east down hollywood, part i

(1.15.12)

I fantasize, still, about the either-or

of a cottage in Herefordshire vs.

a flat in London

and giving the middle finger to my so-far

life path and settling in

as a full-time neurotic writer:

neurotic because I hate cooking,

I hate cleaning even more,

and if nobody advised me to,

hair would remain uncut

jeans would remain holey

floors unswept

shelves undusted

the onlything clean would be the dishes

because that alleviates my brain,

and the keyboard from the daily dusting-

pounding

of fingers in use.

I swear, I will have this same pair of boots

for probably the rest of my life

because that is the way my body works

when it comes to these things.

Obviously there's money, paying the bills,

grown-up talk, 'it wouldn't be as simple as all that,'

haven't any experience with children

so nannying isn't viable, nor is marriage,

which takes out two oft-opted for options

by females in need of cash and adventure

(and or) (adventure optional)

I haven't a degree, I don't want one,

carry on

I have a mind under this body

somewhere, I swear to you I promise!

and my fingers, as I mentioned,

are useful, although sensitive. . . .

I can function like a fairly normal adult

when called upon,

except for the time on the freeway I ran out of gas

and possibly blew out something on the bottom of my car

that I still need to get checked out and this week I locked myself out

twice in one day and sometimes I forget to put food back in the fridge

but I'm good at running errands and answering the telephone even when I don't

feel like it and I'm good at things like reading and putting words together and thinking,

which that one professor I had always said was the point of education, "I'm trying to teach you

how to think!", he said, and he said if we knew how, it'd keep our chances of being homeless down

quite a lot, and he seemed like he knew what he was talking about so maybe I'll write him a letter one of these days and ask him if he meant that and if so what a thinking-capable person desperate for a life of non-monotony should do when the money runs low

they talked about Bukowski and Syd Field,

about swimming in South Dakota and

the new shop on Melrose where one of them

saw Chloë Sevigny, or was it Evan Rachel Wood

(she said she gets them confused) and

the other tried to cut in about this idea she got

reading

an article in The New Yorker, but everybody

laughed

at "New Yorker" like it was a dirty joke

and she didn't say anything else not even

when they started dissecting The Virgin Suicides

into elements of Freud-Marx-Kierkegaard-etc

so she read

a gossip magazine in the corner

and pouted until it was time to leave

and all the girls with their slouching men

laughed

out of the building and she looked up,

surprised at being alone, and remembered

her 4 a.m. call time

as the decemberists run through my head

"I guess I actually have had more time to blog than I’m making it seem, but keeping some things to myself has become more special. I’ve been drawing and collaging as always, and while none of it is very revealing, it feels too personal to show others. And I keep notebooks, and the world around me is just as interesting to me as it’s ever been, but the prospect of sharing it isn’t as exciting as it used to be. Like, not everything that anyone could find at all entertaining/interesting/funny has to be tweeted, you know? And I kind of resent that mentality in this here SOCIAL MEDIA WORLD we now live in. KIDS THESE DAYS, etc."

Tavi Gavinson wrote that and I was like, yeah, that! Yeah, the world still fascinates me and I still feel compelled to write and sketch and put things into words, but not necessarily publicly. Sometimes I want to do that, but less and less often. I like letter writing, if I'm going to share words these days, and I like typing in blank computer documents and I like making lists on my skin and I like rambling in notebooks or with a permanent marker in a public place. Sometimes I even switch the video camera on and talk into it or behind it. Pastels, occasionally paint, lots of ink, spilled ink even.

At the same time, occasionally I get such an urge to fling a thing or things out into cyberspace, and I guess this blog seems like the place to do it, except for the days I choose tumblr. Sometimes I miss the habit of blogging, but mostly I don't, obviously, I guess, because I do it so little.

Ummm, I feel there should be a banner waving to end this post, like, I'M NOT GOING ANYWHERE ("oh but darling I am going places!") or maybe I'm just trying to say for those of you who still come here I love the interaction of blogging/bloggers and that is what I miss, but also, you know, I am still blogging. I'm not jumping ship yet. Even if it's, like, once a month is all, or a sudden influx of once a week, whatever, I still like this thing. And I do a lot of blog reading, still, because people are amazing and the words and thoughts and openness and expression to be found online is an amazing thing to me.

I don't think I've ever blogged about blogging before (hallo!) and I've certainly never begun (and never will) a post saying "SORRY IT'S BEEN SO LONG SINCE MY LAST POST LOL" because that's annoying, and I'm not apologizing here I am simply rambling and putting words into the ether because that can be, now and then, a really nice thing to do—