"Well I think that we should all be a little suspicious of a person who does not have piles in their home."
-Judy

I live on fremont ave. that's the small duplex, you can even see it from the train. right there: with the green door and that's my blue honda civic parked out front. the man next door is gay. his name is harry and he teaches classes at the community college and high school but no one really knows he is gay.
He lives alone also, although I didn't always live alone. I lived with a man named James and he was handsome and we'd watch law and order together and make pancakes on the weekends but we don't do that anymore because one day he woke up and said that I wasn't what he always wanted out of life and he ended up going back to Pennsylvania in the spring and I looked into the mirror day after day reciting poetry I'd memorized a long time ago. I looked older but I still lived in the duplex.
I spent several evenings with a bottle of wine in my hands, consulting a good friend here or there over drunk conversations on a cellular telephone. The next morning I'd realize I was really going to be fine, and wrote down grocery lists in a little red notebook that would fit into the back pocket of paper denim jeans, sliding slightly off my hips now that I'd lost a little weight.
The sun would creep up later over the buildings and the shadows would make us colder than normal, but it was always alright on Fremont.
Staring at a baby: you don't have to stare back to them if you don't want. No one will know if you don't look that baby back into its eyes. It won't tell anyone, cuz it's a baby, I thought and then went weak in the knees, thinking of James and staring out that window instead of a baby.
And there's my duplex. Here's the stop, sorry, man, I've got to go, but call me later, okay Sara? OF COURSE, she replies, coughing into her coat and pretending.
She always pretends.
And I found out today that my gay neighbor Harry; his sister died. His mother was at his side of our house weeping, but I don't know Harry well enough to console either of them until she takes me into her arms. I make them dinner and she says,
"Lucy was a good girl, she was with a horrible slut of a man, but she was a good girl," and I've got to frown a little bit. I'm making them spaghetti and Harry is in the other room flipping channels, and I forgive him for not weeping over his sister, he is coping, I tell myself.
I pet his mother on the head, wipe her tears off a little bit and tell her something nice, something about love that I won't believe for a long time,
but that's how it is on
Fremont.

beautiful scandalous night

I was once a tired blonde waitress feeding three kids on my own. I was an old man driving a semi and knowing America. I was a secretary, a mistress sitting in an empty hotel room, being sent flowers and thinking sex was love. I was a 47-year-old surgeon cutting corners. I was once a lawyer looking out the window on the 13th floor and thinking I'd go back to Omaha one day.
And when I was done being all of these things you met me right where I was, and my heart was clean
like
bleach
white;
a young lady, cold but not unhappy.

You've been good to me.

wherever we are, we can't go back where we were

here's to calling it a night when you're waking up for the day, or not really being able to tell which is day and which is sleep.
here's to fake-falling-in-love, and falling out of real love.
here's to crash cymbals and other necessary evils.
here's to vitamins and head colds.
here's to cappuccinos in Orem and hearing Thrice at a Starbucks.
here's to waking up exhausted.

This is my ten minute break breakfast.

For about 3 or 4 days, I have forgotten the very word "Jar". I have forgotten what it is, or that there even was a name for it.
A "bottle" of paint thinner (turpenoid to be exact) broke or has been leaking in the cab of my truck, causing...fumes. Only I knew the shape of the "bottle" and it wasn't really a bottle. I was thinking it must be a glass, uh, can? I couldn't remember the word for it until tonight, as I was opening the door of my truck and smelling the turpenoid afresh that I realized it was in a JAR. What the heck.
Jars of jam.
Jars of clay.
Jars of peanut butter. Pears. Tomatoes in the root cellar in Illinois.
Why did I forget this word?
Maybe this is a statement on my condition of never sleeping.

I think one of Satan's big tricks is in making us forget that we know who we are.
I'm always walking around thinking, "I don't know who I am. Don't talk to me right now, I don't know who I am." I glance around the room, hoping for several smiles to put me back in my place and make me know that I'm really Rachel and that I have been for years and years.
Even standing on stage tonight (I don't get nervous. I'm just not nervous about playing very much) I suddenly forgot how to play Good to Me, even though we've played it 10000029i03 times, and then I'm like, "Well if I don't know how to play this song, then who the hell am I?"
But my identity is not all over the place. It is stationary in my relationship with Jesus, and in being a daughter of God.
Rock solid.

Audrey got baptized tonight which was pretty sweet, and we went over to her place (which is Sierra's house) and saw all of her cats.
And I think I've reached the end of a very long headache.

"I know that you would like-like to change me, make me softer:
tune your voice just like a baby. I'm using caution...
bet you wanted.
I wish you could wait to tell me in the morning."
coldwar kids

I don't really know what to do with myself when I am not at work, school, on campus, or in band practice.

Last night I got pho with Celisse and we went to Tony and Shannon's to watch Pride and Prejudice, and Audrey came over too. It just feels back to right. Back to normal.

And the snow, has been beautiful and doing brilliant things with the sky.

when I stopped running from Luke at the top of my lungs, I turned around and realized he wasn't chasing me. didn't have cigarettes in my bag, didn't have norma jean on my mp3 player.

and now I ride the train alone, I catch the 8:04 because I don't wait for someone who makes me smile.