The overthinking person's drinking game
“When a person or situation isn’t what you thought it was going to be, and you can’t figure out whether this is your fault for projecting unfounded qualities onto the person or someone else’s fault for actually misleading you, mistreating you or letting you down, drink.”
I smooshed my bangs to the left today instead of the right because the left side of my face got horribly sunburned yesterday. It felt like ordering a new dish at a restaurant.
That’s seriously all I’ve got today, internet.
This goes out to all my friends in Minnesota.
Bon Iver wanted to show me that it is okay to cry when you are sad. He squeezed his eyes shut and his face was marked by sorrow. Moments later, his eyes were wet. He shuddered. ‘Bon Iver,’ I said, and placed a hand on his bare chest to calm him, ‘what made you so suddenly sad?’
He choked and wiped his eyes. ‘Deforestation,’ he whispered.
Roller derby hijacked my poetry month. We just had our first real scrimmage against total strangers, with refs and scoring and a restless two weeks and a sleepless night of anticipation beforehand. I wish playing roller derby could save the world, because then I’d feel less guilt when I get home from a weekend of accomplishing absolutely nothing else.
But it’s nice that there’s at least something good that can happen with enough sheer will and physical striving, even if all it is is the giddy triumph of pushing and jumping and grappling and sprinting out out out of the pack and seeing all that open track splayed out in front of you like a field of sunflowers for a few seconds before you’re smashing back into the pack.
My secret punk rock alter ego only surfaces after derby practice.
I was thinking about Mean Girls and ‘her hair is so big because it’s full of secrets’ and how that is funny but also poetry.
Let us party you and I.
(Source: poetsorg)
Long biking coat of paint
I went for the year’s first bike ride around Lake Monona last night. The last time I rode it was with a man I loved, but gave up on the work of loving. I think that is the best way to phrase it. When we biked places, he always went faster than my natural pace, but not faster than I could actually ride, so it pushed me to race harder, and I liked that.
This time I pushed myself. Not necessarily to echo: I had a dinner to get to, so I couldn’t take more than an hour. I biked so fast that a bumblebee collided with my face. It didn’t sting me, but it was big, and fast, and I yelped and still felt the impact for a good few minutes after. Near the end, another insect flew right into my eye, so I spent the last ten minutes blinking through tears and swerving a lot while people coming the opposite direction took up way too much of the bike path.
Later, it turned out I’d been biking at the exact same time as this new person I’ve been seeing. We’re nowhere serious, but I do regret how rarely our schedules intersect. We started at different places, and went the same direction, so never overlapped. I tell him, It’s like you were chasing me. Very slowly, he replied.
This morning, Carrie and I talked on gchat about building new memories over the old ones, when your city becomes part of a relationship that is over. Reclaiming the city as your place, regardless of who you might bump into at the grocery store, or what you talked about that night at the Baldwin Street Grille when you decided in your head that it was over. And how if you live in a place long enough, the good and the bad all layer in the same place like coats of paint. Chipped-up coats of paint where different layers are more prominent at different times.
The bike path around Lake Monona is also Carrie’s and my place. Our first real act of friendship, after meeting in a poetry group and occasionally going running together, was a ride on that route, one cloudy summer afternoon shortly before the first time she moved away. And so she’s another person I think about when I ride my bike.
