calmdowncomedown

Too much caffeine, too little nutrition, and the melancholic weighs heavy, I'm told I should smile and be more engaging today, and usually I am, but patience for horny undergrads and creepy old dudes is already thin and wearing thinner, I don't want to talk anymore than I have to, graciousness so often gets misconstrued as flirtation, see what you want to see, don't we all. This everpresent effervescent smile is nothing special, it's just kind of there at this point. I zoned out through class, did some mindless copy-pastework, the fatigue and the winter in my bones sets in.

Eleven days til twenty-nine. My aunt calls me to tell me that she's having a birthday party for my cousin and asks what I'm doing for my "big day" and I say nothing, because that's generally what it is. My cousin's turning 13 this week and still seems so young. She's awkward the way I was at her age and I wonder if her middle school years will be as hellish as mine, especially since there's some uprooting and sadness already there, the prototypical American crashdown dreams of foreclosures and lost soulness in the fabric of her daily life. Last night I reassured a friend of mine that she's not the only one dealing with the confusion of social interactions and relationships and I  step away and feel like I'm still muddling through just as directionless as ever being ten years her senior. I still don't know how to speak love and truth into the worlds of my loved ones.

Hopefully I'm not broke tonight when I pick up the car, and I'm going to go and get cathartic to Dylan Carlson's drone, it's the kind of music that one can be alone to, that hits me in the gut and brings the catharsis. I crave that right now, to keen to the cello and the ringing out of guitar tones, the slow unfurling. There is always time to sleep, these halfhearted dreams can be deferred another year.