestigious. and i cant stop saying how prestigious my program is. because if i let the feeling of huge pride leave my chest for one minute i start worrying about Phillip Seymore hoffman and using the copy machine correctly and answering the phone.
We meet Brogan in time square where the square is trying to be more of a square and there are large peices of it coned off from traffic and replaced with tourists reclining in beach chairs under the buildings on the cement. the white painted traffic lane indicators and arrows ignorered under the chairs.
a helpful tour guide company employee gives us a subway map when we stand for too long on one corner discussing directions. i want to tell her that we arnt tourists and that we only live a short bus ride from the city and that i have an internship in the city at the production company that made Little Miss Sunshine. but the map ends up being really helpful because we are tourists and we dont know where we're going and we have been standing on one corner for too long.

we took the subway to Brooklyn and walked in the same square of slightly slanted brooklyn grid for about an hour looking for a street which Brogan might recognize as one near the thrift store where we were trying to get to.
a kid outside a coffee place called something to do with muffins (where we stopped to eat sandwhiches (lemon chicken with pesto and mozerella omgosh heaven, for me, PB and J for abby) gave us directiosn to fifth ave which we apparently couldnt comprehend because we ended up back around the same bit of grid again, across from the same "Muffin" place.
"that kid can see us." i mused.

we finally found our way by asking the fruit vendors on the corners of every street along Atlantic Ave if we were still going the right way.
"fifth avenure?" Abby asked one
he pointed in the direction we were walking. we walked in it until we reached the next vendor and asked him. it was like following arrows on the floor of a museum that lead you along to the next print to the next print finally to where you want to go, to the animal who matches the print. i remember following prints to find the huge whale at the Museum of Natural History... but its a whale... that cant be right...

Philadelphia or south carolina or D.C.

about three months ago my brother and i were going to drive to... mmm either philidelphia or washing dc or... i forget but the point is: we were going to be in the car for an extended amount of time.
my brother and i have very few things to say to eachother after we've covered the basics of how girls think and how boys think and how we think the other is wrong or right about the way boys think or girls think.
after that we generally move onto how i could change myself via push up bras and tweezers into the kind of girl that my brother thinks is the only kind of girl that could ever have a boy friend.
so what im trying to say is that i was a bid worried about how we were going to pass this extended amount of time in the car.
i decided that perfect solution to it would be to blog about our entire trip.
we could keep a detailed online chronical of every single day of travel and trip once we arrived in philidelphia or south carolina or wherever we were gonna go.
i realized that if we had a third party to talk to- e.i. the blog- we could just talk about anything... and not run out of things to say... does that make sense? even our disagreements would be blog worthy they would even add to it. and our two incredibly contrasting minds, observing the same things and reaching completely different conclusions about them, might be an interesting jumping off point for a blog that would then be turned into a book and then make us lots of money.
anyway i dont know why im telling that story except to say that its a good reason to keep a blog.
we didnt end up going, as youve probobly gathered, or keeping a blog.
but we should have.
it would have helped.

Fairy Tale

Once upon a time there is a lady
Who lives in a tower that’s covered in vines
Many years ago they grew
Through the cracks in the window
and crept inside.

Today the light is shining
Onto her canopy of silk and lace
And silhouetting the vines like veins
Casting thin shadows on her skin
They wrap around the bed
And twist overhead like a cage.

She wakes at dawn and sits
Stretches her arms, smiles
And puts her feet on the floor
A white blossom
brushes her hand as she stands.

“good morning.” She greets it
and plucks it from the stem
she goes to the window and, one petal at a time
she drops the vine’s gift the ground
where it falls at the feet of a knight.

He counts as she counts
And then begins to climb
Long after she’s left the sill.

Thinking still that she’s alone
She’s gone to wander the magic halls and
See where they lead her today
Her bare feet slap the grey stone
As she walks away from the bedroom.

Tiny flames in glass jars
Sit on the floor against the walls
Spaced unevenly throughout the hall
The shine on all but her face.

At the first door she stops trying to hear a sound
Then turns the key and enters
Inside the room is full of twilight.
And dragonflies fly around her
Outside the knight climbs the vine.

Nearby she can hear the crashing of waves
she catches a dragon then leaves
“too early for you.” She decides.
Still the night climbs.

The next doorway, where she stands now,
is the end of a pier
where the sun is rising.
She steps aboard a sailing ship
With rainbow sails
And finds her breakfast waiting.
“so its sailing today.” She sighs.
Still the knight climbs

Until the vines turn hot in his hands
His palms blister
And the poison runs up his arms
And he cries as it reaches his heart
And falls from the wall
Landing broken amidst the petals
Which he knows now have lied.

the stranger

The stranger
By Katie Oscar


One tiny figure slips out
From a wet grey side street
On that side of the city.

The stranger stands for a moment on the empty avenue
Under a dark streetlamp.
All the lamps on that side are dark.

It’s nearly six-o-clock
In a month where the light goes grey at three
And dark at five.

The brown-silver fog
That shrouds the city almost completely
From outside eyes,
Swirls idly but insistently
Through the streets

As though blown by a wind
That only gas is sensitive to
And flesh and hard matter can’t appreciate.

In West Bridge Students feel disoriented
And a sensation close to seasickness
As they watch the gas blow by them
On the avenues.

But the stranger under the dark lamp
Isn’t bothered by it at all,
Only the slightest shake of his head,
As he stares back toward East Bridge
Through the haze,
Gives away that he can see the stuff at all.

No one comes here at night.

Those few students who don’t retreat
Behind their drawn curtains
And locked doors by six o’clock
Keep to East Bridge and its river side restaurants and pubs,

There’s more light and less mist there;
Really there’s just more light and
The mist, like the moon,
Turns invisible in the light.

Bridge avenue is never busy,
It’s no man’s land,
Cutting a slice
Between east and west
Here and there.

No one lingers long, they slip past,
Between places,
Eyes quick and ready
Hoping no one from where they are headed
Sees them come
And no one from where they are leaving
Watches them go.

The coarse sound of glass
Breaking and grinding
Under the strangers small feet
Echoes down the wide silent avenue

The stranger takes no notice
But continues to look towards East Bridge
With the kind of weary nervousness
Usually reserved for those standing on this side
And looking toward that one.

The broken glass comes from the broken lights,
It covers the empty sidewalk
For at least three blocks
On that side of the avenue
Until it stops where the lights are still burning.
No one comes here at night.

That side’s lack of light
Makes the line between there to here
Quite obvious tonight,
In the grey rain the street reflects the lights
From the windows on this side.

The lights reach out,
Towards the shadows
Stopping almost exactly
At the feet of the traveler
Who steps into them,
Finally deciding to cross.

He moves slowly
Watching the light around his feet,
Acknowledging its welcome
Until he stops in one black spot
Where something is obstructing
The light from one window.

Its one black smudge
In a sea of twinkling reflection.
He looks down at the shadow
And then up at the window.

I look back
And then slip away from the sill,
Leaving the stranger
Standing in his pool of light
Looking up.

Death and stories

I swallowed the story that she told me and once inside my body, circulating through my blood stream, it started to search for a way out.
Little bruises appeared on my legs, then over the weeks, as the story neared the surface of my skin, the bruises turned to blisters, blood blisters.
When you stick a tack into a blister, you release the blood. Is a bruise just the same, I wondered, would it only require a longer tack?
The story she told was about you. She said you were dying. She said there was not the slightest hope that you would ever leave your bed.
I watched you breath, I watched the green lids of your closed eyes.
I thought about your dancing, and the way you never stopped. You never slowed for anything, you were always moving forward.
At night I lay awake, propped up against two pillows in the empty bed beside yours.
I watched you lying there and stuck my bruised knees with short pins.
I unbuttoned my shirt and, as the hours wore on, watched the bruises appearing along my ribs,
Soon a blister formed on the left, above my heart.
I stuck it with my pin and watched it bleed and felt the pulse beneath it, feeding it. And then starvation.
The tiny wound gasped and opened wide, tensed and then failed.
I closed my eyes,
That’s the end.
The lie she had fed me had escaped, now you will live.

God and Pitted Fruit

I decide to amuse my apathetic self with frozen cherries, their juice is dramatic, like licking blood off your fingers- purple, red, cold.
“Vampires die when they drink dead blood, cold blood,” I remember.
Fresh, Frozen, Grade A, No Sugar Added, Dark, Sweet cherries, Pitted.
“Pitted” I think, “heartless, dead, they thaw and ripen in your mouth. Sweet cold cherries, pitted.”
How do they get the pits out?
I look for puncture wounds.
Unblemished.
How do they get the pits out? Have they bred the hearts out?I bite, then crack! I bite a heart.
I smile, thank you, I say to someone.
I understand. I created a metaphor and so
you adressed me from within it.
Heartless! Bred to live without hearts!
All cherry, all fruit and sweet without heart!“Nice metaphor,” you said, “and on that note- here- you, you have, be, find, by chance, by luck, by destiny, the one cherry with a heart, one, out of thousands.
“Here, for you.”

Thoughts on the Trailer for the Film “Revolutionary Road”

"I want to feel things- really feel them. How’s that for an ambition?"
Why is this so complicated? It seems so simple, really, really straightforward; I Don’t care who I am, where I am or who I'm with, I just want to feel things.
The movie that this quote belongs to is about how this simple desire causes a horror.
The trailer follows the format for a horror movie; the music, timing, thrusts of base into your guy as reviews fade in and out over black between visuals. Why are we so spooked by the drama, the challenge the pain, and the anguish of this dream failing before our eyes?
No one goes to the mall is too crowded. No one likes the normal situation- “the same ridiculous delusion.”
The dream failing before us is not his dream, it’s the dream of an entire culture we are all here, at the mall which is why we don’t want to be here- its too crowded.

The horror movie marketing of this movie makes perfect sense.
BOOM, base in your gut- You are no one.
BOOM BOOM, base in your gut, goose bumps on your arms- All you wanted was to feel things.
BOOM you feel the skin of your stomach, your chest and your back against the fabric of your shirt.
“We’re gonna be okay.”
You let out your breath.
“I hope so” She says, “I really hopes so.”
“I hope so” you think.
Maybe this film will show you how.
But, because you have the smallest bit of civilian insight into filmmaking, you assume it will all end badly.

old story

Magic Man
Saturday, July 19, 2008 at 10:08pm

Across the street from the hardware store where I went to buy the light bulb for the baby’s head for my installation, there’s a huge building with a domed roof and a lot of very tall columns.
There’s a green lawn between the huge building and the street and on the lawn there are tall lamp posts whose lamps are like giant glass globes.

On Thursday there was a man standing on the grass under the lamp posts, playing with a tiny glass ball that looked like it might have fallen from a post and shrunken to a size that he could toss between his hands.
theres a man named Brian Fraud whos written and illastrated a few books about fairies.
many of his fairies have globes with them, floating above their palms sort of like personifications of their fairy magic.

the man on the lawn rolled the orb over his arms and the backs of his hands... flip flopping his objectified power under the glass globed lamps like a magic trick or a slight-of-hand or trick-the-eye game.

I tried to take his picture.
I stepped out of my comfort zone to take five more shots then I usually allow myself... before my stalker slash tourist phobias take over and I run away from the stranger whose soul I’ve tried to capture...



I tried and tried
But I didn’t capture the man with the globe.
only the memory of it in the awful snap shot photos that, when I look at them, will remind me of him. And ill know where and who and what I saw.
Someone else will see a man in a blue shirt with a smudgy green grey something behind him and a blur of something that could be anything flickering between his palms.

just dreaming
id like to work in Anthropologie
and stay late when the people come to hang the strange paper and yarn decorations from everywhere.
and maybe hold the bottom of a ladder while they reach up to nail a nail.

i think that there should be a whole new goverment funded work devision that is in charge of beautifying.
they will be like the maintenence. and they will be everywhere where there is a maintenence.
they will have meetings and design all the decorations for the mall or community college where they work
they will hang and ornament all the places where the janitors sweep.
they will work everyday and everything will always be artful.
it will be basically like a crew of instalation artists who make things like beautiful lighting and carpets.
or something
imagine going to a mall one a week and finding that everything is different everytime because someone is paid to make sure that the lighting is blue one week and red the next.
sort of the way Google illustrates their logo according to holidays- this work force will illustrate their area according to everyday
but not just holidays- seasons and themes in the news and current events.

Goodnight Benjamin

the curious case of Benjamin button made me want to wake up early and hear the birds singing
and live my life in a big way and fall in love
all in misty blue.

rant

away
want to go away
get away
from something that feels like nothing but also feels like everything
everything means nothing

where?
away
away where?
tasks...
bake
chores
point a to point be
process, process, process,
remember to pre-heat
bake
cookies!
point a to point b.
no..
creativity
just
measurments and sugar.
tell me what to do!
but dont tell me what to do!
i know what to do!
make me do it!
i will
make me do it!
shut up!
never
stillness
tired
ache
heart sqeeezzeedd with tight situations.
sunny breezy big windowed mornings!
please!
im done.
fail me!
im done!
i dont want anything
except everything.
dont tell me what to do.
i want to do everything.
NOTHING!
college! shit!
no!
i dont want to make movies!
i want to make stories
in my head!!
i dont want to show them to you!
theyre mine!
theyre incredible!
perfect!
but youll never know
listen.
whispering.
i cant do this.
"we"
could we do it?
no!
i hate you!
no
i just dont like you
that doesnt imply hate
dont touch me!
if you touch me i hate you!
i cant do this.
i want to bake cookies.
dropped out of harvard to open a bakery.
fell in love with a charachature in a red sweater.
"i believe your writing a story about me... when i file papers i hear a deep ocean."

tragedy or a comedy.
tragedy you die- comedy you fall in love.

tragedy you get rejected.
comedy you get accepted.
no fucking way
its the other fucking way around.
give me one comedy about being accepted.

"outrageous for a man like me to stand here and complain
painting my hair the color of mud"

i think that if i had a twin i would run away
because they would come with me
and like me
and like running away
and like running away with me

run away with me?
i dont think i like u enough.

i cant stay here and give up
i have to go far away and shout back to the shore: by the way! i give up!
and then dissapear over the horizon.
or under it.

pirate ship!
yes!
point a to point b
to a whole new level!
always moving!
never standing still!
always moving! and always with the simple
uncreative goal of "treasure!"
piracy!
yes!
please
im stuck!

The Pact

It’s so warm today.
The wind blows and the sky is churning, black against grey
with the bitter resentment of winter overpowered.
No matter how it howls
There’s no bitterness wind
That whisks pleasantly past my face and blows my hair around my eyes.

The rock where I sit is the day’s only memory
Frozen with yesterdays chill, it turns my thighs numb
And chuckles with the small piece of consciousness that
One of the philosophers promises us that rocks have.
"No windows or doors for anything to come in or out"
Just self and consciousness of self
Is what the rock has.

But I’m sure somehow that the wind and the rock have formed a wordless pact
"There’s nothing I can do!" says the wind
As he lifts the pages of this book
Flipping back to an entry from last summer.
What a tease.
"You must hold the winter for us until tomorrow."

And the rock chuckles inside its windowless soul,
While the message rattles the shutters on its walls.

ifuture

when predicting the future, tarot card readings and all such silliness predict only the future of the path that you are on now; if i read my tarot cards they will give me the outcome of an event if everything continues the way it is going.
"If i take this path (draws a card) then this (another card) will be the outcome."

one of the futures we like to imagine looks like pipes and slime and factories giving off filthy smog but another one of the paths we are on is headed towards a silence where we all live in round white ihouses.
and wear white, clean, shiny, iclothing.
and we wont communicate and the world will stay silent... like snow

Ever notice how everything is quiter after snow... with only a few foggy sounds from far away.
thats what i see when i see the white iworld.

...everything pulsing with that white round light that mac computers pulse with when they go to sleep.

the iways will shine as the icars whip around corners, quietly, like slieghs on ice. and when theyre not driving the icars pulse in the drivways.
theres a setting to turn off the pulsing light but only the most computer savvy people know how to do it so mostly the world will pulse

and be quiet
except for the sounds of quiet keyboards.
and the tiny crescendos of computers turning on.

poem at the end of summer

What did she say?
The angel with the blue, pink, purple, silver pigtails?
What did she write that last morning?
The morning when she woke- she said- as if from underwater.

She watched me sleeping.
“Katie” she wrote, followed by adjectives like beautiful and sleeping
and outlined against a blue window-
glowing.

Was I there?
Did she really see my closed eyes and think they looked strangely peaceful at rest
because she remembered them fiery and full of life awake?
Did she lie?- that perfect angel with the silver hair…
No, she didn’t, couldn’t lie.

So was she real?
Was she blind?
Or was I beautiful?

old poem

fishing today

I think if I see you today I will smile
Today I’ll know exactly what to say
And I’ll say it.
And not think about what you think about it
I think I won’t replay it and regret it

Today I think ill look at your face
instead of into your eyes

My thoughts will wander slowly tawords the knowlage of your presence
Like thoughts are supposed to do
Like early mornings
When I find
my mind meandering easily
Between intentions of buttered toast
And theories of world domination

I don’t think I love you anymore
I don’t think you can real me in
like a fish who has swallowed a hook

The hooks you never know you have cast
The ones that
with no intention of yours
you have kicked from the dock
Into the sea where they snag
Unwanted, innocent, invisble passing fish
That you never knew were there
And you never knew were caught
And you never cared.

I was cought.
And you never knew
Dragged and flung from oblivion
And landing gasping in airless powerlessness
At your feet

Of course I cant be sure
If I love you anymore
I wont know if I don’t
Until I see you and smile
And speak and look
And look away
So I'm hoping to see you today.

maybe

maybe i dont really want to make movies.
maybe i just like the idea of having someone tell me what to do.
even if its me
telling me what to do
i still need to excuse of a controlled experiment of an alternate reality
in order to consider myself a credible authority
and to listen to me.

most days

Most days

Most days I go downstairs,
And find something wonderful to eat
Like buttered toast
And earl grey tea.

I carry it all back upstairs
With the delightful idea of
Stealing a movie from my dad's credit card
And downloading it from itunes.

Sitting on the floor with my tea and my perfect toast,
I look up at the screen and let the Beauty wash over me.

And now a universe has squeezed its way in
Through the little red arteries in my eyes.
And now the dye shows the doctors things that they couldn’t see before.

And we can see the particular cavities
Where imagination and believability swim around and wait
For other people’s ideas to arrive.
And we can see they are squeezed and prodded and swirled around
Until they are adequate for transfer
To the next piece my brain
The piece that controls the pride and the entitlement and the potential of me.

And we can see that
This second chamber of judgment,
Behind my eyes,
Houses a predictable little response who
Turns up its nose at the
Mutilated bits of other people’s universes
That squeezed their way in through my red eyes.
Because the little response has just received
Word from me and I know that we
Could have created a much more perfect work of art.

Sometimes I take my dirty dishes back downstairs
Thinking about what a genius I am

Sometimes I leave my dishes on the floor
And go downstairs empty handed
But always
Thinking about what a genius I am

I smile as I get more toast
More tea
And do it all over again
Knowing all along that I am headed for greatness
And that all my daily habits
Are somehow helping me to get there.

recipe

one and a half teaspoons of hot coco mix.
a bit of heavy whipping cream

put the cream and the coco in a small jar and shake the jar until the liquid does not make any noise or move at all.
then lick with your fingers
or eat with a spoon.

note: if the liquid starts moving and making a noise again you will have chocolate butter.

You

I'm ready for you now.

when i see you
i know not to wait for fireworks.
I'm ready for the silence that will follow
in the rocket's place.

I'm not expecting much.
I'm ready for that too.
ready for who you wont be.

I'm ready to be patient
while i sketch out
the perfect you
and iron it onto your face.

I'm ready to peel away that pattern
and see that-ah-yes-
you've turned out a fine first draft of you.

I'm ready to outline your features and
line by line
to cross-hatch your shadows.

I'm excited for the day
when ill take
my perfect eraser that doesn't smudge
and reveal the highlights where the sun touches your cheeks
and the lights in your eyes

I'm ready for the hard work that you will take.
and I'm ready for the grand unveiling...

ill decide one day that you are
as good as i can imagine you will ever be.

that's the day ill stand before you and view you
with the critical eye that all artists save for their own work.

ill know where you could have been better
and also where you are perfect.
ill feel a bit more perfect myself for having created you.
and also a bite more flawed
because Ive given so much of me to you
and you turned out nothing like i planned you would.

Ill run a finger or the back of a brush
over the lines of you
and smile because i know that all along
you've been painting me too.

I'm ready for you.
I'm waiting for the blank canvas of you with open arms, rinsed brushes and colors
that ive chosen before knowing you
a palette of paints Ive mixed the way i like them.

I'm ready for you now and whenever you re ready we'll begin.

making lists.

I'm making a list
of things to stack
one on top of the other.
stack until they pile high enough
to reach over the wall
of myself.

hand by hand foot by foot
i begin to craw upwards towards the top
of this jumbled decaying compost heap of intention.

the list teeters.
"make a movie" gets pressed into my palms and
"learn to drive" is under my nails.

as i pass my abdomin and reach for a rib. i look down and see
"excersise daily" there on my foot
its coating my footholds in resisue.
what more could i possibly do on that point?
i wonder, panting as i reach
for the next rung on the ladder- collar bone. and
grasp it with all my srength...
this must be good enough to satsify
"daily workout", i assure myself, as i swing there for a moment
i turn back
hoping to check off that fulfilled bit of gooey resalution
that is sticky between my toes.

"just be happy" is hard like diamonds on the inside of my skull.
i scrape it off in thin layers which shatter
as they fall and shower me in crystal dust.
then-crack- im out- blinking in the sunlight
coated in that last bullieted requirement for freedom.

political dreams

Giuliani is tossing a ball
back and forth between his hands and laughing.
the ball is bright and red and shiny as it is flipped
from one small plump hand to the other.

i want to snatch the beautiful toy away from the cackling politician.

all it has done is shine
but the old man cant let it alone.

back and forth it flies and finally he drops it to the floor.
delighted to be free the ball bounces off the podium and rolls away.

i pick it up when it arrives at my feet
i hold it hight above my head and a stadium of people cry and cheer
the ball shines brightly back at them all...
red and pure and audaciously hopeful.

a wormy sensation

a wormy sensation has a hold on me
a crawling tight knawing twist in my gut
tells me that i am dissatisfied with something.

so i crawl into the tightest corner i can find
i wrap myself in my arms and squeeze my ribs together with my elbows.

i try to think of what could possibly be wrong.
why am i crawling and twisted?

maybe, i think, there is not logic at all
and the wormy sensation is just my heart
squeezing iteslf with its elbows
curled up in its own tight corner.
maybe myself has no more idea
of why it must this
then i do.

more almost fatal dreams

i found my red book...

i had a dream that my heart stopped so some paramedics tried to shock it back to life

they shocked me once and my heart fell out on the steps on a porch where i had fallen

i got up and took the paddles from the startled paramedic and held them uncertainly over my heart...
wanting to shock it again but not being sure how to do it

i yelled at the profesionals to help me

one came forward and told me that i had to excite my heart awake

he put my heart in a plastic bag and i took the back and swung it around my head...

i woke up.

little piece of self

i lost my red book
i sat at a table in barnes and nobel and looked back through the pages

i held a year of pages between my fingers...
a month
a differnt month

i looked at my little bit of life
written in horizantal lines on graph paper between two pleather covers
i put it down
and thought
"dont put it there it will fall or someone will want it and take it or youll leave it"

i left it

i bet someone took it

i would have taken it

i hope they read it and are inspired by it.

i miss it.

dream

i am in a dorm
much like the one i stayed at at camp this summer
i am surrounded by artists
much like the ones i was surrounded by this summer

they are all hurting themselves

i dont remember the specifics

only a vague image of a androgenous face lying on the ground close to my own...
in some sort of self induced agony.

i decide to leave

there is some logic behind what they are doing to themselves...
some excuse for it like... art or self discovery
so my dream self cannot bring herself to tell them to stop...
she understands why they cannot so she leaves

she (i) take an elevator down from the dorm
the mall... the palisades mall is under the dorm...
the mall is sort of like the lobby or common area of the dorm...
where everyone hangs out when they are not in their rooms or on thier floor

so i wander around the mall.
it is huge... like a realistic mall
i end up on the other side from where i came down in the elevator when i decide i can go back upstairs now.

on the otherside (where i am) there is another elevator.
much the same as the one that i came down in
but
i know that if i go up in it i will have a difficult time finding my way back to the dorm
i know that my dorm is on the fifth floor
but apparently the fifth floor is very large because if i take this other elevator there i will not know how to get to my side of the floor.

so
i know all this but
i decide to take this elevator anyway
there is a man guarding the elevator door and i have to pay him a ticket which i have to get from a ticket machine near the elevator.
so i am getting my ticket thinking that if the elevator comes down and the doors open i can get in without paying...
which apperently is allowed
because the doors open and i get on right infront of the elevator man and he doesnt care...

once inside i hit the botton for the fifth floor and the doors close and the lift goes up
we go to the seventeenth floor.
a beautiful thin tall black woman gets on

the she hits the lobby botton and the elevator takes her down...
as she gets off at the floor that i just left from she calls back to me something about the elevator not choosing floors in the order that the bottons were pressed.

we go to another floor that is not my floor and a girl gets on
i know her
she is from another group...
not my group...
she is not from this side of the building
but she is not from my side of the building either...
she takes a different elevator to her dorm...
not this one but not mine
but i know her

she asks me why i am on this side
i say i thought it didnt mater and that i would end up on my floor anyway
she points to the elevator buttons with the numbers on them and i notice
that there are a lot of different sets of numbers
there are multiple fifth floors

now i know i am lost

the girl who i know and i get off at some random floor

we leave the building

there is a blank spot in the dream now

next thing i remember is that we are lost
outside of the building at the top of a hill and we are on bicycles.
we ride very fast down the hll and end up through the glass doors of a building... (they open and we ride through)
the lobby we are in is the lobby with the elevator to the girls dorm
and from there i know how to get to my dorm

the other people from the girls group run to meet us and want to now how we got lost and why we left and how we found our way back
they put quarters into our hands to pay for the elevator and then tell us that it really doesnt matter
and then take our hands and we all get in the elevator and then
i woke up...

illusions

either the whole world is blind or i am delusional.
i have this thought in context of beauty

there is a girl who i just do not find attractive.
she has the body
she has the hair
and the face
and the laugh

i do not find her atractive

and everyone else does

now
usually i can see what other people find conventionally attractive about someone even if i personally find them rather ordinary...
but with the indiviual who i am thinking of...
its just not there...
and it is for everyone else...
so it makes me wonder

either the whole world is blind or i am delusional.

which seems an interesting thing to think about
much more interesting than this girl...
so i wonder...

either the whole world is blind or i am delusional.

this is a thought that many people have...
because
everyone must be delusional or everyone would be blind
because
the entire world and everything in it must be illusionas
so
we must be delusional to see it
otherwise
we would be sane and looking around and seeing what truly existed: nothing.

two dreams

first dream:

i am a man
i am standing in a crowded ballroom in what feels like a very exspensive hotel
surrounded by what feels like very wealthy people... like myself.
in the crowd i am aware of two others amidst the strangers.

one is a beautiful woman. the most beautiful woman i have ever seen... i think she was wearing navy a navy blue gown...

the other is a man wearing a red suit.
his skin is also red *(when i woke up and remembered the dream i remembered him like the yellow demon from sin city)
he is also watching the beautiful woman.

i leave with the beautiful woman we go back to my room... remember i am still a man.
im lying with her on my bed in my very small hotel room when we realize that the red man is under the bed.
i dont know how we knew we just did.
i turned and saw a drop like blood on the white sheet
i thought "blood" but i heard my man's dream voice say "a tear."

i reached down and under the bed and pulled the crying red man by the hair out from under the bed.

the woman and i ran out into the hall.
there were many people in the hall
they had a just-left-the-party feeling to them.

now the woman is gone or maybe i am her
because now i am a woman
though still not quite myself...

i am running through the black tie event dressed people
away from the red man
i am holding a baby girl
i run to a room
in the room i give the baby to a man who i know will protect her
then i leave the room and go back to hall
i see the red man waiting patiently in a group of people and yell back to the room for them to lock their door
i hear them lock it.

next dream:
im sitting on a couch in a small house that has a beach house feeling to it
the house and the room are very crowded
i dont remember the begining of the dream
but i remember that a woman (who was a mix of my mom, meryl streep, signorey weaver and a million other women that i know and actress that ive seen) was shooting at me.
she shot me in the leg and the neck... she was also shooting the girl next to me.
the girl next to me got a bullet in the chest or the stomach and went still
the lady was still shooting at my arms and legs so i turned to that she would shoot me in the heart and it would all end.
i remember just being frustrated that she wouldnt aim better.

she shot me in the head and then stopped.
i sat back on the couch and tried to feel what i felt.
the woman seemed to be patient and calm enough to wait for me to die.
i was thinking about the whole situation when my dream minded started to wobble and i felt a bit drunk...
i remember linking this to being shot in the head.

*in real life i have just finished the book "illusions" which is about a man, richard who is taught a lot of lessons by another man who is actually a mesiah. the mesiah's name is donald shimoda.

in my dream, as my brain began to get wobbley i grapsed onto the thought of donald shimoda telling the richard that the whole world is an illusion and we have complete control over what we choose to make real.
so
as i died...
in my dream i decided that i didnt want to die and that if donald shimoda thought it was possible i was going to try to not die.

i turned to a calm man sitting next to me and told him i would like to go to the emergency room and try to survive.
he looked tawords the kitchen where the woman was and said that he thought i should ask her.

the girl next to me who was also not dead said that her mom worked in the ER and that she had to go there anyway to visit her mom
she said it would be no trouble for her to take me there.
i got up and went to ask the woman
she smiled when she saw me and said that me standing up had caused my head to bleed even more and that i was surely going to die even quicker if i bothered to get to the car and get to the ER.
so she let me go
completly convinced that i would die on the way
the man and the girl packed gauze onto my head and i held it there and i got into the car and then i woke up.

what about not speaking in context.

when i think a "what if" thought i dont think i actually think the words "what if"

i think i think something more like "what about" because my brain is already in context.
like

if i think "what if i ate a banana right now..." im not thinking "what if..."
im thinking "what about a banana"

because my brain is already on the same page as i am...

cuz there is just that one page...


what if i started saying things as they occured to me without context to test the people around me to see if they are keeping up...

"what about not speaking in context..."

the little boy in extreamly loud and incredibly close.

johnathan safran foer.

genius

not original

everything is illuminated

alluminated

heh

they laughed when i couldnt spell it

we watched it

holocust gets old...

couldnt watch it again.

jewish...??

blogging

i feel lonely.
its strange because the lonely feeling was triggered by never feeling alone.

i woke up late this morning i slept in max's bed last night because my bed makes me sneeze and max was in montreal.
i woke up and hoped that no one was home because i wanted a peaceful morning without my dad telling how i needed to do things in order to not end up like he ended up: married with children and too much work and not enough art....

its strange... my parents teach me all about the law of attraction which teaches that anything that u expect to come to you will come to you.
they teach me that and i believe in it like some people believe in heaven and hell.

i tried to talk to my d ad today about his dream day... and whats strange is that he couldnt plan his dream day.. couldnt talk about it
and thats all the law of attraction is; visualizing and expecting and knowing your dream day.

this blog makes no sense
im really just writing it to avoid going to sleep.

im avoiding going to sleep because my bed isnt made and ill have to make it before i go to sleep
and im avoiding getting into my bed because my bed is against the wall that max's bed is on the other side of.
and max is home from montreal and his girl friend is here with him tonight.
shes in my grade and shes a sweety
and im glad that i got to meet her.
but relationships make me sick.

just for now

im sure they wont make me sick forever

its just that

relationships were such a highped up... and important and worth envying thing...
before i ever had one...

and then i went to art camp and had a joke of a relationship...
but it wasnt in the begining.
in the begining it was wonderful.
at the end it was a joke.

but i loved myself and hated myself in new ways that i had never felt before while i was sorta of jokingly loving my art camp boy...

strange...

but the point of all of this is to say that...
i dont want to hear my brother and his girl whispering on the other side of the wall.

it will give me stomach ache

the fakeness of it
or maybe its not thier fakeness
maybe its my own
or my fakeness that i was with my art camp boy...
that is what will make me sick
the memory of the dark room that was so dark that i could have been kissing anyone...
and i thought about that in the moment
this could be anyone.
"now you understand why guys get in trouble with thier girlfriends all the time for saying a differnt womans name." says jake when i tell him this story.

i do understand

i hate relationships

i want to feel as beautiful as the pixie girl who looked up into the boys face while he traced the lines of her cheeks and lips and whispered "you have the most perfect face ive ever seen..."
i want to feel as beautiful as that pixie girl.
she was me.
he said that he meant the most perfect face in terms of art... composition.
he said it was a compliment but also just a fact.
he ran a finger over my closed eye lid and i knew that he was so proud of himself for having me
and that was a feeling that made me want to belong to myself and to no one else forever
but also a feeling that made me want to be held forever.

he was proud of himself for being with me...

thats all relationships can ever be... a feeling in yourself that the other person makes you feel.
you could feel it with half a dozen others.
the question is do they feel it with you?
proud of themselves in context of you?

i blew him a kiss when i drove away after five weeks.
he was sitting in the lobby and he waved at me through the tall glas window wall.
i smiled and blew a kiss
i hope he loved that
because it caused me some pain.

but anyway
im lonely
in a house with no doors
where construction workers are always in the yard outside the kitchen
im lonely surrounded by friends who never take a breath between sentences and who say "i love you" as a substatution for "hello" "goodbye" and many other things.

im lonley
because i feel like no one ever loves anyone for anyone.
everyone loves everyone because of some feeling that they feel themselves with they are around people.
and thats lonley.
and selfish and i know i am a victim of it.

ill have to go make my bed now
and sleep in it.
and ignore the whispering.
and if i cant ignore it i will have to refrain from anylizing it

goodnight.

today (in which i do not get my learners permit)

today i woke up early because i had to get my learners permit.

i went through the motions of
wake up
get up
shower
eat
leave
like i would on any normal school day during the school year.

i thought about how
these things were much easier things to do when i was moving towards somthing that i felt indiferent about- permit.
as opposed to something i was dreading and unprepared for and livid at- school.

we drove to the department of motor vehical in haverstraw.
on the way the black tape with the cord that connects to an ipod and plays ipod music through the stereo...
that black tape got stuck in the tape deck.
my mom tried to claw it out.
while she attempted the hopeless task she talked about growing up in the 70's when tape deck problems were a daily thing.
she said we needed a knife.
we tried a pen.
we pried the black tape up with the pen and the tip of the pen came off
and black bloody shiny ink covered the deck.

well not exacly bloody.
if youve ever seen a large quantity of pen ink outside of its pen
you will be aware that
in the right light (the kind of light which the morning was in... bright light...)
pen ink reveals its true colors...
which is really just one color
which is shiny purple.

so

shiny purple blood covered the tape and the deck
and the tape stayed in the deck
and the deck made strange helpless courageous "i think i can i think i can i think i can" clicking machine sounds when we pressed the eject botton.

and then we arrived at the motor vehical office and i filled out a form
there was a bit at the end of the form that was optional where u could register to vote if you are going to be 18 by the end of the year of the next ellection.
i am going to be 18 ONE month after the next ellection.

FRUSTRATION!

so i filled it out.
and i realized that i didnt have a political party.
and that i couldnt vote in a primary.
so i probobly should have just registered as a democrat even though sometimes they are silly.
they are generally less silly than the others.

so anyway
we got to the front of the line and only had one form of id and my mom had her drivers liscence but they sent us away to come back with a birth certificate and a social security card.
so we left.
and we went to starbucks to meet my dad and my social security card.

and to get a coffee.

we got those two essential items and then were on our way to panera... down the strip... to eat and wait two hours till the next time slot (1:00) when i could take my permit test.
right outside starbucks
under the awning, next to the trash can we waited when we saw a friend drive by.
she parked her car
and then we stood there and talked with her about identical anorexia while lightning crackled a few times
and we kept sharing opinions as it began to rain.
when we finally left her to her coffee we were faced with the obstacal of crossing the bit of parking lot between this bit of under-the-awning-strip-mall-sidewalk and the other bit.

there was a huge puddle in the low bit of that bit of parking lot.
we looked at it with forboading for a moment.

on the far side of the puddle-bit of parking lot there was a modelles
an advertisment in the window of the modelles had a swimmer
she was swimming and she had a nose plug pinching her nose and churned up water all around her.

on our side of the parking lot there was a photographer who was out
apparently
photographing the weather.

we told him we were about to run through the puddle
he told us he was going to take our picture
so we ran.
when we got to the other side he ran after us and told us that the picture of us and the advertisment picture of the nose-plugged swimmer had come together quite nicely in his photograph and could he please have our names.
we gave him our names and continued on to panera.

in panera i read a short story by truman copote.
the story was called miriam and in it there is a old lady who hallucinates (i think) a young girl with silver hair.
the young girl forces her way into the old lady's life and the old lady gets upset.

then i listened to "the weepies" who have a lyric in a song that they have
that goes: "yesterday when you were young everything you needed done was done for you"
i thought about my learners permit.

then i got two text messeges.
on messege was from eliza.
eliza recomended the book of truman copote stories.
the one about miriam was her favorites.
thats why i was reading it first before reading any of the others.
her text messege wasnt about the book.

in her messeges she told me that she was seeing pineapple express at the mall with her twin sister maya.
maya and eliza are my friends who are not friends with my other friends jake and adam.
the text messege from eliza told me that jake and adam were in the theater with her maya and it was followed quite immediatly by a text messege from adam that told me that he was in a movie theater with "your twins" and of course i was already of aware.

i texted them both back and told them about the other ones text.
making it, im sure quite awkward for them...
two faces lit blue in a dark crowded movie theater... strangers to eachother together missing the person-in-common-link that could make an introduction about of anponymousness.

after panera and miriam and the two text messseges
we got back in the car with the bleeding purple stereo
we went back, 30 mins and maybe four towns away, to the motor vehecal office listening to my ipod with one ear-bud each.

when we got there i went in ahead to go to the bathroom.
in the bathroom the toilet paper fell off the roll and onto the floor and rolled away into the next stall
someone on the toilet in the next stall rolled it back to me
neither one of us said anything.
there was another roll in my stall so i left that one on the floor.

i went back outside to get my mother and found that she had lost her liscense.
so we left
and went back to panera.
to look for it
and her credit card.
which had been in the hand with the lisence and was missing too.

on the drive there we called my dad and told him to tranfer all the money on the card into his account incase someone wanted to use it.
if someone had stolen it.

someone hadnt
they hadnt spent anything at least.

but in those few minutes of listening to my mothers side of the please-transfer-all-the-money-using-the-online-transfer-thing-conversation
i realized something

it is this:
i did not want my permit before today
but now
i do
just so that, in future, i can avoid being in close proximity to conversations like that.

and also i realized that i will never get married and if i ever by some illogical crazed choice i do end up married
i will never ever ever have a single cell phone conversation with my other.

so long story not very short:

we found the cards
at panera
i didnt get my permit.

the end.

me and bella swann/cullen

feel like im moving backwards in time.
away from who i was in boston...
pixie dancing smiling kissing beauty girl

past who i was at nyack
naive silly self-steryotype wierd waldorf girl

back to who i was at green meadow
just katie

i want to get a tan
not to impress anyone
who to feel like i am healthy and not ghostly
i just want to get a tan
i dont want to go to the beach
just the tan

i want to buy clothing
not to wear to something exciting
not to feel like the kind of person who i want to feel like
the kind that is wearing that clothing
no
i just want it
to wear it when i leave my house probobly leaving just to buy more clothing

id also like to be awake
to leave my bed and its dusty sheets and antifeminist guilty pleasure novels.
i dont care about bella and her vampire love and her vampire human baby
she shouldnt have become a vampire
a feminist wouldnt have made her one
would have made her her own thing
instead she just lived happily ever after
in modern fairytales the princess gets the prince and then realized she doesnt want him

in classic fairy tales she gets the prince the end.
classic fairy tales are classics because they arnt written anymore
because our heroines are supposed to be
heronines
not
like
pretty
bellas happy ending?
beautiful vampire husband child and self.
happily ever bloodsuckingly after.