WordArt

“If I die, can you make sure and give my bottle cap collection to the guy at the Auto Body shop?” My mother glares at me, and I know, once again, that I have made the stupidest statement in the history of language or something. Oh well. “You can just do whatever you want with the rest of my stuff, but I really want Terry to get those.” Something strikes me as right about it. He emerges in my mind as the only human thing about the whole accident.

“Can you take her back?”
“Sure. Right this way. I’m Terry.”
“I’m Courtney. It’s nice to meet you. I’m sorry it’s not under better circumstances.” Nervous laughter. My eyes roll behind my huge bug-eye sunglasses.
“Right. So, this is your baby, here?”
“Yep, that’s my girl.”
“’92 is my favorite year for the Cherokee.”
“Yea, mine too—there shouldn’t be much left in here, just need this, and I guess I’ll take these bottle caps for my collection.”
“Oh, you collect bottle caps? Me too! How many do you have?”
“Hmmm, I guess probably like four shoeboxes full. My friends collect them for me too.”
“That’s great. I probably have like two or three shoe boxes.”
“Nice. Well, good luck with that. ‘Nice to meet you. Thanks.”

There was something validating about the way he acknowledged the value of my things. He liked the things that I did in the way that I did. Suddenly human interactions were more than collisions that left cars irreparably damaged and bodies mangled across asphalt. Value was measurable in favorites and shoeboxes-full; not dollars-worth of damage, percentage of fault, or miles per hour.

My heart warmed for the first time in days and I smiled, pushing my numb cheek into my swollen eye, squeezing out tears that had been loitering there.

But these feelings and values don’t translate; so here I am, trying to convince my mother that Terry at Brea Auto Body should have my bottle cap collection in the event of my untimely death. She says she’ll use them to cover my coffin, although I’ve told her I’d rather be cremated. Cremated and put in my Bubba Gump hurricane glass—after the bottle caps are taken out.

But I’ll probably live for a while, and I don’t think I could give Terry my bottle caps if I wasn’t dead. I would be too embarrassed. So they’ll probably get used to cover my coffee table at my first home, and then it will break and my partner will want a nicer new one, so they’ll end up dumped, like the trash they were to begin with.

It’s funny how things come full circle like that.

I'm back on the bus again, after months in my little antisocial bubble. The best part of riding the bus for the last couple days is that I have finally almost finished reading A Passage to India, a seriously great book by E.M. Forster that takes place during the British occupation of India. It is so good, and now that I have finally gotten past the part that I have read to 3 times now over the last 3 years, it is even better!

Next stop, the Fullerton Public Library, to pick up some new novels for free. Embrace the free world with me, friends. But don't just do it because I said so, because it turns out that communism with a boss is fascism. Hahaha.

C

Writing is what I ought to do. I know this, and it’s just something I should be doing. My struggle with writing comes from a common sense of the bucket hitting the bottom of the well and coming up dry, a lack of fortitude to finish a thought that I’ve started, a fear of the ever critical reader (yes, that’s you… no, I don’t know if you’re really being critical or generous, and I may never know!—that’s the problem). I scrounge through the desert of my mundane experience for pieces that give me enough flavor to make broth with, hoping my imagination and practice will add some substance to it. I grow bored with the project, assuming we will all find something else to consume if we wander just a little further. Finally, if a piece makes its way through the machine and on to the plate, I am afraid to let it out of the kitchen, for fear that it will seem trivial or overstated or commonplace, or even for fear that no one will notice that it is there at all.

Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street, or maybe chewing breakfast cereal, or observing some natural phenomenon or another; and the most interesting subject will come to mind. And I will spend the most fascinated 3 seconds of my life exploring the idea and thinking about all that I should someday write about it. And in about that long the idea is quite gone, replaced in my conscious space by some shiny object or a butterfly or a very cool sneaker.

So then, let’s write these down. Things that I may someday, and now we all know ought to, write about. You should participate here, because the fact is you should all be reading these someday. and when I say should I mean ought to, because that’s the kind of language we use around here.

Things I can remember so far…

A piece of cross-gender relationships that I started several months ago and became disinterested with for lack of information (that supported my desired conclusion).

A piece on the difference of experience between time spent with many people and time spent with few.

An exploration of friendships of different types and values and natures that I have encountered.

An exploration of fruit juicing of different types and values and natures that I have encountered.

A journaly type expedition through my final stand at the home of my parents for the next two and a half months.

Okay, your turn. Otherwise I will just start ripping ideas of all of your blogs. and you don’t want that to happen. Like, it ought not.

C