Every Day a Love Letter

 I secretly wish to be a drummer. Specifically, a girl drummer for a rock band, that exact mental image-- hair short and dyed, wailing on a full kit, angry in that sexy way that women always are in movies made for men. Drum kits are sadly very expensive and I have a full enough schedule as it is, so that dream will remain on the back burner for a while. But I have one special indulgence, and it's listening to Paul Simon.  No, Paul Simon is not a drummer. Or a girl. Or sexy-angry (sorry, Paul!). Paul Simon  did  record the album  Graceland  with a bunch of South African artists including the Gaza Sisters and the Boyoyo Boys, among others, with a lot of inspiration from the mbaqanga style. (Note: there's still debate about if this was appropriation or appreciation, especially given the cultural boycott on South Africa due to Apartheid at the time of recording).  Paul Simon himself is actually pretty coincidental to my enjoyment of the album. I mean, the ...

  Where gray polyvinyl chloride meets  Drying strands of grass, like wheat  Which makes no grain, only waves  In sunlit breezes through the day.  Chairs older than my oldest tooth  Wear metal grating wound with roots  From ivys which do not know poison,  Only sweet tea, coffees, the noise one  Makes when they step into the morning  After a night full of dreams like warnings.  The wind chimes snake-rattle, the mint leaves  Attempt infinity, bound in a pot that won't keep.  And the sun loves me here. He sings  To the top of my head, and makes me king.

 Last night me and my friends went to a goth dance event downtown. I danced until my clothes were so soaked with sweat that they added a couple pounds (the benefit of wearing black, nobody can tell), someone got a tattoo, and then it was one in the morning and we all needed milkshakes more than we've ever needed anything before. DQ was too far out of the way, so we ended up at Dick's Drive-In, along with apparently the entire population of Capitol Hill.   While we were in line figuring out who was going to pay back whom, we saw: a young boy with spikes on his Converse, a man wearing a toga, a couple in matching red T-shirts, and a busker playing the trombone to some background jazz music. Man, this guy was good! And loud-- we could hear him as we left, even with the windows down.   When I was in elementary school band, I played the flute. The trombonists sat right behind us, and while I never got hit in the back of the head or anything, I definitely considered t...

 Today, me and my parents went to our local "No Kings" protest. We made signs and chanted along and listened to the mayor poorly but earnestly stumble through a speech-- his policies are better than his public speaking. Mostly we stood along the busiest road in the city with a bunch of signs and cheered when cars honked at us.  If I'm honest I was surprised at how nice everyone was. The protestors I knew would be cool, but drivers heading past us were mostly very polite. Lots of waves and thumbs-ups. Nobody flipped me off once! There was a lot of honking in solidarity to the cause, which as far as happy reasons for headaches ranks pretty high up there.   A few weeks ago there was a strike at my university amongst some of the student employees. I didn't cross the picket line, of course; I had been one of the striking workers last spring. On the picket line, there were plenty of nice people, but also a lot of rude and scary individuals. More than a handful of people we...

 Back home for the summer and I had a perfect breakfast: two eggs on toast, chocolate milk for fun, and raspberries that were drying next to the sink. We were worried about the raspberries molding, so the family was in an 'Everything Must Go!' raspberry headspace, and I had a whole bunch. I didn't eat much fresh fruit in the last year, mostly bananas and apples because they can generally be trusted to keep and they're easy to toss in a backpack. Plus, they're cheap here.  In my mind, berries are a very summery thing, like tote bags, slip n' slides, and ice cream trucks. Even though the sky was fighting to remain gray for the first chunk of the day, raspberries were my little rebellion. Yes, it really is summer! How else could this be my breakfast?  I don't have much to say about raspberries. They're a simple pleasure and I think that most people already appreciate them without an explanation. I'm about to enjoy a peach after I type this up, to my sum...

 I have a special laugh that I only use when I almost run into a stranger. Usually this happens when I am distractedly leaving a room-- today it was as I left the restroom to go study, because I was thinking about Mr. Rogers and his not-so-secret 143 code. Anyway I love bumping into strangers because it is the perfect everyday amount of embarrassing. I will laugh my bumping-into-strangers-laugh,  she will smile awkwardly, I will apologize, and we both go on our ways. I also love bumping into strangers because it requires that we both stop and make brief eye contact and notice something about each other. Today my stranger had long black hair and smiled mostly without involving her teeth. I would never have noticed this about her if I hadn't almost run her over. I'm trying to invite embarrassment into my life more. Living passionately necessitates humiliation, so I am performing at open-mic nights and making brutal small talk with people whom I've got nothing in common with. ...

 I'm moving out of my crappy dorm room tomorrow, and then I'll be back in my home town for a few months. I'm going to wake up in the morning, file paperwork with Human Resources, take a final exam, ferry boxes and bags into a car which will drive to the storage locker place, ferry the boxes and bags into the storage locker, drive the car back to my crappy dorm room, ferry more boxes and bags into the car, drive the car back home to my parents' house, and then I'm going to fall asleep, surrounded by unpacked things which I can only imagine will be resentful of their cardboard trappings and will probably haunt me in my nightmares. I'm really looking forward to it.  The truth is that I've come to love my crappy dorm room. One time, me and my roommate saw a fawn walking by a meter from our window. My walls were covered in postcards from people important to me. We filled the room up with lamps so we never had to turn on the ugly florescent overhead light. Yes, we...