On seeing something I can't touch

The following is a little something I wrote on a borrowed laptop computer from my friend, Zachary. I mused to myself for an afternoon, struggling with what I will do next in a creative context. It is very very honest because I wrote it to myself (even though I added "dear zachary" to the top).


dear zachary,

this is your computer and i've chosen to write on it because the internet is proving to be nothing but a locked basement with no lights on in which i keep running into the same things and thinking they are something different than the thing that they are. i used to write all the time. in fact during my senior year of high school i decided to save up and buy a laptop solely for the purpose of word processing. it was orange.

i've thought and thought about how to best express myself... sometimes it could come out in the most particular way where you know this is the way and this has always been the way and this is all you gotta do. our mission is clear: be understood; understand others. any variation from this mission causes a skew from the peaceful lifeline of the earth. and the universe for that matter. just understand the intentions of others, stop inventing their feelings like there were no real feelings there to begin with. inventing fantastic and false realities have lead our earth into the bottom of a filthy toilet bowl.

poor poor new orleans, the big dirty toilet bowl. put all the poor people at the bottom as close to the levy as possible and see what happens. when wind starts to blow and rain starts to fall.

the film i am concocting will be titled "thinking out loud: a young woman muses ignorantly on the current state of her environment." i'm not an idiot though. and people might think that from the sound of my intellectual status... but i am NOT an idiot... i can think of several people with more power than me that are idiots... people with more sex appeal, or more energy, or more money, or more energy, or more drive, or more charisma than me. whatever it is, there are some things that i was born with less of... or maybe it was all there and i just failed due to my indecision and snake-eating-own-tail syndrome: something i would never wish upon anyone, unless it is someone who only has cruel intentions for reasons unexplained and unexplainable to the rest of the human race.

i won't talk about my bodily issues anymore. i just remembered today that nobody likes that conversation. everyone is uncomfortable with it and it is very frustrating to see someone complain about the state of their body, while they are doing nothing at all to change it.

any new orders of business kelly?

well there is the fact that i've become completely and utterly unable to come up with a plan... there's this undeniable feeling i have that things will inevitably work out for the "best." where did someone like me get that idea?

attractive people are uncomfortable with being in the public eye... very uncomfy indeed.

is it easier for you to read this now that i've created space to place these things in, created (and when i say created for the second time, i am talking about pressing a button commonly referred to as "return" or "enter." one in the same in my mind but not in the mind of one who often works with PCs. and there it is, my first use of an upper-cased letter!) empty white lines in which you can put your mind at ease and take a little break from whatever it is i'm shoving down your throat?

so you've been reading along and realize no time has passed at all. how does this happen? is this some fantastic new break-through in the information age that allows one to absorb new knowledge without the frustration of actual time passing? here i am, inventing the most amazing thing to ever occur since dr. emmett brown invented the time machine and all i can think about is purchasing a canister in which i can place large kitchen utensils.

is my life going to be this large, vast wasting of time because i have nothing better to do? only a year and a half out of school and i'm already terrified about my lack of direction. no. i've been terrified for quite sometime, but am only now realizing that it may in fact, be a permanent situation. sitting near the sunlight has made me happier though. moving to the big city has made me more confused and has made me feel more pressure towards coming up with something to make the world spin faster and slower at the same time, you know, like smoother is what i think i mean by faster and slower at the same time.

but what will the images be that will accompany this text? will i show the city and all the fantastic things that there are to see here? or will it be me, or my surrounding humans? will it be beagles or big, black dogs, or maybe one of the sixty million pugs residing in the new york city area? pugs are old news kelly. old news indeed. how much is a sound recording device kelly? your thoughts are brilliant, even at their worst and most awkward.

But don’t fear. Microsoft Word of the 2001 persuasion tends to correct your “mistakes� for you! It will not allow me to go on using the lower cased letters whenever I please. Kelly is a word that is misspelled when used in the lower case. It is not a noun or a verb or a what-not, it is your name. And your name must be capitalized at all times. Please try and take less note of what I have been talking about with work and being freaked out about the city and start thinking more about what I can do for you. What can I do for you? Hmm, actually I think a more accurate expression would be, “What can you do for me?� What advice can one offer that will not cause me, the serpent to go on choking and foaming at the mouth on my tail? What action will reverse the pattern that I fear almost more than death itself?

It is this pattern that has overtaken loved ones and famous assholes alike, this pattern of unproductivity. Apparently, unproductivity is not a word, but it is a real thing, an idea that makes perfect sense in my own 2006 brains.

I wrote this on the train yesterday:

“I couldn’t stop looking at her. I felt wrong about it. Imposing, but I couldn’t stop. I felt like she might get self-conscious, me looking at her like that. But she never let on. I suddenly realized that more than anything I wanted her to hold me and let me cry into her chest. I’d cry about dying and I’d cry about the plant that I thought about throwing into the train tracks to rot, I’d cry for loneliness and my lost God and for a little girl in the middle of a big, dirty city. Instead, I’m swallowing as hard as I can, all the tears. Instead, she left the train without me and I’ll never see her again. Instead, I’m on a bumpy ride back home. Eric might dream a highway back to me though, someday.�

The sorrow that engulfed my spirit last night was overwhelming. My personality went ape-shit after cheering myself up with several old reruns of the Ben Stiller Show. I went into my bedroom and began recording video on my cellular phone of myself in my bedroom, playing different characters, saying different things that seemed to be the most fucked up things to say at the time. One included me lying listlessly on a pillow and saying, “Well all I can say is, I’m pretty tired…. Okay?�

Security Camera

Here is something I posted on myspace.com originally on September 11, 2006 entitled "security camera." Don't worry I don't think it has anything whatsoever to do with "9/11." You might recognize the repetitive nature of my "blogging voice." I'm working on it!:

Finally, after a strange amount of time has passed, I feel the urge to write my heart out. After living in Austin quite a while longer, I moved to Olympia, WA. Working as a barista downtown I realized what life is like after college, being back in my old college town, no longer a student. I felt so far from the action, without meaning, serving those that were a part of the meaning out there. I became a snob of coffee, something I could never have fathomed. Becoming a coffee snob is far easier than becoming say, a wine snob. I see the world of wines in a much more complex way, whereas coffee can be laid out quite simply. And now, as I have moved to the city of NEW YORK CITY I could not have been more unprepared for the coffee that awaited me here. Terrible. All of it. Not one good cup as of yet. But, I have good things to say about the city as well. Here I am working as a receptionist for Les Copains, a clothing/accessories company distributing to over 25 Saks all over the country. This is a job that mostly involves doing busy work for the various people running the office here and answering phones, receiving packages, etc. The most strange parts of it thus far have been my reading the book, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" and staring at people filmed by the security camera on 55th St. I must observe each and every exit and entry of the building and thus am caught off guard when I witness things that have nothing to do with my building other than the fact that they are happening outside of it. Last week, I saw a couple kissing eachother. On the streets of New York City, people, including myself, walk briskly down the sidewalk, jay-walking as they please, glaring straight ahead, with their own destinations in mind. There are also many tourists in this part of town with their heads pointed up as they wander slowly and annoyingly through the sidewalks. But another thing that people do here is people-watch incessantly. Without end. Many will sit on the steps outside of here in my plain-view on my security monitor in black and white and gawk obviously at passersby. There's this battle between those who look at nothing and those who look at everything. So back to the kissing couple. They stood embracing but also looking about them self-consciously, observing people walking by absent-mindedly, as if not fully focused on one another. I felt such excitement watching them with noone to tell me not to. I sat glued to the screen with bated breath seeing each gesture as it unfolded, listening to their muffled voices speaking to eachother softly out on the street in front of the large wooden doors that lie about 25 feet in front of me. They kissed for a long while, hidden under the male's baseball cap and then they would emerge smiling, the male being much more self-conscious and aware of his surroundings than the female. They spoke as if working out a problem, but they just kept kissing over and over again. I felt like I was doing something very wrong. Watching their private moment together with noone else around on the sidewalk. I thought about footage like this I had seen on reality TV shows where people are filmed from some sort of low-quality grainy security camera as they sneak under the sheets to "do it." I felt like this was similar yet so unlike that because this couple was entirely oblivious to anyone watching them this closely. Reality show characters always know that they have the eyes of millions of imaginary citizens on them, always, whether they've snuck under the sheets or not. They only hope that their "accidentally" revealed naked bodies appear attractive to the rest of the country. As I mentioned before, I have quickly become one of those New Yorkers who walks in a straight line, very quickly not observing much in my wake and so seeing this activity was especially strange for me. So anyway, I am looking very forward to adjusting to reality. We arrived in the city a few weeks ago on August 21st and other than those initial butterflies I got as we caught a glimpse of the skyline, I have not felt enough excitement about living here... it's as if my consciousness has not caught up to me yet. The wonderment is missing somewhere. I don't know. I wish I was a tourist walking slowly and clumsily with a camera around my neck, taking in everything with a rich sense of curiosity and amazement. I am sad I don't feel that way about this city. I am slowly settling in though which sometimes takes people a long time. Anyway...

Headline: Woman Pukes on N Train; Passengers Look On, Indifferent

MANHATTAN- This morning, around 9:25am Eastern, while riding on the express N train uptown and right as I realized I was getting close to being late to my job, something caught my eye. A well-dressed woman of approximately 30 years of age covered her mouth and lunged forward from her seat. She convulsed in this way two or three times before spurting a clear liquied all over the floor. I watched in horror thinking maybe I should help her. I've seen puke on the train before, but it was from the mouth of a desperately and prematurely drunk young woman at 11:30 PM on a Friday. This is Monday morning people. And we're not talking "blowing chunks." There were no chunks, just liquid. She sat there wiping her nose and trying not to cry until she and coincidentally, I got off at 57th St. I was blown away at people's indifference to the situation. In most cases, the person is irretrievably drunk and/or crazy and so their vomit is their problem. But this was some sweet lady on the way to work who ralphed and was really embarassed, and everyone just stared or moved to a different part of the traincar. Of course, the puke started to slide down the floor as the train lurched forward and I even considered moving but it was too mean, so I just moved my feet.

I have to

I've been inspired by the great Noah Dassel to blog my heart out. It seems that blogging is now a significant survival tool during a turning point in any person's life. For example, Noah Dassel has been blogging his heart out in a much more interesting setting than my own known as "Spain." Check his out (http://dasselogue.blogspot.com/) to read about someone experiencing new things every day in a manic, creative, and invigorated way. This is how Noah experiences everything, but now he's in a different country and it is extra interesting.

And so, I have begun my journey towards adult greatness by moving to New York City. I have lived here for around a month and a half and have already grown accustomed to the way it works around here. I'm not bragging either, in fact, I feel disappointed that it has been this easy to get a feel for this place. So anyway, I've posted a few blogs already on myspace.com but we all know how seriously everyone takes all that stuff so I'd like to repost those things on this blog as well as some other things I've been working on, writing-wise. Here we go, into the predictable, planes-crashing-into-the-sides-of-buildings-every-five-years city!