What I Have to Say About the House that They Bulldozed Today

This morning they were spraying the house with a fire hose. I'm not sure how I understood that that meant that it was going to be knocked down but I did understand that right away. Like the phone ringing in the night and the dread you feel even before you answer it.
I don't think anyone ever explained to me that when a house is going to be bulldozed you must first spray down the surrounding area with a lot of water. I find that I am often making these far fetched and yet correct leaps of logic. The house was uninhabited and was -most people would say- ugly, completely in the way, and also rotten so perhaps even someone less observant then myself would assume that any attention the house was receiving had to be in regard to its impending end. I did think briefly that maybe they were going to burn it- though that seemed more unlikely, it would have more satisfyingly explained the fire hose. But if they were going to burn it I probably would have received some letter from the town explaining that there would be a fire today and that this fire was intentional. Maybe they would have be required to shut down the road.

The color of the house was the only thing in bad taste- a murky mud brown with lighter yellow-brown accents so that it looked the way mud looks on a boot when some but not all of it has dried but in spite of this I always thought it was a good looking structure. I liked the way it was placed on it's gravelly dead-grass lawn with its first rate view of the four lane service road, gas station and construction site. It was nestled into the commercial landscape the way illustrations in children's stories show cottages sitting neatly amongst rolling hills.

If the house had been inhabitable I would have liked to live there. I think I would enjoy and not be at all annoyed by the way the rooms surely throb red, green and yellow even at night when the service road is empty of cars and living there is like living on the edge of a wide waterway and the traffic light outside like a drawbridge going up and down servicing boats that aren't there. During the day though-
I imagine one could sit for hours, cross legged on the moldy carpet looking up through the window attempting to write poetry about the stuttering and oddly weak-looking gestures of the bulldozers and cranes doing their long-necked jobs in the construction site next door.

Anyway I watched them spray the house with water and then I ate breakfast at the healthfood store and then I left on my way to school. At the corner I passed a bulldozer who was bent over and sniffing a pile of mud colored rubble in a confused kind of lonely looking denial. I felt satisfied that something large and significant had taken place. The house used to be there and while it was I had had many thoughts about it, including but not limited to how interesting it would have been to live in it.

A Midsummer Nights Dream

this is a Monologue to be spoken by a boy to the girl who he loves who doesn't love him back:

Do you want to know the problem with this play?
When the story ends and everyone is supposedly with the person they are meant to be with-
The problem is Demetrius! Demetrius is the problem.
Do you know the story?
The story is: Demetrius loves Hermia and Hermia loves Lysander and Lysander also loves Hermia, no one loves Helena and Helena loves Demetrius.
But Demetrius loves Hermia!!!
So the fairies but a spell on everyone and mess everything up and then they fix it. They fix it all... but not Demetrius!
Demetrius gets fucked! They just put him with Helena. But he doesnt love Helena!
The Fairies put a spell on him and then leave it on him to leave him in love with Helena. But its a spell- he just continues to be under a spell and love her.
And I guess it's fine cuz I mean, it works out. Cuz Hermia would never have loved him right? I mean- unless they put a spell on her right? They could just as easily have put a spell on Hermia and made her okay with loving two boys or something. And then put a spell on Helena to make her OKAY with loving someone who didnt love her back! Whats the problem with that? As long as there is magic happening- its magic right?- POOF! 'Helena you enjoy this, i will magically make you fine, make you ENJOY loving someone who doesnt love you back. Magic.

Jake and I discuss our personal genius.

Jake tells me that he played a show with a band that he had never played with before. The front man of the band tells a short anecdote- something like 'this is Jake, we don't know where he came from. He's never played with us before.'
After the show some people from the audience come up to Jake and ask 'is this true? have you never played with them before?' he tells them that this is indeed true. The people are so impressed, they are blown away, they are astonished by his amazing skills.
"And it dawned on me," he says, "that I mean, I better be able to do this. I've been practicing the cello every day for ten years. I better be able to do this."

And I share with him similar compliments that I received after screening my film. Compliments mostly from women who call it 'truly observed' or 'delicately articulated' or 'honestly and simply stated.' And I mean, I better be able to make an observation about the experience of a young woman. I've only been studying this 'Young Woman' creature and it's relationship to the world for, lets say, ten (conscious) years. I better be able to express my thoughts about the 'Young Woman' in a cinematic way. I've been practicing the ability to organize the world in cinematic terms every day, every moment since before I understood what I was doing.

I would venture to say that there is no such thing as 'naturally gifted' instead there is 'naturally inclined to practice.' There is also 'incessant compulsion to practice.'
And Jake and I sat in a small Greek restaurant in the East Village.
We licked hummus off our fingers and expressed to each other the joy of becoming expertly gifted by being 'incessantly compelled' to practice.

...I think Malcolm Gladwell also has some thoughts about this...

I feel that need to confess things into the Internet

"No One has Secrets Anymore."

"Some people are just gracefully happy and it doesn't seem like they're rubbing it in your face."

"...That's why ppl like to laugh together, it means they're all on the same page."

"Modesty. People like that."

It requires a certain level of skill to talk to you. It's a skill that everyone around you has to work hard to master for fear of failing with disastrous consequences. This wouldn't be so bad if you didn't exert so little effort when speaking to others. You don't go out of your way even an inch to make other people comfortable, while they are walking on eggshells scattered over thin ice under shaking icicles for you... Thats why its exhausting to be your friend.

"The problem with busy people is that they they only hang out with the ppl who they like the MOST so why would they hang out with me? They dont have the time for people who they like a little bit." He says.

The character of you when I write it will be slightly deaf the way you are slightly deaf. In the picture of our relationship, your deafness will illustrate how frustrating it is when you talk and talk and then when I respond you say "what?"
You tell no objective stories. Every anecdote is so concretely inside your pov, for the whole car ride its as though your voice is narrating my mind.

...They were an itchy class. They might have just slipped through unnoticed like for instance a quiet insecure class might have done. But part of their itchiness was that they all had huge egos so they talked about themselves constantly. They talked about their itchiness.

When I spend time with him I feel how huge and delicate my life is. Probably because, weather it's true or not, I feel that he doesn't value his own life and so if he is leading, or even simply present, we wont necessarily fall into situations that are necessarily safe.

I cant help but think about myself as I appear in his story. I don't want to be another part of people who leave and abuse and misunderstand him, almost as an impulse to avoid a cliche.
I want to save him so that he can't have the satisfaction of being right about his predictable situation. But he is right. In his story I am just another relationship which he tried to maintain and only pushed away.

The kid sitting outside the door smoking a cigarette at the top of the stairs has sharpie all over on his arms.

"Who has secrets anymore?"

Godfather: try to think as people around you think and on that basis anythings possible

Sort of between people right now

"Sometimes is a percentage!"

"I kissed my person last night."
"Fuck you!"
"She kissed me."
"Fuck you."
"It's not a contest."
"Yes it is."
"Well then I won the contest."

Love Letters In The Internet Age

In my dream you have no hands
We stand together on a cliff.
I stretch my long arms wide around you,
My ribs and my hips are narrow and delicate,
My hands spread flat and strong behind you
heavily hanging off my wrists- like insults
I try to hide them. He said ‘Poets have always been published

The ‘you’ in the sonnet has always been universal and personal at once.
There’s the 'you-who-was-stripped-by-the-poet'
Of your white petticoats and corset, by candlelight.
And there’s another you- 'you-reading-it.'

You picked it up, a poem written in ink and smudged by rain
Blowing on the wind near a theater.
You are less beautiful in person than you are on the page.
You lady, might be reading about yourself.
You inspired and slept with and angered the poet.
These are not so special-
The love letters of the internet age- they are not a part of the new narcissism. I mean,

Since the beginning of poems it's always been possible
to nail the note to a tree
Along side a path where you know she will pass.

Some pointers: It does need to be a tree
Where once you stood together
And discussed how, should you ever send a love letter,
You would nail it to this tree
And she should keep an eye out just in case.

When you leave it its for her and not for her at once,
Since you will never come back to see if she’s left you a response.

A secret: those dreams, they aren’t yours.
You never were seen handless in my dreams, we never stood on a cliff.
Poems are easier than essays and prettier than anger.

Some pointers: the way to read this poem
Is to be every single YOU at once.

A secret: There are many of you and though it was you who was handless in my dream
You reminded me of him, the way you didn’t move and didn’t meet my eye
And had thin biteable lips. And I felt
Guilty like a thief but glad to be a thief. And I woke up thinking of him
But this poem is for you.

In the morning the light is blue in the white washed hallways and bedrooms.
The curtains are cheap and thin and they block out the light but not the wind so they flutter and the light is let in in bursts.

into the internet

The back of the couch makes a little ledge of wood
between the cushions and the wall.
I put my glass of water there
and think 'I will forget this is here
and I will knock it over and it will smash on the radiator.
I forgot it was there and when it smashed on the radiator I was so startled...

I feel that need to confess things
Into the Internet
but I am out of poetry,
For once I really want to say it as it is.
But poetry is the camouflage
So without it I'm not allowed
To say anything.

Unless I chance it:
I miss the way you made me feel and I want to feel that way again
I know that if anything more had happened it would have come to nothing.
but since its come to nothing anyway I would have preferred for more to have happened.
Just because of the adrenaline... I liked the adrenaline a lot.
I think about you now when I run through red lights,
or slam on my breaks to avoid a squirrel.

When I jump out of planes and off of bridges, hanging from parachutes and bungee cords I shut my eyes
and as the bones over my heart tighten, as I struggle to breathe,
I think about my knee touching your knee under the table.

The library is buzzing

The hardest thing for me to do is write an essay about something i care about.
They kicked me out of high school for this. I believe the quote was "Katie doesnt do anything that she does not love."
They twisted it a little bit. what they should have said was "katie does not do anything when she cant see a way that she will love what she's done."
Im not saying that that is a healthier tendency. its just a thing... a

the library is buzzing
the boy in front of me keeps touching the girl next to him... her knee her hair.
i bet she is his girlfriend but she did slap him once...

my back hurts so much that i am nauseas. nausea...
that is what i am writing about...
wana see what i have so far?

this is not helping. if i post this it is because the library is buzzing and i feel like im dreaming
and i am typing with a kind of reckless abandon and posting with the same kind and also because i need to go to sleep. and also because i cant go to sleep because my back hurts too much.
i dont think this is the kind of thing that its okay to write
i also
really
really
dont think that its okay to say that its not okay to write something and then write it anyway

The best thing would be to write down events from day to day. Keep a diary to see clearly—let none of the nuances or small happenings escape. (Sarte, ‘Nausea’)

Throughout history the great thinkers and teachers of society have always communicated their ideas through stories.
One useful tool is to put the events into the point of view of an individual. Much the same way a documentary demands our acceptance as fact because it depicts the true life experience of an event, the portrayal of a idea inside of a story has more credibility even if it is a fiction, for it to be at all convincing certain kinks and problems with the argument must be worked out before it is even able to stand as something viable.
Lars vontri’s recent film melancholia is a film about the end of the world. Another planet is about the crash into the earth and destroy all life but vontrir covers this information through the point of view of just two people experiencing it. Thus we are able to enter the story on a intimate scale, much the same way satre’s nausea is depiected as a journal kept by one man. Satre’s narrator is isolated and so are vontrir’s heroines. Both satre and vontrir create realism out of what could easily stray into the realm of surrealism or even fantasy. By putting this experience concretely into a infividual’s point of view we are able to say ‘this is really what happened. ‘ and accept it as a kind of reality. Even though it is quite ‘out there.’

Philosophers and scientists often turn to story as a way to illustrate new and complicated ideas. Science fiction films are a perfect outlet for filmmakers to create gadgets and circumstances which are, within the rules of their imaginary world, completely plausible.
The same is true for philosophers who attempt to illustrate their ideas through dramatic fictional events. In La Nausee (Nausea) Jean Paul Satre chooses to paint an elaborate picture of an existential crisis. A man keeps a detailed account in his journal of a transformation taking place in his life which is causing him to see the world in a new way.

in what reality is that five pages? or spelled correctly?
a different reality.
I'm going to sleep.
here... in the buzzing library because im afraid to go back to my apartment because they might be having fun there and i dont want to murder anyone tonight.

You, the Cat

The girl kicks the house cat. Not in a violent way. In a 'here play with my shoe lace, I know you want it!' way. The cat plays with the shoe lace, grabs it in two paws and then brings it to her teeth and bites it claws and bites and claws and bites.
The girl adds her hand to the game. The cat, who's name is Tiger, bites and claws the girls hand. The girl, who has a tendency to make the most mundane things important and even profoundly sad, says to the cat: " I bet you don't even know you're an animal.'
And I think about you and how you are that cat. And then I want to pick up the cat and squeeze it until it cries
or until it fights me off and bites my jugular and slinks away into the jungle.