drunkenbee

Morning/Night

This morning, I woke up at 4 a.m. in Chicago and then made my way to Washington D.C. where I had to stop at the ATA counter to redeem a travel voucher they won't let you redeem over the phone and the lady at the counter didn't have any front teeth and in front of me was a disheveled boy checking in for a flight being told his suitcase was too heavy and so he unzipped it and took out four hackeysacks (sp?) and transferred them to his backpack.

Tonight I had french fries and champagne for dinner, then on the Metro on the way home snuck glances at this couple totally making out and usually I don't like that sort of display in public but they were so cute how they carved out their private space in public and maybe it was that I was listening to Band of Horses' "St. Augustine" but it was really compelling in an aesthetic sense and, alright, also in a "damn I should've made out with my husband more this weekend" kind of way.

Then later tonight, grabbing toothpaste at the corner store two surfer dudes (surfers? In Washington, DC? WTF?) popping their zits between index finger and thumb and buying beer, and then on the sidewalk near my house a hard luck kinda man with a hang dog face and hound dog eyes making his way, holding in a clenched fist a large, leaved branch, it raked across the sidewalk so I had to step aside and let the man by with his sad eyes, clutching hands, and raking leaves.

Now, I need to eat a spoonful of peanut butter, put on Battlestar Galactica and spend an hour wondering how everyone loves something that's so damn boring so much but watch it anyway because there's nothing else to watch and see the "4 a.m. wake up plus champagne and french fries" note on why I can't read a novel right now.

I hate this time, away from my home, away from my sweet, but there are some things that I will always remember: my shadow, slim and stretched, going on ahead of me as I walk, long strides, Victoria Legrand's voice in my ear, this strange city acting strange all around me.

Puppies and Bunnies

Oh, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I'm late getting here. It's just that I've been trapped behind a seemingly neverending string of people STANDING STILL on escalators and moving sidewalks. These people have apparently not gotten the memo that technological innovations are generally meant to ENHANCE your performance of routine human activities like, say, walking (n.b. the internet is excepted from this "enhancement" requirement). In other words, while technology is great when it lets you do physical things -- wash clothes, dishes, move upwards through space -- quickly and with a minimum of physical exertion, if you like styling yourself a human being who actually lives in a world, technology does not, I repeat, does not, then exempt you from that minimum of physical exertion.

Previously, I would encounter this strange species of non-moving person only occasionally on the moving sidewalks at Midway because I only ever flew occasionally. So, previously, in those innocent days of yore, their existence always seemed an anomaly, they were just an irritating mutation, like moles or bunions or people who electively visit Disneyworld. The scales having fallen from my eyes now, and I encounter them every day on the escalators leading to and from the DC Metro, and every weekend flying into and out of Midway. It seems to me that they are replicating, that there are more of them then there are me. It makes me wonder, because when I get stuck behind these fat asses standing still on a moving sidewalk that moves at a speed somewhere between "tortoise" and "corpse," I feel like my entire head is turning itself inside out, my slimy, oozy brains sliding around trying to cling to the skull that once housed them so nicely, and I picture my mouth gaping open and slowly forming itself into a howl that could rouse the forces of chaos. While this inside-out rage feeling builds and builds inside of me, these people just stand there -- and no, they do not understand that you stand only on the right -- their ill-fitting pants almost always making their ass/crotch area look weird, their sensible shoes (sensible for what I wonder? Certainly not for walking), like, sealed to the spot they stepped onto this moving apparatus, they just stand there, in my way, bovine, oblivious to the fact that THEY ARE THE HARBINGERS OF THE APOCALPYSE.