Apparent fruit of thy womb

A couple of stills from Obvious Child that I can now share online because we've had our premiere. Link to web video as soon as we get it up! Note added on July 15th.

Cat of traveling language

She doubts that she could hear the rumble of sex even if the radiator wasn't humming. In fact, the radiator need not hum at all, as it is March of the thirteenth and the degree of the air is somewhere in the high 30s. All the windows in the apartment are opened anyways. But, alas, the radiator stops its humming and indeed, there is no sound of sex, although she knows it is occurring but a mere few steps down the hallway. If she were to travel down the hall and stand outside, next to the closed door, she is sure she would likely hear the moans and gropes of sexual encounter, however, as she sits now, in the plaid mustard yellow and forest green chair, there are three walls between her and the room filled with the joyous grunts of copulation. And through so very many walls, she knows little can be heard, despite how majestically and intimately capable the two bodies inside that room are of becoming entwined.

The white and gray cat in front of her meows with an erect, straight-standing tail. It stretches briefly, its front legs extending to such euphoric lengths that its face can't help but contort into an expression of utter pleasure. She wishes she could imitate the cat in that way.

That cat, though, she never could imitate.

The Kingdom

The sun had the resemblance of a giant yellow octopus hanging in the opalescent ocean sky. Its endless unfolding tentacle rays dangling, drooping so low they almost seemed to coil on the ground below in a pile - inviting a kind of sad warmth should one be able to wrestle himself inside one of its spiraled reticent limbs.

Polly preferred the shade underneath her favorite apple tree, ensconced in a foggy gray shadow that danced around her when the breeze fluttered, reclining against the tree's sturdy trunk, waiting for a perfect terse apple to fall and catch in the pouch of her skirt. She had been waiting for ten years, filled with a somber excitement.


Jimmy was less hopeful, staring at the murky bubbly film that had stubbornly cemented itself over the surface of the lake some time before the last apple had fallen into Polly's lap. Jimmy was in Polly's sight line, but she never saw him. Jimmy never saw Polly either but he could hear the soft moans of disappointment that wilted out of her every time the sun closed its eyes and dimmed its light.


Paul was the only one who ever really moved - leaving the cloisters of his ivy-covered house to rove about in the tall, slender grass fields of the Kingdom. Though he was more active than most he was also the most abject - scowling always, never placid or stoic like the others were. He silently and mentally encouraged the others' abeyance though, as he preferred not to be disturbed during his daily wanderings. He believed his soundless denunciations of their possible mobility (for he wasn't sure if they even could move) was what kept them idle. And he was grateful for his power - for he would have hated to share his towering expanse of greenery with the others.

You were right. There is no justice.

Someone told me tonight that my new hair reminds them of F.B.I agent Dana Scully.



I was considering dying it back blonde, but now...
The hair stays.

I think that's enough, carrots.

Well, as one of my all time favorite recording artists Shania Twain says, "I gol' darn gone and done it." Sure, Shania is talking about falling in love when she didn't want to (and we can all relate to how terrible that is), where as I am talking about finally dying my hair the one color it has never been: red. Well, it's not really red, it's more auburn. Think Claire Danes' color from My So-Called Life meets Tilda Swinton style. Or I guess we could just leave Claire Danes out of it, because Tilda really has the same color, but My So-Called Life was such an awesome show. Ahhhh, Jared Leto from the 90s.

The intention was not to dye my hair red, but I should know by now that when I settle in with Joey (my roommate who has been doing my hair for the past two years) and have a plan for my hair that it never goes accordingly. This summer the plan was to simply bleach it so I would be super-blonde (like Kelly Bundy in Married With Children.) We certainly got the color right, but we ended up chopping off about five inches as well because all the bleach fried my hair. So my hair looked more like Twiggy's than Kelly Bundy's, but that was alright.

So when Joey and I sat down in the kitchen today, the idea was just to make my hair a darker blonde, as my roots have been growing out for some time now and I wanted to make the distinction between root color and the other color more subtle. Well, when we did it the blonde part got darker, but the roots turned red. This was bad. I never wanted to be a redhead. I don't even like using that word.

So Joey sent me back to Beauty Kingdom to get a different color. It was a bad idea that he didn't come with me, because I purchased a box of brown dye that still had hints of red in it. (I think it was called "bronzed brown", but I didn't pay as much attention to the name of the color as I did to the model on the box who portrayed the color. She was so very pretty.) And Joey doesn't read the box either before he saturates my hair in the dye mixture.

Joey tells me my hair looks purple.

I get up to go and look in the mirror (we are in the kitchen, you see) and he tells me not to. That I should just sit back down and wait to look.

After twenty five minutes and few bites of delicious cheese from the Essex Market, I am face down, leaning over the side of the tub in the bathroom while Joey rinses the dye out. I still haven't seen my hair. I half open my eyes as he rinses and can see maroon-colored water running off the ends of my hair, splattering onto the floor of the tub and snaking toward the drain.

"Joey, this looks red to me."

"Hmmm, well it's not really red, it's more of a burgundy."

I didn't like that.

Well, once it was dried it turned out alright. Alright enough for me to give it a try. I look wiser I think. More sophisticated. No one has seen it yet except Joey. I will report back the reactions of others.

Happy New Year!

AM Randomness Pt. 3

Another night another dream...


So last night I dreamed that I met Zac Efron at a party at my apartment in Bushwick. (You know, the guy from the three Disney High School Musical films.) In my dream I found him captivatingly attractive and sat down on the arm of the couch on which he was sitting and began talking with him about college basketball.

Suddenly, we both had places to go so we walk to the subway and get on the train together. We ride for awhile, continually talking. What about, I never knew. We were just two very chatty subway riders engaging one another in vibrant conversation. As we rode an urge in me grew that I had to be protective over him, not in a possessive way, but more in a big sister, motherly way. (In my dream I had imagined he was much younger than me, like fifteen or sixteen, but after doing some wikipedia research I found out that he is a mere two years younger than me.) But, despite the motherly adoration, I really wanted to bone him. It was all I could think about while we were riding the train together. And to increase my intense amative desire, Zac explained to me that he just broke up with his girlfriend because she wouldn't have sex with him. I smiled at him and then stood up, giving him a hug and a kiss on the cheek and because it was my stop I got off the subway. I was blissful, knowing that I would see him again soon and that when I did I would seduce him.

I got off the train and it and Zac rumbled away. I smiled and then remembered that I was pregnant. In my dream, my stomach wasn't much larger than it normally is in real life, but the skin on my abdomen was much tighter. It felt like if I bent over at too sharp an angle my skin would just rip open like a piece of dried seaweed paper.

Upon remembering I'm pregnant I immediately change my plans (whatever they were) and go over to my friend Anna's house, pissed as hell because I don't think Zac Efron will want to have sex with someone who is going to have a baby and already has one kid. (Apparently I already have one young baby at home.)

So I am at Anna's apartment and in complete regret I ask her, while calmly running my hands over my taught skin, "Why the hell didn't I get an abortion?" Anna shakes her head. "I already have one child and I don't even know where it is! When was the last time you saw that kid?" Anna shakes her head again and says, "I don't think I ever saw it."

I panic thinking back to Zac's pretty boy face and his fluffy feathery hair, "I can still get an abortion, right? Just go to Planned Parenthood?" Just as I finish my sentence my water breaks and Anna must take me to the hospital. When I wake up (wake up in my dream, not from my dream) I am lying on a hospital bed in one of those paper gowns with big woolen socks on my feet. Anna is there. I look at her and she smiles. "I had it taken care of," she says.

I want to get up and give her a hug, but I can't move as the epidural is still numbing my legs. "And the other one?" I ask. "Taken care of." Anna smiles.

I lay my head back down on the pillow and gleefully think of Zac and how I can't wait to see him again. You know, to sleep with him.

Lemon, with a side of ginger.

Destruction of material things is always a fun way to evade your emotions. For example, a long time ago, after I decided a silly little boy (who now in hindsight seems oh so much sillier) didn't adore me enough, I came home, removed a single drinking glass from my wooden kitchen cabinet and threw it as hard as I could into the sink. Then, through my watery eyes, I stared down at the sink, which was scattered with pieces of varying sizes of sharp glass. I felt empowered. Like I had regained control of my life and my emotions, like I had seized a sort of power back from the silly boy. But I only felt this way for a mere moment, as I soon began the process of collecting the pieces with my bare hands as to hide the evidence of my craziness from my roommates. With the sink empty and pristine I crawled to my room and feel asleep on my floor, fully clothed. The next morning I awoke and went into the kitchen where I found my roommate Molly was standing in front of the sink, unmoving, with the cabinet doors below the sink ajar. She looked at me.

"The sink is leaking."

After playing dumb for a few minutes, I eventually told her what I had done. I then had to call the landlord and get him to come out and fix it. (Vincent is his name by the way. He is Italian and large set and I am unbelievably attracted to him. Every time he comes by to fix something I put on makeup and do my hair. I love his thin-from-wear, gray t-shirt with damp spots underneath his broad shoulders) Vincent had to take the pipes apart underneath the sink and once he disconnected them he found many pieces of glass that had managed to push their way down the drain.

"In the future, you may want to try to avoid putting glass down the drain."

I became defensive and lied, saying it wasn't done on purpose.

But it was worth it. Breaking things is fun. But just material things. Breaking bones and breaking hearts simply aren't as fun. Though I am just assuming, as I know for certain I have never broken anyone's bones and I am pretty damn positive I have never broken anyone's heart. Except for maybe a boy's in the sixth grade. (I was obsessed with him for months and when he finally asked me to be his girlfriend I dumped him the next day. I remember he had a small mole next to his mouth that looked like a peanut butter smear, like perhaps he hadn't efficiently wiped his face after his morning toast. That is not why I dumped him, though. I was just in it for the chase. Once I got him I was disinterested, immediately becoming distracted by his fraternal twin brother. But, I doubt that broke his heart more than it just annoyed him.)


Maybe it isn't so much about breaking something as it is about using more physical strength than you would normally. After another hard break-up I installed an air conditioner in my bedroom window. Those units are incredibly heavy and hard to lift, so boxy and awkwardly shaped. And sweating in the hot, stale air of my room I diligently drilled and screwed for two hours until I safely secured the appliance in my window. (I wasn't sure I installed it properly until autumn came when I removed it and realized that it had stayed put, not having come loose and fallen three stories to crush some unaware pedestrian.) I turned it on, closed my bedroom door and laid on my bed, flat on my back, looking up at the ceiling. While waiting for my room to chill down to sixty degrees as drops of sweat slowly evaporating off my body, the pain of the breakup slowly crept back into my mind. I didn't move, but waited, allowing the full weight of the melancholy come over me. I let the pain set in on me and it was heavy, physically massive, like there was the body of a full-grown adult on top of me. I got up, turned the AC off and immediately set off on my bike, to meet a friend who had Valium and an extra ticket to a Godard film that was playing at BAM.

So, I guess this is my guide to getting over the pain of heartbreak. Just try these three simple steps:
1. Break something that will shatter.
2. Lift heavy things or exercise.
3. Valium. (Or some generic, more affordable version of it.)

If the above fail, casual sex is the only sure bet to evade your emotions.