c u r r e n t l y

Wanting to tell you that if you think my eyebrows are bad in the above selfie that I have shared apropos of nothing, you should see them now. I took that picture two weeks ago and have groomed them zero times. They're getting to a point where I sort of admire their audacity. That they're at a point where they can accurately be described as audacious and that I spent a full minute in the bathroom mirror at work today in actual awe of the way so many hairs grow a centimeter away from any spaces where it would be helpful for them to grow - that, friends, speaks to something. It does. I've just lost track of what since I started to tell you about it. 

Reading the piles and piles of forty-eight cent books I've accumulated from The Strand since Diego started working near there. Or trying to. I keep just re-reading books I've already read, like, I visited my mom recently:

and grabbed a Chuck Palahniuk I forgot I had there off the shelf and read it again. (Speaking of whom, she keeps saying things like, "Maybe one weekend we'll drive some boxes of your stuff to your apartment!" which I feel like is rude because I don't see what's wrong with my plan of just taking one book home every time I visit for the next forty years. It's cool though. I thought you loved seeing me, Mom, but it's cool. Message received.) Or I'm carefully sifting through the duct-taped pages of Margaret Atwoods that have somehow survived a decade's worth of beatings via the inside of a series of tote bags. Or I'm being salty that I let a friend borrow my copy of Down and Out in Paris and London a few years ago and haven't gotten it back yet because I REALLY WANT TO READ IT FOR THE TENTH TIME. THE TENTH TIME IS THE BEST TIME EVERYBODY KNOWS THAT.

Anyway, so, Reading something by Alice Hoffman that I forgot the name of because it's all the way in the other room. Illumination Night! So far a lady has jumped out of a window. But something about Alice Hoffman stories make me feel all autumn-y inside so I feel like I'll probably finish this one tonight provided I ever finish telling you about all of the things that are current.

Watching myself type this, obviously. But Alice Hoffman reminded me of Practical Magic (which is on Netflix now!!) which reminded me of the last movie I watched which was Face Off which is my favorite movie of all time since I watched it on Sunday night.  I saw it when it came out on VHS, but most of the time if a movie like that was on I was watching it with my brother and my mom's BFF's two sons. Which meant that what I was really doing was reading a book and/or writing in my diary with gel pen about the wretchedness of being surrounded by boys, while in front of the television three or more male children hopped around excitedly shouting "THIS IS MY FAVORITE PART! READY? READY? WATCH! THIS IS THE BEST PART!" So on Sunday when Adult Lindsay watched Face Off, she realized that it has everything she's ever wanted in a Lifetime movie PLUS Nicholas Cage's facial expressions.

Planning to count how many times I've said "which" since I started this. Seems like a lot of times. Whiches, witches, Halloween! Costumes! Planning costumes. I'm so good at this. I accidentally already picked mine while trying to get ready a few weeks ago:

If I can get Diego to be Rizzo I'm going as Sandy. You're the one that I love most, plastic shiny pants I bought online for reasons I cannot recall or comprehend. 

Anticipating:

And, like, I don't know, carving jack-o-lanterns and picking apples and stuff. But mostly the five-dollar box of commercials and tiny shampoos. 

“Our grand tapestry depicts the handwritten poem ‘Le Temps a Laissé Son Manteau,’ expertly printed on canvas.”

“Borrowing the intricate rococo flourish from an antique mirror, this grand pinboard elegantly frames a rotating display of photos, notes and treasured mementos.”

Who are these infants who have treasured mementos to display on thousand dollar pinboards whilst I, an adult lady, is scouring Amazon for the best deal on chalk so I can write YOU’RE OUT OF COFFEE JERKS on the square of chalkboard paint the tenants before us put there (and by “put” I mean “spun around in a circle with their eyes closed while holding a wet paintbrush, stumbling toward whatever wall they happened to be facing, and then moving the paintbrush-wielding arm in a rough approximation of a rectangle”)?  A “distressed canvas play tent” for three hundred dollars? THAT IS A TEEPEE. And for three hundred dollars I hope it comes with a bedtime story about how all the real teepees were burned down. Or ruined with scalp blood. Or however history went, I don’t know, I just feel like little Harlow or Max or whoever ought to know that there used to be zero dollar teepees to play in before SOMEBODY rubbed smallpox on everything.

I was waiting in line to give the nice admissions people at the MoNH laughably, laughably less than the suggested admission the other day when the mom standing behind me with her child spotted an outlet in a far corner. The speed and force at which she sent that kid toward that corner was such that I honestly, honestly thought that she could see the Virgin Mother floating above it. It was truly as though we were twelve weeks into an Odysseyen trek toward a tree bed and that outlet was a sexy, sexy siren. And then when the outlet didn't work - my brothers and sisters, I kid thee not when I tell you: There was actual anguish on the mother's face. Real, unadulterated anguish. Anyway it's moments like that I try to keep in mind when it feels like everyone has more money than me for distressed toy boxes full of iPads for each of their five kids' separate bedrooms in the apartments that they are somehow owners of while I live in near-constant fear that my converted-from-a-boarding-house one-bedroom over the bridge will be taken away from me because why would I be allowed to stay somewhere I love so much?

("Oh, that Lindsay. She really flew too close to the sun with her middling admin job and those windows that don't fit any of the standard-sized curtains sold in the tri-state area. She should have known it was all too good to be true when the desk people at Urgent Care were shocked into whispered conversations by how high her copay was. It was only a matter of time before the universe said it was just kidding and set everything on fire and exposed how terrible everything actually was supposed to be. She was 100% right to be so constantly worried.")

Someday soon I ought to actually read one of those emails from the cringe-y rotund woman at work about 401Ks, and perhaps funnel some of my amazon-cat-art-and-cigarette money into one. Someday less soon I would like to make a tiny Mexican-Lindsay hybrid. I'll keep it away from outlets as a general rule, I think, at least for a while, but I might distress a dresser drawer or two. For now though, what I want is to sit by this open window and watch the people walk by and listen to Nick Drake for as many hours as I want to, because nobody needs me to wipe their butt just yet.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,

my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.

So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,

and over our heads the grey light unwinds in turning fans

Pablo Neruda

[I was dreaming of you but]
just then
Dawn, in her golden sandals
                               [woke me]
Sappho

Last Saturday (the one where it was approximately 1059857 degrees in the shade AKA too hot to be a person AND we didn’t have internet) (if it seems like I’m obsessed with the weather lately it’s because I am, THE HUMANITY, honestly) I was watching It (because it’s the only DVD we own) while folding the hot clothes that had just come out of the dryer (whilst softly sobbing at my lot in life) and I realized that we have the exact same sink as Beverly Marsh. You know. This one:

Source: Me. I took it on set. Definitely not Google Images.

If you can tear your eyes away from baby Seth Green, that’s mine and Beverly’s BFF sink. (My heart burns there too, gurrl.) Except that mine is covered in hair instead of blood. Usually.

Our last apartment’s shower had what I lovingly referred to as the “Scary ‘It’ Drain.” Before that, the foyer of the building I lived in reminded me of the scene in the movie where Richie goes into the school basement to get a mop and Mr. Marsh is DRUNK AS A SKUNK and then a werewolf comes. I’ve sussed out similarities to It scenes in every place I’ve lived since I saw most of the movie from my hiding place next to our couch while I was supposed to be napping. I also still have nightmares starring Tim Curry, which are terrifying but also impressive re: the caliber of Dream Tim Curry’s performances.

It’s so cute how our Reptar brains are sometimes like, “GAH SABER-TOOTHED TIGER ['Or scary clown,' I later edit in because I realize that I made zero connection between Pennywise and the tiger in my head or in this blog]” even though we keep telling them there aren’t any of those left. I keep forgetting to tell mine, actually, which maybe is why it seems to think that there’s one crouching behind everybody who says “hi” weird. Or that there’s one hiding in the middle of all those people over there, and as soon as I go over and stand with them it’s going to knock me over and poke me in the eye with its tooth. Or that one saber-toothed tiger that follows me around all the time, like, no big deal, everyone, this tiger just follows me around all the time, I’m fine though, this is fine. Everything’s fine. Except that it might bite my legs off at any moment and there’s no way to tell when it’s going to happen and there’s nothing I’ll be able to do about it anyway, so. Thanks! Thanks for asking! Her name's Maude! Anyway, by “it’s so cute” I mean cute as in how babies are cute, by which I mean exhausting and I get a headache after a while.

Here's what my brain did this week:

My days have been too long and too quiet, is maybe why. It's Friday now, I'm leaving work in twenty minutes and I'm going to eat my body weight in sushi and wash it all down with beers and by the time Monday rolls around I will have had a mental refresh (I'm saying that in my head like RE!fresh) and I'll have that tiger on a daisy chain like the lady in the cards.

It was only later that the map’s breath could be heard. Apart from lungs, from wind. A beating.

THE INTERNET, that strange and uncertain frontier, was the perfect kind of fertile. It occurs to me now to wonder if the seeds I was dropping in fact led me there, pieces of the secret parts of me as they were, minions of the map that lived (lives, still) in the molecules of my more malleable parts. It occurs to me to wonder, but at the moment this salivating and breathy map of mine wants us to focus on our presence before the vast expanse. On our expanding ribcage, the hot pressure of a rapidly swelling flesh balloon.

We allow the glass to dull the edges a bit, is how we keep going. I tuck my tiny rectangle away because when given the choice I prefer not to be a caricature and am rewarded with more opportunities to be horrified at myself. The man, for example, vigorously emptying the contents of his stomach onto the floor of the car I’m about to get onto only very slightly alters the trajectory of my evening. The following is a spoiler: I do not make sure he gets home safely. I do not make sure he has a home to get to, safely or otherwise. I only just now, at the time of this writing, hope that he had someone to make him rinse his mouth out before he went to bed. I didn’t hope it then because I didn’t have room to. If I let those type of hopes bubble up when they wanted to, I’d fall over. I’d overflow. Seated a distance I judge to be too far away for vomit to splash, I listen to two other men discuss in great detail and at great volume the ripped-ness of a third (absent) man. He works out a lot, has very little body fat. He eats only brown rice and vegetables. They repeat these facts to each other, over and over, in as many different ways as they can think of. It’s not a lot of different ways. Finally I have to look, I have to know the source of this inanity. But I don’t, really, because first I see that one of them has a wound on his leg that is openly bleeding. Another spoiler: I do not say, You’re… bleeding. You are bleeding blood. Kind of a lot.  I do not think, BLOOD. I am not moved to action. No. I think, THIS is what I get for trying to “be present.” This is what the present has to offer.

But we cannot simply sit and stare at our wounds forever.
Haruki Murakami

We had to take headshots at work, and everyone’s photographed selves turned out a little denser than their alive selves. So I didn’t mind too much about that, but the beginnings of lines around my eyes were unsettling. I’m not actually going to live forever.

I made this today while I was on hold (so, all day) (so, this is basically what I did today) (along with ruminate, which I just learned is the name of the thing I am sometimes doing) (I'm working on a post on compulsions, specifically mine because I know marginally more about those specific ones than about, you know, compulsions in general) (although it is possible to know more about a "thing" in the general sense than you know about it in the sense that it applies directly to you, I guess) (anyway it is specifically a "blog post" and not just regular writing because I want to put it on the internet because it turns out that the internet is directly involved in said compulsions, so, poetry and things - and that makes it harder because a lot of it is SHAMEFUL! like I already feel like I've said too much aah) (nobody cares, please see below):