America; A New Hope

Tomorrow, a new era in American history will begin, and I get to be a part of it. Tomorrow, Barack Hussein Obama will officially become the first African-American president of the United States of America. I would just like to take the time to say that I am honored to be a part of this time in American history. Tomorrow we not only get a new president, but a new hope and a new America. I'm proud to say that I helped, in whatever small way, to make this happen. I will be proud to tell my children, and my children's children, that I voted for the first black president of the United States. A man who, hopefully, will restore our nation's sense of pride, hope, and unflinching patriotism. Within the next four years, I look forward to having the ability to be proud, for once, to call myself an American, and I look forward to others being envious of that fact. Most of all, though, I look forward to having a president that I can trust, and believe in. I look forward to being able to feel all the more secure that he is the leader of the place that I have called home for the nearly two decades of my existence. I look forward to cleaner and more reliable energy sources, and affordable health care. I look forward to the restoration of our country's economy. But really, most of all, I simply look forward.  

As yet, untitled.

I've always wanted to be able to tell people stories, like really amazing stories. Stories that they'll want to steal, and tell, and sell as their own. 

I've never possessed that ability, however. 

I'm fantastic at talking about myself, but I couldn't tell a decent story to save my life. 

I wish I could weave tales of far off places and the exact hue of blue of your eyes when you're angry with me, 

but I can't. 

I want to tell people the wonders of the sweet surrender of love, 

the magic of kisses, 

the odd semi-mysticism of religion, and 

the slightly less than tactful way in which you approach 

romance. 

I could tell legends and faery tales and folklore. 

I could tell them about the taste of your tongue. 

But there it is. 

There is the difficulty. 

It all leads back to you, doesn't it? 

Every thought leads back to a moment or a memory of you. 

A graceful dance of weaving incongruency. 

I'll never understand the way you look at me...

The Church Channel

I’ve gotten used to feeling homesick in my own home. It’s become a version of normalcy. I’m not really alone, but I’m lonely, sitting here on my bed trying to figure out life, while thumbing through the latest Cosmo. I feel a little bit silly. I’m a little bit deranged. Some might say I’m searching. Sitting and reading, with the ever-flawless Drew Barrymore staring back at me from the glossy pages of the modern woman’s Bible, I feel fake. I’ve been reading Chuck Palanhiuk novels since I was ten, so Cosmo’s just not my thing, but I want to fit in somewhere. 

The TV flickers green, red, blue, yellow, white off in the corner of my room. Somewhere in the back of my mind, just beneath my concentration, I hear the word “Bible” resurface. I read about the best ways to make a man fall madly in love with you. Most of them involve your thigh muscles. The words “Jesus”, “faith”, “belief”, and “life” flow past my subconscious just long enough for them to register briefly in my mind. They hang in the space between my ears, like a fly caught in a web. Dangling, waiting to be caught. I shake the words from the web of my mind and continue reading about the latest trends in footwear. 

The idea of sleep occurs to me for a brief moment and I look at the clock. 4AM, not nearly earlier enough. I won’t be sleeping till at least seven, maybe eight, o’clock today. The television murmurs and flickers again in the corner of my room, and my eyelids flutter briefly over the screen. The church channel. I grapple for the remote, which sinks only deeper into the flannel depths of my bed sheets. Again, the words “Bible” and “belief” brush past my ears, in a dance of what sounds like perfect alliteration, at the time. I try to shake the words, but the murmurs of the TV seem to grow louder. The sinking remote has apparently been given free-will to adjust volume. My eyes graze over the images on the TV. Someone’s praying.

I reach the remote with my big toe and pull in closer. As I click the television off, the sounds of the televangelist prayer hangs in the cold air of my bedroom. 

Maybe sleep is a good idea. Tonight. 

Pink Elephants

"Hey, do you remember that one TV show?" Rob asked me over coffee one morning.

   "Which TV show? There's a lot of them out there." I replied, silently cursing him for speaking to me before the sun had fully risen. 

   "You know. The one with those guys that have that job, and there's that girl. You know, the hot one!" 

   "Well, that narrows it down so much!" I spat sarcastically, " I'm sorry I had to ask!" 

   "Jesus, Jamie, why you don't try being just a little bit more of a bitch?" He scolded; apparently sarcasm was our forte. 

   Rob left for work without saying another word to me. Without even a kiss on the forehead, he left me to find solace in laundry and homework. I had been taking classes at the local community college and waitressing four days a week. I fell perfectly into the category of 'starving artist.' I was studying Film&Theatre, the only thing, besides Rob, that I had ever been passionate about. When I was little I always had this big dream of being the person in charge of all the TV shows and movies. I never wanted to be the pre-madonna actress prancing around in front of the 

camera, but the person telling her the words to say, how to say them, and how to move and emote. I wanted to paint the canvas of the movie screen with the right colors, faces, and light. I wanted people to hear my name and be flooded with thoughts of beauty in motion.

   As I attempted to sketch out the story board of my first short film I gazed around the apartment that Rob and I had shared for the past two years. Even at a glance, you could tell that I had done the decorating. There were little touches and Jamie-isms everywhere. From the green crepe-paper covered living room walls, to the pink ceramic elephants I had been using as book-ends, and the bright blue painted kitchen floor, I had over taken the whole of the apartment with rampant artistic expression. For the past few months I had been begging Rob to agree to let me paint a giant Oak tree in our bedroom. I wanted to feel as if I were making love in a forest every night. However, Rob didn't exactly share my artistic views. In fact, most of the time he 

found my affinity for bright colors and unique objects to be obnoxious. He told me once that if I kept adding things, and painting, and decorating, and changing that I'd come home one day to find everything painted grey. I remember him making me cry when her ripped down my hand tie-dyed curtains after a particularly vicious fight. Never the less, I loved him. And most people called me crazy for it. Told me I 'tried to hard to please him,' but I knew they didn't understand. Other people couldn't understand what we shared. That evening, however, everything about our relationship would change. 

Spark Ave.

You left the party and I followed you the quarter of a mile down Spark Avenue and sat next to you on a broken down park bench. You pressed your face into the palms of your hands and began to cry as the rain came. The weather was cold and unforgiving.  I gave you my jacket and wrapped my arms around you because I was afraid that you might get sick. Then I carried you home. I carried you back down Spark Avenue and out onto the highway and then down towards the ocean. You lived a block from the shore and already the streets were flooded. I kept looking down, half expecting to see a school of fish swim past my ankles, but they never did. I took you upstairs and laid you down onto your bed and for a few quiet moments you, the rain, and I were the only things in existence. I watched your eyelids flutter and felt your slow, steady pulse as you slept. As suddenly as you had gone to sleep, you were awake again. Your eyes flew open and stared straight back into mine. A smile crept across your lips and in those upturned inner corners I could see the truth. You were, in fact, stone cold drunk. You were plastered. You were gone. I saw this strange mix of emotion come over your eyes. You looked at me with a mixture of lust and disgust and, still, you kissed me on the mouth. You wrapped your arms around my waist and took me down onto the bed with you. For a moment, I resisted. I told you we should save this. Save it for some other night, some other time, some other place. But you said no and that everything would be alright. Still, I ran. I ran scared. I ran back towards the "dry side" of town and back down Spark Avenue and back to that bench. I wanted to run all the way back in time. I wanted to take you back to that bench and back to when you were crying so I could tell you everything would be OK. I wanted to tell you that I loved you before you kissed me and before you were drunk and before it wouldn't matter anymore. So, as the rain began to dissipate, I pressed my face into the palms of my hands and I cried of that bench in the middle of Spark Avenue wishing I could turn back time. 

Tomorrow is no place...

There once was a man. He sat at the table directly caddy-corner from mine, night after night, and watched me eat potato chips. As he watched, he wrote. As he wrote, he whistled. As he whistled, a song formed. This song was about me. I never knew this. Night after night we would lock eyes and I would smile and he would frown. Then, on an average Saturday evening, the man was conspicuously absent. No eyes, no writing, no whistling, no song. I was alone. This man was the Devil. This man was God. This man was my father, and my mother, and my home, and my heart. This man was the world. This man was an angel. This man. 

Uhm, Hi. Fuck you =]

I'm sort of going to stop vying for your attention. Honestly, it's not really worth it. I mean, being ignored is fine. I can deal. I'm sure she's more interesting than me anyway. I really only need you for one thing anyway. Not that I couldn't find someone else in about 10 seconds. I've got a whole roster, really. You just happen to be at the top of it right now. I could bump you down a few spaces. Or I could just bump you off. Take your pick. You seem to be bumping me down on yours as we speak. Good luck finding another me. [There aren't any more of me, just so you know. You'll be searching forever and find nothing like me. Good luck. Goodnight.] I couldn't care less about her hair color or eye color or breast size or height. We check out girls together all the time. That's fine. I fully understand this dynamic. But when something grabs your attention more than I do, I admit I get a little bit offended. Alright, actually, I'm completely offended. You're out with me. Fucking get over this girl. She's not yours anymore and I doubt she wants to be. She's teasing you, baby. I know she is. We all know she is. Your vying for her attention the same way I'm usually vying for yours. Just don't lose yourself in an hopeless endeavor. Oh wait. Too late. Sucks for you. Good luck. Goodnight.