The Routines

20 minutes to go

Twenty minutes to go. What can you do in twenty minutes but think of the twenty minutes there is to go? How hard will you work when there are just 20 minutes to go? Hard, or hardly? Maybe both.

Now there is less than twenty minutes to go. All the things are put away, all the pieces of paper have been recycled. All the food has been eaten, the money spent, and the day winds down from dusk. What has been made has been made, what's been done has been done, and twenty minutes are almost done too.

Do you even want the last twenty minutes? The last twenty minutes of a movie are different than the last twenty minutes of a television show, the last 20 minutes of a letter, of a lecture, of a shift at work. The last 20 minutes is something-the time shrinks and expands according to context. It expands, it expands.

There are 15 minutes to go. Sometimes if you go get your coat and your bag it doesn't seem so long. It doesn't seem so long does it?

Now there are 14 minutes to go. Maybe I will play this game. Count down the minutes as they happen upon me. See how long one can write in twenty minutes. Why does this minute seem so long?

13 minutes to go.

I will go home. I can think of the bus ride home, and the people I will see on the bus ride home. Maybe there will be the man who sits on the bus and mumbles only slightly audibly to himself.

Seven minutes to go.

Bad Date Karma

I have believed strange things before.
I believe in strange things.
Asked out on a date.
Plan the date for Monday.
Monday comes and we are both ill.
It happens.

Can't plan the rest of the week.
Days fill up with obligations,
For the both of us.

Plan the date for the following Tuesday.
Tuesday is good.
I live with the idea of it being Tuesday.
Something came up,
And now Tuesday it's not.

Wednesday is too busy for me,
Thursday might be too busy for her,
Friday might be for family,
Then it's Christmas.

I know it's an odd belief, but I believe in date karma.
If we pick a day and something else is wrong with it,
I might just give up.

Maybe the universe is trying to tell me,
"Hey, this really isn't a good idea."

Things I have stopped include this

I was sick for awhile. I was sick in a way that isn't cancer, or something physical. In a way that people can say to you, "at least you still have your health".

I have stopped many things, and one of those things was this blog.

I realize, that a lot of the writings were symptomatic of my larger undiagnosed mental illnesses. I can say that, and acknowledge it.

Sometimes writing helped, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes it made things worse, sometimes better. It's hard to articulate and differentiate the complexities of past writing.

I think I was worried I would revert to past habits and behaviors. But, the thing is, I never read anything again that I make. I never re-read much, or remake much. So, what's the point? What's the worry?

This is just a note for now.

Capturing fleeing moments early Saturday morning

My notebook is in my backpack. I do not have the energy to trail the pen across the page. It takes remarkably a lot more energy to write out everything as you would like to say it on here. Easier I guess it is to write in this format.

Dear self,

How have we been doing?

Love

self

Gee. That is a hard question to answer. I feel like I am so caught up in the whirring spinning of everything. Home and school and just getting to ride the bus alone is something I haven't yet been able to fully assimilate into my life. It's like it didn't happen, that nothing happened even though the glaringly obvious is "duh, it really did." I think my internal monologue voice might be part valley girl.

My palms smell like oranges, my fingertips smell like oranges even though I've washed my hands a number of times. I have eaten a lot of oranges today. I'm not sure if it's unhealthy to eat a lot of them.

I feel like a plastic tupperware container. No one asks a plastic container how it feels. It just holds a lot of other things. I am a big tupperware container that has been emptied for a very very long time. I don't know how I feel. I feel slightly disconnected from everything inside of me. It is hard to describe fully, but it's not a bad feeling.

I will describe it later.

I kinda do this on a regular basis

Is this blog a marriage, dating, or a long-term relationship? Is this for better or worse, or can I start something new? Do I even want to? I don't know if I can love it as much, or if it will love me as much after what I did to it.

L.K.

I think the drugs are working, and I think you are probably right about the keep on living thing. Can we write a book already? It would be about all of this. About me and about you and about our separate breakdowns and our separate moments when pieces of us died. For you awhile ago, for me a month ago.

You know? Real gritty(you), real pretty(me), real witty(both of us, but we can debate about who's wittier).

Since it was my idea, and since I almost died, I get to draw the front cover, and you can draw the back.

Lines, lines, lines. I am in love with lines, but pen and ink ones not the other kind.

Oh the things we'll have to tell.

A.L.