The Glasses

My brother found these glasses at a dollar store last year, and I rediscovered them the other day in a drawer in a bathroom at my parents' house. We HAD to play with them. Seriously, how could we not?

Dream--

house with natalie portman's apartment through my bedroom closet (tight squeeze), devendra banhart lying on her couch, the dining room table and chairs outside on the lawn, rachel howard sitting on them, waterfall and forest in the back yard.

I can't help but wonder what dreams really mean. Is it our belief in a deeper meaning that gives them their ominous, all-knowing qualities, or are they just senseless connections our bored brain strings together while we're sleeping because it needs something to do? Are they brand new, possibly symbolic images, or just recycled from our daily lives, jumbled together and presented behind our eyes? Dreams are so personal-- it's a rare occasion when two or more people have the same dream, and even then, they are unique to the dreamer because of the experience. But the ultimate manifestation of their intimacy, I think, is the fact that they are so fleeting; often, the more you try to write the dream or tell someone about it, the more quickly it slips away. Even if you get the gist of the dream told, there are minute details and certain ways things looked in your mind that are completely incommunicable, and probably lost forever inside your head.

Flightless Bird, American Mouth

So I'm having problems. A couple few, to use my father's terminology.

1. I am still jobless. Being jobless means little to no cash flow. And the little cash flow that exists is all an outpouring, not an inpouring (which I don't think is a word, but I'll claim artistic license on this one). Luckily, I'm still in school, so I feel a tiny bit less guilty about spongeing off my parents for the time being. Still, not a lot of spongeing. Not spongeing like Paris Hilton spongeing. Spongeing like, "Here's fifty bucks, buy some groceries so you don't starve." I'm grateful for everything they give me and probably wholly undeserving of it all, but it only makes me feel like a child (but not enough that I refuse their help).

2. I just found a website where you can do crossword puzzles online. Since I am a fierce and vicious procrastinator, I will never get anything done ever again. This is the site that has rendered me useless.

3. I keep distracting myself from the work I'm supposed to be doing because it's my last week of classes. Like the online crosswords and the fact that I am watching my second movie of the day right now, or that I spent all night last night drinking with my neighbors instead of taking five seconds to email questions to Chris Heavener of Annalemma Magazine.

4. I am officially tired of being single. I've suspected this for a long time, that I'm sick of watching movies by myself and going to bed every night without an occasional extra, warm body, but I've recently confirmed it. Not that being single doesn't have its perks-- believe me, it does. And I've enjoyed it for a while. And now, please can I try the other one?

So, those are my big problems. And now for something completely unrelated:

The Family Stone. I've been trying to figure out what about this movie makes me love it so much. The cast is awesome-- Diane Keaton, Rachel McAdams, Luke Wilson, Claire Danes, Dermot Mulroney. Oh, and Sarah Jessica Parker, who I could live without, but she doesn't ruin the movie. So, awesome cast, yes, but not the reason I love the movie. Or, not the sole reason. I'm pretty sure it's the story, and even more than the story, it's the characters. I'm a sucker for characters, and this movie has awesome ones, a lot of them, too, and the way their relationships to each other are revealed is just awesome. Yes, I know this movie came out in 2005 and it's a Christmas movie, but it's great. Really. I am going to study it and apply it to my previously unmentioned big problem number

5. I'm working on this short story that keeps getting bigger and bigger and I'm worried might turn into a novel, but there's this part about a family and I'm having trouble with showing the reader that this girl, Elle, has this close relationship to this family (The Walsh Family) and she has to decide between maintaining a relationship with them while torturing herself because of the youngest kid who was once her boyfriend, or break up with him completely and cut ties with the family, too. Sounds stupid now that I write it down. But it isn't. I promise. But that's my problem with the story, and I think studying The Family Stone will help me figure out what to do.

Yes, I think that.

ALSO: I've been listening to "Flightless Bird, American Mouth" by Iron and Wine pretty much on repeat.


Not an actual music video. Just a weird picture on the screen while the song plays. But the song is playing, and that's the point, yeah?


Same song, but performed acousticly by Sam Beam. Awesome.

Dear D.S.N.,

This is why I can't write about you. This is why I can't think about you: because once I get started, I can't stop and I can't sleep and my whole body is calling out for you through the walls. I won't sleep better alone, and neither will you. Let me feel the scratch of your beard against my face, let me snuggle into the warmth of you (can I have a kiss?).

I am thinking about how yours is the only snoring that didn't keep me awake, the soft in and out lulling me to sleep on that strange couch. I am thinking of you asleep on the floor beside me in a sleeping bag and how badly I wanted to crawl down there with you and curl up inside your arms but I had to tell myself over and over again, "Bad Idea. Bad Idea. Badideabadideabadideabadidea," so that I'd stay on the couch and keep my hands to myself.

I am thinking about the distance between us and how there really isn't any. I am also thinking about how I will probably look back a few years from now and wonder how it was that I liked you so much I couldn't sleep, how it was that I wanted to spend every minute with you, how I couldn't stop thinking about you. And I will probably laugh, but I will also smile.