Brain On Fire

February 22, 2007

"Yeah, we're runnin' a little bit hot tonight."

lethargy increasing as the sun sinks deeper behind the mountains
more than fatigue, my head swims

"I can barely see the road from the heat comin' off."

a table requests more bread and butter and I scramble up and down the stairs to fulfill the order
an electric guitar snarls while the bass and drums pound away
at least five minutes pass before I finally return to the banquet
it's like being caught in a time warp, rushing around to get nowhere

"I reach down between my legs ..."

a sudden awareness of the body deep within clothes
anticipation about a man who could spend the night at my side
thinking ahead to Friday night with excitement

"...ease the seat back ..."

riding on the back of his motorcycle into the hot night, long hair flying in the wind

"Panama! Panama-ha!"

April 9, 2006 

untitled and unfinished 

Dusk was setting in over State Road 100 as we made our way through the woods on the way back from Palatka.  We rode with the windows open in Jed's black pickup truck and I saw the breeze scattering his long, straight, brown-black hair.  We'd gone out for the day in search of the meaning of life somewhere out in the woods and dusty hick towns of North Florida and were returning to Lake Butler empty-handed.  We'd barely said a word since supper at Huddle House and the only soundtrack to our ride was the chirping of crickets and peepers hidden behind the tall pines and Spanish moss.  Jed's smooth tan face was lonely and sad in that strong, silent, masculine way and reflected my own inner turmoil.  One hand rested on the gear shift and it could have been so easy for me to put my hand on his but of course I didn't dare.  I lost myself in lamentation and didn't realize how long I'd been admiring him when his expression softened and he glanced at me.  Mockingly, he said, "Huh?! What're ya lookin' at?!"

Snapping out of it, I smirked and tossed off, "Nothin' much!"  I quickly busied myself by ransacking my backpack for the bottle of honey I picked up at a farm stand in Starke, opened it, and squeezed some of the golden goo straight into my mouth.

"Make sure that dudn't get on the seat, I just cleaned this truck yesterday," Jed admonished.

"I won't," I grumbled.  The first dose of honey satisfied as I'd hoped, but the second one left an unpleasant aftertaste.  "Hmm," I said as I tipped back more.

"How is it?" he asked.

"Ugh," I admitted.  "It tastes like manure."

"That's nasty."

"That's the best way I can describe it."  I quickly sucked down two more squirts anyway.

"So why do you keep eating it?"

"It has just enough of that honey sweetness to get me to have more."

"So if you had a spoon of manure and it was sweetened with honey, you'd keep eating it, even though it mostly tastes like manure?"

"Of course not!" I chuckled.  He sighed and smiled and kept on looking at the road ahead.  I put away the honey and we resumed our unspoken frustration.  Jed decided that he was uncomfortable with it and wordlessly turned on the radio in time to catch "I Can See Everything".  The keening steel guitar, tender tenor vocals, and despairing lyrics proved too much for my emotional state and I betrayed a single teardrop.  I turned toward the passenger-side window and stared through the passing scenery.  After the first refrain, Jed suddenly spoke.

"Rusty," he said to me, his voice hard with strain.  I wiped my eye and pulled my baseball cap over my face as though I was trying to sleep.  I wasn't sure if I felt like answering him.  "Rusty," he said again.

"Yeah," I acknowledged.

"What, are you takin' a nap? I'm sorry."

"Nah, I dunno," I grunted, removing the hat and letting the warm wind frizz my red curls.  The wind was inevitable and so was facing him.

"Uh, I was wonderin' if you wanted to come over my place for a while before you go home ..."

I didn't answer him right away because I had to consider this.  I honestly hated to have to bid him good-night when the ride was over, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to hang out with him over beers without confessing my true feelings.  I was so addicted to his presence, though, that I gave in.  "Sure," I said as nonchalantly as I could, then silently kicked myself for it.

"I mean, we might as well finish off the day properly, y'know, watch the stars come out ..."  As if this was a new activity we'd never enjoyed before and he had to explain it.  Apparently he needed to share whatever was troubling him.  Fine, misery loves company.

"Of course, I guess I ain't sleepy after all, anyway," I said.

After a few more taciturn minutes with the radio on, Jed turned the truck onto his road and into his woodsy property.  I put my hat on and lazily alighted, following him around the bushes and to the front door of his ranch house.  We went inside, he turned on the living room light, I dropped my bag on the sofa, and he went into the kitchen while I continued on to the sliding door and out to the porch.  I sat down on the porch swing, took off my hat, and waited.  Momentarily the slider opened and closed and he joined me on the swing, presenting me with a longneck.  We cracked open the beers and sipped in silence while the crickets and the neighbors' air conditioning unit droned on.  More silence ...it was almost deafening.  After an excruciating couple of minutes, Jed again broke it.

"So ...ya got a few minutes? I, uh, I got somethin' on my mind."

"I have all night, technically. What's up?"  I was starting to feel nervous from the suspense.  He heaved another sigh and ran his hand through his hair.

"Well ...I--I wanted to tell you that I've been thinking about you and me and how long we've been friends. I'm really glad we're friends and--ya really mean a lot to me."

I knew it, he'd figured me out.  Now here was the rejection that had been a long time coming, the trite explanation that he could never reciprocate my feelings but really valued me as a friend.  The butterflies in my stomach started fluttering full-force and I stared at my beer while waiting for the axe to fall.  He cocked his head to try to meet my gaze and his hair brushed his shoulder.  Reluctantly, I looked up at him and he straightened up.  His deep brown eyes were wide with what almost looked like fear.

"What I really want to say is, will you marry me?"

It was almost a whisper.  Unsmiling and barely breathing, I stared at him and whispered back, "What?"

"You heard me."

I put down my beer so I wouldn't drop it from my trembling hands, took a sharp breath, and said, "Yes."

"Will ya?"

"Yes."

"Ya mean it?"  He took my hand in his.

"Damnit, Jed, I said yes."

Now that my apartment is set up and I'm still unemployed, I'm finally finding the time to catch up on creative endeavors and may actually take the time tomorrow to return to writing my "book".  My guitar is due in town at the end of the week and hopefully my video demo reel footage will come soon, as well, and I'm looking forward to reviewing the raw footage from the Road Trip.  If only I could just create art and play for a living.  I'm looking forward to getting out in the sun and letting the desert inspire some more creativity to share here.  Stay tuned!

February 2, 2005

grey sky
wet North Pleasant Street
water dripping off of the awning at Bertucci's
a young man looking pensive outside the MASSPIRG office
"Trouble" by Coldplay setting the mood inside my head
I push up my cat's-eye glasses on my nose as a raindrop pelts them
fidgety hands pull the collar of my black coat tighter around the cowl neck of my charcoal-grey mohair sweater
black boots splash water onto my jeans
pedestrians pass wordlessly on the sidewalk on the way from one shelter to the next
don't feel much like being friendly today
grey hound's-tooth umbrella tucked under left arm with black pocketbook
right hand smooths my straight dark-brown ponytail
mindlessly turn down the lane and find myself outside of Rao's Coffee
this was where we philosophized over chai tea for the first time
technicolor ideas and sunlight illuminating your grinning countenance
Natalie Merchant playing on the jukebox: "Kind and Generous"
today my olive face looks sallow in the window's reflection
and the yellow lamps behind the glass are so far away, out of reach,
just like you.

I want to live in the maroon sweater world,
to drink red wine with my gourmet dinner,
listen to classical music in my black Lincoln
as I drive the roads of places like
Cambridge,
Weston,
Wellesley,
Sudbury.
I want to wear my wool overcoat,
Hush Puppy pumps,
my hair in a bun
as I walk arm-in-arm with my short-haired,
tie-wearing male companion
into the opera.
I want to stroll down a cobblestone street and stop to chat with a good friend in the glow of an old black lamppost.
I want to work at a prestigious, ivy-covered university,
surrounded by scholarship, art, and music;
hear my footsteps clatter down the cavernous hallways
and bask in the golden afternoon sun of perpetual October in New England.
Perhaps later in life, or on another plane of existence, or in another lifetime.

I was so eager to put myself out there and show off my artistic and literary creations and now it's been a while since I added anything.  Some things in my life have been distracting me, not the least of which is the Three-Month Experiment, or the Arizona Project.  In other words, a short, experimental relocation from New England to Arizona that is set to begin on September 6, assuming I have a place to live at that point.  The other thing that's been in the works under the radar is a "book" I'm trying to "write".  I like writing stories but have a hard time finishing them, so this time may prove to be no different, but so far I've been fairly disciplined about adding to the story on a regular basis, so my creative energy has mostly been going into that.  I haven't decided yet if I want to post excerpts as they materialize, though I probably should.  Stay tuned, though.  Even if new material drops off, Arizona should provide ample fodder for this webpage.

May 20, 2006 (revised June 10, 2006)

The white-haired old man with the guitar onstage stands still at the microphone.
His big blue eyes look out upon the arena of admirers,
seeming to gaze right through them.
He lazily drawls, "How're you guys doin' tonight?"
A cheer ripples through the masses.
What has happened to him?
He's a mere shadow of his former party-rocker self.
The frizzy, long brown hair is now completely white and slicked back,
a testament to his unplanned survival of the Seventies
and his friendships with men even wilder yet than he.
Does he miss the party animal he was then?
Has he acquiesced to senior citizenship and mellowed too much?
"If I'd known I'd be playing this song for the rest of my life, I wouldn't'a' written it."
And then the first heavy, distorted guitar notes leap from his pick.
He paces to and fro, dragging cables behind him.
For a few minutes, he is twenty-six again,
back in Colorado, boozing and getting high and creating loud music.
The old "clown prince of rock" is still there after all.

June 10, 2006

I am a twenty-six-year-old child-woman.
The same term was used to describe Janis Joplin, you know.
She was scarcely a year older than me when she died before her time.
I want to ask my peers: Do you ever wonder if you'll live to see thirty?"
I chase my tail in a comfortable but increasingly entrapping extended adolescence,
still decorating the walls of my childhood bedroom with images of rock 'n' roll heroes
(the teenage posters having long since graduated to tasteful black and white photographs in wooden frames).
But I unhappily watch them turn sixty and beyond, one after another.
A favorite singer has retained his boyish voice but not his boyish looks.
I watch him on the television and marvel at the crow's feet around his eyes that are absent from the liner notes of his 1970s records.
I pity him when I see his long, luxuriant brown locks turning grey and visibly thinning out.
How can I imagine a youthful sixty
when I can't see thirty?
I repeatedly implore the Lord:
"God, don't take me away until I find a husband!"
Before thirty or after sixty, mortality still awaits.
And then--my brother's laugh cuts through the slumbering house, a most welcome reassurance.
I do not need to fear tomorrow.

May 20, 2006

Where thick, flowing black locks once cascaded onto shoulders,
a fedora now hides the baldness that tops a dry grey mop.
The tall, skinny, flexible body has gradually become softened with the fat of sixty-one years,
the once-proportional face now framed by a double chin and wrinkled jowls.
The stiffness of the limbs recalls a childhood bout of polio aggravated by harsh Manitoba winters.
But the hands and fingers have not forgotten the music.
As if thirty-five years hadn't passed,
they deftly pick out the melody
while the voice, always sounding older than its years,
sings the eerily prophetic lyrics:
"Old man, look at my life. I'm a lot like you were.
Old man, take a look at my life. I'm a lot like you.
I need someone to love me the whole day through."
The probing, dark-eyed gaze under the heavy browline
ensures the listener's understanding of the profundity of the words.
"It's better to burn out than to fade away.
My, my, hey, hey."

May 4, 2006

I'm calling in well to work today,
I feel too good toil in the dark confines of a cubicle.
I'm gonna take my boat out on Lake Whitehall,
take Jack out fishing.
When the sun's high in the sky
and steam starts rising off the water,
we'll make our way through the Spanish moss and palmettos and back to my house,
put the fish on ice,
drink cheap beer,
smoke some weed,
listen to records of the James Gang and try to imitate them on our guitars.
Then we'll move the coffee table out of the way
and do it on the floor of the den
with no one around to hear us
because all those fool neighbors are wasting a fine summer day at their jobs.
(Silly people, earning a living.)
After exhausting ourselves to sleep,
we'll wake up hung over at the five o'clock quitting hour,
drag ourselves into Jack's El Camino,
and drive to Scoop's for butter pecan in waffle cones.
Then we'll toast the sunset with one last beer
and fight mosquitoes until we've had enough.
We'll retire to bed,
smug that the rat race missed us more than we missed it.