I'm wide awake, it's morning

It's not quite morning. But it will be before I know it. And I am most certainly wide awake. Up at midnight, composing love songs to my favorite band as if they'd run out of juice to make their own cocktails. Offering to knit them earmuffs against my bad jokes. So a whale swims into a bar... What's a girl to do, with nothing on her mind but magic boyfriends and hope for happy sleep?

Worry about another restless night. Worry about the ozone layer and crazy sea lions in the mountains and microbial soup. Worry about cancer and strokes. Pap smears. Panic attacks. That's funny, let's all worry about having another panic attack. Isn't that, by definition, a panic attack?

The sun is on its way up and I'm slouched down in my bed wondering if we'll ever make it to Libra. If an FTL drive will ever be anything less fictional than a cylon. Forget about my cozy comforter, let us discuss the edge of the universe. Worm holes. The Bermuda Triangle.

When you are a kid, you can't fall asleep. There are monsters. In the closet, under the bed, behind the door. Waiting for you to fall asleep. Eat your brains. Oh wait, those are zombies. When you are a "grown-up", there are still monsters. Only they wait for you to wake up. Steal your time, your patience, your good thoughts. Either way, those monsters keep you from sleeping.

If I prop my eyelids open, the dark will last. I won't have marathon panic dreams or tossing fits. If I'm lucky I could find an X-Files episode to watch. Mulder would be the perfect company for this lonely conversation. Mulder, his neuroses, and his red speedo. Have you seen el chupacabra? Man, I hope that's not what is waiting for me to wake up.

Tick tock. Dark time is running out. Before I know it, the vampires will have wrapped up in their luxurious Kroner coffins and I'll be treading to work with a venti cup laced with my drug of choice, avoiding glances from all directions, especially from those I know. Off to have my time stolen by monsters with bad attitudes and magical disconnecting LANs.

I'm wide awake, and I'm mourning.



Well I could have been a famous singer
If I had someone else's voice
But failures always sounded better
Let's fuck it up, boys, make some noise

Inspiration... my ass!

This is for Ciara and Emily and any lurkers who were just thinking I should write more.

I recently read Chuck Palahniuk's Diary. It's about a woman who grows up white trash in a trailer park, dreaming of the life she wish she had. She doodles herself into big Victorian houses with happy trees and gardens with fountains and gazebos. She's constantly creating a world on paper that's better than her own. But then she goes to art school and meets a boy who takes her to that life and all is right in her world... only she's lost her inspiration. Years later people want sweet old Misty Marie Kleinman, queen of the slaves, to be an artist again. She refuses, and they torture her. They slip her poison pills for her headaches, they fake her daughter's death, they put her entire leg in a cast for a minor cut and lock her in an attic room with paints and canvases. Suddenly, she's inspired. The greatest artists have been tortured by life, they point out. Misfortune and misery are inspiration.

I figured out what my problem is, what sucked up my mojo. Happiness. I've been terribly happy lately, or in the least, complacent. Happiness will kick the shit out of any muse. Sitting here in my grown up world, feeling generally successful as a human being, surrounded by shiny boxes and noise makers to lull me into a peaceful coma.

BUT LIFE'S NOT FAIR. AND LIFE IS NOT A COMA.

It took some anger to get this going. Some good old frustration. Skin-scraping, knuckle-bleeding, toe-breaking (because I kicked a tree, of course) animosity. Spend a day trying to make microorganisms glow in the dark (AND FAIL), and you'll want to whip out your samurai sword, your nuclear warhead, your Jedi Chef BFG 666 Mobile Missile Launcher and do some damage, too, for frak's sake!

So what is my inspiration, why is my life so fucking unfair? Oh, I shall tell you. Besides the aforementioned fact that I am a cell staining failure, my midsection is too voluminous to be clothed by American Apparel t-shirts. Emily goes and gifts me for my twenty-sixth birthday a humorously witty shirt and I cannot be seen in public wearing it for fear I may just be mistaken for an overstuffed haggis. Apparently, to err is Human, to arr is Pirate, and to be the fat girl is Tracey.

Tis h'okay, though. Because I'm going to do something about it. Emily's pirate shirt is not the first shirt that didn't fit. (You may remember my Elijah Wood t-shirt.) Right after I finish eating my $30 worth of takeout food, I'm going to enlist Billy Blanks's help. And by "right after" I mean in a few days once my Taebo AMPED system gets here. I hope to pick up some sweet moves that even D-Qwon and Chuck Norris would be jealous of. Speaking of unfair, where are the fatties in this video? Is this shit so good that the fat just melts right off? These people are eternally trapped in the video, and they have nothing better to do than boot camp and tae bo all the time, is that why there aren't any fatties? I'm not sure if this is a good omen or a rip off.

You know what else isn't fair? My inability to attract a mate. Sure, I'm not really trying that hard, and my potbelly should have its own pen, but I'm funny. Clever. Smart. Considerate. I walk away from people I know without any notice, but I'm no ugo. But the plain Jane, funny fat girl always plays second fiddle. Wears the hand-me-downs. Drinks the dregs. DOESN'T GET LOOKED IN THE EYE. I don't need to wear makeup to be the main character in my own story, do I? Life is not fair, but I should at least get top billing in my own damn movie.

In the end, I guess what I can conclude is that looking like a sausage, retaining my fitness of zero, and failing to fluoresce will keep me writing. Like I said, life is not fair.

lost myself again

lyrics from Sia's "Breathe Me"

Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
UNFOLD me
I am small
and needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere else to be found,
Yeah I think that I might break
Lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
UNFOLD me
I am small
and needy
Warm me up
And breathe me


Ahh! I can't stop bawling, I'm such a baby! I've got this song on repeat, just going round and round. And it's just amazing how other people's creations can affect you so, so very deeply, take you to a place inside that you cannot reach yourself. Breathless and cold, you are overwhelmed with emotion. If you have a listen to this song by itself, you may not know what I'm talking about. But if you've seen the last three episodes of Six Feet Under you might.

So sad, so wonderful, so amazing that I just don't want to let it go. It's like on those rare mornings where you wake up after a particularly dramatic dream and you just want to lay there with your eyes closed and revel in it for as long as you can, wrapping tight in your blankets as if you could somehow freeze each image and every emotion, even if it was about the end of the world because honestly, sometimes, dammit, it just feels so good to feel. To feel anything, be it happiness or utter grief. It feels freeing to take off from the runway after sitting for what feels like an eternity on the tarmac. It feels fucking fantastic to drop from the cliff after being suspended for so long, even if it's just those few moments before you hit the ground and the searing pain sets in.

Don't make me wake up.

we don't say it enough

I've told a friend that I've been uninspired. He asked, "How's your writing coming?" And I've told him twice now, maybe even three times, that it's not. It's not coming and I've nothing to say. To which he responded, "Write about this conversation. Write about this concert. Describe how beautiful this day is." I was going to try, but then I was inspired by something else. I won't reveal my muse, but I wanted to say this:

We don't say it enough. And by it, I mean whatever important thing it is to you. Fuck that, actually. Fuck talking. We don't DO it enough. All the things you want to do, all the things you wish you did, all the things you've ever felt important and meaningful, go do them. Do them now before the opportunities pass you by. They could be gone in a heartbeat. Flatliners. Bermuda Triangulated.

Sometimes you can get so caught up in the little things. The hot water heater is broken. My freaking knitting project looks like the sheep threw up. I'm fairly certain my rent check will bounce. Screw it. Forget it all, it'll all be fine. The question is "Are you the person you want to be?" If something uncontrollable happened to you tomorrow that changed everything, would you look back somewhere down the road and regret your actions. Or lack of actions. We can think and dream and hope and pray all we want. Most of the time, it's the only way we can manage to make it through the day.

And by "we", I mean "me." I don't do enough. I don't call enough. I don't know enough. I don't live enough.

This isn't a lecture for the masses. This is for me. A reminder. In case of the apocalypse, this is my bomb shelter. My immunization. My break glass in case of emergency. And behind that glass lies a note:

"This is your life. Do you have any regrets?"