i want to uppercut a punkass.

Once upon a time, on a tan couch that I purchased at a garage sale for $75, in my first apartment (for which I had purchased the couch), I decided to be a punk.

I had just sent a beautiful boy home for good, a boy who knew me and loved me and wanted to be with me, could offer me a comfortable life, a boy who - ostensibly - wanted marry me. He told me that all other boys were assholes and he made fun of ugly girls, and I knew that meant that he was my ticket out of victimhood.

When I closed the door, I had a visiting gray cat and empty space in front of me, space that had once been dedicated to him but during which I was now determined to fuck up in all possible manners. I wanted to be a fucking PUNK and DRINK and do DRUGS and BAD THINGS. If you know me, you likely also know that most of those things did not happen.

What happened was a kind of slow punkery and fucking up, and I can only see it now, looking back. I fucked up in the opposite direction. I didn't let go and loosen up; pulled my internal strings so tight that they snapped and I burst, but quietly, and gradually, and isn't it fitting that I fucked up my plan to fuck up?

Did I do some exquisitely stupid shit? Absolutely. Would I take it back? Never. Not for the 20 pounds that I wish I didn't have on me, not for a guaranteed quota of sunny days on the beach with friends and a delicious breeze. Whereas Sunshine Sugar Punk was an aspiration two years ago - or whenever I started this blog - I'd like to think I've earned it now. Even if it's dumb. Maybe if I ever open a bakery, that's what I'll call it. And for Alyssa...it'll have a doormat that says FUCK THAT SHIT.

in. print.

I saw my words in print today.

It was just my local newspaper, the Acorn, and I wasn't credited. But that's my photo. And that whole big article? I wrote it. Two months of press releases, and I'm finally published. It's a big little thing.

I met all those kids, too. I talked to them, and they told me what they liked to do and how they got the idea to use their iPhones to make flash cards instead of writing everything out on paper. (FIFTH GRADERS HAVE iPHONES.) And you know why they said they did it? Because it helps them learn better and lets them study anywhere. Also, and I quote, "It's a really great way to save paper!" They were sincerely concerned about preserving the environment, and I would like to think this means that for every particle of self-centered laziness they absorb as a generation, they're also learning to protect the things that are important and irreplaceable.

These kids were not bullshit. They were excited to tell me what they were doing and how they were innovating and how it was helping their classmates learn, too. And now there's a story about them, and it's in a shitty little local newspaper, but it's my story, and my hometown, and that photo is on the front page, and they got a whole page all to themselves. Minus ad space of course.

Those are good kids. And I knew it was a good story.

words words words

Centering myself with the wisdom of others.

"moved as she was by some instinctive need of distance and blue"

- Virginia Woolf

"Cause crazy is perfect, and fucked up is perfect, so I will be perfect."

- Next to Normal

"The whole sea for miles ran red and gold"

- Virginia Woolf

"Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It was in that moment's flight between the picture and her canvas that the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself - struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: 'But this is what I see; this is what I see,' and so to clasp some miserable remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their best to pluck from her."

- Virginia Woolf

Perhaps a bit heavy on Virginia Woolf...but perhaps I am simply and instinctively in need of distance and blue.

my sailboat and me

What I really want is a sailboat.

Really, though. Sure, I want a new computer. I want a job and a new car, even a new used car, that'd still be lovely. I wouldn't say no to a Nordstrom or Victoria's Secret gift card. Fuck, I love underwear. I want direction, health, wholeness, gymnastics training, voice lessons. Krav Maga. A horse.

But I keep coming back to my sailboat.

I mean, do you really need anything on a sailboat? It's water, it's sun, it's wind, and it's you. And you control where you go, and when, and how quickly. Except the kicker is - you don't, not entirely. It's give and take, you and whatever else is out there with you, that water, that sun, those winds. That's the beauty of a sailboat. I feel like out there I'd be integrally part of something immense, but somehow also acutely myself. Somehow.

I just have this image of pulling ropes and tying sails, and probably pulling and tying muscles, and spending sweaty salted days out where everything sparkles. I hope there's a place where everything sparkles. I want to find it, and live in it, and when I get there, I hope they give me a sailboat.

Beginnings.

Busting up perfect.
Conflicted, enamored - man.
It's hard to stay sane.