Bro just asked me if I’ve ever tried putting ice cream on a cookie. As if I’m not a fatass!
Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 7:30PM, 1/31/2024
before it came crashing down you once said we all end up in the same place. like life is a stomach and we are forced to churn. water can flow down the wrong pipe // seeds can sprout in lungs // i could give in or give way or give up and would that be so bad? spin the wheel of fortune, grab a wedge of sunlight, shrink down into the abyss that follows. this is nice, you think, a noiseless descent into the vault of memory. no bad angles, just perfect planes. when biting into an animal cracker, aim straight for the heart.
You live in a house? Like a mailbox and a driveway and a backyard and everything?
Yeah.
What is this? What kind of sorcery is this?
Hot Topic, 2:00PM, 1/14/2024
to make the argument about human necessity is to implicate man as an accessory. downfall is self-assembled, like a robot. ants among giants, ogres among angels–elected because they could reach the heavens, and scolded because they would not leave. a beanstalk, chopped down, falling to the earth like the fallen logs that lined the fence to the elementary school. i taste the odor of gas and smell the chainsaw’s teeth and i know another one has fallen.
–and yet i walked up to the house, past the rubble, between the beams that lifted the structure into the sky. i lived, i lived–
I get drinks by asking for a water cup.
Okay, well I’m nice and I pay for my drinks, plus I have the Panera Sip Club…
I’m sorry that you have morals.
Glen/Catherine Outbound, 12:00PM, 1/27/2024
it is always easier to talk about something that is lost. even easier when the object is subjective, when there are strains of doubt that can seep into the pavement, tearing up the stairs and the highways and the purgatories that lie beyond. have you lost your mind? your wits? your morals? a quantum experiment, schrodinger’s reply, yes and no shattered against a backdrop of an infinite outcomes. flip one of the switches, true-to-false, and you will survive, won’t you? change all of them–a novel binary, encoded in the scraps of your imagination–and you loop to the person you once were.
Corporeal Cloud
if you look too long at the sky
you’ll fall in
plunging deep in the pocket
between times and spaces
that weren’t there yesterday
to steal your breath and the blood
in your bones a talisman for the justification
the gathering of your insides
in vague palms like cotton candy mounds
flossing between windowsills and rooftop shingles
a corporeal cloud
which is all too much
until you feel your feet on the ground
The Art of Involvement: The Unfortunate Need to Rest
“Time is a wall we all share” and there are so few doors. I am unsatisfied. I am always unsatisfied.
I write this with a pounding headache, while eating half of a chocolate chip cookie for dinner. It’s that time of the year: burnout central. Most would call it midterms. I know I am most definitely not alone in my exhaustion this week. Being a student is demanding, not to mention someone who chases passion and community around as much as I do while having to drive 30 minutes there and back, and work, and meet with friends, and… Well, you get the idea.
Art is wonderful, and art is something that feeds me and drains me all at once. I definitely think it’s something worth the extra effort to support. I am always swept away by how much I love being around people that value art as much as I do, but as much as I loathe to admit it, I can’t experience it all.
Even now, as I dedicate this small amount of time to expressing myself, I know I could be relaxing. Soaking in the tub or annoying my cat with unwarranted kisses sounds wonderful. I also know that I regret it when I don’t force myself to sit down and write. I find myself too often taking a passive role in my own life, scrolling endlessly through mind-numbing content rather than reflect, engage, and create on my own terms.
I avoid life because work and school are already quite enough, thank you very much, but then I feel less myself… It’s a dilemma I’ve always struggled with.
My current solution is attending the events painstakingly put together by the people around me. I overcommit, of course. Not only am I a chronic people pleaser, but being busy tends to make me feel happier until I hit the wall.
Hello again, wall.
Part of the wall right now is due to my own spent energy in coordinating other things, such as the literary magazine, Lyceum. My baby. My creative outlet since Freshman year that I have struggle to let go of now that I’ve helped it hobble along for almost 4 whole years. Now we are getting over 50 people each semester to submit their work and its going great! Right before I have to leave.
Graduation looms, and it’s exciting and terrifying all at once. And there’s another reason: I need to do everything I want to now, before I leave student life behind. A college campus is such a brief, wonderfully compact time and place to connect, explore, and grow. My time here feels like it’s been so brief (and partially it was, due to the shutdown that left me adrift in Zoom purgatory). I found my places and my interests, and it was only through me throwing my all into things and being open. I’d say my frantic attempts to avoid regret might end up rather successful.
Here I am, tired and setting up for another full day tomorrow, knowing I am not going to sleep enough tonight–head swimming with plays, drag shows, and open mics and I feel happy. I’m glad for the reminder of my personal limits as well… maybe it will click this time? It usually does, at least for a small stretch. Then I throw my alone time to the wind once more, only to be violently reminded that I am, in fact, an introvert. That I am, in fact, just human.
For the record, this is not the post I wanted to write for this week, but it is the one that won’t leave me alone until I push it out of my system. And here I am, forcing you to be a witness. Isn’t that the nature of art? Maybe you relate, or roll your eyes, or award me with a brief nose-exhale. Maybe you don’t read this at all, but it’s still here for you.
And hey, my headache feels better.
Of course the sun stretches itself so wide, to touch all that it can I want to scatter too, selfishly. Afraid to lose touch. Do not compel me, put the focusing lens away I will wash All in fragile warmth / Sustaining.
How is St. Louis? Is it St. Louis-ing? Is it Arch-ing?
Ahmo’s, 6:00PM, 2/1/2024
the metro is a closed loop, a sleeping dragon. you point out one of the buildings, veins throbbing, heavy against the rain; the train squeals against the track and you are robbed of my reply, my sympathies, as if they would do anything but raise the hairs on your arm. what happens when you let stitches sit in too long? your skin shifts, a chameleon in twilight. the sun sets, the skin darkens. the leaf-rot smell of autumn returns, and i know you will not be around to watch the flowers bloom in the spring.
What if I get lost?
You’re not going to get lost, you just need to walk in a straight line. If you get lost, that’s on you.
Markley Hall, 3:00PM, 2/8/2024
the world is full of lines, hard and soft, good and bad. sometimes the world is grayscale, allowing me to sort everything into sets, rigid containers, labeled and discarded. road lines = good. scars = bad. cracks in doorways and mirrors and cement foundations? // then the world resumes in color, and the containers begin to spill. the cracks pile up, multiplying, threatening the edges of my vision. in trying to blend the lines, you erased the figure; in trying to straighten the branches, i destroyed the roots…
Nah, I could barely see it… don’t ask any questions about that night, I don’t remember any of it!
Mosher-Jordan Dining Hall, 1:30PM, 3/3/2024
we have learned to associate lack of memory with a good time. if something went south, we would remember it, right? the brain fills slowly, in hindsight, fabricating memories, forging alliances. you call it breaking down problems with a hammer and a drink. the worst punishment of all: force-fed my own thoughts until i choked them up and spit them out. my reality lives on, isolated, trapped like chac mool: free and fictitious ocean, only real when it imprisons a snail.
