Oh.

I say "I want to sled right through this." I want it to turn from ice to snow, to form powder around the windowsills, to be capable of blowing away when the sky sneezes. I want it to be meltable by the sun's unavoidable warmth. Yes, there is a glacier in my chest. Last night, through the tinkering dark streets near the bus stop, it started to shift and break apart; shards of migrating ice pressed against the gaps in my ribcage and made it difficult to breathe. When I made it onto the bus and the hugs and hands no longer cluttered my mind and my mouth was free to stop muttering words of betrayal and hurt, the dizziness overtook me, the sadness expanded so palpably in my chest that I marveled I was still standing. Thick breath and tears conspired to exit my body simultaneously. I took a seat and felt the floor of the bus beneath my cold feet, felt the way my toes filled the space of my shoes, and it stabilized my thoughts. But the sadness did not ebb. I really get the phrase 'sad sack' now because there seems to be a viscousness to sadness and it lives in the body in this way that makes the flesh literally a cellular sack containing it. I want to have it drained from this sack of mine, to create a little tear in one corner (perhaps where my heel meets my ankle, so often chafed by inflexible indifferent shoes) and as I walk around the streets in these bleak nights, devoid of verdant anything, I will leave a trail of wetness that is black as tar and as dense as imploded galaxies. With each step my heart will have more room to expand, 'till by the time I reach my home I will float straight through the locked gates and into my bedroom, my body a zeppelin so full of air and light and hope.

An Entry About Jeopardy!

Hello hello,

I've been watching a lot of Jeopardy! lately and man, I like that show, but parts of it just make me laugh. Alex Trebek came out at the start the other evening and his first comment was how he was the only person onstage whose last name didn't end in the letter L. See, now why do people act like Jeopardy! is for smart people when the main topic of discussion is the fact that all the contestants' last names end in the letter L?

See, that's my other problem with Jeopardy! (you can't forget the exclamation mark after it!), how it's supposed to be for really smart people, but it isn't. They throw in that ridiculous thing about phrasing everything in the form of a question, but who actually forms questions that way? I'm not a smart girl (or good-looking, well-spoken, nice smelling.. the list goes on), but when someone asks me "Who is Barney Miller?" I don't say "Abe Vigoda's short-lived series Fish was a spinoff of this sitcom!". (By the way, the fact that I used a Barney Miller spinoff as my example for a Jeopardy! question instead of some bit of Greek mythology should show you exactly how bad I would be on Jeopardy!).

Anyway, so yeah, I guess my point is, if you want to have some cheap fun, whenever someone asks you a question, phrase your answer like a Jeopardy! clue. Examples:

someone: "What is The Pink Panther?"

me: "This series of comedy films features the bumbling French police detective, Jacques Clouseau and was later its own series of animated cartoons."

someone: "What is that stain on your shirt?"

me: "This icing was left by one of the many cupcakes Norma has enjoyed in her lifetime"

Okay, I can't really come up with very good examples, but you get my general drift eh?

In other news, I ate the most memorable red-velvet cupcake the other day in that new cupcake eatery Downtown. I'm going to go make one or more pancakes. Who else wants breakfast?

Hugs Don't Grow On Trees

Today, I purposely lost myself in the grocery store.

Sometimes I remember never being rescued at the swings during the summer of 2006; I seem to have been swinging away these past three years. The tears still fall with the same velocity and my voice gets smaller and smaller.