Well, I finally broke the seal and rode my horse last night. Aside from being a little unfocused and not the most supple he's ever been, he wasn't bad. He was sane, which was nice. We'll see how he feels once he gets back into better shape. I might have to prepare myself for the crazies. In the meantime, no horse has needed a back and good mane-pull more than he does right now. Blech. He is so gross.
When I put him back in his pen, he completely ran me over. I was not pleased. I've been working with him since he was a gangly, bum-high, big-headed, small-necked three year old to have manners on the ground. He doesn't run people over. He respects people's space. He's just too big to be rude, and generally he's not. I don't know why he did it, but his big drafty head smacked me right in the face. I woke up with a pounding headache and a stiff neck this morning. I wonder if that has anything to do with it.
I'm thinking about working at the barn on Sundays to help pay off my huge chunk of owed board. I don't really want to, because I already work Monday through Saturday, but I am just so broke. Maybe I'll talk to Shalayne and work something out. Maybe I can just feed on the weekends, or something. Or maybe I'll just continue working my two jobs as usual and pay her with money, rather than work.
Eric left the country yesterday. I'm sad. I tried stringing a friend's guitar, but failed horribly. The thing is literally impossible to tune. It got to the point where the nuts wouldn't turn anymore, and it was still ridiculously out of tune. I would pick a note on the low E string, and listen while it dropped as many as four steps, all on its own. I finally got it to sound somewhat like an E, and moved on the the A string. When I came back to the E string, it was a full octave lower, and it was G#. I don't understand. I need Eric to come help me. He could fix it. He is better at these things than I am.
I feel a little stressed out.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
measured my life in coffee spoons
I cleaned out my car today. Cleaned everything right out of it, and I mean everything. Garbage, clothes, books, shoes. Five scarves. Two toques. A pair of mittens. A set of coasters I bought at IKEA three months ago. The accumulation of all of the stressful aspects of my life.
I thought I'd feel better about my life if I did it; more in control. I don't. Instead I feel worry lines springing up on my forehead uninvited. I keep thinking about why my car overheats. Keep worrying about things like head gaskets and wondering if I'll ever have a completely worry-free day.
Eric is leaving for Europe tomorrow and I feel sad. We didn't celebrate my birthday before he left like we said we would. He didn't bring it up. In the midst of all of my hurt feelings, I asked him about it and he said he bought me a card but hasn't written in it yet, and that was all. Said something about how we'd celebrate it when he got home. It would have been nice to have been briefed of his plans -- or of his postponement, rather.
Tomorrow I'm going to begin the long stretch of full-time office-boredom, marked with short spurts of part-time greenhouse-coffee-shop-exhaustion. And the horse remains dreadfully unridden. The bills remain unpaid. Racked up.
Fourteen hundred and seventy dollars went towards the stupid moment of making a U-turn in deep snow.
I am feeling more like J. Alfred Prufrock than ever. Maybe I won't read the poem ever again until I'm forty-five, and then we'll see how I feel about it.
I thought I'd feel better about my life if I did it; more in control. I don't. Instead I feel worry lines springing up on my forehead uninvited. I keep thinking about why my car overheats. Keep worrying about things like head gaskets and wondering if I'll ever have a completely worry-free day.
Eric is leaving for Europe tomorrow and I feel sad. We didn't celebrate my birthday before he left like we said we would. He didn't bring it up. In the midst of all of my hurt feelings, I asked him about it and he said he bought me a card but hasn't written in it yet, and that was all. Said something about how we'd celebrate it when he got home. It would have been nice to have been briefed of his plans -- or of his postponement, rather.
Tomorrow I'm going to begin the long stretch of full-time office-boredom, marked with short spurts of part-time greenhouse-coffee-shop-exhaustion. And the horse remains dreadfully unridden. The bills remain unpaid. Racked up.
Fourteen hundred and seventy dollars went towards the stupid moment of making a U-turn in deep snow.
I am feeling more like J. Alfred Prufrock than ever. Maybe I won't read the poem ever again until I'm forty-five, and then we'll see how I feel about it.
exit sign
Sometimes I try writing poetry.
exit sign
the words rolling around
on my tongue taste bitter
so i spit them out
at you while you inhale
smoke of your unspoken
words curls upwards
past my chandelier,
towards the ceiling
where it might pop
against the abbrasive surface
no less abbrasive than i am,
you'd say
no less harmful
we should get down
on our hands and knees, now
avoid the smoke before it
ruins our lungs
under the thick ambiguity
we'll crawl towards the exit sign.
exit sign
the words rolling around
on my tongue taste bitter
so i spit them out
at you while you inhale
smoke of your unspoken
words curls upwards
past my chandelier,
towards the ceiling
where it might pop
against the abbrasive surface
no less abbrasive than i am,
you'd say
no less harmful
we should get down
on our hands and knees, now
avoid the smoke before it
ruins our lungs
under the thick ambiguity
we'll crawl towards the exit sign.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
this is fiction. fyi.
Inspired by an actual flyer.
Dress For Sale, Never Worn. Size 8, No Alterations Made.$350 $250 OBO.
It's usually in the closet, but I take it out to look at it sometimes. I picture myself wearing it, and we're drinking champagne with our arms interlocked like people in movies do. That's what I saw the first time I tried it on, when your mother said, "oh, honey..." and the sales girl told me I looked fantastic.
I never pictured replacing it with a drab black suit. Of stepping out of a resplendent, glowing, bright-white dream and into a heavy, suffocating cloak.
"Oh, honey..." your mother said to me when we stood next to black Crown Vics at the edge of the green expanse. I was staring out at the rows and rows of you. Other people that were like you. People who meant something to somebody like you did to me.
I took it out of the closet and lay it on my bed, and thought about the hundred-and-fifty phone calls that had to be made. The photographs that weren't taken, the cake that wasn't shared, the music that wasn't danced to, or even played at all.
I keep having dreams that I'm standing alone inside the reception hall. You promised to meet me there; you promised, so where are you? And I say your name out loud, and it echoes empty through the room.
When I'm awake, my thoughts echo empty in my mind.
When I came home from the funeral, I tore the drab black suit from my body, like I couldn't get out of it fast enough, like its heavy, unbreathable material was tightening
tightening
tightening.
And I fell down on my bed next to the dress, still lying where I'd been looking at it earlier this morning, and with pieces of silk and lace in my hands, I fell asleep.
This morning I made a flyer, and I asked a third of what I bought it for. Then in the car, on the way to post the flyer, I hastily crossed out the price and lowered it by $100.
I can't keep dreaming about the empty reception hall or my echoing voice or your mother saying, "oh, honey," to me while I slowly drift away.
Dress For Sale, Never Worn. Size 8, No Alterations Made.
It's usually in the closet, but I take it out to look at it sometimes. I picture myself wearing it, and we're drinking champagne with our arms interlocked like people in movies do. That's what I saw the first time I tried it on, when your mother said, "oh, honey..." and the sales girl told me I looked fantastic.
I never pictured replacing it with a drab black suit. Of stepping out of a resplendent, glowing, bright-white dream and into a heavy, suffocating cloak.
"Oh, honey..." your mother said to me when we stood next to black Crown Vics at the edge of the green expanse. I was staring out at the rows and rows of you. Other people that were like you. People who meant something to somebody like you did to me.
I took it out of the closet and lay it on my bed, and thought about the hundred-and-fifty phone calls that had to be made. The photographs that weren't taken, the cake that wasn't shared, the music that wasn't danced to, or even played at all.
I keep having dreams that I'm standing alone inside the reception hall. You promised to meet me there; you promised, so where are you? And I say your name out loud, and it echoes empty through the room.
When I'm awake, my thoughts echo empty in my mind.
When I came home from the funeral, I tore the drab black suit from my body, like I couldn't get out of it fast enough, like its heavy, unbreathable material was tightening
tightening
tightening.
And I fell down on my bed next to the dress, still lying where I'd been looking at it earlier this morning, and with pieces of silk and lace in my hands, I fell asleep.
This morning I made a flyer, and I asked a third of what I bought it for. Then in the car, on the way to post the flyer, I hastily crossed out the price and lowered it by $100.
I can't keep dreaming about the empty reception hall or my echoing voice or your mother saying, "oh, honey," to me while I slowly drift away.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
one perfect joy.
It's spring, and I feel like writing poetry. So I wrote one. One tiny, tiny poem. Unoriginal as I am, I named it "spring."
I don't think I'm a poet, actually. But it's fun to try it anyway. I've been feeling like everything in my life could be a series of poetry. Maybe I'll publish a book one day.
I'd like to write a collection of stories from the barn, and from our lives, and publish them all together in one book. Once I am finished with school and can really focus on something that's for me (and not for grades), I think I'll start on it. So many important things happened. There is so much to tell. So much for the world to understand about our summers and winters and all of the things that happened to us because of that one, obvious, common thread that connects us all.
It's 11:30 PM. I have to go to work tomorrow, but I wish so bad it was a weeknight so that I could watch my favourite late-night television shows before falling asleep. I have fallen asleep during so many interviews on Late Night. I have forced myself to stay awake through those first, funny sketches.
I rode my horse today, for fifteen minutes until he was sweaty, and I was out of breath. We are so out of shape, the two of us. And I am always in a hurry. I just want to go outside and gallop around. Seriously, that's what I want to do with my hundreds of dollars per month: have unlimited access to galloping around in Albertan fields. I spend a winter full of debt for that one, perfect joy.
This is the beginning of a full week.
I don't think I'm a poet, actually. But it's fun to try it anyway. I've been feeling like everything in my life could be a series of poetry. Maybe I'll publish a book one day.
I'd like to write a collection of stories from the barn, and from our lives, and publish them all together in one book. Once I am finished with school and can really focus on something that's for me (and not for grades), I think I'll start on it. So many important things happened. There is so much to tell. So much for the world to understand about our summers and winters and all of the things that happened to us because of that one, obvious, common thread that connects us all.
It's 11:30 PM. I have to go to work tomorrow, but I wish so bad it was a weeknight so that I could watch my favourite late-night television shows before falling asleep. I have fallen asleep during so many interviews on Late Night. I have forced myself to stay awake through those first, funny sketches.
I rode my horse today, for fifteen minutes until he was sweaty, and I was out of breath. We are so out of shape, the two of us. And I am always in a hurry. I just want to go outside and gallop around. Seriously, that's what I want to do with my hundreds of dollars per month: have unlimited access to galloping around in Albertan fields. I spend a winter full of debt for that one, perfect joy.
This is the beginning of a full week.
Friday, April 11, 2008
spring
the muck of the new year
is stuck to the open-toed shoes
i ressurrected from my basement
i count spring as the beginning
i am standing in the mud
outside your house
in the weak sunshine
it's the beginning of a do-over,
at least.
is stuck to the open-toed shoes
i ressurrected from my basement
i count spring as the beginning
i am standing in the mud
outside your house
in the weak sunshine
it's the beginning of a do-over,
at least.
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
riddles
Today I heard a song she loved.
It's silly. We used to make fun of her for her unashamed love of Kenny Rogers and Patrick Stewart and drinking Sourpuss out of wine glasses. Now that's all I want to do.
I want to be back in the back seat of her truck, and hear that silly song come on, and laugh while she turns it up and says, "Come on, it's GOOD! Sing along!" And I want to keep driving and driving and driving forever.
If we get out of the truck, it'll all go away. I didn't know that then. I do now.
I don't like these kinds of life-changing experiences. The kinds that make you different, in your heart, than the way you were before. It's not that I don't like change; I just don't like my life without her in it. And I can't stop thinking of all the different ways to live my life, and which one would she think is a good idea? What kinds of advice would she give me now, if I were sitting in her kitchen floor at midnight, the way I used to. The way we all would. Taking turns.
And we are different than we were before, in the most profound way. We didn't ask to be different, did we? I didn't ask to be forced to take giant steps forward, away from the way things were. It's heavy on my heart.
My wisest friend, who loved Kenny Rogers, got out of the truck.
Who's left to drive, now?
life ain't nothing but a funny, funny riddle. -- K.R.
It's silly. We used to make fun of her for her unashamed love of Kenny Rogers and Patrick Stewart and drinking Sourpuss out of wine glasses. Now that's all I want to do.
I want to be back in the back seat of her truck, and hear that silly song come on, and laugh while she turns it up and says, "Come on, it's GOOD! Sing along!" And I want to keep driving and driving and driving forever.
If we get out of the truck, it'll all go away. I didn't know that then. I do now.
I don't like these kinds of life-changing experiences. The kinds that make you different, in your heart, than the way you were before. It's not that I don't like change; I just don't like my life without her in it. And I can't stop thinking of all the different ways to live my life, and which one would she think is a good idea? What kinds of advice would she give me now, if I were sitting in her kitchen floor at midnight, the way I used to. The way we all would. Taking turns.
And we are different than we were before, in the most profound way. We didn't ask to be different, did we? I didn't ask to be forced to take giant steps forward, away from the way things were. It's heavy on my heart.
My wisest friend, who loved Kenny Rogers, got out of the truck.
Who's left to drive, now?
life ain't nothing but a funny, funny riddle. -- K.R.
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