Ten minutes ago we were sworn in. All twenty some odd number of us stood straight, our right arms raised, and repeated the same oath of office the members of the president’s cabinet must agree to. Two vital parts of this oath stuck out to me, (a) “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” and (b) “So help me God.” No badge, no gun, just a plastic ID that I must write my own name on in ball point pen and wear on a lanyard above my waist. I have sworn to defend my country’s constitution against all enemies, but have no tools with which to do so save for my own ingenuity and a semi-respectable pay rate.

If an old woman doesn’t appreciate me asking her how many of her grandchildren were squatting here on April 1st, how many teacups were housed, how many cats she’s holding, and how many illegal immigrants she’s hired to care for those cats, so attempts to crack my skull with a wooden rolling pin – what do I do? They don’t cover defending your country’s constitution against a domestic grandmother. Do I squeal pleas for my life? Hold a crucifix to her with my eyes shut and my heart hoping it’s a quick death? This oath makes me uneasy. It’s the same oath military officers take. So help me God.

I walked into a cafe this morning and boasted my recent taking of this oath, and made it sound especially important.

“I was sworn in as a federal officer yesterday,” I said to them.

“What?!” they said, amazed, obviously thinking I would soon be carrying a badge and steel revolver. “For what?”

“For the Census Bureau,” I replied. They broke into laughter, looked at each other, and handed me my tiny cup of espresso. I reminded myself that I was still important and still a man; that they had no effect on my federal oath of office. That I am, in fact, vital to the health of the United States Constitution.

If I meet anyone famous, I’m not allowed to tell you. If I find Osama Bin Laden, as one of the women in my class dumbly asked, I am unable to report him to the officials. Sean, the young and and vivacious man who does in fact do his job better than anyone in the room could, replies, “If you find Osama Bin Laden, someone is straight slacking; don’t worry about it.”

After the class ends, after 7 hours of peanut gallery-like comments , ridiculous questions, and a lengthy fingerprinting activity, I am freed and tell Sean, “You did a good job, man. It’s a tough crowd.” His fellow associate who wandered in after the end of class, an orange bearded man of Irish decent, says to me while chewing a baby carrot, “Hey man, want to join a cooler group? We’ve got beer and hookers.” This bearded man’s remark renews my faith in the structure of the federal government; his stature and disposition prove to me that our country is 100% sure of what it’s doing and will, above all else, make its constitution a priority – despite the fact that it might be hundreds of years old and out of date.

Being a U.S. Census Officer I feel a little bit like a gay man who’s married to a straight woman: I’m not totally faithful, I think it’s fun, I really do care for her, but I just don’t know how long this marriage will last until I come out. Maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but they’re an equal opportunity employer.

A few quick questions you might all be wondering. In our constitution it states that a census will be taken every ten years. It began in 1790 and has been conducted every ten years, in years ending in zero, ever since. This census determines how many representatives each state will have in the House of Representatives, as well as how much public transportation we need and how big to make our schools. These are not its only purposes, but these are some of the most important. So when I come to your house, don’t ask me why I’m doing it. Just answer the ten questions. Please. And I wont mind if you complement me on my sweet messenger bag.

I’ll leave you with a quote I read on a bumper sticker, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” – this quote is often attributed to Thomas Jefferson or Howard Zinn, but no one really knows. Regardless of who said it, it’s something worth thinking about.

David Wagoner wears denim buttons-ups unbuttoned to the third button with different colored turtlenecks beneath. A Native American inspired (perhaps made) belt buckle holds his pants tight with the dignity of eternal youth. He still does his hair everyday, snowy white it holds close to his head, combed with an unmatched slickness. His glasses are large, beautiful relics from the 70′s, if they were tinted they would immediately be the most fashionable sunglasses within 30 miles – that’s him, that’s David Wagoner; even in his old age he’s on the verge of being completely fashionable. His poetry still is.

Legends are legendary because of their elusiveness. As the recent attention on Tiger Woods has revealed, a legend rarely remains a legend when put directly in the spotlight, or when the facts of their life are explicitly revealed. To be a legend one must master the art of paraphrase, solitude, and performance. For the past three weeks I’ve been taught by a legend; a poet born in 1926 who worked with and outlived the likes of Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, Elizabeth Bishop, and countless others. David Wagoner has mastered the ability to remain a master. The kind of person who can make a silly remark and yet, somehow, it’s received as a piece of backwards-wisdom; intentionally said in a silly way so that we’ll learn an important lesson.

“Stay alive,” he said wisely and not without a grim skepticism. “If you plan to write good poetry, you must stay alive.” I’ve scribbled these wise axioms all throughout my notebook. I take them, at first, as complete truth. Old folks, especially successful ones such as David, have an innate conviction that, unless you’re simply not listening, forces you to believe – even if momentarily – everything they say..

“Theodore Roethke was in this room,” David says, crossing one leg over the other, nimble even in his eighties, “when he was arrested for threatening a class with a can opener; the state police came and arrested him. He was incoherent, of course.” His voice is musical, it booms like thunder but soothes like cough syrup. He told us that to master poetry we must master the same abilities a classical singer does: pitch, tone, timbre, rhythm. “Two floors below us Allen Ginsberg performed one of his first readings of the poem ‘Howl.’ This building, Parrington Hall, is haunted by the spirits of many poets, Roethke, Ginsberg, and so many more. Roethke instructed me in this hall. That was back when instructors wore suits and ties and coats, and took their suit coats off as soon as they got the chance.” He always finishes his stories of old with a chuckle that says we could never understand and that we probably think he’s trying to be funny.

There’s certainly something demystifying about being in David’s presence – he insists upon being called David – not unlike if you learned the science behind love it would become less magical. So many people seem to believe that the ability to write poetry is some natural, magical gift that can’t be taught – honed, perhaps, but not taught. David seems to think it’s a bit of natural ability, but that there’s also a science to it. “You’re poetry is not sacred in this room,” he said on the first day. “We will tear it apart.” One of the first things he tore apart was the prose poem, something I hold rather dear to my heart. “It used to be that poetry and prose were completely separate forms, that’s no longer the case. I don’t see what you could gain from writing a poem without intentional line breaks. And either use punctuation correctly or don’t use it at all. You live in an era where there are no rules,” he says. “Remember that.”

A few minutes later he tells us not to capitalize the first letter of a line unless it’s the beginning of a sentence, and a couple classes later not to part an attributive adjective and it’s noun with a line break, then he tells us not to have more than twice as many attributive adjectives as we have lines. One moment he tells us there are no rules, then the next he lays them out clearly. And of course he makes the suggestion that we write out a poem in prose first, no line breaks, no poetic constraints – just write and write until we have no more to say on the subject. Even the oldest, wisest, most successful poets can be a walking contradiction, maybe that makes a poet. It’s humbling and yet a little scary, too. How would you feel if Jesus came to you, a devoted christian, and started saying hypocritical things and making confused suggestions? I suppose your faith would likely falter, but at the same time you’d realize that Jesus wasn’t that much better than you – what’s stopping you from being a modern day Jesus?

After a pregnant pause in which the fourteen or so students in the room glance slowly around at each other, he says, “Every time I say something a little voice in the back of my head says,” he reaches back and touches the back of his head as if he knows the voice’s exact location, “’yeah, but the opposite’s also true.’” And he immediately redeems himself of his previous contradictions. He’s quite possibly the most coherent human being I’ve ever met. Unfaltering in his beliefs, yet acknowledging of the fact that they’re likely wrong – everyone’s likely wrong.

David often spends 3-5 second intervals between statements, he creates these long and somber silences, not quite awkward so much as meditative. The subtext of his silence says, “You should all be thinking of ideas right now greater than the one I just had.” They’re intimidating silences in which I often scribble ideas in all caps in my notebook – I’ve recently learned that my writing is somewhat legible if written in all caps. He often counters his booming criticisms with a tiny chirp of praise; he knocks you off your feet and doesn’t grab you by the hand and pull you back up, but merely whispers in your ear, “I suggest you get back up.” He takes confidence and energy.

Coming into David Wagoner’s knowledgeable arms I was excited, thinking he must hold the skeleton key to poetic success. After his class I would be able to open any door, anywhere, and turn whatever was inside to art. His age, his reverence, his reputation – his first book of poems was published at 22 and he hasn’t stopped since; he’s well into his eighties now. All of these seemed to be evidence that he would be able to turn me into a successful poet. Of course, this was a naïve, overly excited, and headstrong belief.

Masters can teach us what they did to master a thing, but masters are considered masters because they did something striking and unique – something never done before. No one can teach you how to do something that’s never been done before.

“A plains Indian,” he once said, “does not think the same way that a woods Indian does. If you place a woods Indian on the plains he will feel vulnerable; a plains Indian in the woods will feel trapped.” The Indian out of his comfort zone will feel fear, the Indian must turn that fear to positive energy and will himself to innovation, and always say to himself, “Yeah, but the opposite’s also true.”

David once said his wife calls the following poem his “cash cow.” It’s been reproduced in multiple languages, in thousands of mediums, and read in thousands of different places; in keeping to this tradition, I am reproducing it here, for you, just in case you get lost:

Lost

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

The first time my wife told me she didn’t love me I waited patiently for the punchline. I was sitting on the couch. Both of our children were crisscross on the floor in front of the television. She stood there stoney-faced, pinned to the floor, barely blinking. I left that night to stay at my brother’s house. Four months later we were back together. A couple weeks after I returned I asked her what her episode was all about. We were lying in bed, the television flashing silently in the corner of the room.

“I don’t know, I was just in a bad place.” She cuddled up next to me, wrapped her leg around mine. “You know, my dad just died and – ” She sighed and closed her eyes. “I was just confused.”

The second time she told me she didn’t love me, I flipped.

“You’re insane,” I told her. “You know that?” I was convinced that, like her mother, she had finally lost it.

I went to my brother’s again – she kept the kids – working on making my third wheel liveable. I was using an electric sander to prep the walls for a fresh coat of paint, drinking tequila and beer as I worked in the deadening summer sun. My brother had heard from one of his coworkers that my wife went on a week long singles’ cruise a month or two back. Multiple times she’d accused me of being unfaithful.

“I know you look at other women,” she’d say. “Do you touch them, too?”

“Babe, I’ve never laid my finger on another woman all the years we’ve been together.”

“Yeah right, you’re satisfied with this body?” She’d lift her shirt up to her breasts exposing stretch marks, scars and cellulite. This had become a semi-weekly routine, my confirmation of fidelity; she was never thoroughly convinced. Once, during one of these debates, our daughter came running into the kitchen.

“Momma, what’s wrong with your belly?” My wife lowered her shirt and glanced at me – defeated.

“Honey,” she said, tucking her shirt back in and looking softly to our daughter, “what can I do for you?” Her smile was gracious and loving like a bed patiently awaiting arrival. My daughter jumped onto her lap and they nearly sunk to the floor. My wife had always been very slender. She managed to collect stretch marks and other damages from two pregnancies. She was small but not lean; the kind of woman who always asks someone else to open the pickle jar.

I finished up the sanding, hopped into my Suburban and headed for the hardware store to buy paint. I took a bottle of Corona with me. The sweat had gathered in pools on my back, armpits and chest. My undershirt changed from white to a dull gray and wood shavings were tangled in my greasy hair. While I drove I thought of her on that cruise, wondered if she’d ever been unfaithful to me. Maybe all those conversations were meant to be prompts; her always hoping I’d ask her the same questions she’d ask me; she could confess and her guilty conscious would be lifted. There was certainly a weight that held her down day to day during our seven years together. I imagined her prancing about in a one piece (covering the evidence of her having birthed two children), dangling a martini glass between her fingers as she tip-toed across the hardwood deck of a mediocre cruise ship, the sun reflected off her cheap department store sunglasses. A target in a firing range.

I was a couple miles from the store when I decided to take a side road and pass up the old house. It was an old craftsmen home with a few modern additions: a bay window that allowed the sun’s nectar-like rays to bathe you as you read the morning paper, a two car garage with a shop bench and beer fridge, and a second floor deck. I pulled into the drive and put the Suburban in park. The radio was off. The only thing I could hear was the chugging of the engine and the muffler beating a tinny rhythm against the chassis. My bottle rattled in the cup holder. I grabbed it and took a drink.

I started drinking when I was five. When my dad got back from Vietnam he didn’t talk much unless he drank and all his drinking buddies were either dead or mental. Not long after my fifth birthday he filled me up a short glass of Johnny Walker, lit me a cool cigarette, and smiled through a scar and a buzz cut as he handed them to me like a king knighting his loyal subject. I remained his sole drinking buddy my entire childhood. By fifteen I’d been hospitalized twice due to alcohol poisoning. He didn’t do it to me because he didn’t love me or was a bad father – quite the opposite. He wanted me to enjoy life’s pleasures; valuable father-son time.

The house hadn’t changed any, it was still in magnificent shape, The lawn, though, was a bit overgrown. One of the few things I was sure of was that the yard would never again be groomed as well as when I lived there. I took a Polaroid in my mind, took another drink, shifted into reverse, and backed out toward the street. I heard the sound of snapping wood and felt the Suburban lift up a couple inches. I rolled down the window and looked back. The mailbox hung limply beneath the rear bumper like a wilting flower. “Shit.”

I pulled forward a few feet and it fell all the way to the sidewalk with a metallic clank. I looked down the street both ways; no children playing, no mailman stuffing – stillness and silence save for the exhaust pumping slowly out of the Suburban. My hands shook on the steering wheel, the onset of my anxiety. The mail was splayed out all over the cracks in the cement. Her name was written across them with my last name still attached. It seemed strange to see them merged as one, the world still unaware of our separation. I felt territorial. Imagining her frolicking on that cruise with strange men made my cheeks burn red and my temples pulse like a war drum beneath pounding sticks. The thing my therapist tells me is that it’s not about reversing my anxiety and anger, it’s simply about acknowledging the presence of them. The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem. But my therapist has never told me how to handle thoughts of my wife sleeping with other men. I like to pretend that even though she’s not with me I was the only man she ever loved, the only man she ever fucked, the only man she ever went grocery shopping with, and the last man she’ll ever do any of those things with. The problem is I was never all that good at any of those things, just loyal. My loyalty is my gift. Everything else is sub-par.

She recently purchased a new sedan – Imported. Air conditioned. Air bags throughout. Efficient mileage. I know this because she drove by my brother’s one day as I was washing the third wheel. She didn’t so much as glance in my direction. Obviously she knew I was there and must have driven by on purpose, just as I’d made the venture to our old house. The new car had a shimmer that day unlike any car over a year old. Her composure was strong, her head held high and her eyes focused on the road. A man sat next to her in the passenger seat with his head turned away from me. All I could see was his brown wavy hair and a prim collared shirt. I imagined his jaw finely carved, his chest accurately sculpted by God’s chisel – God’s real only begotten son. As they passed I just stood there, the hose pouring out into the street, suds washing slowly down the drain labeled ‘Protect Our Fish: This Water Goes Directly to Our Rivers!’

The Suburban was now halfway on the sidewalk, halfway in the driveway. I contemplated my next move, took another glance at the injured mailbox. I pulled up a few feet, steering the nose of the Suburban toward the garage door and paused for a moment, a very brief moment. I decided, ultimately, to scrap all rationality. I floored it, grinning as I did. I imagined her pristine new import parked behind the garage door and how little she deserved it. When I hit the door it bent inward, cracking down the center, but I hit nothing else. The garage was still full of some of my old tools that I didn’t yet have the space to take. Old movie posters hung on the walls in cheap plastic frames. I drove all the way to the back wall, carrying a piece of the garage door atop the roof, and went through my old beer fridge. The car wasn’t there. I gazed at the wounded fridge and closed my eyes. I pulled my Corona from the cup holder, took one last hit, and threw it out the window against the wall. I backed out of the garage. I turned the suburban toward the vibrantly stained porch and floored it again. As I hit it it crinkled like a paper airplane being kicked by a boy’s boot. It hung onto the house, barely. Tears began to come down my dirty cheeks. I felt awkward, as if the whole world were watching me lose my shit. I could hear sirens far down the highway. The tires wove intricate dirt patterns in the overgrown grass as I pulled back, my vision blurred, onto the front yard. I sat still in the Suburban a minute, put it in park and played with the gas pedal. The engine got louder and louder, teasing the calmness of the neighborhood. The sirens grew louder. The sirens and the engine gathered in a sort of crescendo. At their climax I shifted to drive. The tires dug holes into the grass before shooting the Suburban and I through the bay window. The coffee table and countless decorations – house plants, lamps, family photos – all picked up into a cloud. The sound of glass breaking, wood snapping, and carpet tearing all rang out in a glorious symphony. The Suburban stopped part way through the dining room wall, the engine dead and smoke rising from the hood. Breathing hard, I crawled out the open window. The door was jammed and the windshield had blown out. I cut my hands on glass as I crawled then dropped to the dining room floor, landing next to a displaced dinner plate. The scene was very peculiar; something between a garbage sale and a parking lot. With my hands on my knees, my mind spinning and my head dripping with sweat, I spent a few moments trying to collect myself before breaking into a run out the hole where the bay window had once been and heading North toward my brother’s. Sweat fell off me like rain and alcohol pulsed through my veins. Evening was coming down hard as I ran.

Once, when I was a boy, my brother and I were exploring my grandfather’s backyard. Grandpa had a large hilly back forty with cows, pigs and trees that stretched for acres. He kept all the animals in a pathetic looking electric fence strapped with signs that read ‘Danger: high voltage’ every fifty feet or so. My brother is seven years older than me and has always used that to his advantage.

“Come on,” my brother said. “Touch it!”

“I don’t know,” I said. “What if it, you know, kills us or something.”

“You’re such a pussy. It’s not going to kill us.”

“What if we get burned or our hair sticks up like in the movies and grandpa yells at us for playing around with the fence and tells mom. Or worse, doesn’t tell mom.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Here,” he said, “watch.” He leaned forward, stretching his fingers out slowly. I could see them shaking, I wasn’t the only one scared. It was a cool summer afternoon, I was on break and he had dropped out. There weren’t many clouds in the sky but the Washington climate refused to allow heat to enter the atmosphere. As he got closer I grew more and more scared for him. He finally touched it, slowly, and screamed louder than I’d ever heard him scream. He began convulsing and spitting. I ran to him, yelling his name. When I reached him he fell to the grass next to a cow pie and began laughing like a lunatic.

“You’re a jerk,” I told him, reaching out to the fence myself. The feeling through my body as I touched it was nothing like I’d expected. It was as if my entire body had fallen asleep and was tingling all over. There was a light pulsing throughout my limbs and I was more surprised than anything. I stood there, holding on for a long time. Eventually my brother stopped laughing and just looked at me, expressionless.

“Hey,” he said, “Oliver.” I held on. I Felt the electricity move my blood. My world sank away and I closed my eyes. “Hey!” he yelled. I heard him get up off the ground and take a few steps toward me. After a moment he tackled me to the ground and held me there, smacking my face. “Oliver!” I opened my eyes and looked up to the sky, grinning as big as I knew how to.

I looked back as I ran. The police lights were flashing toward me. To my right laid a steep hill splotched with blackberry bushes. I made a cut for it and stepped on a loose patch of mud, falling directly on my tailbone. I began to slide down the hill, scraping my back on the jagged rocks as I went, finally stopping in a blackberry bush. My vision was even more blurred. Everything I was enduring seemed surreal. I stood up to head down the hill again, dirtier and more exhausted than before. After another minute or so I came across another loose patch. This time stopped by an even larger blackberry bush. I rolled into the middle, getting scratches all over my face and finally losing my momentum like a fly trapped in a spider’s web. “Fuck.”

I climbed through the bushes toward what sounded like a river, the Green River I guessed. I reached a clearing and peeled the thorns from my arms and cheeks, my forehead and ass. I began to wish I had brought the tequila with me, or at least another Corona. I figured I’d been running for about an hour. The night was heavy with darkness and I heard two things: above me I heard the spinning of a helicopter’s blade. Behind me, the barking and scurrying of police dogs. I couldn’t see shit but the sounds were enough to keep me running blindly. I reached the river and jumped in without hesitation. The water was cold but not debilitating. I turned back and viewed the silhouettes of two – maybe three, maybe six – dogs running toward the river. My pace quickened. The water grew deeper, almost to my chest, and I slipped on a smooth rock, submerging me completely. The sounds of the chase dissolved into splashing, bubbles, and the gentle flow of the river. It was falsely comforting. For a moment I considered staying under till it all had passed but then my instincts kicked in and I began flapping my arms like fins, reached my head toward the surface. The dogs were in the water now, paddling towards me with their mouths open and flaring like furnaces. I tried to swim away but was no match for their efficiency. I slipped once more on a large smooth rock. I felt, briefly, as if a major league pitcher had thrown a baseball at my forehead, then I felt nothing.

Fluorescent lights hung neutrally above me. I tried to sit up but couldn’t because my wrist was handcuffed to the rail of a hospital bed. A police officer stood like a royal guard outside the door of my room. My head felt like a thousand pounds of coal in a burlap sack. To my surprise, my wife was standing there as well. Her mouth was moving and her hands were flying about, full of emotion as usual. God’s only begotten son stood proudly next to her. Her prize winning’s from the week long cruise I assumed. None of them looked all that angry, which relieved me, but I was nonetheless fearful of their presence. I laid back down and exhaled like a whale, feeling all the spots where the blackberry bushes had pierced me burn like splashes of boiling water on my skin. They all noticed I had woken at the same time. Their conversation stopped and she motioned to both of them to stay outside.

The reason I study writing is because when one studies writing, one is actually studying life. There is no way to become a successful writer (define success in your own way—success is relative) without being analytical, and always learning about subjects that don’t seem to overtly adhere to your path.

“You see a piece of paper on the ground?” he said, his accent boiling his r’s, “pick it up and read it. It does not matter what it’s about. Knowledge is knowledge.” Amid is bald on top with a dent in the back of his skull.

“I bet there’s a story behind that,” I said when he showed it to me.

“Well,” he said, looking at me grimly, “it was an infection.” He said it as if he was disappointed that it wasn’t something greater. “That is why I say ‘gain all your knowledge now.’ When you get older, the gears will not turn so well. Sometimes I cannot find the right…” he trailed off and looked out the window, held his head in his hands, then came back. “I cannot always find the right words, I just see one and grab it, but it is not always right.” I smiled at him. “I am good at bullshitting, no?”

“Very good,” I replied.

He chuckled. “At least you are honest.”

I see Amid often in the coffee shop, but this is the first time we’ve ever really spoken. I sat across from him at a table because the others were taken.

“You’re welcome to sit here,” he said to me, “but do not listen, you do not want my negative energy.”

“We can share,” I told him.

“You do not want to share with me,” he said, smiling, and looking out the window before taking a sip from his steaming cup.

“Okay,” I said to him, “noted.” And of course, he began to speak to me on life, the world, and summarized all the things that he wished he’d done and advised me to do.

“You will never regret reading. Ever.”

Amid often just sits in a chair, he rarely reads the newspaper or a book. Sometimes, very rarely, he speaks to another man in a foreign language I can’t place. Otherwise, he just sits and looks at the table, out the window, or into his coffee cup. He is brimming with regret.

When I forget what matters, I need perspective. Sometimes perspective costs me $10.50 at the movie theatre, sometimes it costs me a couple beers and a few shots of vodka, sometimes it costs me a full night’s rest—I never know what it will cost until I’ve gained it. I only understand a sense of perspective in retrospect.

When you’re lying at the bottom of a hole it’s impossible to see over the top of it, that, unfortunately, is the truth of the matter.

And here’s an instrumental I made a while ago with a guitar, an organ, a ukulele, and a few children’s percussion instruments: Nothing Really Happens When I’m Alone

I’ve been climbing this ladder, that’s all I really can do. Climb climb climb and, every once in a while, stop at a floor to look in a window. See how people are getting along. Hope to see some broken reflection of myself in glass meant to be looked through, not reflected upon.

Just when you think you know everything, realize you’re only being tricked. The point at which everything seems clear is the point just before your reality is overturned. It’s easy to be proud of how well you get through hard times, but it’s harder, for me at least, to be proud of the times when I got by and it wasn’t hard.

I had an amazing summer. I went on a road trip to California, I met so many new people; pretty much began a new life. But when you meet new people you inevitably lose others. To think we understand the purpose of someone’s relation to us is to claim to know more than anyone’s ever known. That’s probably why everyone gets divorced now. They all think they’re signing a contract to relieve their loneliness, only to find they’re signing up to spend years with someone they don’t even know.

I sometimes toy with the idea of just traveling. Backpacking through Europe, learning about the world and writing about its beauty. But it all comes back to that saying, Wherever you go, there you’ll be. I go through waves of content and discontent. Every time I feel a positive wave coming on I hope that this time it will stay. But I should never be so foolish.

Once, I met two amazing people at nearly the same time. These people were on opposite ends of the spectrum. One romantic, involved, clever, sincere, but almost wholly untouchable. The other receptive, playful, intelligent, and hungry for knowledge. Both beautiful. These people got along well enough, but by no means were best friends. I, however, managed to be best friends with both of them. I could connect with both of them unlike either of them were able to connect with each other. I wasn’t so much a bridge but a system of underground tunnels to both. Each of them often spoke of the other and I felt conflicted in their intentions. A game of tug of war it seemed. There was the first, she couldn’t hide a thing with her eyes. And the second, I fear could do it all too well. Neither of them was better than the other but they, as well as me, have at least one thing in common—we don’t know what the fuck we’re doing aside from making it alive and in bed every night. If we’re lucky we might even get some sleep.

Hi Everyone,
My Grandparents house has crumbled with them inside. I have lost my grandfather and my family is digging as we speak for my grandmother. Please pray for us.

This came from one of the friends I spent two weeks in Belize with this past summer. Much of her family resides in Haiti and has, as the message ominously dictates, been involuntarily given a lead role in one of Haiti’s worst natural disasters.

Yesterday a 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti. The Red Cross estimates 1/3 Haitians have been affected—roughly 3 million.

My problems seem pretty insignificant right now. I have a home, I have transportation, I have my family and friends.

Raymond Joseph, a Haitian ambassador to the US, said of the disaster, “God has given, God has taken away.” It’s difficult for me to comprehend being taken to such devastation and yet able to view the situation so rationally. Haiti has dealt with over 30 coups and countless hurricanes in its 200 some odd years of life. The history of Haiti, as with so much of the world, has been recorded in blood.

Today, if you wake up and don’t want to go to work because you can’t stand the person in the cubicle next to you, Google “Haiti.” You’ll be giving that same person a hug when you arrive. Sometimes, the best we can do from afar when disaster strikes, is live our own lives twice as purposefully.

Read more on the quake here.

Do you know what it’s like when you have a glass of orange juice, finish it, then neglect to wash the glass and refill it with apple juice? The acidic qualities of the orange juice, stray bits of pulp, they all come through with the apple and make a strange cocktail. That’s how I envision lovers upon lovers in a lifetime. The next becoming more and more of a cocktail with bitter—and sweet—remains of the lover before. The final being nowhere near as pure as the first. Or maybe nowhere near as pure as the third, or fourth. Perhaps after the first couple I still retained the energy to wash the glass before pouring a new one. But my energy, I fear, is depleting. I’m on my way to drinking cocktail after cocktail.

This is the third time I’ve listened to Pet Sounds today, it’s 11:44, I’ve been awake something like four hours. Three times in four hours. A bow without resin. Powder flying, strings scratching, notes resound with impurity.

Adam ordered me a sandwich. That’s the kind of grace I need. Shantell smiled bigger than big, that’s the kind of grace I need. I slept on a cold pillow that smelled like someone else’s hair. I opened the window to hear the inconsistent drops of the gutter. A mountain of pillows laid beside me all night trying to breathe. A fan whistled a monotone tune it wished was a lullaby. Vodka nourished me. The blankets could be held tight but not tight enough.

I dreamt of grocery shopping, I think. I rolled and rolled, over and over. I dreamt, I think, of grocery shopping. The domestic kind, “Do we need this, honey?” That sort. “No, we’ve already got some.” You know the kind. “And what about this?” With the inevitable, “Well, is it on sale? We don’t really need it.” And the produce. Looking for the unbruised fruits but finding none. Settling, finally, for only the mildly bruised. Settling for the mildly bruised.

Here’s a secret. Sometimes I walk grocery stores late at night, early in the morning, mid-day. I don’t purchase a thing. I just walk down the aisles to see how much all the items wish I’d purchase them. I like the way their packages try to lure me in—they just want me so bad. Except the cheese, the cheese never tries too hard. It smells funny and is wrapped in clear plastic. But it doesn’t need to look nice, right? It’s cheese, it knows someone will buy it. Same with the milk. And the eggs. It’s only the packaged cereals, snacks, crackers, cookies—the things we don’t need that want me to buy them so badly. I think I dreamt of grocery shopping last night.

Let us quickly assess the state of my being:

Are you here?
Are you?
Are you breathing?
Slowly.
Did you sleep well?
Define well.
Who woke you up this morning?
Am I awake?
What time is it?
11:56
What day is it?
January 9, 2010

Anywhere but here would be nice,
But maybe what I mean is I quit,
Or maybe let’s fall and only sleep,
And let’s stop trying—
Only let come what may.
I mean, really, anywhere but here still
Has me me me
Perhaps I mean anywhere but here
Or there—nowhere.

Audrey Tautou is impenetrable—even her eyes are actresses. There’s one scene where a line of models is walking down a staircase past Coco and her eyes scan each one up, down, analyzing every seam, every button, every frill. In the beginning of the film Audrey portrays a stubborn Coco, unwilling to love, unwilling to set aside her pride, protective of her sister and their sisterhood. She says to her sister in a scene where they share the same twin-sized bed (the portrait of poverty and orphan-hood), “The only good part of love is making love. Too bad you need a man for that.”

The cinematography is picturesque. More than once I found myself basking in the image laid out before me. The characters were completely silent yet the scene and the on-point acting of each of them meant that every static moment wasn’t necessarily a still moment.

Coco seems to be convincing herself she’s not a gold digger throughout the course of the film but when a man of wealth springs up in the cabaret she works at, she jumps on the tail of his coat and follows him all the way to his country-side estate. She is controlled—somewhat—and abused—somewhat—but finds in this man a companion. He grows possessive of her and the audience is made to believe that Coco, in one way or another, is special from most every other girl in the world. Contrary to what you might expect, Coco criticizes nearly every fashion statement throughout the film, “Too many feathers, too tight, too many adornments,” etc. She sees the world of the high-class, in the film at least, as boring, frivolous, and absurd. But when she’s offered the chance to dive into it, she doesn’t deny it; she studies it. The camera takes the place of her eyes many times and we find ourselves studying the garb of nearly every woman in the film, not by choice, but out of our duty as viewers. And it’s entertaining, enticing.

Coco falls in love with a man who lends her money (money he gets from marrying a rich woman) so that she can open a hat shop. His marriage to another woman is the beginning of her misery. With this misery she finds the energy to work. One line she reads from a book in the film—and promptly denies as ridiculous—goes something like “the poor are happy because manual labor offers a distraction for the mind from suffering.” Though she denies it, she lives by it. She’s beginning to flourish as a designer, but doesn’t truly bloom until her lover is suddenly and unexpectedly killed in a car accident. The film shifts immediately from his death to her success. We see her cut, sew, design, and model through a gloriously sculpted montage. You can’t help but see her transition into the class she put down for most of the film and yet, to feel for her.

I’m no fashion guru and I’ve always had an initial disgust for the glam and glitter of designers. Coco Avant Chanel puts all that aside and says that even designers were people too, once.

A Date Derailed: You have just been abandoned by your date. Tell the story. Start with: “No matter what I do…” Additionally, implement the idiomatic expression, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

No matter what I do, I always manage to do it with an exceptional lack of grace. This morning for instance, I spilled milk all over the side of my cereal bowl. Yesterday I forgot to call my mother on her birthday. And just now I managed to completely ruin all my chances of ever getting anywhere with Patricia Marie Scoll. I’m pretty easily satisfied. She was pretty, not exceptionally, but enough. She was witty—no genius, but she could make coffee without asking how. A great smile. A great smile. A great smile. How can I ever hope to change my ways for the better? It’s not that I’m rude or crass or honest or gross or excessive or over-the-top or any of those things. I just. I always fuck up.

She told me I had nice eyes. Big, colorful, exposing eyes. I told her I liked her dress. Dark, elegant, ladylike.

I told her I didn’t like steak, she told me she loved it.

She ordered diet Pepsi. Me, water.

She held her fork in her left hand, mine in my right.

She sipped on her drink. I gulped.

She was still, cool, calm, collected. My foot was constantly tapping like a rabbit under the table.

Sweat was collecting on my brow. My anxiousness was developing into a time bomb. I could feel myself tick tick tick tick ticking. It was only a matter of time.

My father was always a bit compulsive. He had to fold the laundry a certain way, walk to the car a certain way, eat a certain way, watch tv a certain way, feed the dog a certain way, sleep a certain way, keep his secrets in a certain way. They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. But what if there never was a tree to begin with? Just a straggly little bush that always wished it was a tree. It tried to control its world and make everything happen a certain way so that when push came to shove it wasn’t the one being shoved.

He always took forever to park the car. He would pull in, then out, in, then out, trying to make it a perfect fit. He was quiet and concentrated. If we tried to rush him he wouldn’t have any of it. His look of concentration would turn to fury and a tantrum would begin to boil somewhere beneath the seams of his tightly tucked t-shirt. He would explode and everyone felt awkward. My mother would sometimes explode too, and there I was in the backseat wishing I had a bomb shelter to run to but having nothing more than a seat belt and a stuffed puppy to hold close to my chest.

When the waiter came with a dessert menu I said we were fine. Patricia gave me a quick look as if to say, “No no no, please.” But I persisted, “We’re fine,” I said. I wanted to express control and in so doing I managed to completely disregard her desires. She was more than mildly upset. This was yet another fuckup on top of not holding the door long enough, having it come crashing into her ankle. Pulling her chair out but then tripping her as she sat down. Asking her what her opinion was on politics then telling her I had none but that most people were always wrong when it came to politics. Acting smart when I wasn’t.

“Do you think you take after your mother?” she asked me as the waiter walked away with the dessert menu.

“Why do you ask?”

“Just curious.”

“I suppose so,” I replied. “But definitely not after my father.”

“Oh no?” she replied curiously. “What is he like?”

“He’s obsessive compulsive. He’s in this little world of his own where nothing happens but what he allows, and if it does he sends out a hazmat team to clear the mess.”

“And you’re nothing like him?”

“I don’t think so,” I almost snapped.

“I could see how you might be a little OCD.” She was just making conversation of course a bit perturbed by my exceptional lack of grace, and my shrinking self esteem was turning me to the defensive. The sweat wasn’t just collecting on my brow I could feel a drop running down the side of my head towards my cheek.

“I think it’s fucked up that you would make such an assumption, you hardly know me,” I said angrily, regretting it immediately. She wasn’t in the least surprised, she might have smiled a bit. She stood up slowly and put her jacket over her long sparkling dress and picked up her handbag from the table. She reached for her wine and finished it off before walking out the door.

“I hope you can handle the bill,” she said, walking away like a fawn from the drinking hole.

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