hijacked from Juansolo
Or: I, Too, Can Be Normal

snack: chocolate chip cookies
food: Paradise Pie
drink: coffee
mixed drink: Patrick’s fruit punch at Molly’s. .
beer: is for men
color: red
time of day: toss up between morning and twilight.
drama: Buffy
romantic: Moulin Rouge
cartoon: Lil Mermaid (I knew all the lyrics when I was 9)
comedy: anything with Adam Sandler
book: The Secret History – Donna Tart  I think I’ve read it maybe….. 20 times
magazine: I don’t believe in magazines, but if I did, it’d be fish porn
band: uh, ….. ummmmm……. I don’t have a favorite band.
number: 6
ice cream: yes, please
word: discombobulated/ moot
photo: Hannibal sleeping
perfume: Well, if you must know, it’s Carrierre. I’m not gonna run upstairs to check the spelling.
actor: wow……. umm…….. I’m not gonna say cuz you’d laugh…. ok, that nerdy guy on CSI.
vacation spot: bellybutton
domestic animal: Furry or wet.
farm animal: baby sheep and baby ducks and baby chickens
wild animal: Panther. If Lions know they’re cute, then Panthers know they’re sexy.
website: if I told you, I’d have to kill you..
metal: platinum
stone: pearl
clothing: soft clothes. pastels. I like to wear pajamas to Dennys and ballgowns when I do groceries.
holiday: Chrismas, duh!
sound: running water
air freshener/candle scent: rose
movie quote: ”I’ll be right back.”
store: Fish stores……
state: California
tree: gingko trees. they always look like they’re laughing.
bush: arabian jasmine
flower: roses. peach roses.
sport: ballroom dancing
team: Padres
tv show: Family Guy

This was very fun to fill out.

She fell in love with the sea when she was 18. On the shore of womanhood, she stood. And along the water’s edge the darkness marked its line. Cross it, the sea seemed to whisper, cross the line.

It was the first time she’d ever been away from home for more than a month, and the experience – it still thrilled her, but she was also homesick in the middle of the night. So she wandered the campus, walking through the eucalyptus groves and circling around the dorms. Finally, reaching the road’s end, she climbed over the wooden railing and made her way down the rocky slope, her sneakers slipping swiftly down the wet stones.

The smell of the ocean is the same everywhere. It smells like the end of the earth.

Whenever she stood there, with the tide leaving salty kisses on her toes, she thought of the emptiness inside her. If she was with someone, a friend or classmate, she feigned interest in the patterns of stars stitched across the velvet sky. But when she was alone, she cried and cried so much she made the sea jealous of her tears.

 It was a mourning ritual and she felt lighter afterwards, as if the tears had washed away the dirt of human contact and she was just a soul, as weightless and ephemeral as the fog that rolled in every so often. And when the tears subsided and she could breathe calmly again, she would turn around and walk the way she came, ducking beneath honeysuckle vines and listening to her footfalls on the wooden bridge.

To be alone in the middle of everything. Is that a blessing or a curse?

Cover me in your ashes, then. If you wish to be dead to me, I will follow suit.

Or tell me that the sun still feels like my breath on your skin and the wind still moves like my hair on your face.

Then maybe I’ll tell you that I still have your ring.

Unless I need to pawn it to pay for my medication.

Which I may have to do if prostitution is out of the question.

But she fell in love with the sea when she was 18, and the sea loved her back.

Sarah’s Saturday Keyboard Confession

The correct pronunciation of my name is not SE-ruh. It’s sah-rrrah. It’s the spanish pronunciation, sah-rrrah, with the slightest rolling of the R. Which makes no sense when you consider the screenname Sarahndipidee…..

But very few people call me that, though it’s secretly what I prefer.

The two names Joan and Sarah. They have been a division within me since the day I was born. Literally, my parents could not decide, and so gave me a non-hyphenated hyphenated name. Joan Sarah.

I have always been Joan at school. I think because of this, she has developed the better qualities of etiquette and refinement – the outward persona, the costume worn every day, the mask, the shield, the sword.

Sarah, though. The softness of S and R and breathiness of H. She is the stuff of dreams, of summer nights, of twilights on the porch drinking lemonade. She is that bittersweetness of climax, that jaw-clenching goodness of orgasm, the heartstopping rollercoaster of love and hate and the sibling emotions in between.

My entire life, no one has known both at the same time except for 3 people. you, You, and You. All three people, having known both Joan and Sarah, prefer one over the other.

Thus the dilemma of who I am supposed to be.

Then there is the world as I experience it in real time, then the memory filters and the world as I am told it is. So when I say I Love you, it is the only truth in this Universe. But ask me again tomorrow, and it could be I Loved you. Then ask me again when we’re older and wiser, and it could be I will love you forever. Though that’s in the future and plans always change.

The point is: once it is the truth, it is always the truth. It is gold. You can beat it, melt it, shape it into a dagger or a ring, but it is still gold.

So if you should outlive me, you can tell everyone you were Loved – and what an honor that is.

I didn’t understand what you meant when you wrote what you wrote in that email. Are you asking me to leave you alone, then? Because I thought I had – left you alone that is. And it was not so good.

So I tried to broach the subject of perhaps a friendship now that there is so much distance between us. It would mean a lot, and I don’t say that lightly, but it would mean (signify) a lot.

In our last conversation, I told you I couldn’t call you anymore, because every time I did, I was so tempted to                              (and here is where a hundred desires, wishes, thoughts flew through my mind so quickly I could not write them fast enough).

Thus, the lack of communication or at least, the lack of my name appearing on your phone. But I still write you, not knowing if you’re reading or if you’ve given up on me completely.

Yes, of course my life right now …….. Like I said before, I’m trying not to call you until I don’t need to call you anymore.

But god I need to call you and hear you say that everything’s gonna be all right. everything’s gonna be alright……

I came home to a strange email today…..

Why would you send that?

Does that mean we’re still friends, or was it a goodbye?

Does that mean you want to help me, or wash your hands of me?

I couldn’t sleep last night, and I couldn’t figure out why, then I realized it was because I was so hungry I didn’t even feel hungry anymore. Did that make sense? Prolly not…….

So I stayed up til 3 am, tossing in bed until the comforter was twisted into the form of a body, and I dreamed I was sleeping in a bed of snakes.

There was this restaurant on the coast. We drove there in your truck and walked through the streets. They served orange french toast. And I was happy. And this really happened.

Hawaiian food is delicious; this I know to be true.

And Thai food…… you can’t deny that.

My memories of time with you involve food and bright sunshine, ocean and summer nights, joy and contentment.

So I write these memories to remind myself of how happy I can be, how happy I can make someone. I don’t know if you’re still reading this, but I continue to write to you sometimes because we still have conversations in my head. I remember what you look like, how you sound. So keep reading if it brings you comfort, if it brings you solace, if it brings you closer to the truth of how I remember it – as malleable as that may seem. If it hurts you, though, if you’d rather not be reminded of being awake for one summer, then do what you need to do – be it erase me from your life, deny I ever existed, or move to the middle of the ocean and never speak again.

And I                  I will keep writing as long as I can.

It is the tragedy of a misplaced letter.

Dear One,

Do you ever wonder – have you ever wondered – if it was really Love or not; I mean Love with a capital L kind of starstruck Gone With the Wind tragedy. Or do you think maybe it was just Lust – you know, Lust with a capital L – like Adam and Eve kind of tragedy…..

I think it was Strange. It was….. a mutual gravitational pull, as if both of us had been knocked out of our orbits by angry asteroids and we were heading towards an apathetic sun, but passing each other in the galaxy, it was only inevitable that we would catch each other despite the momentum.

Then seeing our own reflections in each others oceans, we realized and understood our significance in the universe.

I remember one day in the summer. The racetracks – the adobe-pink stucco of the buildings, the metal seats and tables, the betting booths and crowds. We watched the jockeys walk the horses and I picked out some winners – do you remember that? – strange that I would feel such a connection to the horses. I remember that more than the starting gate, the finish lines, the laps and flying dirt. I remember my pink hat. I remember this was true.

I remember one night in the summer. It was my favorite kind of weather and we were going to see a play. I wore a table cloth for a shawl because I liked the pattern. We sat in the middle seats, on the right side of the stage. It was an outdoor theater at Balboa Park, and you took my hand and told me that I made you feel alive again. I remember this to be true.

I remember a plane ticket. I remember I was not allowed to go. I remember cutting my wrists. I remember my mother thinking that if I left again, I would stay with you and never come back. I remember being taken to the hospital, blood covering my hands, my lap, the blanket they wrapped around me, the chrome of the wheelchair, the special room they put me in – the ones with special mirrors. And I would not talk for days. I could not.

And I remember sitting in the common room, wrapped in bandages and covered in hospital gowns, and a young man sat down in the chair to my right. He was one of the really crazy ones. But he looked at me, looked at me with the sanest eyes I’d ever seen and said “It’s ok to cry, you know.”

So I did. I cried for three days and sometimes they had to tie me down and I wasn’t allowed to have real utensils. Then they made me swallow all these pills and soon I started to paint again and then I started to talk again, and they wondered – they wondered how Love like that could truly exist in the world – so strong a connection it drives one insane to be without the other.

I wonder if you still care about me; if you can still feel me thinking about you like you used to. Sometimes, I’m working at the store and someone will pass by with the color of your hair, or someone will approach me with the shape of your eyes, or someone will smile the way that made me stumble, and each time that happens, I want to tear my chest open and give them my heart.

I am suffering, but I will not ask for your help. I need to do this alone.

Truly,
Joan Sarah

Was it really a curse, though? she wondered. Or should he have considered himself blessed, if only for a little time.

Edit:

She looked down from where she was – or was it up? But she was everywhere, she knew that now, and at the same time, she was next to him, watching him grieve. And though she was offered peace and contentment, more than anything, she wanted him.

His eyes stared unfocused at the wall. Slumped in the corner of his bedroom – no, huddled, like a boy haunted by the boogeyman, he barely disturbed the dust with his breath.

“Please,” he whispered. “Please, God, just make it stop hurting.”

And the pain that covered those words like barbs tore through the ephemeral sedation, the ether of her apparition. Though she no longer had hands or skin, she wanted to touch his face, turn it towards her, kiss those lips that felt like ripe cherries. Though she no longer had a voice, she felt that if she screamed loud enough, he would be able to hear her across mortality. So she did.

She screamed with the force of a thousand palominos dragging a thousand runaway trains, she gathered the storms blowing off the coast of Madagascar to fuel the cries of jade-plumed birds taking flight, she stole the wake of a space shuttle struggling against Earth’s gravity and people wondered at the marvels of modern science. But all he heard were voices from another room.

Suddenly he grabbed his head between his hands, crushing with all his might, squeezing the memory of her from his unwilling neurons.

“I will not …..” he seethed. “I will not ….”

Will not what? she wondered.

And he walked to his dresser and pulled a bottle of vodka from beneath the clothes. More than half full, it sloshed in his hand and for a moment, he seemed to consider dashing it against his head or throwing it at the ground. But he swung around, laughing hysterically, turning and turning in circles until he collapsed on the bed.

“To Us!” he shouted with forced jubilation. “To Us, and our wedding, and our house, and our kids! To Us and the million other things you promised me! To Us, you wench, you whore, you …. ungrateful…. bitch………….. Why?!” he cried. ”Why did you die?”

He leaned his head back and drank the whole bottle, spilling almost none of it. “Why did you die?” he whispered. “Why can’t I join you?”

She sat down beside him, within him, and felt his heart beating as if it were her own, felt the frustration and anger – emotions that hammered his nervous system, quickened his pulse though the alcohol was coming like a tide, numbing the pain like warm blanket.

“Idiot,” she said in his head. “You can’t join with something that’s already a part of you.”

Sarah’s Saturday Keyboard Confessions:

If anyone has been saving my entries – anyone – could you please send me a copy? I archived a few months back and deleted some posts, but the archived files died a terrible, horrible death. So if anyone has a copy lying around, I’d appreciate it.

More tomorrow. Sleep now….

In case you were wondering, which you probably weren’t, but just in case, I’m starting to write again.

It comes and goes in flashes, but at least it comes, yes? How much is truth, how much is fiction? Do you really need to know, even though some of you already do?

You can prolly tell anyway.

Updates:

The convenience store by my house got robbed last night.

The cancer research job I applied for? Well, it turns out that it’s actually a chemical warfare facility. You know, testing bad mojo on baby beagles and shit.

I’m covered in flea bites.

I cut my nails too short, and now my fingertips hurt, especially when I put them in saltwater.

This morning, I ate two donuts and had 4 cups of coffee.

I almost got fired for yelling at my boss about what an asshole he is during the remodel.

I think I’m the only person in the world who actually looks forward to eating Ramen noodles.

Do I still love you? Yes. Do you really want to know that? Prolly not. Are you still reading this? Prolly…….. not?

I am considering dropping the restraining order and just buying a small pistol. You know, the cute kind that I can keep in one of my cute lil purses.

And just to start the day on an up note:

Hey Mickey you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind

Hey Mickey!