Spent the last few days traveling around Illinois, engulfed in a constant stream of holiday commerce. Merry Christmas Migraine. Finished all my Christmas shopping w/out going too much in debt (indulged court side seats at the Bulls-Celtics game this coming January--holiday splurge for myself and my best friend, fellow sports writer John "yer mom's SO HOT" Danish)....
Bumped into my ex-girlfriend Kristina in Barnes-n-Nobles. I hadn't seen her in about five years and I didn't recognize her. She blinked her eyes and called out my name and I shrugged my shoulders unphased. She was seven months pregnant ( !!!!!) and has been mara-married for about three years. My mom was with me--Mom always LOVED Kristina and after accumulating the gall to re-introduce myself to the girl I took to East Peoria's 1996 prom;(Memories to dancing to "KILLING ME SOFTLY") after staring into the blue-willow pools of her eyes and feeling blessed that I don't have a morgage and a family to furnish with my unfinished novel, I told my mom that, "Ooops, there goes 'yer ex-daughter-in-law."
Mother and Kristina have always had a Ruth and Naomi type of rapport. When I finally broke up with Kris, I think my mom cried more than I did. Actually Kristina has a fat ass (sad but true) and on prom I kept picking her fat ass up and twirling her around, as if her Lane Bryant assenting torso were the width of a baton.
I got a hernia two days later.
It was weird. I guess sometimes the romantic residue of a person stays inside you even though you'd rather they leave. One time Kristina and I were watching a video in her parents basement, having a typical high-school post-prom pelvic thrust make-out session and later on the night, after I kissed her porcelain astro dome forehead goodbye and guzzled my vehicle across the banks of the Illinois river, only then I noticed that sometime during the night, Kristina had doffed her necklace, a sliver cubed K, and had clipped it around the contours of my own neck. I have no clue when she could have done this--it wasn't like I was conciously monitoring her every slight feline movement--but sometime that night she pinned her love around my neck and I didn't realize it until hours later.
Seems like a metaphorical mirror of life--shit happens and you don't realize it until later---the ramification of our every crazy longing--our art having effects on total strangers.
Today at lunch I was reading proofs for my professor upcoming "dazzling" novel WHITE LIGHT. I had a batch of my own poems scattered like leaves across the table. One poem was called AFTER SEX MY GIRLFRIEND AND I TALK ABOUT WHERE WE WERE WHEN CHALLENGER EXPLODED. I wasn't paying attention and the waitress (whose name was also Kris) told me abruptly: "I was in fourth grade."
I had no clue what she was talking about until she pointed at the title of my poem. I didn't intend for her to read the poem, but she kept on my prying.
"I was in first grade" I told her.
"They took us in from the cafeteria. They had it playing in all the classrooms." She said.
"Everyone made a big deal because a teacher was in space." I said.
After I saw Kristina last week--I swear--it felt like I was wearing that unsuspecting silver necklace once again. I could feel the cold steel slinking down my neck as I watched Kristina give my mom a hug (?) and then lumber, very pregnant, out of the wooden dentures of the bookstore. All the joys and lies of that dubious summer came back to me and I could feel her--her clean mouth and sunset eyelashes--her silence--could feel all of this, as I made a lame joke to my mom about the one that gottaway......
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Early in BEFORE SUNSET Jesse (Hawke) informs an interviewer that he wants to write a novel that takes place solely during the discourse of a pop song. I've been having writers block lately (which has transitioned into writers avenue; writers suburbia; writers continent) and so, as a holiday activity, I figured I'd plagerize this idea. The pop song is called "LET ME SLEEP IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME" is one of Pearl Jam's most beloved B-sides. I'll let the bloggs speak for themselves, but it'll cover a young man looking for himself around the holidays--ardently searching for joy....
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