You Gotta Go Where It Takes You

The mood hit tonight, and I just had to go out walking. I plugged myself into my Ipod, pointed in no specific direction, and decided I had to go go go. I kept fearing having to come to an end, but shook myself of the melodrama. Walks end Carmen, walks end.

I ended up on a bed, tired, looking up at my friend adorned with a Zoro mask, princess tiara, and fake gun pointed at me.

"I'm just trying to clear out all my shit," she said to me. "It's all gotta go."

"I hear ya. I think I'm gonna throw out 90% of my stuff when I move on the weekend. Just donate it, or I dunno, throw it in a big green garbage bag and relish the liberation."

She held up the tiara, examining the tacky jewels and presumably its worth.

"Yeah, that one you can chuck."

"This? This tiara? Are you kidding me? This thing's killer. No way."

She put the fake gun half in her pants and checked herself out in the mirror. All of a sudden she whipped around and pointed the gun at me.

"That was awesome. Really natural, like you do it all the time."

Her eyes lit up with excitement.

"I should totally kill someone hey?"

"No, probably not."

Hemmy and I

Hemingway wanted me to go fishing with him and Nick Adams today but I told him I was too busy. He was having some trouble understanding and I wasn't too sure if I'd ever be able to clarify the matter for him.

"The day is young. The trout will bite. The river will be calm as it passes over the rocks. This is the time," he said.

Look Hem, I have to read one of your stupid books and then write an essay, so essentially you are the reason I can't do something with you. And by the way, you can put more than four words in a sentence. I know you have a style and all, but I think you could really up the efficiency.

Hemingway looked at Carmen for a long while before casting his gaze elsewhere. "I suppose," he started tentatively, "I suppose I always thought that if I came back from the dead you'd be more inclined to come out and do something." He looked up at her again, but this time for longer.

Alright, first things first Hemmy. That last sentence was good because it was relatively long; that's what I wanna see. Or don't, I dunno I guess I don't care all that much. Second thing. The fact that you're resurrecting from the dead JUST to go fishing with Nick and I only adds to your already large fame. In essence, it's the sheer impossibility of your current actions that will result in the certain necessity of my essay. If you had just stayed dead, my prof probably would have assigned us something else to read.

Hemingway looked slightly defeated and his eyes conveyed sadness. "She is very blunt," he thought to himself. He threw his fishing pole over his shoulder and began walking down the street, away from Carmen.

"Another day," he said slowly without looking back, "We'll go to Pamplona and run with the bulls."

Hemingway kicked a stone near his foot and it scuffled along for a while before falling into a drain. He didn't hear it hit the water below, but he knew that it sunk none the less. He moved the fishing pole to his other shoulder.

Haik-Me, Haik-U

Let's gather around,
It's time for wicked haikus,
Hold on tight you fools.

Packets of Kool-aid,
A mere rainbow in my glass,
Fun in my tummy.

Too apathetic,
Should cook myself some dinner,
Mmm, liquid sugar.

Ring, ring says my phone,
Come out and play now Carmen,
Time to seize the night.

I'm Defeating A Purpose

I began to make a "To Do" list this morning, but felt my motivation wean quickly. I'm sure that I'm not alone in doing this, but I started to write down things I've already done, completed things if you will. Then I put a big red check mark next to those and realized that I was making an "Already Done'd" list. I think the underachiever in me really wanted a pat on the back, but knew that trickery would have to be involved in any successful praise. Atleast I'm having internal battles within my consciousness or subconsciously, the way a romantic or profoundly disturbed literary character does. That's a nice thought and I think I'll go with it.

She sat at her kitchen table, an empty coffee cup placed beside her making a ring on the wooden surface. "I'll deal with it later," she thought to herself, and averted her glance. She did a lot of things later, a lot of things never, but she often chose meek denial over admittance when it came to this issue. Sometimes she thought that her utter disregard for other people, for messes she made, and the general disarray she left in her trail was a sign of her immaturity. This again was denial. Immaturity in her mind presented a certain transient quality which, in her case, she understood to be rather doubtful. In the interest of honesty, however, she may have admitted that it was not immaturity, but rather selfishness. At the moment, she was not all that interested in honesty when applied to her character. She took out a sheet of paper, a pen, and began writing beautiful lies.

"To Do" she titled it.

A Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Me: I don't know what the hell I'm gonna cook for myself when I move out? Well, yeah actually I have a pretty accurate idea; nothing.

My darling mother: Oh you'll figure something out.

Me: Maybe. I might just lose weight and become even more emaciated than I already am. That's just what I need.

My darling mother: You need to tell me your secret to staying thin.

Me: It's called apathy.

My darling mother: Well, you're not gonna die.

Me: Thanks for the heads up.

Sometimes Life Presents Us With Dilemmas

I'm not the type to blow things out of proportion, to overreact if you will. I don't stress out or have anxiety attacks that leave me in the emergency room at 1 in the morning on a random tuesday night. Most of my friends would probably say "chill" if asked to describe me in one word because, essentially, staying cool is what I'm all about. So when I make mention of "dilemmas", a purely relative term, I'm talking about insignificant, minute, itty bitty rabbit terd shit compared to the things my psychosis manifests daily, momentarily resulting in the violent rise of my blood pressure. I just wanted to establish a certain perspective here.

So perhaps you were or weren't in your car on a very hot afternoon. You may or may not have been extremely thirsty, even thirstier than that family vacation you went on where the gas station attendant actually contemplated whether or not he knew what pop was. "Pop?" he questioned you. "Well, I'll check in the back." You saw an old bottle of iced tea and thought dangerously little about the repercussion of drinking rancid nestea before bringing it to your lips and tipping that shit back. The painful stomach ache you experienced later was a coincidence. Pure coincidence that had nothing to do with expired aspartame chemicals floating around in your vulnerable intestines.

And maybe, as you sat in an exceptionally long lecture on wednesday afternoon, staring at the minutes being passed on your cell phone, you had an alarming thought. Your purse is open, a perfectly acceptable state for a purse to be in and necessary if you're going to be staring at a phone that you'd rather not have your enthusiastic Bosnian prof see -- but wait! You have other things in your purse, specifically a sketchy hand knife that your friend brought you back from his recent trip "across seas" and you realize in a moment of panic that maybe your prof would care more about the SERIAL MURDERER in class, than the rude cell phone watcher. It's not that you regularly carry around hand knifes, leather bound Xena style ones none the less, but you happened to receive it on that particular morning and what else could you do but slip it right beside your mac book? Do you try to conceal the knife bringing more attention to the fact that you have an illegal weapon, or do you play it cool and hope that no one notices?

Or do you stand up in the middle of your mind numbingly boring lecture, knife in hand, and yell I'M GONNA SHANK YOU BITCHES!

Just Like A Caveman

Some people smoke crack rocks in the back alley behind their shoddy apartment complex on the eastside, and some people eat a whole bag of double filling oreos each night because everyone's addicted to something. There is also this small group of vile assholes who see it fit to be "addicted to life" which is utterly dispicable but completely beyond my control. Quite honestly I respect the meth heads a lot more than the Ned Flanders because atleast their addiction is both potent and predictable. No hobo is really gonna say "Hey wait, that meth high sucked compared to my card board box!". Life on the other hand, pfft, I make empty suicide threats everyday! I usually follow it up with a "Don't worry moooom, I'm joking. You'd get too stressed out if I did that and I know how intense work has been for you lately."

For me, the cute little addiction I have no problem fostering is coffee. Caffeine mmmm, and my dealer is always hanging around at the local superstore, 7-11, or kitchen cupboard. He's a flexible little bastard.

I find it modestly amusing that early mornings and addictions can reduce me to a non-pronoun using degenerate. When that coffee hits my tired tastebuds, my brain just spits out a quick uncensored response; neanderthal style.

"Mmmm, so good."

The Future Looks Promising

My school is very big. Now, when I say big I mean huge, gargantuan, bloody enormous and of all the kajillions of people in my massive school, I had to get that ostentatious douche kid in my english discussion class. I really don't even have a problem with that many people, but I swear to god, when that guy uses his heinous baby voice to describe his current mood my body goes into convulsions that almost match the nagging twitch in my eye. Today we had to do the generic "Tell us your name and an interesting fact about yourself" and well, as you may have guessed, his interesting fact didn't disappoint.

"Well I'm frighteningly..." he paused and closed his eyes for added effect, he inhaled deeply and then continued "...FRIGHTENINGLY obsessed with China." He lingered on the second "frighteningly" and my eyes started rolling back in my head uncontrollably.

I looked around the class, hoping for a look of understanding from someone, but found nothing. Between the girl who gave "dancing" as her interesting fact, and the guy who gave "I didn't eat breakfast", there was very little hope for mutual, bonding hatred over China man.

We got into a discussion about the discrepancies between fiction and non-fiction wherein China man had to make emo-I'm-a-typical-arts-student comments. I had too much rage cursing through my cynical, critical veins to spaz, so I let him duke it out with the ballerina. In retrospect I quite like the ballerina.

China man decided to say that when he has to suspend his disbelief in non-fiction, like he might in fiction, he thinks that the author has failed at his or her job. Please for the sake of my sanity, envision that last sentence being spoken by the most pompous, annoying, ENRAGING afroed freak. I'm really one for impersonations, so these words just tend to fall irritatingly short of the justice I could do to him. Anyways, the teaching assitant tries to tell him that it was a good point (lie) but is interrupted by the ballerina.

"Ok wait a second," she says, perplexed as she tosses her perfectly highlighted hair to the side. "What do you mean by "suspend disbelief"? You lost me there."

At this point I'm looking around the room frantically, not understanding how everyone didn't burst out laughing, but I try to remain poised as China man responds.

"Well, take Lord of the Rings for example. You have to believe that in the realm of the fictional story, hobbits really do exist. If you don't accept that, or if you question it, the story will never be "successful"."

The ballerina ruffled her brow and I could see the bright neon lights reflecting off her glossy lips.

"Hobbits?"

And I was afraid I wouldn't make it to university. Hah.

Life and Christmas souvenirs

This past summer has aged me in ways that I could have never predicted. I've really had my ability to cope tested, and I'm hoping that all the pop quizzes are done. I tried to explain to some of my friends, in a moment of weakness, just what I was feeling.

"Alright, so pretend that you took everything in your life, carefully put it in a snow globe so as not to disturb anything, and then TURNED IT UPSIDE DOWN AND SHOOK IT! And then picture throwing that agitated snow globe at a brick wall and watching it break into a million little pieces that you know would be too hard to pick up and put together. Does that suffice?"

Everyone kind of sat there for a second, waited for the exasperated girl to finish, and the reactions varied accordingly. My favourite was from my friend Ben who, upon exhaling a large puff of smoke, said: "Whoa. Seriously, I dig that shit. That was an awesome story. A snowglobe? Who woulda thought!?"

A couple of days ago I was driving another friend of mine home, and I started to get a bit of road rage. I muttered some words of "encouragement" to another driver and she mistook my grumblings as desperation, or pain.

"Is it that snow globe shit?"

Today I went to the dollar store with my sister and hit the lowest of lows. In the middle of a row that had mars bars displayed alongside pads of paper adorned with happy faces, a Nick Lachey song started playing in the background. I looked up at my sister, saw the sheer anguish I felt mirrored exactly in her face, and closed my eyes.

"Let's get out of here. I will NOT break down in the dollar store."