When I wake at noon on a Monday to Joni Mitchell blaring in the living room and my roommate sitting in swimming trunks reading the Sunday paper on the couch and the house smelling like Clementines and licorice tea, I can almost believe I’m in a ’60s commune, walking with flowers in my hair. Not that that’s an accurate portrait of the 1960s nor would I have a clue what the decade was actually like, but there’s a lightness and romance to being a better version of yourself in a better version of time.
Oh it gets so lonely
When you’re walking
And the streets are full of strangers
All the news of home you read
More about the war
And the bloody changes
Oh, will you take me as I am?
Seat mate: My High School gym teacher
“Oh, hi, Mr. Zeiters. Fancy seeing you here.”
“You know, you really sucked at gym.”
“Uh, I know.”
“You didn’t go into a career in physical education, did you? Because you really sucked.”
“I know.”
“Especially at volleyball. You were horrible at volleyball. I mean, my God, I’ve never seen anyone that terrible in my 20 years of teaching gym.”
“Was I good at anything?”
“Walking. You were a good walker.”
“Hmm. Thanks.”
“You weren’t bad at dodge ball, either.”
. . .
Seat mate: Random 19-year-old frat boy
“Oh, hi, frat boy. What do you do for a living?”
“I frat. What do you do?”
“I’m an exotic dancer.”
“No way! So you don’t go to school, then?”
“I went to school. MIT. Rocket science.”
“No way! Wow. So, I suppose those are fake, then.”
“Do you think me being an exotic dancer gives you the right to comment on my breasts?”
“Oh, are you one of those man-haters then?”
“I don’t hate all men. Just you.”
“…so rocket science. Wow.”
. . .
Actual
Seat mate: Random 30something who kept blowing his nose on tissues made out of fake hundred dollar bills
“Hi, random – oh my God, I’m going to puke.”
::wretching sounds::
“Ma’am? Can you do that in the bathroom, please?”
I’m leaving for Minnesota in a few hours. If the terrorists take my plane, I’ll be going down with bright red nail polish and Joan Jett’s I Don’t Give a Damn About My Bad Reputation in my head. My Christmas was lovely, quiet and restless. I’ll see you in the North.
Most people frantically attempt to get their holiday shopping done before the impending Christmas deadline. I, however, frantically attempt to get all my last minute worrying done before the New Year because every December, I make the weak resolution to be less neurotic and fretful once the next year begins. By February, I’m usually at an all-time high of fidgety “what ifs” and “oh shits.”
This year, once more, I’m making the resolution to not flip out as often and to be done with whatever existential crisis I’ve been having for, oh, the past two years. I’ve spent my entire 20s believing I’m in crisis, and that’s getting exhausting, not to mention boring. Seriously! If by March, I am still this broody, heads are gonna roll. I know there are plenty of artists who spend their entire lives in broody and tortured dispositions, but being tortured doesn’t have the same allure it did at 17. Tortured is so passé. And expensive. And time-consuming. With all the hours I spent woeing, I could’ve traveled sixteen times around the Milky Way in a hot air balloon or something equally as stupid.
I think my boyfriend will appreciate my new-found resolution to be less broody, as in the past few days, I’ve completely taken him down with me on this last minute worrying deal.
I whisper meaningfully into the phone:
“Do you think we’ll be together forever?”
“I thought you hated words like ‘forever.’ You said, quite snottily might I add, that word was a sign of immaturity, not to mention religious and government influenced nonsense.”
“Yeah. It is. Do you think we’ll be together forever?”
“How can I predict the future? Are you okay?”
“Just answer the question, buddy.”
“Um. I think it’s possible we’ll be together forever, but I still don’t -”
“That’s good enough. For now.”
“I’m never going to get my shit together oh my GOD I am one of those couched losers everyone else always refers to I am everyone’s token loser friend LOSER -”
“Dude, you’re not loser. You went through a rough time and -”
“NO I AM A LOSER OH GOD -”
“Okay, you’re a loser.”
“I can’t believe you just called me a loser. Do you really think that? Why would you say that to me?”
“I was just kidd -”
“YOU HATE ME AND I HATE MYSELF AND EVEN SATAN PROBABLY HATES ME BECAUSE THERE’S NO PLACE IN HELL OR HEAVEN FOR LOSERS.”
Happy Holidays. With 2003, we here at zosiablue.com vow to have a far more motivated, ambitious and winning personality and less of:
“Oh fucking hell, I’ll be 23 next month. I’M OLD.”
“Oh, good grief, shut up.” *
Happy Holidays. I mean it.
* said by mother, not boyfriend. Also slightly inaccurate, as this writer would never drop an f-bomb intentionally in front of her mother. And actually, she would never tell me to shut up, either. At least not in those exact words.
I practice making peace with death when I fly. I sit very calmly, always on the aisle, ankles crossed and I look over the lap of the person next to me onto the wing and I say: if that wing snaps and the plane dives, I will die and it will be okay because that’s the way it goes. When turbulence tilts my water on the tray table, my heart doesn’t shift. I say: if the bottom of this airplane collapses beneath my feet, and I am sucked into an oxygenless smoke cloud, then that’s fine. Absolutely fine. I start to believe this, too. It isn’t a pep talk or a mantra. I’m not sure what it is.
I treat people on planes how I wish I could treat people in real life, too, because it would be easier. I make up names, details, careers, laughs, hand gestures. People get so interested in me each time because I am enigmatic and a liar. They know I’m lying; I know they do. I can see the doubt crinkle on their mouth corners as I spout off an impossible name or a made-up country. But they believe me because I couldn’t care less if they didn’t and because I’m looking past them, squinting to see the Big Dipper in between air exhaust and red lights. I order whiskey and stir with my finger and I spill it on my sweater – that doesn’t change – but I don’t care and they don’t care and we are one big aeronautical fantasy. When the plane lands, I grab my bag and coat and I walk away. I don’t say good-bye or good luck because I have no heart on planes. It’s a weightless cruelty that is only cruelty by biological design.
He said: call me in an hour. I’m back on the ground now, organs heavy and functional. He knows I cry when I see teddy bears in trash cans, and he most definitely knows I can only spend exactly 12 minutes in a grocery store before I hyperventilate. So I can’t be Zosia or Marilyn or Harper the Norwegian Delegate with him, and I am most definitely scared to death of death, and when it’s late, and my mouth is wool-dry, I can’t seem to find my meditative weightlessness.
He’s not there when I call, which is – fine. I guess. I don’t know if I would be there, either. Somewhere in space I stay preying on passengers, their humanity inside-out and ice-sharp. If I can leave them gasping, I might be able to do the same for myself.
Okay, I’m getting on a plane tonight and barring my usual disclaimers of a fiery crash, I’ll be in Virginia for a week or so. I’ll update here, but just in case, my Livejournal is the easiest way to keep track.
Last night was my household’s holiday Christmas exchange and dinner. There are really no internet words for how much I love my roommates. We’re all good shit, even the cat.
This morning, I scribbled a poem in soap crayons on the shower wall for my lounging buddy. I don’t know why, but I’m going to miss him extra much this time around. You think: we’re adults with jobs! We share groceries and bedspace. There’s no room for this junior-high missing-you stuff. But it happens, anyway, the little chunk of heart that lies elsewhere while I’m 3000 miles away.
Okay, no more scanned teenager pictures after this one. But look! I was 14 and already perfecting my “fuck you, I am so badass” pout. Abbey looks exactly the same. Then again, she has since she was about five.
So, I was offered a well-paying, potentially interesting and career-building job at a major company today without even doing anything beyond posting my resume on Monster.com two days ago and giving a good phone interview. I don’t know if I’m going to take it, but for now, that’s all I’ll say considering how careers and personal websites don’t have harmonious relationships.
On a lighter note, if I’m going to get the KILLER FLU, I wish it would hurry up and just invade me. My body keeps giving all these teasing hints of the KILLER FLU, like a scratchy throat and slight fever and shoulder-blade aches, but I keep warding it off with juice and vitamins. I’m going to Virginia on Thursday for the holidays, and I just know some unhygienic sneezer is going to blow droplets in my direction, and the minute I step off the plane, I will collapse to the ground, finally at the mercy of the KILLER FLU. I hope I get lots of hits for the KILLER FLU now. Just in case: are you looking to prevent this nation’s pandemic? Mashed garlic, vitamin C and zinc tablets and ginger tea are your friends. Except not all at once.
Chris just spent the last hour giving me an air guitar/drum/vocal performance to Guns-n-Roses album Appetite of Destruction, so I’m feeling a little worn out. Plus, I’m wearing a really itchy winter sweater and that’s just exhausting in itself.
As usual, I’m the last one awake in the house. This isn’t something I necessarily enjoy – I’ve always liked falling asleep to voices in the living room and low lights through the door hinges. Being up by myself at night incites all sorts of weird phobias: are the doors locked? Why is someone laughing in the alley at this time of night? And the classic play-along-at-home game of: “What’s that sound?”
I suppose, despite the uneasiness, I feel most wholly myself late at night. I still worry and I still notice every ache and pain and subtle nuance of my body, but I’m observant and dignified instead of tinny and high-pitched.
I get tired of tinny. I get exhausted from trying to be a million different people to see if one fits me better than the other. I eat garlic cloves for the antibody properties, and make myself kissable again with candy canes from the Christmas tree. Is that me? Am I the girl who’ll stand diligently at the butcher board, carefully cutting cloves with a dull knife? Or am I the girl who keeps a bag of chips (sans chip clip) stashed in her desk drawer? And why is this all about food?
The cat is sneaking pistachio shells from my garbage can. I can hear the fang scrape, and then the soft slide as she spits a shell onto the carpet.
I have a humidifier in the bedroom. I eat yogurt and oranges and whole-wheat everything. I don’t cook my vegetables and I wash my hands with organic soap several times throughout the day. At night, I brush my teeth and chase the toothpaste with Pepto and Rolaids. When the house is asleep, I can almost hear my stomach flipping against my ribs.
I’m in writing slump. It should be solved by tomorrow when I go to a social soiree that will inspire me to write interesting and beautiful and hilarious paragraphs that will probably touch on the themes of music, human beings and the various liquids I spill on my shirt throughout the night.
For now, feast your eyes on the above picture. It’s a very very ordinary picture; I don’t even remember what was going on at the time. It looks like Chris just discovered a very small child in his arms and I’m trying to claw its eyes out. Either way, I applied every Paint Shop Pro filter I could to this picture, my favorites being the ultra-soft focus and the awful tape picture frame. I would really like to go into the business of horrible PSP-altered photography, but so many people do a better job with that, and plus, all I really want to do is soft focus everything.
I also updated my Zosia page, but it isn’t that interesting because, like I said, Writing Slump. I do say the word “cyclops,” though and there’s a picture that involves a soft-focused fake flower.
Edit: I’m not actually topless in that picture. I was at the Mormon Wedding Reception, and there ain’t no toplessness with the Mormons.*
*at least, not with these Mormons.
I forgot to mention – if anyone wants a Christmas card with an awesome bat stamp on it, drop me a line with your address at batxmas AT zosiablue DOT com. This offer is extended to complete strangers, non-complete strangers and nerd-friends I don’t have addresses for.
There’s a blizzard outside. I’m going to bundle up in trendy snow-wear and shovel the walkways and by trendy I mean green mechanic coveralls, rainbow gloves and extra-large red plaid plastic boots. I’ll be so hot that snow’ll just melt in front of me and there’ll be no need for shoveling. Swizzle*.
*This is slang Chris’s cousin made up to combat the growing popularity of “sweet.” It was apparently introduced before the “shizzle my nizzle” trend, so take it accordingly.
I’m boiling water for spaghetti, so I’m in my room multi-tasking because waiting for water to boil is one of my least favorite activities in the world. Lately, I’m seeing things. Not hallucinations, but movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn around fast, and it’s just the lapel of my red raincoat or the cat slinking into the closet or sometimes it’s nothing at all. I think things are falling, and when I go to catch them, they’re standing upright. That’s not symbolism; I’m talking about my electric toothbrush that balances on the sink.
Right now, my playlist just switched from Aphex Twin to WHAM! singing an 80s Christmas carol. I know there must be some meaning in this. Today, I got a box of soap crayons from my household Secret Santa. You’re supposed to draw on shower tile with them, but I drew a giant blue swirl on my back bedroom wall and now it sits staring at the back of my head like an angry 5-year-old’s target. Let’s hope my landlords don’t come in my room anytime soon.
I was thinking today how exhausting hope is. The idea that: I’m going to pretend everything’s going to be okay, even though all internal signs point to the opposite. The battle is tiring. I think I’m doing hope wrong. At least I hope so. (Har.)
We have colored lights hung in our living room. I like to sit in there, reading The Dark Twoer series, drinking tea with candy canes melted on the bottom of the cup, petting the cat, though she makes me slightly allergic.
I’ve smelled sawdust all week. That’s either the cat or a brain tumor.
. . .
Also:
Current things I have overwhelming obsessions with:
1. The Aphex Twin song Boy-Girl Song
2. Moscato D’Asti white wine – I’ve never been a wine person or a person who treats an alcoholic drink as just a beverage (as when I do drink, I do it to get a buzz), but this wine changes everything
3. In the same vein, Fuzzy Navels (with Low Acid orange juice – my ulcer loves me)
4. The colored Christmas lights hung in our living room
5. The Dark Tower series
6. Tweaking my new computer
7. My new citrus flavored toothpaste
8. Christmas candles
9. Veggie stir-fry
10. The bat stamps I bought online. I think I might be a stamp nerd. But seriously. Look at those bats. I laughed for two days straight when I found them. I’m going to put them on Christmas cards.
I’ll be updating every day again starting tonight. I’ve been busy getting my new computer set up and ordering RAM and playing with the cat, so the internet has suffered under my feline and nerd distractions. Also, I should finally get my mail transferred over tomorrow, so people I owe e-mails (such as Misty and Celina) should get treats in their inbox. Well. Not treats. But replies, nonetheless.
. . .
I’ve been looking at Kevin Fanning’s pictures of his almost-year old son, who is seriously the Cutest Child in the Universe, and I found that biological tug going, “Aww, look at this fucking shit. We should have one.” And then I remember how I lose sleep over the new cat being in the laundry room where I can’t see her (because what is she chewing on? is that sound the sound of kitty teeth on dryer sheets? IS THAT POISONOUS, OH GOD) and all thoughts of children dissipate. And, you know, the whole not actually really wanting to have kids in general thing. At least not for ten or sixty years.
. . .
“And you know, even though I’m a big whiny baby when it comes to myself, I want you to know if you were in trouble or needed help, I would help you, no matter what.”
“Aww, thanks.”
“I mean, if you were drowning in an ocean near Australia, I would be there.”
“What about the sharks and jellyfish?”
“They wouldn’t come near me.”
“Life isn’t actually a movie, you know. You’re not immune to dangerous sea life.”
“Well, I would still find a way to get to you.”
“But you don’t know how to swim. I mean, would you just learn all of a sudden? It’d probably be more trouble than it’s worth.”
“…”
“Just being realistic.”
“I’m never saying anything sweet to you again.”
I tell him I don’t want to go, even though I’m not sure that’s true. It’s more like: I can’t go, no really, I can’t, I want to, I’m not even dressed yet, I can’t. He leaves, and I hear his car starting in the garage. Something changes, and I run out the back door in a red plaid bathrobe and bare feet. He catches me halfway to the gate. In the house, he warms my now-stinging feet with a sweatshirt and then feeds me Mini-Wheats as I frantically stand at my closet, trying to find something to wear. We’re going to be late.
We’re standing outside the restaurant and she’s smoking. I’m drunk from white wine and freezing. She’s telling me a secret and I’ve just met her tonight. I’m thinking: am I being cool enough? Am I talking too much? I do that when I drink. She says my name and the guitar player with the Connor Oberst eyes turns and says: “Jennifer. What a beautiful name.” He must’ve been kidding.
I feel like something is clawing me from the inside out. This isn’t a new feeling, but this particular brand of it has been absent from my emotional repertoire for at least a year. He was trying to be nice, but I stand in the kitchen and I yell at him. I’ve never yelled at him like this before. He stands at the sink and methodically cleans a pizza cutter. He is shaking. He takes his pizza and pushes past me. His left eye with the finicky vein is bright red and wet. Days later, I still can’t get the sound of my voice echoing off the lights or the view of his vein out of my head.
On the ride home, we have full stomachs and a new cat. I’m shoving my face into the spot between the cat’s ears, talking nonsense to her. I’ve had two glasses of wine, and though I don’t feel it, I can taste it on the inside of my mouth. We pass a tree with blue lights strung in the branches. I look at him, he looks at me and everything that was ever anything happens in the split second between our look and a blink.
He says: what’s your life purpose? I laugh nervously and start to shred my paper cup, spilling water on the couch in the process. I say: I don’t know how to answer that. Can you tell me why I’m so angry lately? He says: At least you’re feeling something and that’s a change, isn’t it? Do you still want to be an actor? I say: I’m feeling too much. Yes. He says: You can never feel too much. Now find the stage and go.
I’ve been absent for no notable reason. I’ve been waiting on my new computer so I could be ultra-nerdy and say, “It’s the first of December and this is my first post from my new computer!” but it hasn’t come yet. It’s supposed to be here today, and I’ve been anxiously awaiting it’s arrival. It’s like I’ve adopted a child from China. I ran some errands around town for a while, so I even left the UPS person a letter begging them to forfeit a signature and leave my computer in the front hallway. I told the UPS person I loved them and attached a candy cane to the note, just in case. But no computer.
I’ll have more to say later, but I wanted to get the cat picture off the front page. I can’t have it getting around that I’m an internet cat blogger or even worse, a cat person – though my dogs have never been interested in rousing games of hide-and-go-seek like this cat is. I nearly killed myself trying to unearth Lucy from the cupboard that holds the pots and pans.
Happy December. My advent candy today was a house with a smoking chimney, whatever that might mean.
