i walk between two squirrels

one ran onto a porch of a house

while the one who had been chasing the other one
in circles

froze in the road and stared at me

i was a little afraid and felt a little something

i can't describe

i have owned several grammar books over the years. though i don't usually remember them, a lot of the lessons and rules in them make sense to me. my writing style can be influence more by grammar lessons. The Deluxe Transitive Vampire is my favorite grammar book, mainly because of its sentence style. after reading sentences from that book, i usually want to write derivative sentences. sometimes i carry it to and from work, along with other books, without opening it. other times i have carried it to and from work and have opened it. with no set goals in mind, oftentimes i open it while in my apartment, laying on my bed. oftentimes i do simple things that i feel are supplemental to my life. regardless of emotional implications, i feel i have adopted a sentence style that is positive. 

'a restaurant built around a terraced garden' in an ann beattie story

reminds me of the area in the middle of my high school that was 'outdoors' and

had a tree in the middle with bushes on the side.

my lab partner threw frog legs into it once.

after the teacher caught us, i watched him from the second story as he retrieved them .

the story is about a man who hates thanksgiving. 

i'm not following the plot of the story, but ensuring my eyes look at each word.

when i finish the last page i predict i will feel like i've made every moment in life count.

while i sleep, this feeling will vanish.

then i will get up to go to the bathroom and fall forwards, outside of my skin.

reaching for the inside of my arms, the inside of my arms will feel unreachable. 

from Untitled

Jim brings a camera to the lake house. The camera was given to him by a cousin from Kansas. The cousin is a professional photographer who invested in a newer camera with a bigger lens. Jim realizes the camera is lost when the sun is at the top of the sky and Ellen suggests walking down the shore trail to see the other houses. He sees the quilts on the guest room beds which are perfectly flat in the non-sunlight. There are two small duffel bags, with open mouths, revealing folded sweatshirts and rolled up bathing suits. The sloping lawn shines outside the large, diamond-paned windows. Jim leans down and looks under the bed against the right wall. The dark metal cross and support bars create shadows resembling things other than camera. He lays his stomach to the floor and slides to the bed that touches the left wall and the windows of the back wall. His palms touch the floor two inches to the outside of each pec muscle.The space under these double beds is darker but he still feels the camera is not there. He stands and feels the blood run down the inside of his body. Jim pans the tall dresser covered in an old fashioned tray, black and white photos, a dish of bracelets, and a miniature log cabin made for incense burning - no camera. 

somewhere i have a picture of a haunted fireplace in louisiana 

one time in louisiana i gutted a house whose owner

wanted us to save any star wars toys we found

also the barge board was valuable

which the house was made of i'm thinking

about those two places because i  can't sleep

for a few moments my life will continue
without me contemplating wanting to or not wanting to live
sometimes i see something vaguely on the computer screen
in the windows bar
specifically on the gmail window tab
and i focus at where it says 'Gmail...'
and concentrate on my anticipation
of a message, for it to say '_________ says...'
it feels like seeing to a million
germs vibrate under a microscope

my boredom becomes a loneliness
i don't have any friends right now
there's a cold chicken roll next to me
a too loud basketball game
drank all my snapple
snapple made my mouth taste funny
just thought about the tense
changes in my cover letter
and looked back on my life
like i never lived in its front seat
the ball of my foot on the corner
of a break pedal
two cliffs reaching out
and holding a glob of chocolate
above the brook

Books I Read Specifically to Cope

Short Cuts by Raymond Carver,

The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys,
Who Will Run the Frog Hospital by Lorrie Moore,

Quartet by Jean Rhys,

The Collected Works of W.B. Yeats (the first 30 pages),

(Random poems from) Sunflower Splendor: Three Thousand Years of Chinese Poetry,

A&P by John Updike on the internet on the day he died,

Sometimes My Heart Pushes My Ribs by Ellen Kennedy [anecdote],

started Follies by Ann Beattie.

i can't say anything. if i open my mouth i will begin to cry. i'm feel like everything is meaningless. i don't know why i feel this way. we are all uncertain about things. we need to make money so we can pay for food and a place to live. i am able to make money. what else should i do? i want to spend a lot of time with someone. i want to talk to them all the time. i don't want to be bored and feel meaninglessness. i guess i don't feel like everything is meaningless. a stadium of people cheering makes me feel nothing. it is not impossible to get what i want. but i cannot speak. we are uncertain about things. if i am reckless i might disappear forever. . now i see meaninglessness. the universe expands and gets colder and darker. i want to be in english class again. dogs and cats chase each other respectively. i am crazy now. i am going to just curl up and die. the second law of thermodynamics says all things must decay. i'm facing the abyss. i have more energy to give up.

2 weeks later -

i deleted a lot of things from the above paragraph and felt lost or confused. my pizza unfolded itself. soon i'm going to fold my pizza back and bite it. now i am chewing my pizza and i want it to fill my stomach and push the anxiousness out of my chest. i keep going back to the pizza, folding it, and biting it. now i want a can of soda. i just thought that what im doing has nothing to do with the purpose of me writing but i don't know what the purpose of me writing is. how is what i'm doing controlling my writing? is this even relevent? do people want to read this? i keep biting my pizza and it is becoming less and less part of this paragraph. soon this paragraph will have to be about an emotion, maybe. the goal of this paragraph might be to control a specific emotion that has stayed in me too long. i feel like this emotion keeps returning and staying too long. the longer it stays the more frustrated i get at this emotion and want to push it out. then i 'push' it out and it goes very far away but returns with the same level of influence on my other emotions, sometimes more influence. i just bit the pizza again which is now cold and i feel that i will be definately getting a soda soon before this paragraph is done maybe. i'm afraid if i get up the paragraph will be damaged in an unreparable way, like the ideas will 'leak' out of the last unfinished sentence and soak into a rug or stick to the surface of the desk. i looked up at the paragraph without focusing on any words and remembered i wanted to say that it might not matter if this is finished because i feel like the emotion that the paragraph is becoming about is something, maybe not an emotions but a thought, that i have been aware of in the past and will have my chance to do something with in the future. i thought that maybe this is the end. i thought that maybe this whole paragraph is just an excuse for itself. i felt like im constantly making excuses and putting things off and not 'living in the moment' enough. i decided against soda and filled a cup of water from the water filter and sipped it on the way back to the computer. on the way to the filter i saw the security gaurd with the accent. i felt bad for the security gaurd's life which has to be spent at that job. then i decided i don't feel sorry for my life being spent at my job. i did not mention i was at my job. i felt like the water would make me feel better in the end. there is a basketball game on on a tv behind me. i just thought i can't wait to lay in bed which was an emotion i was hoping to acheive because i felt the opposite of that earlier. i felt an abstract need to do something with my body before i got to bed. i will probably do things with my body that are simple like change the cloths, drink and eat foods that are in my refridgerator, talk to my roommate, listen to music, read and type. the other abstract needs involved not going directly home and or spending money. i just finished the water and felt worried about the things i needed to do before i leave in an hour. will i just post this on my blog which i'm sure no one reads? how has the unknown idea or emotion developed in this paragraph? have i accomplished anything that will retain value? when i read this again will i feel those things again or improve my ability to type about the unknown idea or emotion. the emotion is somewhere near me but i feel like it is less inside of me. i feel aware that the emotion will return. i stopped calling it a possible idea because the vague way in which it enters and leaves my body is less characteristic of an idea. the time on the clock is telling me to stop writing. i feel at least like i did something. like i excersized at the gym but only for 3/4 the time i told myself i would.

i think it's funny that i thought my life was stupid today

also that i was in a lot of physical pain

i went into walgreens to buy advil

they were out of advil but a dvd that was in my backpack

set off the alarm

then i went to duane read and they had nyquil

my dvd set off the alarm again

i went up to them and told them i set off the alarm

then i set off the alarm on the way out and didn't say anything

a cop car slowly rolled behind me on Albermarle

i showed the officer the contents of my bag

he got bored 

i felt like the whole thing was built by a child

then i had an image of new york state from above

i was lying in bed and thinking i could die

and everything won't matter

i felt like i wanted to stay there

i want to stay wet in my towel

and not get dressed for work

i'm looking out the window of my kitchen

and i feel thin

there's a person typing on a laptop

i get my laptop and type on it

we're two gerbils