April 13, 2011
The contact in my right eye is always blurry. And how do M&M’s have a pickle aftertaste? It’s such a bad taste that I’m sure nothing else but brushing my teeth will get rid of it. Not even Dasani.
It must have been raining because you can hear the cars driving on a wet street, but you’re not sure because you’ve not been writing your paper and blasting any kind of warm music you can find. And not writing your paper.
I am perpetually cold.
Especially my pinkies. I don’t think they get enough blood in them.
I start thinking about how important pinkies actually are. I had that one life science course in Jr. High that gave the class the assignment to not use our thumbs all day. Only then did we realize how important thumbs are—yaaada yada yada. I try to not use my pinkies now.
You’re already getting bored.
You hear another sound in between the cars driving on the wet street.
I am perpetually cold.
You shiver; the other sound is a train whistle.
I try to remember how close the closest train tracks are. They’re not close at all. Like, not even close enough to… they’re just not close. Then I wonder if sound travels any slower when it’s raining. Wouldn’t sound waves run into the raindrops? It’s hard for humans to move fast in pools of water, too.
You know sound waves and humans aren’t the same thing, right?
Duh.
And pools of water aren’t the same as raindrops either.
…
I take my contact out and wash it out with solution. When I put it back in, my eye is all wet and when I use my thumb and pinky to pull my eyelid down to get all the bubbles out of the contact, my fingers come off my eyelash and they’re black.
I wipe it on my roommate’s towel by the open window.
I am perpetually cold.
Every other room I’ve been to in my building looks empty because they are empty. People are starting to pack up to go home.
You look around your desk that still has everything on it. Jars of sand. Jars of rocks. Jars of stuff. Pictures your best friend drew and doesn’t know you kept. Records from your brother.
You thought they would be worth looking for. They were.
Yellow tambourine that you suddenly wish was green.
If only I could get my ears to stop ringing.
Advertisements that you found stupid mistakes in. Paper maché Christmas lights that you want to rip from the wall. A Pepto-Bismol pink hospital bracelet that you do rip from the wall. The trash can is full. Nothing but chapstick in the pencil cup. Jars of knick-knacks.
There are different types of thirsty, I think. There is the dry thirsty and there is the bad taste thirsty and there is the sticky thirsty. I have the second one. The last two almost seem the same, so they’re lumped together now. And I still have the second one. Nothing helps. Not even Dasani helps.
I am perpetually cold.
You want to take all the stuff off of the walls and shelves. Like the jars and the pictures and the animal keychains. But you did take the bracelet off so you go ahead take the basketball bracket down as well. Two down… and just a lot more to go.
That’s really frustrating. Because you don’t like having seventy-nine percent of this stuff ninety-seven percent of the time.
Yes, I begin to realize. Very frustrating, but...
You really hate that you love stuff because stuff slows you down. It makes you late for class a lot and then you have to clean that stuff sometimes too. You feel like you have to throw away stuff so you do, and then you feel like you should save stuff but that stuff always ends up in the wrong pile and you throw it away by accident.
And you know that in like a decade or two or three when you’re ten or twenty or thirty years older, almost none of this stuff will matter. Like the artistically painted earring rack. Or the vintage watch holder. Or the handmade ring box.
For someone who wears the same jewelry everyday, I sure do have a lot of it.
You wish your stuff would disappear. Or be taken from you, that’s good too. Because then you wouldn’t have a choice, the option to say, “no actually I want to keep this stuff because I like this stuff.” Don’t ask me why I like the stuff because I don’t know.
You're really fighting to not take the paper maché lights down now. Because that would be one more thing gone. One more empty outlet.
…Now that’s three down… and still a lot more to go.
My nails are too short though to pull the staples out of the wall. And then there are the leftover staples from someone else that I’ll feel the obligation to take out as well. And there is too much stuff to try and find a place for now.
Jars of ocean water.
You are perpetually cold. And I feel sorry for you.
