Writing Saturday=bust. Shit!

Because I've forgotten the cord to plug in my computer, because I've forgotten my headphones, because I got off to a late start, because the two women sitting across from me at Caribou screamed and screamed about their rich neighbor who supposedly digs through the trash--she has a 500,000 house! She's stinking rich. And you won't believe this...I saw her digging through the trash. And her son, well he got my son started on it!--that's why.

Also, because after the trashy-son-woman left, another woman came to take her place. A woman who was much louder and much more angry and who had a cell phone. This woman came to Caribou solely to call her credit card company and complain about their website. She did so for about 45 minutes. She asked to speak to three different people, and so I heard her story 3 different times: Excuse me. Excuse me. Can I talk? Can you let me finish? Your website does not reflect this policy. I made a payment yesterday. 12:00 evening tonight is SUNDAY. This is a business day. You're not listening to me. No. I cannot speak to you anymore. I need to speak with your manager. I need you to pull up your website and look at this with me--do you have a computer in front of you?--I need you to understand my situation and do something about it. I need to speak to someone who is not you right now.--Thank you! She sat with her ass on the end of her wooden cabin-like Caribou chair as though she was practicing her posture. She gestured wildly. She had huge lips. She kept glancing at me, expecting me to be annoyed. I refused to show annoyance in my face; instead I just looked at the papers in front of me. When she stopped looking at me, I kept one eye on the papers and one angry eye on her.

That is also why my big writing day has been a bust.

Today, though, was okay. It's January 26th, so when you don't freeze in a ditch somewhere or lose a limb in some sort of accident, you have to say it's okay.

I spent the morning crying in my bed, for some good reason I can't really think of anymore. It was then 12:30, so I lifted weights while listening to country music, and then I decided to take advantage of the above zero weather and go for a run. And I ran and ran to prove to myself that I had it in me; I ran down Chicago to Minnehaha Parkway, and I ran the Parkway along the creek until I got to the lake, and instead of just running the tiny swamp part of the lake, I ran the whole thing, past the couples holding each others' hands in one hand and a dog leash in the other, past the girls in their tight black running pants, past the slender men on bikes with slushy tires, the men who I wish would ask me out on dates. Ah, dates. I thought about my recent bouts with the dating website, the men who look at my profile and pass on, the men with tattoos and faint moustaches who send me emails without complete sentences. I hate the dating website; the interviews of, essentially, will-you-suit-me-for-the-rest-of-my-life over coffee, the emails filled with misdirected wit. I've just become so, very good at being alone. It's depressing isn't it! It is.

Last night, I looked at the other girls on the website, their clever profiles, their cute pictures, their descriptions of themselves as "fun-loving." Their blonde hair and sucked-in, sexy faces and self-taken photographs. I began to think the website was competitive. I futhered my destructive thinking of the philiosphy of this website, how easy it is to just pass on, to reject somebody. I'll pass, but thanks. How one sentence or picture makes you say, "no." How, if I met some of these men, if they really knew who I was, that I'd be such a different person. How they could think the same thing about me. How this seems to mess with fate, or ironically is. If we were all in a room together this would be such a different story. How things like religion or wanting-of-children just sits in front of you, in tiny sans sariff font. Most of my non-spoken correspondences, otherwise known as these "winks" end with me saying in my head fuck off, [insert retarded screen name here], I'm more attractive than you anyway. You're missing out, [stupid screen name]. My picture may not be very cute, but I'm totally hot in person. And then I cry for awhile and hate myself. I'm gonna go feel sorry for myself and listen to my Sinatra records and pretend that I have somebody who thinks about me when I'm not there.

Isn't love just the most important, ridciulous thing. It is. Fuck.

Although I didn't get the writing done I wanted today, I was able to accomplish part of my goal of reading over the literary magnificence of P's essay and RT's poems. How wonderful. I took my thin black pen, and I wrote in margins, and channeled MFA Jean. I wrote and wrote, made jokes, took very small words very seriously, and felt like a human being again. When I was done, I took the pages of essay and poem and paged through them three or four times, gloating in my comments. Not even in what they said, but just how they looked on the white spaces of the pages, all teacher-writingly and messy and exclamation point filled. ! The coffee was just dark enough to upset my stomach, and the cookie was hard, but I sat there with my fingers in my hair, my head resting in my palm, and I thought about smart things; I wondered about poetry and art and trends and failures and successess and why those were what they were.

That run I had today, that was a good run. It's been 5 hours since, and my thighs are still twitching. My muscles are saying what were you thinking, Jeano. You weren't quite ready for all of these miles yet. But they're wrong.