IMPORTANT NOTIFICATION

hey y'all.
I've moved to a new blog.

You should probs check it out...


It's been fun,
Lauren 

An Open Letter to Jay Gatsby or Why I Am a Terrible Friend

An Open Letter to Jay Gatsby or Why I Am A Terrible Friend

Hey man.  I feel you.  Because I have my very own green light.

I don’t know if you saw Gatz (if you didn’t, that’s a shame because it was really good), but they used a green LED – a little pin-point thing – in one cue that made me really happy because I saw it and my parents didn’t to show the green light at the end of the dock that you stared at.

I’d look up exactly what Nick Caraway had to say about the whole thing, but it’s been a year since I read the book and I can’t be bothered.

Anyway.  I feel you.  The notification light on my phone is green.  And, occasionally, it’s a text message from a dear friend who means the world to me and on whom I may or may not have the tiniest bit of a crush but like I can’t say a damn thing because I saw what happened to you and I know better than to let myself be tempted by a little green light. 

Like, come on man!  If your story isn’t a warning against temptation by green, I don’t know what is. 

Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I get it.  I mean I look out of the corner of my eye and see a flashing light and get my hopes up and sometimes there’s not even anything there.  And I can’t start anything because what if I’m being a nuisance?  The last thing I want to do is drive this person off.  Because our friendship means a lot to me.  And so does the promise of the green light bringing some news.  Something silly or serious or anything.  But something.  From them.  Maybe if I quit cold turkey, but I can’t do that.

You know how it is.  You amassed a small personal fortune and threw ridiculous parties to get Daisy.  I can’t even do that.  Think how I must feel!

Anyway.   Thanks for listening. 

Sincerely,
Lauren Eames

Failure is Always an Option

So I think we can safely say that I have failed my 2012 New Year's Resolution. I mean I got through May something-or-other, which is respectable, but it's not 365 pieces. And most of it is nonsensical crap. Don't try and tell me otherwise. I know it is. Some of the stuff I've posted over the past 12 months had been ok. But most of it's crap.

But hey, I tried.  And now I have a creative writing blog with readers who, unlike the readers of my everyday blog regarding which I am woefully behind, are not predominantly Russian Neck Brace Fetishists.
So I'll keep updating. Y'all will get something whenever the muse strikes. I just won't be tied to the calendar anymore.

May 18 - Gallery Talk

…As shifting forms become clarified through studious and critical practice, the viewer is left with a summary of the inaccuracies of existence.

Bullshit.

The high white walls of a defunct factory make the small, black-and-white description shrink into an idiotic footnote to a piece of art that, in reality, constitutes a mess of swirling colors that does not in fact become clarified through studious and critical practice.  She skims some more text on the ephemeral nature of the human condition being represented in the conflict between red and blue.  Dominant and passive forever in conflict.  Jealousy being the sublimation of sexual desire (Although that one seemed legit, she had heard about it in Psych 101.  Or maybe an English class.  Somewhere reputable anyway).

“What do you think?”

She turned around.  A thoroughly nondescript man stood.  Was there something in the curl of his lip?  She couldn’t remember now.  For now, let’s say he stood. Simply that.  She doesn’t look at him.

“I don’t know.”

“Come on. You think something.  Everybody does.”

He moved a few steps to her side.  He looks up at her.  She’s not that tall. 

“I think the description’s interesting.”

“Don’t look at the description.  Everybody does.”

“Where do I look?”

“At the art.”

She looks.  It’s red and blue.  And probably bullshit. 

“It combines emerging sexuality and UFO sightings.”

He laughs in response.

“That’s where you’re going?”

“Sure.  Why not?”

“It’s about Jesus.”

She looks again for the cruciform.  All she sees is a beam of light and a confusion of squiggles.

“It’s not about Jesus.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“You don’t know.  No body does.”

Who is this guy? “Who are you?”

“Come to lunch with me.  The café has good sandwiches.  We’ll get coffee.”

“I don’t know you.”

“Get to know me.”

“Does this ever work for you?”

“Rarely.”

“Why try it then?”

“Because I got you to look at the art. And you seem nice. And life is short.”

She says nothing.

“And I’m an idiot.” He finishes.

She does not go to lunch with him.  This is probably smart.  There was definitely something in his eye.   At least there was in the newspaper the next morning.  He slashed a cross in bright green into “Subliminal, Extraterrestrial, Chrystalization”

May 17 - Memory Games

Finding anything useful in your mind is like playing a game of memory.  I suppose you must think it's no fun to cary only a few things, so one is forced to sort through a baffling set of cards to find a damn thing.
Flute to flute.
Pumpkin to pumpkin.
Crab apple to crab apple.
A pair of key limes to pair...
Ah!  Your favorite.  A mandarin orange with an open mouthed grin scrawled on it in inedible black ink.  Now where's it's mate?
And a eureka lemon with it's smiling mouth fully cut out.  it leaks and stings.  What is this tied to?

Are you playing with me?  Making this too difficult?
How can you find anything.

"One can never have too many fruits on hand"

May 16 - Edward Sharp and Ophelia's MillhavenS Paint Adventure

Jade, the girl of the hour, plays a silly refrain on a flute at the beginning of the act before examining her reminders.

White the shroud of mountain snow.
That's to pack for this weekend.  She skis with her family when she can be bothered to be one of them.  Often she considers squealing like a pig and fertilizing the plants in the green house. Then she remembers the green turf at the head of the mountain and the stones below and the memories of childhood buried within.
Larded all with sweet flowers;
This one she braided with a friend to remember a special night at camp when... well... the string is there to remind her so that she does not have to speak her remembrances.  The string, beaded with flowers, suffices.

Tomorrow is St. Valentines day - that's the red - and below it on her ring finger is kept a one, a scrap, touched by the boy she'll follow home tomorrow.
One drunken party, he thew on the costume of the night, and opened the door to her, a child.  A child didn't leave.
He would be her Valentine if she hadn't gone in.

Now she stalks the halls like an old gypsy woman, insisting she's a girl, and they part the ways, like the red sea before moses, marking her with their scarlet ink as a woman undeserving of their attention but allowing all she asks.

She followed the boy home.
If you come around then just as the sun goes down, you can watch the whole thing turn to gold, said a man who came to town from a southern island continent with the hair of a car salesman and the voice of a fallen angel.
And she left again.  Singing:
They bore him barefaced on the bier,
Hey, non nonny, nonny, hey, nonny,
And in his grave rained many a tear.
And she tied a black string around the ring finger.  So many things to remember...

May 15 - Pineing

I love you most when I am not with you.

I love the pineing for your company, true.
But, more important, I love the way I have filled in the gaps of your life.  What I do not know, I make up.  This suits me best.  To love a man I do not truly know but believe I understand.

May 14 - Woes of an Insomniac

To sit in solemn silence

is an enviable thing...

May 13 - War

When she enters the room, she is greeted by reminders of destruction.
Above the window, a reproduction of Guernica dominates a space that should not even be visible.  A photo of Bikini Atoll hides in the peripheral vision of anyone who sits at the desk.
What a place to work.
Constantly reminded of how quickly the decision to kill an entire town or an entire island can be made.

May 12 - Your's

She fucks like Roma's best.
Cafe au lait when you wake -
a cigarette if that's your thing.

Waiting for someone to remember
fondly.

May 11 - Chickens

Chickens out-number humans 3+:1.
There are 24 billion of them.

I look at their beady little eyes in a new light now.
They all look the same.  An ocean of shiny, emotionless pin heads.
I see them pecking me to death with no remorse.

May 10 - Untitled

I saw men and women - equal without power - wandering the streets, dead and dying phones, tablets, and computers in hand.
Lost, so lost.
They looked up at the sky for the first time in years, finally untethered.
And saw the grey.  the same grey as the side walk they were so accustomed to.
They could have seen what they were missing...

God plays cruel tricks.

May 9 - Aftermath

In some places, the storm fostered brotherhood.
Friendly neighbors ran extension cords and power strips, offering passers by a place to charge up.
In that age, we do not know what to do without electricity.
We do not know how to use a dictionary or an encyclopedia.
We are lost in this darkness.
But, as I said, in some this storm fostered brotherhood.
They helped where they could have hoarded.
Asking nothing in return.

May 8 - prayer

Scrawled on the wall was an invocation -

OH Great GOD of power

OH Great GOD of Light

OH Great GOD of GAS

OH CON-ED; OH CON-ED

WHERE HAS ALL THE Power FLED?

- in a child's sacrificial blood.

May 7 - Judgement Week

Nothing is quite so damaging as boredom.
With nothing to direct our attentions, we turn to each other.
and judge.
and find our company lacking.

May 6 - Setting

The grocery stores look like movie sets for post apocalyptic stories.
Signs - like the 70s - proclaim No GAS at every turn

And windows flicker with candles.
         Everywhere it is Diwali.
         We celebrate light like never before.

May 5 - Baptism

A flood came.
Like a baptism for new earth
It christened a new region of Manhattan: SoPo (south of power)
and a new age - one of shortage and anger

May 4 - Clouds

The clouds will not leave.
The sky taunts us in the mornings, showing glimpses of blue and even white cloud cover
It teases us with a break in the grey
But the clouds do not leave
They stay.  Menacing, with the idea of more rain about them.

May 3 - Romanticism

It's Romantic...
Storm and stress.  Sandy and college applications.  Certain English poets whom she idolizes would be proud.  Not fully remembering the Romantic movement from sophomore english and history, she declines to say which ones.
She reads Puritan religious epics, a gay fantasia on national themes, social psychology.  All by candle light.  She marvels that it can be colder inside the house than outside.
(in a fit of madness, she throws her windows open and shouts King Lear into the storm)
Roy was right; life is some crazy sandstorm in space.  It attacks from every angle and it rips you to bits.
Sand Storm: sandy storm; storm, sandy; hurricane sandy.
A metaphor more apt than ever she cleverly thinks.

She is very alone.  And possibly drunk.
on what she does not know.

May 2 - Dawn

For warmth, she curls up next to a man she does not know.  They met here.  In this abandoned husk of a house.
He put his arms around her as she began to cry, not knowing he wanted nothing more than the warmth of another.
He is sick but not catching.  She is alone.  So he tells her of his family (who are gone) and of his journey (which will not end).  They share a birthday candle for warmth.
7.  The number of days since the electricity fled. They think.  Who really knows... no one seems to care.  They have accepted a week long hurrication.  It will be Monday when they return.
Monday of a new year and a new age.