It's showtime, baby.
Well, not for me. Not yet. My showtime, the true test to see if there is a drop of creative blood left in my body, comes later tonight. Tonight, as I sit with a bottle of Jameson at my left and a pack of Camel Lights at my right, I am put through the artistic ringer... Tonight, as I sit trying to write a ten minute show by eight a.m. tomorrow with suggestions pulled out of hats, put there by sadistic audience members that really love to watch writers squirm.
They don't really, but I will curse them in such a way in the small hours of this morning, when I'm not even close to finished and everything I have is shit. We shall see, my friends, we shall soon see...
A good friend said last night that 'good sketch writing' means that every line, every last word adds something to the plot, furthers the character, and is funny. That's a lot of pressure, per word. I'm not positve my rusty artist bones are going to be able to withstand the assault.
...And I have yet to mention that I probably won't even start writing until two this morning, because it is the last show of my friend's band, so I have to drag my exhausted self out to a bar.
...And try and get two of my friends laid, one of whom has no place to stay because I didn't call two days ago to confirm the hotel reservations I made for him?
Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. It's going to be an interesting evening.
Friday, May 30, 2008
Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Fate's bad joke, Romance's punchline...
When I say 'finished with,' I mean 'sleep with when drinking until further notice.'
It isn't so much a problem as it is a minor inconvenience. It's not a conflict, more an issue. As in, I take issue with the fact that he's so good in bed I can't seem to kick him out of it. (Last night, we dutifully christened every room of my new apartment- and there wasn't even a bed yet.)
I bristle at this admission like I am above it. In truth, none of us are. I am lead to believe, if my experiences and those of my close friends are any indication, that all of us with a serious former relationship have serious problems with the 'former' part.
I'm not sure if it's because of the sex stuff...or the love stuff.
It might be because loving a person, actually loving them, takes a certain ammount of self-saacrifice. Parts of who we are eventually go from sacrificed to lost. Maybe, in this post-breakup togetherness, we simply seek to find the parts of ourselves we've sacrificed to be with them. Almost like giving back the movies he left at your place. Or trying to get back your hairdryer.... Don't ask.
Could be the sex thing... When you've been with someone for any ammount of time, the sexual chemistry is either there or it isn't. If it is, you can imagine the unwillingness to let it slip away. Great sex, like good help and acceptable Chinese food, is hard to find. So when you have it, and you want it, you probably won't let it go without a fight. And some rug burns...
...until something better comes along. This is unfair. Completely true, but unfair.
If you've played the game of love and lost, is it breaking the rules to jump back onto the field for sex?
It isn't so much a problem as it is a minor inconvenience. It's not a conflict, more an issue. As in, I take issue with the fact that he's so good in bed I can't seem to kick him out of it. (Last night, we dutifully christened every room of my new apartment- and there wasn't even a bed yet.)
I bristle at this admission like I am above it. In truth, none of us are. I am lead to believe, if my experiences and those of my close friends are any indication, that all of us with a serious former relationship have serious problems with the 'former' part.
I'm not sure if it's because of the sex stuff...or the love stuff.
It might be because loving a person, actually loving them, takes a certain ammount of self-saacrifice. Parts of who we are eventually go from sacrificed to lost. Maybe, in this post-breakup togetherness, we simply seek to find the parts of ourselves we've sacrificed to be with them. Almost like giving back the movies he left at your place. Or trying to get back your hairdryer.... Don't ask.
Could be the sex thing... When you've been with someone for any ammount of time, the sexual chemistry is either there or it isn't. If it is, you can imagine the unwillingness to let it slip away. Great sex, like good help and acceptable Chinese food, is hard to find. So when you have it, and you want it, you probably won't let it go without a fight. And some rug burns...
...until something better comes along. This is unfair. Completely true, but unfair.
If you've played the game of love and lost, is it breaking the rules to jump back onto the field for sex?
Monday, May 26, 2008
Heart in a jar...
Tonight, you arrested my mind.
Then you came to my defense
with a knife in the shape your mouth,
in the form of your body,
with the wrath of a god.
So you stood by me, and
I'll stand by my belief.
What you say tonight ends this fiasco forever.
It doesn't matter the words you use- I am past caring what they are. I am determined to hear only silence, only finality in whatever it is you decide to say. This conversation is overdue enough... I don't care about the words. You will never hear me say that again.
What happens tonight ends this, or I walk away from you. In the next minutes, the next hours, you break my heart one last time and then it is over. Done, or your life's going to be my hell.
I would wish you luck, but you don't deserve it.
Then you came to my defense
with a knife in the shape your mouth,
in the form of your body,
with the wrath of a god.
So you stood by me, and
I'll stand by my belief.
What you say tonight ends this fiasco forever.
It doesn't matter the words you use- I am past caring what they are. I am determined to hear only silence, only finality in whatever it is you decide to say. This conversation is overdue enough... I don't care about the words. You will never hear me say that again.
What happens tonight ends this, or I walk away from you. In the next minutes, the next hours, you break my heart one last time and then it is over. Done, or your life's going to be my hell.
I would wish you luck, but you don't deserve it.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
If you go, go quietly...
Yesterday, I drove my brother and his new wife to the airport in Minneapolis so they could catch a plane- To Anchorage, Alaska, where they will be spending the next three years. My newly acquried sister-in-law is in the air force and is stationed there for the rest of her enlistment term.
I cried. My mom cried. My brother cried... Ok, we all cried. A lot.
I realized on the drive home, with my mother sobbing in the passenger seat, that some of my tears weren't the sad goodbye kind. I will miss my brother, of course, but, the more I think about it, I cried for something else too.
I'm jealous.
Dan and Desiree are starting a new life in someplace different. Somewhere away from home, forced to support themselves, thrown everyday into something new and exciting and terrifying, expected to lean on each other to form a solid marriage that will last. And here I remain, the days running together in an uncreative line, the same scenery and same drama and same...well, everyting.
My brother is going places. I'm going crazy.
I cried. My mom cried. My brother cried... Ok, we all cried. A lot.
I realized on the drive home, with my mother sobbing in the passenger seat, that some of my tears weren't the sad goodbye kind. I will miss my brother, of course, but, the more I think about it, I cried for something else too.
I'm jealous.
Dan and Desiree are starting a new life in someplace different. Somewhere away from home, forced to support themselves, thrown everyday into something new and exciting and terrifying, expected to lean on each other to form a solid marriage that will last. And here I remain, the days running together in an uncreative line, the same scenery and same drama and same...well, everyting.
My brother is going places. I'm going crazy.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Altered states...
..and it kind of hurts when the
kind of words you write
kind of turn themselves into knives, and don't
mind my nerve, you can call it fiction, but I
like being submerged
in your contradictions.
I'm beginning to think I've found my calling. That thing I'm supposed to be doing with my life, the undeniable pull towards a pursuit so utterly noble that all around me cannot help but admire my complete sense of purpose...
I belive there's a yeah, right in there somewhere. Or perhaps a gee, Lauren what is it you are supposed to do with your life? What has called you so greatly to action?
It would seem, my friends, that I have been called to the humble existence of the village idiot. This is the only possible assumption, especially if my behavior continues as it has with no end in sight and seemingly no way to control it...
Idiot. Inappropriate. Ridiculous.
kind of words you write
kind of turn themselves into knives, and don't
mind my nerve, you can call it fiction, but I
like being submerged
in your contradictions.
I'm beginning to think I've found my calling. That thing I'm supposed to be doing with my life, the undeniable pull towards a pursuit so utterly noble that all around me cannot help but admire my complete sense of purpose...
I belive there's a yeah, right in there somewhere. Or perhaps a gee, Lauren what is it you are supposed to do with your life? What has called you so greatly to action?
It would seem, my friends, that I have been called to the humble existence of the village idiot. This is the only possible assumption, especially if my behavior continues as it has with no end in sight and seemingly no way to control it...
Idiot. Inappropriate. Ridiculous.
Saturday, May 10, 2008
And the beat changes, goes on...
For the moments leading up to this one, I blame you.
For this moment, I blame me.
It's a beautiful morning. Well, it would be, if it were November. As it is May, I'm going to call it pretty...
The sun is rising in all those hazy colors over a lake covered in fog and it is so damned cliche, so fucking romantic I could claw out my own eyes for having witnessed such a spectacular tragedy. The morning that follows this ridiculous parody of a Shakespearean sunrise can shove it. And the day that grows from this morning, well, might as well never happen.
I didn't plan on ending up here. I never do with you. But I had something to say and you needed to hear it... It wasn't going to be nice, but I'd had just enough Jameson and just about enough of this soap opera you and I call a friendship to be a little mean.
The drive to your house seems scant seconds, not nearly long enough to calm myself, so when I pull into your driveway, I am seething. I am ready to yell and rant and rage until you and I have made sense of all of this. I am going to pace and smoke and-
Do...nothing...at all. You aren't home. Where the hell are you? I need to get rid of this ridiculousness in my brain...somehow. Like I said, for this moment, I blame you.
I decide to drive. An early morning trip up the shore seems like a good idea. There's a backup pack of cigarettes in the glovebox and I can turn on some Jason Mraz and- Fuck. Not Jason Mraz, does he have to make me think about you? I hate that we have the same taste in music. And now that I think about it, Gavin DeGraw, John Mayer, Johnny Cash, The White Stripes, and Matchbox 20 are all out of the question... Damn.
As I search through the cd's I haven't discarded, I catch a glimpse of my gas gauge. The orange needle is mocking me, dancing perilously close to 'E.' With gas prices as they are, a drive is the wrong idea, but it would seem I have nowhere to go. Even my precious Caribou Coffee still sleeps, oblivious that it is abandoning me in my hour of need. Oh well, I guess I'll always have you, pack of Camel Lights.
I pull a cigarette from its box, and I manage a sort of bittersweet smile as I savor that first inhale. I watch the smoke curl and writhe around the inside of the car and it is just as trapped as I am, the lost wanderer of the air on a too-cold morning in May, grasping for a place to be and finding no such hold. It is as if nothing-
Fuck this. I cannot sit in your driveway waxing poetic about cigarette smoke all damn day. I have to get out of here.
Where to? Where to chain smoke with a pen in one hand and coffee in the other?
Where does a heartsick pile of twenty-something woman go to escape the sunrise and its relentless consequences?
To keep you in my life, will I always run from the mornings?
For this moment, I blame me.
It's a beautiful morning. Well, it would be, if it were November. As it is May, I'm going to call it pretty...
The sun is rising in all those hazy colors over a lake covered in fog and it is so damned cliche, so fucking romantic I could claw out my own eyes for having witnessed such a spectacular tragedy. The morning that follows this ridiculous parody of a Shakespearean sunrise can shove it. And the day that grows from this morning, well, might as well never happen.
I didn't plan on ending up here. I never do with you. But I had something to say and you needed to hear it... It wasn't going to be nice, but I'd had just enough Jameson and just about enough of this soap opera you and I call a friendship to be a little mean.
The drive to your house seems scant seconds, not nearly long enough to calm myself, so when I pull into your driveway, I am seething. I am ready to yell and rant and rage until you and I have made sense of all of this. I am going to pace and smoke and-
Do...nothing...at all. You aren't home. Where the hell are you? I need to get rid of this ridiculousness in my brain...somehow. Like I said, for this moment, I blame you.
I decide to drive. An early morning trip up the shore seems like a good idea. There's a backup pack of cigarettes in the glovebox and I can turn on some Jason Mraz and- Fuck. Not Jason Mraz, does he have to make me think about you? I hate that we have the same taste in music. And now that I think about it, Gavin DeGraw, John Mayer, Johnny Cash, The White Stripes, and Matchbox 20 are all out of the question... Damn.
As I search through the cd's I haven't discarded, I catch a glimpse of my gas gauge. The orange needle is mocking me, dancing perilously close to 'E.' With gas prices as they are, a drive is the wrong idea, but it would seem I have nowhere to go. Even my precious Caribou Coffee still sleeps, oblivious that it is abandoning me in my hour of need. Oh well, I guess I'll always have you, pack of Camel Lights.
I pull a cigarette from its box, and I manage a sort of bittersweet smile as I savor that first inhale. I watch the smoke curl and writhe around the inside of the car and it is just as trapped as I am, the lost wanderer of the air on a too-cold morning in May, grasping for a place to be and finding no such hold. It is as if nothing-
Fuck this. I cannot sit in your driveway waxing poetic about cigarette smoke all damn day. I have to get out of here.
Where to? Where to chain smoke with a pen in one hand and coffee in the other?
Where does a heartsick pile of twenty-something woman go to escape the sunrise and its relentless consequences?
To keep you in my life, will I always run from the mornings?
Saturday, May 3, 2008
All's fair...
Today, a friend of mine mentioned the saying, "Anything worth fighting for is worth fighting dirty for."
I've decided to start fighting dirty.
Let the games begin.
You have no idea what you are in for, kid.
I've decided to start fighting dirty.
Let the games begin.
You have no idea what you are in for, kid.
Thursday, May 1, 2008
Stranded at a 24 Hour Diner...
You see I always wanted to kiss you and I,
always wanted to run from you because
I always wanted to miss you and I,
I always wanted to come for you...
I've been stood up. By my own sanity.
Sure, we've been on the rocks lately. We've had some troubles. There was that mess with the tequila shots and my roommate's boyfriend's car, and that time we skipped work to drive to Baudette because we couldn't sleep and I wanted to see Willy the Walleye. And there is of course, the never-ending, consistently ridiculous battle we're having over my intensely screwed up love life that usually ends in consuming mass quantities of Jameson.
...But, we were going to give it a try. Take some time, give each other the necessary space, retreat to our separate corners and try not to come out swinging.
The plan: Monday night movie fest while packing to leave my beautiful house. I was going to bring the popcorn and grass, and dear old Sanity was supposed to bring the rational thought and logical decision making. Only, Sanity decided not to show.
Apparently, there was something better going on.
So there I was, all alone and without Sanity, when who should decide to call me for a drink but the Prince of Lies himself. Naturally, I got all dolled up and went walking into the bar he commanded my presence in. Being sans Sanity, I had no choice in the matter.
Three beers and four torturously intimate cigarette breaks later, we are back at my house. There is some small talk and a half-hearted attempt at watching a movie before Prince and I are naked, I am vulnerable, and we are complicating our nonexistent relationship- Again.
We manage to stop, however, before 'everything but' turns into 'all the way.' This is not because he miraculously develops self-control or because Sanity showed up late with an apology and a pizza. It's because I seem to have forgotten which box I packed the condoms in. If Sanity isn't going to help me, Dumb Luck seems to be my new best friend.
Things...cease, and it seems impossible for me to lay next to him for another second. I reach for enough clothes to cover and enough cash to get some breakfast, tiptoe up the stairs, drop my keys on the tile floor twice, and head out the door.
I chain-smoke as I drive, cursing every CD in my car for reminding me we have the same taste in music. There is no destination, I only hope to remain gone from the house long enough for him to wake up and get the hell out. I silently beg this one small favor of him, please don't make me come home to you, because it feels too good to let the day begin with you next to me.
I end up, two hours later, at a Perkins Restaurant in Wisconsin. (God love the cheeseheads for not passing a smoking ban.) It is there I sit, cursing Sanity for leaving me high and dry and starting this whole messy business over again.
I'm in the market for a replacement. How about Reason? Passion? Rage? I hear Rage is a hoot at parties...What do you think?
always wanted to run from you because
I always wanted to miss you and I,
I always wanted to come for you...
I've been stood up. By my own sanity.
Sure, we've been on the rocks lately. We've had some troubles. There was that mess with the tequila shots and my roommate's boyfriend's car, and that time we skipped work to drive to Baudette because we couldn't sleep and I wanted to see Willy the Walleye. And there is of course, the never-ending, consistently ridiculous battle we're having over my intensely screwed up love life that usually ends in consuming mass quantities of Jameson.
...But, we were going to give it a try. Take some time, give each other the necessary space, retreat to our separate corners and try not to come out swinging.
The plan: Monday night movie fest while packing to leave my beautiful house. I was going to bring the popcorn and grass, and dear old Sanity was supposed to bring the rational thought and logical decision making. Only, Sanity decided not to show.
Apparently, there was something better going on.
So there I was, all alone and without Sanity, when who should decide to call me for a drink but the Prince of Lies himself. Naturally, I got all dolled up and went walking into the bar he commanded my presence in. Being sans Sanity, I had no choice in the matter.
Three beers and four torturously intimate cigarette breaks later, we are back at my house. There is some small talk and a half-hearted attempt at watching a movie before Prince and I are naked, I am vulnerable, and we are complicating our nonexistent relationship- Again.
We manage to stop, however, before 'everything but' turns into 'all the way.' This is not because he miraculously develops self-control or because Sanity showed up late with an apology and a pizza. It's because I seem to have forgotten which box I packed the condoms in. If Sanity isn't going to help me, Dumb Luck seems to be my new best friend.
Things...cease, and it seems impossible for me to lay next to him for another second. I reach for enough clothes to cover and enough cash to get some breakfast, tiptoe up the stairs, drop my keys on the tile floor twice, and head out the door.
I chain-smoke as I drive, cursing every CD in my car for reminding me we have the same taste in music. There is no destination, I only hope to remain gone from the house long enough for him to wake up and get the hell out. I silently beg this one small favor of him, please don't make me come home to you, because it feels too good to let the day begin with you next to me.
I end up, two hours later, at a Perkins Restaurant in Wisconsin. (God love the cheeseheads for not passing a smoking ban.) It is there I sit, cursing Sanity for leaving me high and dry and starting this whole messy business over again.
I'm in the market for a replacement. How about Reason? Passion? Rage? I hear Rage is a hoot at parties...What do you think?
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