Nirvana

Crime of Life, December 30, 2008 at 12h22

The first time that I heard Nirvana was in Jason’s bedroom. He was a year older and lived across the street with his very religious family. Jason had skateboarding magazines hidden in his room, and that’s where he heard about grunge. Nevermind had just been released and the whole world was listening to Nirvana. Except me.

And I didn’t like it. I went home.

Late in junior high, there was a school assembly, some kind of senior citizen awareness or appreciation thing. The seniors played a song that they liked and then we played a song that – apparently – us kids listened to. I’d never heard it before. It was Lake of Fire from Nirvana Unplugged in New York. Continued…


Back From Normal

My Regular Mind, December 28, 2008 at 11h05

On some level, I can see how I’ve been struggling for a kind of normality in my life. There are people that have this, that have jobs and families that make them happy. They see the same faces every day, they have the same conversations over and over, and every day is so similar to the day before it. This is what normal is.

I’ve been fighting.

I’m not ready to be normal. I want to have peculiar conversations with peculiar people, in places that I’ve never known or been before. I want to hike into remote areas and listen to the volume of my own thoughts. I want to create a memory of a time without boundaries so that on the day when I do stop fighting – the day I give in to helpless normality – I will remember a time when it was my will to smile. Happiness did not come to me, I made it from nothing.

Everything must be created.


Bossanova

Crime of Life, December 27, 2008 at 10h12

Before my sister got her first car, the only people I’d traveled with were my parents. That meant their music. So on long road trips, we listened to exactly five tapes: Rock and Roll Hits of the Fifties and Sixties, volumes one through five. I was raised on doo wop and Buddy Holly, and I loved it – but I knew there must be more out there.

Then my sister got her first car, and that meant her music. She had a few mix tapes from friends. Some songs were loud and chaotic, and others were soft and harmonious, but they were all unlike anything that anybody I knew was listening to.

She gave me the one that I loved the most. It was Bossanova by the Pixies. Continued…


Directions

Prose, December 26, 2008 at 10h18

Trust me on this next bit, because yesterday I walked a long way through the snow and saw the symbolism with my own mind.

All our lives are like a deep winter. There are billions of us plodding through it with only a few different places to go. In most directions, the trails are well-used and the snow is packed down tight. This is where we go, these simple ways, with miles of untouched possibility all around us. You can go that way and nobody will stop you, but you’ll never know where it leads, and how difficult the walk will be.

Some people take those directions.


The Winter Beast

Briefs of Fiction, December 24, 2008 at 02h43

There was a cold winter beast that lurked in the shadows behind the factory. Only one person had seen it, and so only one person was scared of it.

The others laughed. They asked him, where could it have come from, but your imagination!

It was true, the factory was far from anywhere. It was so remote that it hardly existed, buried deep in a frozen land. But still, the beast had come from somewhere, and one worker had seen it standing on the other side of the door. It was trying to get in.

It ran away, that time, but it came back. Often. Quietly.

And some time during the year, the winter beast got into the factory.

Only half of the good children got their toys that year. Continued…


Protection

Crime of Life, December 23, 2008 at 03h27

She had safety mechanisms built into her personality, protecting her from being hurt by any outside force. When I met her, she let her guard down, became human. Our lust was mutual, and at the time, so was our trust. She let herself be beautiful, then. Continued…


A Pleasant Fall

My Regular Mind, December 21, 2008 at 09h12

Looking up, there was an infinite fall of snowflakes, so light to be taken by the most innocent breeze. I caught one in my hand, once, and it disappeared immediately. It had no presence.

I was startled then by a small tree suddenly shaking itself free of the cold, and it left a large mess of snow right on the sidewalk. It all appeared so suddenly.

I’ve always been fascinated by finding coincidence between things. Things like anagrams and elevator numbers, streets and provinces, Playboy and birth months. I’ve even found interest in 3719 as a prime number. I followed the trail of fate avidly. I believed in these things like I used to believe in Santa Claus.

Until it began to snow.


Shadows

My Regular Mind, December 20, 2008 at 08h55

And this morning, as the sun spilled its way across the world, I faced it with a new warmth. Everything is ahead of me now.

Growing and Glimmering

Crime of Life, December 19, 2008 at 06h23

There was more that happened that night.

We had been friends for many years, but we’d never been as close as that night. Both of us had the aura of alcohol around us while we laid on the trunk of my car staring up into the night sky. The beautiful thing of small towns is that you can actually see the stars; and it’s comforting to think that they can see you, too.

We had a long conversation out in the cold about constellations and life and love. To think that this person I regarded as a friend actually thought the same way as I did, that we were both experiencing similar things. To think that I wasn’t alone, that I could be seen as well.

Last night, I was the first one that he told about his life changing. I honestly never felt happier for him. And if he remembers that conversation we had that night, I’m glad that it all worked out.


A Mid-Afternoon Wish

My Regular Mind, December 19, 2008 at 01h14

I removed Josephine’s heart today. It sits on a box in my closet, waiting to resume its pulse when the snow melts. It’s been weeks since I’ve felt her purr beneath me. It won’t be long now.

My apartment is now clean enough to eat off of. I never understood that expression, to be honest. It’s clean, but I don’t have the urge to cover it in chocolate fondue and lick it all up. The entire idea is absurd.

Tonight is imminent. I can’t stand the idea of parting in tears or in torment. I don’t think I’ll enjoy the evening quite so much as I enjoyed the day.