And Wink for Me

Tom was going to buy Marilyn Monroe.

It was the beauty of the indescribable. The fact that Tom had no idea what Marilyn's life was like or why people loved her, or if she had sex with John F. Kennedy. It was the in the lack of detail that brought mystery. Her stare. Tom never ceased to look at her forgotten face in the bookstore. Behind the semi-reflective double doors, Tom would peer in and see Marilyn. And then after ten seconds he would refocus and see himself. Across the street in miniature formation, students marched whether they cared or not from one place to another. All Marilyn had to see was a university. Tom winked at her, and then continued down the street.

"What are you going to buy?" Robert said forty five minutes later as he pushed his vegetable filled pizza over to Tom. Robert knew Tom never went without picking at other people's food. Tom never considered it unsanitary, and he did not concern himself over the waste and third world countries. Tom merely had some untold fascination with food on the plate. He had not lived during the depression.
"I will probably buy some books," Tom replied. "I'm sure there is some book I need this semester."
Tom looked through the window of the pizza place to the location his feet had been only forty five minutes before. The double doors were a cry for help.
"Did you hear about Stephen?" Robert said. "They had to drag him out he was so drunk; embarrassed Jenny to death."
Tom tried to imagine Jenny forcing her hair back continuously as she was looking down at her other. Stephen, in all his wisdom at the current level of intoxication at the least never felt better.
"I'm sure she was," Tom said. "I wouldn't know."
"No." Robert said, "I guess we wouldn't."
They left silently and walked home. The haze of the spring air made rain imminent, but it never came. The gray dragged and dragged until the sun completed its round. Their home was an apartment a mere walking distance from everything. The pizza, the books, the university, was all a hot trot toward a corner of the complex.

"We really appreciate what you're doing," he heard through the phone. "We know you work hard."
"I know you guys do. I just feel bad sometimes."
"Don't. This is something we've wanted to do since we had you. It isn't your fault, never was."
"I appreciate it," Tom said. "Listen, no offense, but I have a lot of reading to do. If I don't start, I'm gonna keep pushing it back."
"I understand. Keep up the good work, and remember you're in college."
Tom chuckled, "Yea I do."
"Good-bye."
Tom released the phone from his ear like a dysfunctional sea shell, slightly scowling in the lamp light of his messy room as he pressed the red button.

If there was one thing good to be said about suicide, Tom thought, it was that Marilyn lived forever because of it. Of course no one really says that, he continued, but they all think it. Tom knew his "they" was a generalization but in the depths of his mind, Tom knew he was always right. Tom knew he was right because he never asked anybody else. For Tom, that made him one for one. Even if he batted a thousand, it would never compare to the feeling Tom felt when he winked at Marilyn and she stared back at him through the double doors.
Three weeks earlier, as Robert and Tom had set off to register once again for their delightfully close apartment, they were surprised to discover they had received a gift card. Fifty dollars, twenty five for each, lay on top of the contract that was so easy to sign once again for their delightfully close apartment. For three weeks he had thought of what the possibilities were for the money. He looked throughout the bookstore, but every time he exited, he would turn around to see her. For three weeks Robert had asked, "What are you going to buy?"

The night before the purchase Tom received a phone call. It was late, to an odd degree. Tom was reading on his bed, three pillows behind him to support the hours and hours when his nightstand made an aggressive humming noise. He looked at his phone and recognized the caller. He answered the phone.
"Hello?" Tom said.
"Hi." Jenny amused. "What are you doing?"
"I'm reading in my room," Tom said. "What are you doing?"
Jenny paused for a full five seconds before responding pridefully, "I'm being drunk."
Tom could not help but chuckle at the thought, then he asked, "Is Stephen there to take care of you?"
Jenny paused fora full five seconds before responding quietly, "Stephen isn't here."
"Have you tried to call him?"
"No."
"You should. It'd be nice for him to be on the other side."
"What?"
"Nothing." Tom hesitated. "Well I hope you have a good night."
"Oh," Jenny said, "I will."
Tom did not look at his phone at all. The big and blank wall had no advice to give him as he pressed the red button. He tried to imagine the choices and the choices and the choices from here into the next. He tried to picture a tree of actions and reactions that spanned the years ahead and he objectively chose what he felt was the most appropriate response to a pesky, curious late night phone call. His lamp clicked off and his extra pillows fell to the floor as Tom repositioned himself on the bed.

Tom walked in that morning to the bookstore and tried not to look. Marilyn was there, ready for her new life. She was done up and ready to go as always, her pose granting her eternal life. Tom stopped immediately after seeing her to glance at something he could neither feel nor think. Then Tom walked. He passed the art supplies and he passed the spiral notebooks. He passed the t-shirts and the spring jackets. He walked into the textbooks and bought two of them. He bought a history of Sam Houston's life and a history of the Mexican-American War. He passed the card, and the clerk swiped it. Tom walked passed the spring jackets and the t-shirts. Tom passed the spiral notebooks and the art supplies. Finally reaching the front of the store, Tom turned and faced Marilyn directly. He then winked and smiled, but soon the smile vanished as Marilyn's gaze remained unchanged.
"I'm sorry," he said and continued to look for any sign of a listener. Marilyn upon close scrutiny showed dust particles raining down the poster. There were posters behind her and they also had dust collecting upon their brow. Tom opened the glass double doors, and turned once more. As the doors closed slowly, he saw the pizza place with his favorite window. He saw cars move continuously and parallel to the swinging doors, keeping them in view. He saw the quick flashes of the caring and uncaring students alike marching from place to place. And when the doors closed, Tom saw himself with the bag in his hand.

Creative Writing Exercises - Setting

February 22nd

Write about 2 situations that deal with the following objects

a metal framed bed
a box of kleenex
a thin trashcan
a nightstand with a glass of water, a pitcher, and a bowl of fruit
a pastel with cows grazing in the fields and mountains and the sun in the background

1) you are in the hospital with your loved one. Your loved wife has given birth to a son/daughter. the characters are happy, but also afraid like any new parents

2) Write about a loved one and their offspring visiting them in the hospital. It is a sad moment as the older is dying, but he/she is loved by all, especially the one visiting.

I had fifteen minutes

1) When you have a baby in your hands, everything feels dangerous. I tried to make my way around those hard edges of the bed. And slowly, almost in slow motion, I rested myself, one arm supporting our weight, the other holding the newborn. I had no idea that the chair had a sickly green tone. I had no idea Oprah was on. My wife smiled to reassure me that I was doing fine on my own. I looked down at her. She was weightless in my excitement. The fact that all I was at one moment was some little bunch made me almost nauseous. The pastel to the left showed cows: in a pasture before a great mountainside. Doesn't matter the setting, I thought, we are still just cows. I looked again at my wife, and in our gaze was the same thought. We had never raised a cow before.

2) I couldn't help but notice those damn cows. In all those generic hospital rooms, no one pays attention to the paintings until extreme conditions give it a worthy look. Cows. Cattle. Bovine of the beyond it seemed with the setting sun in between mountains. And there was my mother to the right.
"Hello Mother", and I tried to smile.
"Hello son", and she tried not to cry.
I reached over and grabbed a kleenex box as I made my way to the table.
"Men are like kleenex: soft strong and disposable." I recited as I stole one out to hand it to her. She laughed as her frail arms took it.
"From a movie", she said off-hand, "as always".
"Still works here", I said. She knew what came next and I waited for silence before I said, "has he come yet?" She looked away, before firing her nose into the kleenex followed by a well thrown shot into the small trash can. It made no noise but it must've been a bowling ball going in the way I saw it. She had not even eaten her fruit on the nightstand.

The King of Limbs - Album Review

Wake me up. Wake me up. The minute I played the album that was digitally downloaded onto my computer for nine dollars, I was in a dream. For those that love Radiohead, it is a return to normalcy. The continuing tone recalls from In Rainbows, Hail to the Thief, and Amnesiac. I have listened to the album over ten times, and I have found no reason to stop.

Thom Yorke is truly the king of limbs. At first glance I considered this surreal (of course because it's Radiohead), but after the initial shock I realized it was exactly them and exactly what I had wanted. Nine dollars, eight songs, 37 minutes. While it seems a bit short, it does amazing things if you give it a chance. The album starts off with Bloom, a flying sort of abstract march. With what continues the tone of the album seems to start half glad, half sad, with a low point in Codex, a pure piano and Yorke piece and finally seems to pick back up at Separator.

What makes this album so enthralling? I think it would have to be Radiohead's attention once again to minute detail. Each songs has so much to offer in it, and while his lyrics seem to be much less recognizable this time around, he seems hand picked for their style. Continuous talk of water and cleansing makes me feel like this is album's meaning involves a cleansing. With Codex recommending to "jump off the edge into a lake", there's a freeing experience at the end.

Morning Mr Magpie sounds like the most angry song in the album, presenting a melody that has been stolen, and a negative connotation toward the magpie's arrival. Little by Little, although my least favorite song in the album is a perfect lead in to Feral, an almost incoherent flash fiction of music. Don't believe me? Watch this video, and agree with me.

While Feral is fast paced and intense, it's beautiful. One of my favorites is Lotus Flower. Remember when I said that Thom Yorke is the king of limbs? He literally is:

My favorite of the album, Codex, is a brief somber song much like Pyramid Song, Videotape, or Sail to the Moon. Once again, it is something perfect to come up in the vehicle you drive and it's great to listen to as you move through the world. What it does is small, but it enhances your observation, makes them acute. It really is a great song and it's the turn of the album in my opinion. What moves after in Give up the Ghost and Separator is almost a plea to return to what was good. It's a wonder how I listen to this so many times in a row but I've come to the conclusion that the album is very circular, like a death and rebirth. Of course you don't have to agree with my ridiculous defense to playing this album to death.

What else can I say? The King of Limbs impressed me. Then again, I don't think I can give an objective look at Radiohead. They could have released an album full of silence and I would probably be here anyway typing things like, "it's edgy" or "it's like a death and rebirth". Although it's bias, it still goes to their credit that after OK Computer, Kid A, Amnesiac, Hail to the Thief, In Rainbows, Thom Yorke's The Eraser, and finally King of Limbs, I still am able to be enlightened. As usual, it makes getting through the semester that much easier with good, new music at my side.

Happy Valentine's Day: The Mirror Holiday

I am not going to tell you why I hate Valentine's Day

I am sitting in my freshly cleaned room, which took a full forty five minutes to clean last Thursday. Classical music from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is whispering from the same laptop I write and I am taking swigs of cheap wine; Black Swan in fact. To answer your pondering question yes, I am on a date with myself. I have stripped my walls clean of previous pictures. To answer your question yes, I did do some interior decorating. New posters with new paint for a new day for the same man.

 I am not going to tell you why I hate Valentine's Day.

The new posters on my wall use florescent paint, courtesy of Walmart, the store that grants us everything except the one key to our hearts, unless we're addicted to McDonald's. I have painted two: a heavily penciled Zippo lighter, much like the one I own. The feature that really pops out is the flame, done completely in paint at the top of the poster. The second is a question mark, but the period at the bottom is the world. Very obvious undertones truly show how little delicacy I have as an artist. To answer your question yes, I have an infatuation with blacklights.


I am not going to tell you why I hate Valentine's Day.

In what may be the most overrated conversation topics in all of American History, we seem to have a profound hatred for something that promotes love. The top two reasons I have heard are:

1) The holiday has become too commercialized
2) It puts expectations on love

A close third reason is the simple "I'm single" which probably hurts the worst at first. The first reason is very simple. Ever since you wanted that LEGO set or Barbie Doll you've sold something to someone lock, stock, and barrel. You and I both know it was to be expected. You can't get through Saint Patrick's Day without someone shoving a clover cookie in your face. Do not think that Valentine's would get through unscathed. In a country and lifestyle that promotes buying happiness do you really think love would be shoved aside? To answer your question yes, my love comes cheap: a $4.50 bottle of Black Swan Merlot.

What was it that Don Draper said? "The reason you haven't felt it is because it doesn't exist. What you call love was invented by guys like me, to sell nylons."

What was it that Chuck Klosterman said? "I will never satisfy a woman. And that's okay, because I know that no woman will ever satisfy me."

What was it that Tom Cruise said in Jerry Maguire? "You...complete...me." (Ellipsis debated)


What was it that Belle said in Beauty and the Beast? "There must be more than this provincial life."


The list goes on and on. It's like a Merry-Go-Round. Constantly swirling back and forth between movies and tv shows and books and articles. People just cannot shut up about their love life. What does it do to Valentine's? It gives it expectations. Remember those days when high schools girls would prance around with their teddy bears? It wasn't so much the actual gift but the symbol. Here I am, being loved by someone. We all want the PDA.


Nobody wants expectations on love. NOBODY. I cannot think of one man or woman who says, "I look forward to thinking up a super cheesy and convoluted scheme of rose petals that lead through the house and finally end to a bouquet of flowers at the dining room followed by chocolates and a freshly cooked dinner." There are those who say we should expect that all the time. Please. There are humans and then there are slaves. 


One of my worst fears is a first date. I have been told so many times that it is the one that matters instead I have thrown myself into some decaying jail cell. And as my room clutters up with dirty laundry and empty dinner plates I put my love into writing to complete strangers and I place my feelings on walls. It is some desperate cry for help, that maybe someday someone will save me from myself. It won't come. I know that now. But the fact that I expected it gives me the feeling that many others do about Valentine's Day. It comes and goes, but it never forgets to leave a mark. Not so much a positive or negative connotation, but rather a figurative time line mark on current events. Where do you stand? Are you happy alone/with someone else? Do you feel like you're being treated correctly? Would you give it all away for the opposite status on your facebook? How has your spouse changed physically in a year? Do you appreciate that?


These are many details I consider


Thankfully I am an independent man. I feel safer alone in my hermit present than ruining someone else's life. What have I proven with myself? I love to write. Writing has no expectations: you get what you put into it. It is only commercialized through movies of writers and tv shows of writers, but it says nothing of your personal status. You are only what you desire in writing. And when you spend time with it, it rewards you. And when you're single there's nothing better than a job. People love work like I love writing. For Valentine's Days such as these, I am content writing with Black Swan.


I'm not going to tell you why I hate Valentine's Day. Odds are it's the same reason everyone else has. Sometimes though, we all think about our status. Maybe not in some higher sense, but just in a simple one-dimensional task of "am I loved?" Some would give anything to have that one person be there and hold them up when they come in drunk and crying. Some would give anything to be held and have them tightly gripping your shoulders declare, "I see you. I know you are a human being. I know you have value." They would be patient, listen to your day. They would bring you perfectly timed tissues. They would even have a bag to put them in if it got out of hand. They would tell you that it is okay to feel this way. They would stare directly into your eyes. They would not let you whither like a flower without the sun. 


I have torn down my old room decorations. I have put up new ones. I have cleaned my room right. I have started a new semester. I have retained my values. I have changed everything on the outside, but I cannot change who I am. I cannot change my objective self, the one thing I want to change. Because maybe if I change myself I might have a chance at something new with someone new. I have always been told I should never have to change myself, but at 21 I'm starting to believe otherwise. On Valentine's Day, everyone receives an untold gift: an objective glance at who they are as people. I eat like everyone else, I complain like everyone else, I dress...somewhat like everyone else. I have a laptop, I watch movies, and I pay attention to pop-culture. If we want to get straight to the depressing point, I have little to offer other than some blue eyes and a pessimistic outlook, which displays a lack in confidence. That's real. That is me staring myself in the face and then typing it. I think I've just found a close fourth reason as to why people hate Valentine's Day. A true representation of one's self: the mirror holiday.

Thin Walls - A short short turned in for Creative Writing Class

This was a paper I wrote and turned in on February 8th. I personally think it needs a lot of work. It sounds childish and plain, but I had decided to use my first idea and expand it into a short story. I had to turn in something, so this is it.

It was real, even the television was still on, and loud. It was so genuine it chilled him that he was listening in, cup against the wall silently praying for more clarity. Thin walls as they were they had become suddenly adept at concealing specific verbs and phrases. As he quietly stood, ear against the cup against the wall, against the television against the yelling he felt compelled to keep listening. He felt like this was a piece of knowledge he must know and keep and take into the grave. He realized there was something so fascinatingly mundane about the whole ordeal, but he could not stop. It started thirty minutes ago. Paper thin apartment walls left little to the imagination when it came to the sound of a tyrannosaurus rex blaring from Dolby Digital downstairs. He had always wanted to pump it all the way up but that immature brat Shannon upstairs wouldn’t have it merely remarking, “The pots were rattling.”
    Of course they were all a little immature, living across the street from a university, but it was this immature companionship that gave him the impression that sound was a communal commodity. The techno sound would bounce the heavy beats through the walls and he would become the music prophet. It turned out Shannon was no disciple, and would come downstairs repeatedly to remark his video games were causing hell upstairs. Laughing at the metaphorical thought of war causing secretarial hell in heaven, he would shut the door and complain that Shannon was 23 going on 40, but would still turn it down. Ryan next door showed little complaint as he only would comment on who was singing in the shower and would guess what movie was on last Monday. It was only assumed that he adored his sound.

    Thirty minutes ago at 6:00 PM he firmly grasped exactly how thin those walls between him and Ryan were when the argument commenced. It was a low comment, and while he was reading for next week’s history night class, he began to put the book down after the comments grew louder. It wasn’t a dinosaur roar but more like the techno music, the slow build up until the shits and the fucks were so loud that it had reached some club in Europe. In those five seconds he could not help but grow intensely interested. He ran to the kitchen, grabbed a plastic cup, and hurdled the coffee table as he softly placed the cup to the wall and then the cup to his ear. Garbled and broken he had to sift through the sounds of the large television blaring and the chatter. It was obviously between Ryan and his girlfriend, and it was more brutal than expected. He tried to visualize some boxing match as each volley was some wide strike. While the woman placed short but well placed jabs, Ryan was flailing madly. He was loud and boisterous, and although he was dominating in volume he was having a meltdown. He mentioned a world that he could not provide. He confided that if she could not love Ryan like this, then there was no reason to continue. He hated her little planning.
    “Our relationship”, he yelled, “is not some fucking list you check off on the refrigerator.”
All she could do was remark softly. For all he knew Ryan was “winning” the argument if that was possible. By the first ten minutes it already seemed like nuclear end war as both sides showed no concern for leaving fresh geography. It was real, he thought as he listened in. Real like the way his parents fought when he was young. He would listen in on those too. At least one room apart he would listen for the echoes in the kitchen as he would fluctuate up and down the stairs as they moved. His mother would yell her mid life crisis and his father was the counter-attack. It was always the counter attack. Now he could not hear the counter, but as usual the louder of the pair could not sense it. Ryan was infuriated. At one point, he thought the fight had become physical when a pause sounded like movement. In hindsight, he concluded Ryan had moved to the couch.

    It felt so human. This wasn’t just some television show or novel sub plot. It was his neighbor, nearly gagging about how he could not stand his girlfriend’s obsession with her projected life in her upper-twenties. Ryan’s speech was ruthlessly efficient. He was cutting in every respect, and he did not care how she felt. He hated it all: the pale sense of love she didn’t show at the end, her inattentiveness to the world around her, her constant desire to plan everything. It was all a show, and it was dying before the curtain call. He listened as Ryan was saying things so real and so volatile that it infected every charged particle in his body. After twenty minutes it only intensified as he nearly pushed his ear completely flat against the bottom of the cup.
    What was it he hoped to find in this argument? He was never attracted to Ryan’s girlfriend. He was only an acquaintance of Ryan himself. He could only guess that his fantasy was nothing different that something in an Alfred Hitchcock movie: something different enough to be a curious event. If he could see into an office building at night he would only catch mundane events of copies made, computer typing, and crumpled papers thrown into trash bins, it would only be incredible because it was inconspicuous. Wasn’t that what reality TV was for? In the beginning wasn’t that something so true it exploded into every single documentary life style available? There was something different about this: they were not on television. It’s what made people watching so appealing to him. As Ryan complained about his wish for a life he did not have, he had no idea a cup was on the other side.
    Thirty minutes now. He was shocked to hear that Ryan had finished, ending with the absolutely clear statement, “we’re done.” It was bold, and decisive. There was some argument afterward, but there was nothing so dramatic as the conclusion at the thirty minute mark. By thirty three minutes she was gone. Two minutes after the television was turned off, he could hear a guitar reverberating from the room. He removed the cup from the wall and replaced it in the cabinet. He paced several times before finally sitting down on the couch. Whether it was three years without a relationship, time alone in an apartment, or the empty life of a job he did not want and classes he did not want, he firmly concluded that he actually wanted what just happened. It did not matter that it was a fight that blasted the thin walls. It did not matter that it was so decisive that she stormed out and Ryan played guitar. It mattered to him because it was something there to grasp. Like some poem, it was a pessimistic cry for help. He was inwardly pleading for some form of feeling. It was a tangent hope for a life transcendental to watching television, or reading magazines. An argument like that, he thought, could only arise after a firm understanding of life together. He missed that. He almost felt compelled to enter some relationship just to cry as it fell apart. He would burn the house down himself. He would construct the hope of a life lived strongly only to bring it down on him and some poor woman who had no idea she walked into a burning building. He leaned forward, and rubbed his eyes as he peered at the residue on the coffee table. He was 21, and no one had left that kind of residue on his life. Before he could firmly grasp what that meant, he silently opened his history book, and read about imperial China.