Day Thirty Se7en: Happiness is Arrogance

I am sleeping in the cabin again. The tenants my grandparents had left because of all the rain, but they still paid in full. Once again, I have an entire house to myself.

I was kind of enjoying the rain. When I wasn't ignoring it.

Today, my cousin Josh found a bow and arrow set in the basement. When I came home from work, we shot it at this dead tree my grandfather turned into a giant birdfeeder. I want to kill animals and grandpa says it's fine to shoot raccoons or cats, but not chipmunks or squirrels. Oh well. . .

So tomorrow I have a meeting with the Citizen to arrange a schedule. Fuckin' finally.

Next week I will be in Virginia for a wedding for some relatives I've never heard of. It will be just me and my cousins - no adults. It's a roadtrip except by plane. I'm pretty damn excited. I hope it is as cool as the wedding my friend Kyle attended. It was quite lavish. Some dude rolled cigars right in front of you and there was a bar that didn't ID. I want that. I also want to take some really cool pictures of family members I couldn't care less about. Except my 2nd cousin Becky. She is awesome, from what I remember.

Speaking of Kyle, he is in Washington D.C. I told him to spit on all the monuments for me. So he did. What a pal.

I hope that offends you. Those statues don't mean freedom to anyone. In fact, what Kyle did was a much better example of freedom than a swimming pool for FDR or Lincoln staring down from his throne. In fact, all those monuments vaguely represent Greek architecture, which is very pagan. What I'm saying, is there if you think it's wrong to hawk lougies on rocks, you hold them sacred. You mine as well worship them.

Anyway, things for me are going pretty good. How nice.

all the rules, washing up on the shore.

yes

I went swimming today with my cousin expensive underwater camera, but I installed the film wrong. Nothing came out, so tomorrow I will try again.

Those books that I threw in the lake are shriveling up and shreds of them are washing up on the beach. Rule this and rule that, and I swim by them.

I'm working at Financial Resources again because the newspaper internship is still taking forever to process everything. I'm going to call them again and again. Tomorrow I will try again.

I was going to write a short story on the Steadfast Tin Soldier. It would basically be random allusions to the story, which has always fascinated me. What a weird fairy tale. Disney ruined it of course. But someone else did the same thing as me.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baltimore%2C_or_The_Steadfast_Tin_Soldier_and_the_Vampire

I may do it anyway.

Day Thirty Six: Rx

MARcH 28

This is entering into the recesses of my mind.

The perfect hues.

The darkness.

If I clamp my eyelids tighter.


This is perfection and this is beauty.

This is everything I've ever wanted and more.

This is true love.

Day Thirty Five: Decay Island

As we drifted toward the island my cousin remarked, 'maybe that house is haunted'.

I hadn't noticed it. I was too busy rowing, trying not to get wet. The canoe rocked uneasy in the wake of passing motorboats. But we landed dry. Me and my three cousins trekked into the woods, trying to find the almost hidden house shrouded in age and encircled in fallen trees. The house was abandoned as we anticipated and we stepped inside.

It was a Thoreau-esque cabin, completely stripped of all but dusty light fixtures and the fireplace. The housing style was a 1950's nightmare, almost every window cracked or shattered, leaves and wasp nests in every corner. The oval refrigerator sunk into the darkness. A broken mirror, seven years of bad luck echoed in the reflections. Decay in the stale air.

Maybe the house was haunted, just not by the dead. Maybe dreams. Maybe memories.

We smashed a few windows, the pure ones that were untouched. We shattered the lightbulbs and beer bottles littering the living room. On the other end of the island was another cabin in even worse repair. We broke the windowframes and tossed the wood into the lake. Bent the doorknobs until they hung listless.

We're boys. Why not? It was fun, but maybe you had to be there to enjoy the destruction.

You know that saying, "leave only footprints, take only photographs"? Fuck that. I want to burn the whole island down.

Day Thirty Four: Short Comings

Part of seeing in grey is forgiving people.
No me me me me.
Part of seeing in grey is relaxing a bit.
Seeing the rain as cleansing, not drowning.
Part of seeing in grey is seeing the good, too.
Something else, another moral I forgot.

I saw Wall-E today, that stupid robot cartoon. I didn't pay and I had nothing better to do so I went. I was going to write a scathing review and maybe I still will, but what do you care?
Instead, I will show you pictures of me stabbing myself with needles.
It didn't hurt, but I like how it looks.

I like singing in the rain even if I can't sing.
I like talking in the rain even if I can't hear.
I like you.

Day Thrity Three: Dreampetal

Day Thirty Two/Three: Master of Ceremonies

I've been developing film at Rite Aid, my little oasis here. There's a nice girl at the counter named Kaitlyn, who has a tongue piercing and perfect plucked eyebrows. She's ringing up a guy who's wrapped in bandages. He tells me he got real drunk and instead of jumping over a fire, he fell in it. He lifts the bandages and shows me a sick white blister that covers his entire wrist, running up his thumb. He's buying more bandages, of course and some of that Neosporin stuff.

I'm beginning to think that these kids, these poor rebels are the real citizens of New Hampshire. The old people who are stuck in 1950-esque rituals and beliefs are not gonna be here much longer. Twenty years and 90% will be dead. They don't matter. The ones that count are the girls with pink hair and tattoos that are running the registers and answering phones. The guys with lip piercings like fish hooks in their mouths. One day they'll inherit this place, and maybe change it for better. Maybe for worse.

So I went to a party today and yeah, it sucked. I mean, it was a bunch of teenage girls. I was with the fat girl who thought everyone hated her because she was fat. She kept making negative comments about herself and I wanted to smack her and tell her to grow a pair. People will like anyone who likes themselves, unless they like themselves too much.

I was really bored, so I unconsciously decided to liven things up. Matthew and I looked up the rules for fencing and had a tournament with Mark in the front yard. It was worth the bruises. I took pictures with a 35mm camera I found at the church. The thing cranked like an old airplane, the sound of retro. I developed some pictures I found inside the camera and they came out nice. Well, by my standards anyway, which are low.

Then a lot older people show up. I meet a guy named Maxwell, and the first thing he asks me is if I'm gay. "Uh, no." He starts to walk off and I ask him if he wanted to know anything about me besides my sexual orientation. He frowns. "Nah."

Most of the night, I was talking music. It turns out, Jerry likes Natalie Portman's Shaved Head. I didn't think anyone but me and a couple friends ever heard of them! What a nice surprise. Two girls, Kelsey and Christie are arguing over the Strokes while playing a game of Pokémon cards. "They sound like blah," Kelsey says. "No, they sound like amazing."

We go to the lake to swim. It's a nice, perfect little beach, and it looks beautiful. Because they forgot to bring bathing suits, some of the girls are sitting out. But not Kelsey. She strips to just her underwear and dives in. She says, "Has there ever been a party where I haven't taken off my pants?"

I find a boat sitting on the rocks and I take it into the water. Sarah tells me to stop stealing. I say, I'm not stealing, I'm borrowing without permission. Maxwell shouts, "I like him! He ain't no Godfearing type." I corrected him, but well, what could I say? I felt kind of sad to hear that.

I floated out on the lake, but without paddles I didn't get far. I leapt off and swam as far as I could, until I felt I was gonna drown from exhaustion. Skipped mussels as far as I could. Stupid little things.

On the way back from the lake, I met a girl named Sadie Paradise. No lie, that's her name. She's wearing a shirt that says, "Single & Fabulous". I tell her, with a name like that, one day she's gonna be famous. She says, "I know, huh. I already know what my bootlegged sex tape is gonna be. 'A Night in Paradise'. Kind of like Paris Hilton's."

I change the stereo to Rage Against the Machine. Sadie says, "This music makes me want to dropkick babies."
"Really?" I say. "Cuz I kinda enjoy that kind of thing."
She says, "I'm guessing no one here like Lil Wayne."
I grimace and try to justify my reaction. "Um, he doesn't write his own songs and . . . "
"Yeah, I know, but he's so hot I'd have 30 of his babies. In one month. That's thirty babies a day."
I nod.
"And you know what? All that child support would make me fuckin' rich."

Sadie says I look like someone named Kgell, pronounced Shell, some kid they know. "But you're not a man-whore. . . Are you?" I just smile. Then she says I also look like "That, that Shaggy dude!" I laugh and write this down. I tell Sadie and all the girls that I've been compiling a list of famous people I've been compared to. Like Connor O'Berst of Bright Eyes. Edward Norton. Eddie Vedder.

As I leave, I give each of the girls a hug, even the fat one without any self-confidence. All the girls call out goodbye to me, each a different celebrity I'm supposed to be. "Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye!"

I think there's a lesson to be learned here, but you'd be bored with it.