it's a little like chasing Charles. Only now, a year and a half later, I'm hitting all the red lights--you don't call, you don't write-- and I can hear him singing next to me and I smile because, you are letting your guard down aren't you? Its my arm out the window.
We'd stare and stare, Charlie, and I'm going to come looking for you in Arizona or whatever. If you're going to be there, or Colorado. That's fine too. Grow up cynical on East side or West side, Charlie. Free burritos.
Erase all unread.
Erase meeting men too suddenly.
Erase first dates if he doesn't believe in God.
But keep your iPod close and look at me across parking lot libraries.

It could have been good, Charles.

Uh, I am suddenly in love with tennis. Its all I can think about. I'm finally back into working out outside. I am done with Mia St. John, and the Skinny Bitches (yes, they are really out there, and they are a great workout). And my fingers turn purple and I can visualize my lungs filling up with ice. But it's very spring for February.
God is so good.
So good.

The summer I graduated, Danny came back from the war. I remember driving around Peoria with him and Jackie, singing "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" and feeling the immediate shame.
We were driving to Home Depot.
We got there, and he was sitting on a glider, staring off. Jackie was saying something, there were birds flying around the ceiling, trapped in the warehouse. All I could do was look at him and wonder where he was.
We knew that he had changed. We could feel it. It was like walking on eggshells, and pretending that none of us had felt the terror of gunfire and roadside bombs.
But my grandfather and I sat next to each other at a bonfire one night, and he held my hand because I was weeping. He started to weep with me, even though we were broken in two different ways.
He wept for Dan and how you can't come back with the same innocence. I wept because I felt I was shell of a person, and that you weren't supposed to go into the beginning of real life feeling like you were hollow inside.

We've since been healed, the three of us in different ways, although my grandfather is blind now, and my heart doesn't beat the same way because of what the last three years have done to it. But I think what I mean is that I miss the Midwest.
The holiness of empty fields and eternal sunshine.
The roots you put down one time, and seeing that they still give you a foundation later on.
The only place you ever found unconditional love.

Yeah, the first time you met Jesus.

"It's always a good story if it has tamales. Its just true that everyone likes tamales."
-Matt Kilpatrick

what we need is just what we want

It wasn't that I didn't like Jeff. I just take a really long time to warm up to very outspoken people who try too hard to get me to like them the first hour I know them. So he automatically thought I hated him.
"Can you remember a day in your life that you were nice to me, Rachel," he says to me one day. I pause for a very long time because I am vacuuming coffee grinds. I close my eyes and grit my teeth. Finally I just go along with it.
"No, not a specific day, Jeff."
"Funny, neither can I."
"I don't hate you Jeff. You don't understand me or my humor."
He made me a nice mix tape for Christmas anyway. It had a Vampire Weekend song I'd never heard, a Ryan Adams song and a Pinback song that make me cry, a good Cat Powers jam, a Spoon favorite remixed...and so on. It took me a while to think that maybe I should be nice to him. The Stars song was what did it.
So one day I started a conversation with him about the music that was playing at Starby's. We were talking about the band's last album and how it'd been a while since they'd come out with something.
"It was the end of 2006," I told him.
"Yeah, you're right. It was like, October. Because that was when she told me she didn't love me anymore, and I was foolish to think she'd get excited about me telling her about that album." But the way he said it wasn't like how most sappy guys are trying to go for pity. It was matter of fact. I respected him for that, because I realized he was a deeply sad person, but never shows this. Its always about the dumb jokes. He doesn't open up. I like that.
"Yeah, I remember stuff like that by the relationships too," I admitted to him.

And we still piss each other off. But we kinda don't try to kill each other anymore.

some things I know.

I know its hard to find things in your truck when the overhead light doesn't work for several years. I know that somehow your skin adapts to 20 degree weather, and that the bus driver doesn't remember your face no matter how many times you thank him, with snow in your hair. I know that for some reason old scars do go away after a while, and that this is a blessing. I know that coffee ruins and saves lives. I know that the neater the piles, the more pieces of myself I can find laying around my house, and stuff in my bag to sort out later. I know how to work the washing machine. I know about the other girls the rock star is writing, in the other towns. I know to floss now. I know which things to keep secret in the freezing car, and which ones to admit to. I know I miss medicine, and the race, and purpose.

I don't answer the phone if I do not know who's calling, but I guess the whole point is that we never know really.

no taste for you left, even if my hair grows long.
if that carpet was vacuumed up and the cell phones were charged
We're clean
unhappy
carbonated
and can't find out all the secrets.

Little girl on the bus: "I'm gonna throw snow at my daddy. Like, roll it in a ball and say, "whoops!"
Her brother: "Can I throw snow at my daddy too?"
Their mom: "You can put some in the freezer and save it for when he comes back from California."

I spent a lot of time on Mass Transit today. And went to the mall with my backpack on, which is awkward, especially at a store like Urban, or Lolabella. "Hi, I'm just a crazy weirdo with a backpack on. No I'm not stuffing clothes in it. I'm just a student. Sorry."

Done with:
-5 weeks of school
-1/2 of my total papers due in critical theory
-cafe rio (never again)

eventually our mouths will just turn to dust

I know when I get to heaven, I will be stoked about a mansion and stuff like that, like not having headaches, and hanging out with my friends and peace.
But really what I want, is to just read through stacks and stacks
of
reports.

Rachel , welcome to Heaven. Yep. You died at age 63 of complications of cancer. The good news is you're in heaven now, and we just thought you should know that you:
listened to Acid Tongue by Jenny Lewis 18234 times
over the course of your life you used 32424000 rolls of toilet paper
you ate 792 bowls of pho
you went through 46 bottles of shampoo (it would have been more but remember when you were working on dreadlocks?)
845 bowls of mac and cheese
you saved 1200 gallons of gas by taking the bus and riding your bike
You got 1750 bruises, but only 24 were bigger than a baseball
you ate 3 rocks and 2 starfish that were as hard as a rock, and swallowed 9 spiders because you slept in the basement.
Yours truly,
The counters


It would be something cool like that, but more color coordinated.

For some reason, I told Amalia my entire love-life this afternoon before leaving Celisse's house. She gave some very sound advice in her Spanish accent for 20 minutes, and then I laughed and went to the Dentist.
I worshipped God with Jason Mraz the whole way there, but Mraz doesn't know this. With an entirely numb face and a generally optimistic outlook towards mankind I set off into the world.
I'm feeling pretty good from diet and exercise. I haven't smoked in ages, and God walks with me where I go. Despite all of my friends getting pregnant or married and settling down all around me, I feel like the majority of us are on the verge of something life changing (as if those things aren't life changing). Like a balloon ride above the pollution here, only more hardcore. Like where we are going to go.
Perhaps because LOST is back on.