Histrionics

Two very little things, but I want to remember them, as they may be my last memories of him ever, and if not ever, meetings will be few and far between.

First in the early evening. I knew when to expect him and didn't concern myself with searching the deeper recesses of the room. I'd get a smile before I left for my meeting, and with the crowd, probably no chance to chat. Besides, I had friends to talk with. And then, all of a sudden, I catch sight of the back of his head in 3/4 profile. The rest of him was hidden by a doorway, but the shape, the haircut, were quite familiar and I swooned a little. A sketch of a symbol, a slight glimpse of a reflection, and I felt the clack, clack, clack, whoosh of the roller coaster leaving the station.

Like all roller coasters, I was turned out, staggering with adrenaline, too soon. Too soon was some hours later. The place was packed when I returned with friends, and we were graciously ushered to a corner. From my seat I could see him laughing, bantering, working, on the other side of the room. A conspiracy of friends and strangers kept me from bellying up and making a fool of myself. But at the last minute, I was heading toward the door where my coat and bag were held on patient standby. He turned into the aisle; I blocked his path, first by coincidence and a split second later on purpose. In an unprecedented act of friendliness, he reached out and gave me a hug while my tongue fumbled through suggestions of pleasantries.

It was a chaste crush, irrational and fading, but I have no regrets.

lots of typing means I'm working... right?

I'm clinging to the couch as the movers, two burly men who communicate in grunts and nods, carry it into the stairwell...

A handful of regulars from my writers group get together on weekends to "write". We meet at a coffee shop, or occasionally in someone's apartment, with laptops, notebooks, and books. Sometimes editing happens, sometimes actual writing happens, and sometimes it's just brainstorming, research, and poking around the internet. Socializing, however, is a given. It always takes more than an hour, often more than two, for us to consume our beverages and settle down into those private mental spaces where imagination happens.

We're at Mike G's place today, and it may be the last time the five of us are together like this, absorbed in our laptops, which harmonize in a concert of cpu fans. (Jess is playing the rhythm section, shuffling and flicking index cards on the desk as she reworks a plot, perhaps the only one engaging as a capital-W Writer.)

I'm longing for this now, doing my best to experience and capture this time with these friends. Mike G and I are sitting on his couch, one of the few pieces of legitimate furniture left in the room. The couch, Mike, and I are all on our ways out of here. He's headed to one end of California, myself to the other. I wonder where the couch will go. Though even if I met it, center of many fantastic, rambling conversations, again, I probably won't recognize it.

Sara claimed the slipcover, comparing the army green waffle fabric it to the paint swatches. Bobby pulled the swatches from his bag with a flourish and showed me the colors of his future. Their future. Bobby and Sara will be housemates soon, a topic which makes me collapse with exaggerated grief each time it's mentioned. Even as I'm moving away, they're getting closer, Bobby moving into the idea space of "housemate" I used to occupy.

After a long stretch of silence, Mike digs into the cellophane bag of hard pretzels. Bobby takes one, then Jess wanders over, then I take one and offer the bag to Sara. So the silence is broken and our crunchy pretzel break begins. Having commented earlier that the rhinestone ampersand would be "cooler" if it was a pretzel, I took my crusty sourdough specimen and strung it on my necklace. "Check out the bliiiiiing!" We laugh. Sara tells me to wear it to the pub tonight. "Then the guys will really be all over me."

Every so often Bobby points to something else in the apartment and says "You getting rid of that?" Reading lamp, reading chair. Curtain rods, now the paper Ikea lamp hanging over what used to be the dining nook.

They're talking about Firefly now, and Doctor Who, the conversation floating over my head as I keep typing and contemplating my fate. Who in California will talk up Cowboys and Aliens to me? Who will spring into a religious debate that rages from old testament to new testament to literalism and back, then peacefully ends with no love lost? Who will smash strange words together and contemplate the pirninjas and the econopocalypse?

"I grew up on Star Trek!" "So did I. You wanna dance with me?" "Check out this picture of Worf." "I know that episode." "It's time for a new generation of Star Trek" "Done by Joss Whedon" "I wonder what he's up to now."
Side by side on the couch with our laptops, Mike and I both go to look. He hits wikipedia, but I go for imdb.

And twenty minutes later, three laptops are simultaneously playing a youtube vidoe dildo lightsaber duel.

---

"I've been hosing my plant down with chloroform."

Ok. This is just getting silly. But that's just why I love them.

Antsy and angsty in the middle of the night, I throw off my sheets and turn on the light. I'm looking for something to read.

It's not hard to find it... or rather find that I don't have it. I only grabbed a small handful of books when I left home. The only books of poetry I brought with me are old issues of my high school literary magazine.

The quantity of appalling poetry isn't why I avoid looking through them to find my inspiration--but the quantity of that quantity which is *my* poetry is. Oh, yes, I used to be quite prolific, smugly believing I turned a pretty phrase now and again. I'm still fond of a number of those poems, those exploits of literature and youth.

Oh, my, I just skimmed my section of the 2001 edition... a full ten entries, up from eight the previous year... and I wanted to run screaming from my own head. I was very fond of rhymes. Occasionally I managed to use it in an adorable Shel Silverstein kind of way, but too often rhymes were employed to "heavy" topics in an annoying sing-songy way.

But here's an example of a rhyming poem I still like, one that still holds truth a decade (!!!!) later:

Danger Zone

My bed is a graveyard
of habits and tasks,
of flares of activity
that just didn't last:

A job from last weekend
still haunts me this wayL
needlenose pliers
and here they'll stay;

My wallet discarded
spilling from it
ID cards and pictures
given as gifts;

Two weeks ago's laundry
clean but still out,
my fuzzy slippers
and other shoes, no doubt;

Old work from school
on which I'm now scrawling,
but it already has doodles
of soda cans brawling;

A book that I'm reading,
a Gameboy near dead,
a brush and recorder,
any room for my head?

Small pieces of candy,
my computer, no less
(do you think that this may
cause my mother distress?).

Due to CDs and text books
among nameless more
I think that tonight
I'll sleep on the floor.

Funny. Now my bed *is* on the floor.

And, no, despite my proximity to said bed, I am no closer to sleep.