Near Meth Experience

I started carrying

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 21:52:17 -0400

a lighter with me, because of how many people ask me if I have one. Now I can say yeah. And then I’ll say nothing, and force them to ask me if they can borrow it. And then I’ll scrunch my face up.

My radiator is broken.

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:11:00 -0400

My radiator is broken.

I want.

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 17:07:38 -0400

I want.

To Finally Sleep

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 13:14:00 -0400

I met you three days after the doctors told me I was going to die. You may remember, at that all-night diner down near the highway. Jack’s. One of the places I went when the world was sleeping, in the early hours when eyes are reddest, coffee thickest, and still you looked radiant. It was pouring, and you walked in out of the mess, carrying an extra pound of water in the curly mop on your head. You asked me if you could sit and asked my name.

“Marx,” I said. The place was empty but for us, the waitress and the graveyard shift cook. And I waited for the usual question, for you to laugh and say, “Like the brothers? Or the communist?” but you just nodded and squeezed the rain from your hair.

“I’ve seen you here before,” you said. And you might have. I thought about all the nights I’d spent alone, a prisoner in my own mind when everyone else got a reprieve. I thought about the doctors, one of whom I liked very much, a little man whose leg was shorter than the other, and how he’d furrowed his brow and made his mouth tell me all that extra time was going to catch up to me. The seizures, he’d said, were only the beginning.

“I don’t sleep much. This is one of my night places.” I always curbed the truth, molded over corners with a lie so it wouldn’t be so sharp, so unbelievable. But the truth was I hadn’t slept a wink since the moment I was born, some crossed wire in my brain. It was why I felt so old, even at twenty-four. Living a block of time like that all at once, it wasn’t right, and I had often wondered who I would be if I could only sleep. If I hadn’t collected more waking moments than most thirty-five year-olds. I didn’t say any of that to you.

“How about you,” I said, “You look as if you’ve come from a party.”

“It was a ridiculous thing, and the man I went with…” You shook you head. “He’s a pig. I came here for a slice of pie, and I didn’t feel like eating alone.”

“’I’m in no hurry to get anywhere. What was your name?”

“It was Amanda. But maybe tonight I’d rather be a Miranda, or an Elizabeth.”

“Oh, never an Elizabeth.”

“A Miranda then.”

“Amanda. A wonderful name.” You smiled at me so I wide I forgot myself, and felt a grin tickling the corners of my mouth.

You ordered pie, apple, with a bowl of whipped cream on the side, and while I sipped at coffee we talked about poetry, and the decline of modern art. I had never had such a conversation, and it was even more pleasant because I had not been expecting one. I think I fell in love a little bit, as your hair dried, as your wit and mine danced over and through the other like dragonflies in a rain.
“It will be Eliot next, when I return from the bathroom. Prufrock and his love song.”

You winked at me and I found myself toddling to the restroom, elated. I even hummed a little tune as I urinated. Washing my hands, I took a look into my face and saw something I hadn’t since I was a boy. Hope, and only now. As I was dying. I might have even laughed.

I was a step away from the door, my hand reached out to grasp the handle when the seizure began. It threw me to the floor and beat my head against the tile, and clenched my teeth as blood and drool shot through the gaps in them. It went on like this, my entire body writhing under a wave of electric pain, until I began to wish that I could trade my consciousness for death. My seizures had never been mild, and though they’d only began a month before, the first of them had been children compared to this monstrosity. I was an animal being burned alive. I thanked God for the door, for that obstacle between us, because I felt that if you saw me that way I would lose you to pity and unease. When the seizure ended I lay there panting, sucking air as tears of relief ran off my nose and diluted the sticky red on the floor. It was a long time before I was able to get myself up.

When I emerged from the bathroom, weak and sweat-soaked and looking as if I’d taken on a boxing team, the first sunlight was coming through the windows. Cars were parked outside, and two men had their heads buried in plates of greasy food, one at the bar and one in the booth where I’d left you. You were gone. The waitress, seeing me, rushed over. “Oh my God, what happened to you? I thought you’d left!”

I waved a hand. It was too late anyway, and I wasn’t going to spend any of my remaining minutes on the planet explaining myself.

“The woman I was with. When did she leave? Did she say anything?”

Her mouth hung open like a bear trap and her eyes vibrated wildly over my body. “Oh myGod,” she said again.

”The woman who was here with me.”

“What? Oh. She left. But she left-” the waitress reached into her apron and pulled from it a napkin smeared with blue. “-this for you.”

I took it from her and moved toward the door.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call anybody, you look horrible and -”

The door closed behind me. The morning air was like a warm breath on my neck, and I walked to my car as carefully as I could. In my right hand I felt the indent of your writing on the napkin, but it wasn’t until I had pulled myself behind the wheel and brought myself to a complete stop that I was able to read it.

“I couldn’t wait. Thank you for the company and the conversation.” Under that was a number, and another scribble. “Please do call. Something is different about you.”

I drove to the hospital. They scanned my head, and called Dr. Whitehearse. He limped into his office and sat down, dropping the scans on his desk and giving me a strange look.

“I’m afraid it might be less time than we originally thought, Marx. A week at this point, perhaps less. Two more seizures like that will kill you. Hell, one might be enough. They’re telling me to keep you here for observation.”

“I have a week to live and you want me to stay here?”

The doctor smiled. “No, of course not. I wouldn’t either. Go, get out. Live while you can.”

I went home and made myself a sandwich. I watched a film and decided I should get on a plane and visit my parents. Say goodbye. It would be the right thing to do. My fingers traced your writing, and I thought about calling. What would I say? Tell you I’m dying and that I want to spend my last days with you? No, it would be better to spare you. Let you remember me as I was that night, and at least I can be satisfied that I met you before I died.

I booked the plane to Florida. In a bag I put six changes of clothes, my toothbrush and some shampoo. And I tucked your napkin in the side pocket. If I live for eight days, I decided, I will call you.

It’s been seven. Tomorrow I will either hear your voice or dream it. Anyway, it will be good to finally sleep.

Ooh you’re so fine.

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 05:01:54 -0400

Ooh you’re so fine.

The eyeballing game

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:26:30 -0400

The eyeballing game:

lifeofbk:

Current best: 5.21

Bring it.

Uh. 2.67. Really, Brian?

A guaranteed laugh every time. Trust me. CLICK-THROUGH OR CLICK...

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 20:59:00 -0400

A guaranteed laugh every time. Trust me. CLICK-THROUGH OR CLICK HERE!

streeter: I’m in this! Horray! I thought this script was...

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:51:46 -0400

streeter:

I’m in this! Horray!

I thought this script was particularly funny. I hope we lived up to its promise.

The only thing missing was the RA-less floor running wild. That would have made it.

Dead Things

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 00:49:00 -0400

It was November and the crow’s nest was empty. I’d climbed to the top of the pine tree out in front of my old house, long after the birds had gone. The early evening sky looked like the bottom of a child’s foot - smudged gray and looking like it might need a wash. I straddled the wind, remembering when this tree was mine, when I was eleven and it was not pine but tall ship, and how I rode the mast and watched over the rest of them, a fleet of rooftops sliding through a sea of grass and earth. Closing my eyes, I tried to make it all again, the waves, the squall, my ship. But sometimes memories are dead things, and you can make them talk if you need them, but they don’t say anything new. It was just a day, a cold day, and I was just a man in a tree from a childhood above a house someone else called their own. And someone once told me I would only see my childhood from somewhere far beyond it, and maybe I saw it from that treetop, the way I saw the bird’s nest in a bough just below me. It was empty, and when I reached for it something strange happened.

The wind pulled it apart as I watched, a graceful dismantling that happened just beyond my fingertips, and turned the nest into what it was before - just pieces, falling in a breeze.

"But an artichoke is a fish. It’s a fish! You put artichokes on pizza."

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 22:50:00 -0400

“But an artichoke is a fish. It’s a fish! You put artichokes on pizza.”

- Libby

carolinemartin: Let’s remember our roots. I’m a sap for...

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 00:06:41 -0400

carolinemartin:

Let’s remember our roots.

I’m a sap for this.

WHOA.

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 20:32:45 -0400

WHOA.

FIRE IS SCIENCE!!!

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 17:47:52 -0400

FIRE IS SCIENCE!!!

As-Yet-Untitled-Adam-Holwerda-Sitcom-Project

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 14:20:06 -0400

I’m going to write and produce a pilot of a sitcom.

Here are some of the basic thoughts I have about it:

It’s going to be about ten minutes long. Since this isn’t about the networks, or running times needing to be split up by unhealthily long advertisements and whatnot, it’s going to be shorter, but the continuous ten minutes is going to be longer than what you’d see in an actual sitcom.

It’s going to be in HD. It’s going to be a Vimeo sitcom. Not about Vimeo, just. On it.

I have the actors all ready. They’re going to work for free. Just like me.

It’s not to get anyone paid. If the first episode works out, there are more in the plans. There’s no reward for anyone except for the people watching. And maybe from the making of it, and maybe people can use it as a credit to their acting.

It’s going to be shot in a style made famous by Curb Your Enthusiasm. Not that it’s not scripted, because the jokes and the situations are, but the actors don’t need to memorize lines and they’re free to fill the character more completely.

If anyone is interested in getting in on any kind of editing or anything like that, let me know. At the very least I might need help with an intro or something. Brian and Caroline, that’s you. But don’t worry, it’ll be a while before I’m at that stage.

This is the first time I’ve actually, besides talking the actors, said that I’m going to do this. So. Kind of the putting it out there stage.

My man, Jason Chan

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:36:10 -0400

My man, Jason Chan

seanmobrien: Don’t Vote! Here come the celebrities. Thanks...

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:50:48 -0400

seanmobrien:

Don’t Vote!
Here come the celebrities. Thanks Toby.

Natalie Portman said I didn’t have to.

While They Are Watching Pushing Daisies

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 20:33:31 -0400

I am free to pontificate.

Internet, these are the things that I like. Make me a list as fast as you can.

Short stories.
Beautiful girls.
Humor and funny.
Shirts that are not medium. Small is better.
Green tea.
Music that is sung by a girl.
Frisbee that is played by me.
Lava lamps.
Art that is not bad art.
Shoes that hide my toes.
Guitar picks, for getting food from my teeth.
Change that I put in a bottle to shake.
Speakers that make my teeth happy.
Stuffed animals that aren’t stuffed animals.
Remembering the time I learned to breathe underwater.
Indian food, especially curry.
Blankets and pillows and dreaming about my life upside down.
Guitar strings strung on guitars.
Mirrors by themselves. No smoke.
CAPS LOCK.
When my ears are not popping from societal pressure.
When it is not the moment just before, during, or after a sneeze.
Thinking about thinking, and philosophy.
Push ups 30-35.
Comics and books. And comic books.
Beautiful girls.
Tall stories.

Sleep deprivation does wonders for jelly beans and escape...

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 15:41:00 -0400

Sleep deprivation does wonders for jelly beans and escape artists.

lifeofbk: Dexter: Episodes 301-304. Working in Hollywood has its...

Wed, 01 Oct 2008 14:41:00 -0400

lifeofbk:

Dexter: Episodes 301-304. Working in Hollywood has its perks.

YOU ENVIABLE MAN! Rip them and send them to me. Nao. Well, 302-4. I’ve seen 1.

Oh hey. I stumbled this website today called...

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 21:07:36 -0400

Oh hey. I stumbled this website today called “MySoti” which means I don’t know, whatever.

It’s like a t-shirt making site that’s better than Spreadshirt (at least so far).

It’s in beta form but if you want you can buy a t-shirt I made.