--I’M NOT AS BAD AS YOU THINK I AM, AM I?

…Last night I watched, “Donnie Darko” again. It had been at least ten years since seeing it.
What a film, what a piece of work.
Holy hell.
Future film majors should be required to study it. There must have been at least 30 different cinematography shots that were ingenious. Then there’s the creepy, whacked out plot. Then there’s a kitchen soup of famous actors—Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, Seth Rogen, Drew Barrymore, Ashley Tisdale! and Katherine Ross who I once had a crush on (that’s her up there circa “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”) but who I thought while watching “D. Darko” was Meredith Baxter Birney.
In any event, if you’ve never seen Donnie Darko, please do. It’ll knock you down and laugh at you in a very spooky voice.

…Today I nailed boards to other boards. Now I have some nasty ass blisters. My hands are not used to doing anything that does not involve a keyboard.
I am not a carpenter.
I am not handy, nor am I a handyman. Just ask anyone.

…I finished Brian Oliu’s little book of quirky pieces called “So You Know It’s Me.”
This guy is a very fine writer. He strings together beautiful sentences. Sometimes you’re not sure what he means. Sometimes, I bet, he doesn’t even know what he meant. But that’s beside the point if you like lovely language. Usually people who use a lot of repetition feel fraudulent to me, but Brian does it wonderfully.

…I also finished Megan Chance’s historical romance novel, “City of Ash.” Megan, too, is an incredibly gifted writer. She’s the master at many things: building completely individualized characters, layering in sensibilities, adding historical flourishes, doing hardcore research to cement authenticity, and—something that always impresses me—adding so much conflict that the characters get shoved farther and farther into peril. The only thing I don’t understand is why Megan isn’t hugely popular. Maybe she writes too smart for most people? I don’t know, but I love her.

…Tomorrow I am being interviewed and recorded at Vox Poetica, then the link will be put up at the publication. I’ve never done anything like that before, so needless to say, I’m excited. I’m going to read three poems on the air. Yikes!

…Tonight I am going to see “Cheap Trick.” Yep. “Momma’s all right. Daddy’s all right. They just seem a little weary. Surrender. Surrender, but don’t give yourself away.” I am not a big fan but the tickets are free and company will be excellent.
Tomorrow night I’m going to see “One Republic” and meet the band afterward.
Next month it’s “Ryan Adams,” “Death Cab For Cutie” and “The Head and the Heart.” I almost had a coronary when I found out Ryan Adams was finally touring again. I would have his babies.
It probably seems to you as if I go to a lot of concerts. It seems that way to me.

…While reading Brian's book in the bath (there's some alliteration) I wrote four pieces in his style. It was fun.
Here's one.


Strangers

You never told me and I never noticed before, but I do now.
I see them, the jars inside your eyes. Mason jars. My mother used to stuff hers with peaches she picked from a puny-looking tree leaning beside the tree swing attached to two crooked trees.
But these eyes of yours, these eyes with jars inside them, they are different. They are more like glass canisters. They are a place to store precious materials, such as your memories and your laughter. I have never heard you nostalgic and come to think of it, many years have transpired since your last laugh. I am the laughingstock in this relationship, believe me.
I wonder if your eyes get dry as mine sometimes do. If they did get dry, would the jars crack from being bone-dry and sore? If you sat at a computer all day as I sometimes do, would you get so much eye strain that the glass jar canisters would crash in on themselves, shattering like a glass hit by a sonic sound wave?
Discovering these jars in your eyes has me fascinated. They are making me more and more curious. What else do I not know about you? What other discoveries have I not discovered because I have not been paying proper attention?
Oh look—there are trapdoors inside your ears. What a shock! Knock, knock, who’s there, who’s there inside your right ear and who’s inside your left ear and why are do you have doors in your ears in the first place and why are both of them locked, from the inside no less?
Now that the cat is out of the bag you snort and stick out your tongue and I see that, ah ha, it is a ticker tape tongue, a kite tail tongue with little origami strips of paper. On them messages are written in a thin scrawl, as if a carpenter ant found a fountain pen. I read every note where you’ve recorded every name ever created, even the weird, hard-to-pronounce Old Testament names like Hesekiah and Abijah, but nowhere is mine. Is it behind the trapdoors? Is it in one of the jars? Do you not remember who I am or have we really become strangers after all?