new home

I'm in unfamiliar territory now, for the next year. The choice was my own and something that I felt I needed to do while I am young and less cautious or else I might spend the rest of my life wishing I'd taken the risk. New York is a world unto itself. Hell, Manhattan alone is it's own planet. I made the decision to make this long white hallway into a home with a bright and beautiful blonde who keeps me laughing and let's me rant and goes out for drinks after a mediocre day at work. She likes my shitty cooking and watches bootleg tv with me every Sunday. I'm glad she's doing this with me, I can't imagine what it would have been like to change so much in so short a time on my own.

It's been fun planning out the apartment, choosing colors and making art together. The joint efffort has made this place into something I'm proud of. Now comes the part where I force myself to be done with it and decide to be satisfied so that I don't start to accumulate things I dont need for the sake of having them.

Work sucks, and there haven't been any opportunities to do what I'm really here for...but September is the month. I have much still to learn and a lot of confidence to muster if I'm going to do this.

I'm back to dreaming blindly with stones under my head. I always turn to dreams when things get hard or different. They lead me astray in the best way, warn me of the future, and reveal the flaws I don't see in the daylight.

But now I'm back here in the place where I was raised, sipping wine with my mother and idly flipping through thousands of channels with nothing to watch. No stones, no dreams, no desire or need to sleep just yet, a million indescretions rolling around in my head.

I need to start keeping count, then maybe you'll see for once that I am right about all of this.

This room has the worst energy. It reeks of laziness and lack of care. 3months of living hasn't pulled the suitcases off the floor or dragged the clothes out of them. The radiator hisses and clicks like some angry reptile and the world rumbles and shakes to the fourth floor as the thousand subway cars pass underneath.

Life continues on outside in machine forms, horns and motors and generators, busying themselves with routine. If there are birds other than pigeons, they don't sing. But I sit here staring at this pale screen, aching from long walks and the tension of the city.

This place is a cesspool.

There is so little kindness.

I need help finding light here.

A pile of papers several inches thick sits patiently, gathering dust while I ignore them, each and every. They want signatures, answers, type-written hot air and bullshit scribbles to fill their voids. They want to be packed in tight next to cheap parchment and ink stain stuck to the others in a brown package. They want to be sent to the four corners on gasoline driven winds and into the skeptical critical analytical clammy hands and chubby fingers of those who wait to rip it apart.
Those who muse and peruse and huff about it until they come to a decision.
Worthy or not.



Somehow, I don't even care about that. I can't even sit self-conscious and anticipating the rejection or the approval to come. I don't even think I need them as an out anymore, don't need their excuse to leave. I just want to run away, run far and fast and scream from my toes and rip up the roots tangled around my legs.

That's not an unreasonable request.

A Re-occurring Dream

"You're pronouncing it incorrectly," they said, grinning at me in a kind way, but one that made me uneasy. "The emphasis is on the 'U'."

I knew this to be ridiculous. I'd always heard the word 'pendulum' pronounced "PEN-dyoo-lum" and never as these two crones described. They hunched over in dirty vinyl lawnchairs outside of a cart laden with shining, tinkling, fluttering things that (if one had to pick a single, encompassing word) could only be described as "trinkets."

One had wild red hair that seemed to be past the point of washing, and the other wore a peppery-grey updo that had clearly been slept on and ignored for an unfathomably long time. Their clothes were a jazzy compilation of colors and patterns, fading and feathering in delicious dissonance. Their faces were pale leather and their eyes were only dark holes. The sockets did not make me as uneasy as their smiles, sweet and good-natured in the folds of their faces. They were more wise than I would ever be.

I fidgeted, not wanting to continue the argument but unable to shake the need I felt for the object after which I inquired.

The Red one reached in her pocket and pulled out a porcelain ball muttering something about wanting to get a closer look at me. She popped the ball in an empty socket and stared, lidless and artificially in my direction. Her mouth twisted up so that her lips disappeared in the grimace until finally - "Aaaaaaah," she breathed slowly.

She smiled again.

The eye popped out and she handed it to the Pepper companion.
"Have a look-ee," she said in a low voice.
Pepper poked the eye in, twisting it and making adjustments until she could "see" me.
"Hmph." Was her only reply before she pulled the eye back out with an sickening 'pop.'

She turned back to the cart, pulling out a drawer full of little boxes of different colored paper. Feeling about in the drawer, her fingers closed around a tiny green one. Red's laugh burst the silence and she clapped her hands three times. "Perfect!"

Pepper gave what would have been a side glance at Red had they possessed eyes and turned to me.

"You asked for a pendulum," she mocked my pronunciation. "But we know you need more than that...so consider the other things as gifts. You have a very long way to go."

Green box in hand and a few dollars short in my wallet, I left the cart and the women at my back. I don't know what else was in the box, but the pale orange pendulum was warm in my hand.