What's In Your Bag?

What’s in your bag?

I have pencils in my bag—and pens

For school work, just like any average school girl

And for those urgent times when I need to vandalize 

the blank canvas of your ragged eyes

those the urgent times when I need to hypnotize the oxygen 

with the psychedelic stains of a renegade Sharpie.

I have makeup in my bag

To make myself pretty, just like any average school girl

and for the cold-blooded, confused moments when I need to conceal

what I used to be. 

When I need to paint my past all pretty 

as if putting lipstick on a timebomb

would make the ticking stop.

I have money in my bag

For lunch, of course, just like any average school girl

And for coffee, and clothes, and bagels, and gasoline,

And a down-syndrome goldfish named Syd Barrett

, and the most deceitful form of happiness

I’ve ever not felt—
living and breathing Forgetfulness.

And a Wish You Were Here card—just for you.

I have a water bottle in my bag

It’s for when I get thirsty, you silly goose

And for those instances when I forget how to speak

But I remember how to think

So I need something to wash down all the words

I just can’t say

Wash them away into the acidic pits of my stomach

Where they can’t bother me.  

I have a notebook in my bag

For taking notes, in school, just like any average school girl

math, history, etc. etc.—

And for secret letters to kidnap victims

and cryptic notes to cross-dressing heroin junkies

For tragic, angst-ridden poetry on days when I’m feeling blue

For peace-crane folding

 And all those paper airplanes stricken with a chronic case of wanderlust

For random scraps of paper

Where I can stick my old gum.

What’s in your bag?

 

Well, you are. Obviously.

I thought you would have noticed by now.

Maybe if I dedicate more time to vandalize

the blank canvas of your ragged eyes

 You will.

And now tell me,

Have you received the secret letters I’ve sent?

Universal Skeletons

                The Ranch was a place of ghosts and Jell-O Salad. My grandfather of many greats purchased it way back in the good old days. Back in the days when typewriters were still clacking, the flappers still had booze stashed in the garters and the atomic bomb was still just the wet dream of some cunningly disturbed scientist. My grandfather of innumerable greats was Mormon; so therefore, he proceeded to have innumerable amount of children. His children grew up, and dutifully squeezed out an innumerable amount of children, creating a vicious cycle of children creating more children, of skinned knees and spankings. In the end, this cycle eventually created me.

The Ranch is up in the mountains of Arizona, amongst the scrubby, dusty Ponderosa pine forest and perpetual thunderstorms. Every summer, my family would attend a family reunion at the Ranch, though it is difficult for me to call the Ranch a “family reunion”, considering I knew almost no one there. The Ranch was a mass congregation of over 200 Mormons, who all spawned from my original grandfather of many greats. Oddly enough, my small immediate family and I were the only attendants of the family reunion who weren’t Mormon. We drifted about like a small island of blasphemy in an ocean of stifling religion. Maybe it was because of religious differences that I didn’t like the Ranch. Or maybe it was because I didn’t like Jell-O salad, the nonstop wail of cantankerous babies and I grew tired of having strange-smelling old woman pinch my cheeks. But either way, I avoided the crowds whenever I was obligated to go to the Ranch. So I would disappear into the forests and meadows to play with the ghosts.  

If you strayed from the central area of the Ranch a ways, you could find the cowboy ghost towns, scattered and broken among the dusty, dying meadows. The skeletal houses still stood there, like gravestones, and sometimes I would collect a small posse of cronies from the Ranch, and we would go exploring. Like the young, inconsiderate little brats we were, we would throw rocks through the warped windows, and rip the splintering plywood from the doors, in order to gain access to the cobwebbed darkness inside.

Despite the carelessness in which we busted in, once inside, we were scared—although we all pretended otherwise. We all feigned bravado as we delved deeper into the house, investigating the silverware left lying on the table, the old hairbrush with strands of blonde hair still clinging to the bristles, and drawers of black-and-white photographs concealed under a shroud of dust.

We would mine through the house for a while, like thieves raiding the tombs of pharaohs. But eventually, the creak of rotting floorboard would grow too eerie, and the hum of history vibrating through the walls would echo too loudly in our ears, and we would leave. We would crawl through the shattered windows just like we came in, and the Arizona sun would be blinding.

Though these skeletons of old civilizations were no doubt spooky, I never believed that the ghost towns actually held ghosts. But outside the ghost town was a place that I was certain actually did: the Indian burial ground. The burial ground used to be a meadow, with the tenacious remnants of adobe walls peeking through the tall, jagged grass. The dry cracked soil was laced with shards of pottery and human bones. Thinking back on it, I am ashamed to say that I used to go out there and collect full buckets of the pottery. I was just a child, and I never considered how disrespectful that was; though I never, ever touched any of the bones.

I can justify the raiding of the pottery by saying that I was just a kid and didn’t know any better; Mr. Nate Olafson cannot. Nate Olafson was a middle-aged man with a shiny bald head, a bowling ball of a beer gut hanging off his abdomen, and IQ that was similar to Forest Gump’s, only lacking the camaraderie and witty sayings. Olafson was the man who purchased that piece of the property, and he picked that place clean, and sold whatever was possible to sell. And once the burial ground was barren of any monetary value, like a blueberry bush without blueberries, he bulldozed it to the ground. The adobe walls were flattened, and nothing was left of the burial ground but a flat expanse of red dirt. The bones and broken pottery were still there, but they were all scrambled and churned up in a mass jumble of broken, violated history.

Olafson lived right on the burial ground in a grimy motor home, and every night he would stand outside and play the violin. He would play so that it sounded like screams, dragging the horsehair bow across the strings with such brutality that the instrument screeched and squealed like a torture chamber. He did it to scare away angry spirits, but even a sound that cold-blooded can’t undo what he did.

One night, I snuck out to watch him play the violin. My cousin, Ariel and I waited on the edge of the burial ground, hunched in some tall grass. He heard us stirring and whispering in the bushes and started howling at us to get the hell of his land. Like good little children, we obediently got the hell of his land.  

Nate Olafson moved out shortly after desecrating the burial ground. The property was sold to one of my distant Jell-O salad-making aunts, who snagged the opportunity to cover it in concrete and build a few McMansions on it.  The sprinklers keep the lawns a luxurious emerald, and the cheap red tiles on the roofs are specifically designed to match the dirt that hides beneath the concrete. I haven’t returned to the Ranch in ages, but to this day, those houses are still inhabited by several Mormon strangers who descended from my grandfather of my greats just like me.

And it makes me wonder—in a hundred years, what inconsiderate little brats will be raiding your house? In a hundred years, who’s going to be living above your bones?

"Here's to looking at you, kid"

"Here's to looking at you, kid." I always write it on the margins on my papers, and incorporate it in all my doodles, and for the first time, someone asked me what it means. I've never thought about what it means, but I've always known.

It means watching the world, observing all its madness and beauty unfold. It means means looking at the abyss and the abyss looking right back at you. It means looking at the ones you love, when you know that looking is the closet you'll ever be to them. It means looking at all the things you just can't have. It means craning your neck to get a better look at yourself, as if peering through the bars of a zoo cage to catch a glimpse of a beast with no name.

It means to love and be loved. That is all.

Upon My Release

"I would walk
I would walk
in a straight line
as I could find,
or as jagged and winding as any
West Coast trail. I would walk
hungry and forget
all the sad dead food,
leave it behind,
farther and farther behind.
I would walk through the trees,
through walls, through water and sand,
and when my shoes fell apart
my bare feet would walk on
and bleed and heal; and I would walk
empty long roads of gravel and crows
and big silent clouds, singing,
singing every song that ever
crept in my ear,
and when the songs ran out
I'd make new ones. I would walk;
as long as the road never met
I would walk, and sleep
facing the sky; rain
would wash me clean,
wash the gray from my soul.
I would walk towards the sun
towards the moon,
towards the ocean,
my shadow behind me,
walking. And when the stars
started to fall
(as they say they will)
the mountains and rocks
all the wormwood and bowls of plague;
when the wolf sings the pillars down
and all fails to fit,

    I would walk."

Rite a Riff

I chose this piece because I like the wording I used, and I think I adequately captured what its like to live in Minnesota.

November 3rd--
Once upon a time I lived in a hick town in Minnesota, where everyone lived on a steady diet of hamburger helper and Bud Light, and 50% of the population had the last name Hohiezel. When my family came gallivanting into town in our moving van, we were immediately labelled as the California Freaks. A mid-sized clan of vegetarians, unloading a van packed full of suspicious-looking houseplants and my mad scientist father carrying a cardboard box labelled "skulls." (Which contained skulls, of course. They were part of my dad's biological research project for Humboldt State University.)

Minnesota was flat and bleak, an icy, windswept wasteland where decrepit old men spent their days fishing out of holes they drilled in the ice, gnawing on their chewing tobacco and counting their few remaining teeth on gnarled fingers. Their wives would wait at home, gabbing on the telephone about so-and-so's new haircut while waiting for their apple pie to bake. Their children would linger in the bars, and play pool until their mothers called them with news of dinner's ready, don't cha know.


While the rest of Pierz, Minnesota carried out their meek lives in such a manner, my family did our best to convert out 70's house into a small slice of California. I was five-years-old and my favorite thing in the whole world was to pretend to be a cow and attempt to eat the lime green shag carpet that was in my room. That was life. 

Blog Review

 Blub Blub Blub This blog's writing is very sweet and sincere, and the layout is eye-catching.

The Third Eye is the Clearest This blog is so trippy and amazing. I can also relate to everything the writer is saying, because we have been friends for a long time, and she means a lot to me.

Paperclips and Applesauce This blog is honest, and the writer obviously means everything she says. Her "Remember" post is such a tender, meaningful piece, and I suggest you check it out.

Remember

The song "Castles Made of Sand" by Jimi Hendrix carries memories for me, because I listened to it the morning I woke up in the hospital. The night before I had been hit by a truck while I was riding my bicycle on North Douglas Highway, so when I woke up in the morning, I had stitches criss-crossing my forehead, sunken black eyes, and blood and gravel embedded in my hair, which was perched on top of my head in one tangled mass like decrepit bird's nest. But that was only the outside. On the inside, I had bruises buried deep in my bones, a fractured wrist and ankle, and a broken pelvis.

My swollen eyes were crying, because a physical therapist who I still refer to fondly as Lucifer had just visited me with news that it could take anywhere from 2 months to a full year until I could walk again. She had babbled on like an autistic squirrel for what seemed like an hour, tossing in tactless jokes here and there, but I wasn't listening. I was drugged out, drifting off in Percocet-Land, and the only thing I could focus on was the idea of an entire year spent in a bed. A year without running, a year without walking, a year without skiing, a year without splashing in puddles--a year without living.

After Dr. Lucifer the sadistic physical therapist finally exited the room, leaving me alone in my remote-control bed, malfunctioning TV, and the sting of antiseptic air, I picked up my iPod from the bedside table. I had been listening to it when I got hit by the truck, and miraculously, it still worked. I stuck the headphones in my ears, which were still crusted with dried blood, and turned the iPod on shuffle. The first song that came on was "Castles Made of Sand."

The song seemed so perfect, and the moment so cruel. The last verse of the song about the young girl who was crippled hit me harder than the bumper of a truck that I had so recently become acquainted with. I laid there in bed, wondering about castles made of sand, and golden-winged ships and what it means to slip into the sea, until finally in the midst of all my wondering, I realized how happy I was to be alive.

"Castles Made of Sand"
--Jimi Hendrix

Down the street you can hear her scream you're a disgrace
As she slams the door in his drunken face
And now he stands outside
And all the neighbors start to gossip and drool
He cries "oh, girl you must be mad,
What happened to the sweet love you and me had?"
Against the door he leans and starts a scene,
And his tears fall and burn the garden green

And so castles made of sand fall in the sea, eventually

A little Indian brave who before he was ten,
Played war games in the woods with his Indian friends
And he built up a dream that when he grew up
He would be a fearless warrior Indian Cheif
Many moons past and more the dream grew strong until
Tomorrow he would sing his first war song and fight his first battle
But something went wrong, surprise attack killed him in his sleep that night.

And so castles made of sand melts into the sea, eventually

There was a young girl, who's heart was a frown
Cause she was crippled for life,
And she couldn't speak a sound
And she wished and prayed she could stop living,
So she decided to die
She drew her wheelchair to the edge of the shore
And to her legs she smiled you wont hurt me no more
But then a sight she'd never seen made her jump and say
"Look! a golden winged ship is passing my way."

And it really didn't have to stop, it just kept on going...

And so castles made of sand slips into the sea, eventually..."