Description of Mother: Birth Mother was born 12/5/69, the youngest of three children. She is a High School student, 5’7” tall, 135 lbs., having strawberry blonde hair, blue-green eyes and a fair complexion. She is a strong, athletic girl who particularly enjoys swimming. Her mother is of Irish descent; her father is of Lithuanian extraction, in law enforcement, said to have a drinking problem.
Description of Father: Birth father was born 10/22/65, the oldest of five children. He is said to be in the field of marine construction, 5’10” tall, 145 lbs. He is of German descent, having light brown hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion.
It’s incredible, isn’t it–how important those tiny, relevant details can end up being; and how we are so often inclined to make up the other more relevant details when we’ve been given so little to work with.
1. When living in a city with a violent crime per 1,000 of 14.6, it doesn’t take long to learn the differences between fire, police, and ambulance sirens. If you’re watching The Wire, though, it is difficult to figure out whether or not said sirens are coming from outside of your window or the TV.
2. It’s always good to live next to a hospital, just in case you need any duct tape.
3. If you’re looking for a good mint julip, Justin Sirois is your man. He’s basically the Robin Leech of these parts. If Robin Leech wore cowboy boots, that is. And listened to hardcore.
4. If you want to know whether or not your dog is fat, ask him to climb three flights of stairs. He’ll let you know immediately afterwards.
5. If participating in a Show + Tell, always sit next to the old guy who seems to be smiling too much. He’s going to be a little loud, but he’s going to ask really ridiculous questions about your chromosomes.
Bonus: There’s no reason to say goodbye to the thing you aren’t leaving.
“It all comes down to how much you need to inflict yourself on the world. You’re good enough. If you kiss the right ass, you could certainly make a career. Get some show. Teach. Like me, for instance. I’m nt a failure. I’m in a very envied position. You have some big-dick fairy-tail idea of the art world, so you don’t understand this yet, but hanging in, surviving, so you can keep working, that’s all there is. Sure, there are stars, most of them hacks, who make silly amounts of money, but for the rest of us, it’s endurance, perdurance. Do you have the guts to perdure? To be dismissed by some pissant and keep coming? To be dumped by your gallerist? To scramble for teaching gigs? It’s not very glamorous. Is this what you want? You’re good enough for it. You’re not the new sensation, but you’re good enough to get by. But you have to be strong. And petty. That’s the main thing. Are you petty enough? Are you game? Are you ready to screw me again? You must be.”
I’m posting this here because it doesn’t really belong anywhere else. I’m very in love with the world right now.
“If You’re Worried about the Weather, Then You Picked the Wrong Place to Stay”
You know me well enough, I suppose,
to sense that this is something I want to apologize for,
as if it’s my fault that it’s over.
Thing is: I don’t think I ever told you how beautiful you look
when you’re bowing your head and singing about the Chesapeake,
or arcing your foot to pick out pieces
of a wine glass that I broke,
or swooning into an imaginary microphone
in that thick Cajun drawl,
or drunkingly shifting through a cigar box full
of pictures from various stages of your adolescence,
or sitting cross-legged on my floor
and looking for my Hall and Oates record
while he’s standing in my doorframe topless–
and he’ll forever be topless, because
I’ll forever be trying to show people his tattoo.
It’s so very besides-the-point to think these things,
I know, but I can’t help from wishing that we may forever be
pushing each other into bathroom stalls,
drinking wine and eating steak,
paying our rent with federal loan money,
relying on you for Facebook photos,
texting each other pictures of the bridge that connects our respected boroughs,
sparking up cigars with my lighter at 3 in the morning,
drafting cover letters to jobs in unrelated fields,
looking for pesto spreads in the bottom of dumpers,
wearing tie belts and boat shoes during late-night bike rides,
arguing about politics after Favre took it to overtime in Foxboro,
focusing intensely on verb tense agreement,
double-fisting bottles of wine,
wearing boob dresses to award ceremonies,
mixing grape juice and tequila while the sun rises over your balcony,
trying to remember the names of the pedagogical philosophies we’ve subscribed to,
getting spontaneous tattoos and being mistaken for relatives or lovers,
falling asleep during Joanne Woodward movies,
and watching the printed word bleed out into a puddle of its own mismanagement.
What I can never let go of, though,
is that brief glance I got of your hips swaying
while you were dancing to that Beatles song in my living room,
or of falling asleep in my lap while I traced
those words on your forearm that’ll always remind you of us,
or of how many times you’ve shouted “I love you”
as I ran off that porch of yours with the absolutely perfect view.
And it hurts me because right now,
our dreams seem bigger than the universe,
and the universe is too big for me to believe
that I’ll be there when you finally see these things through;
but what I can do is remember these days,
and I can hope to find you again
in the classified section of Poets and Writers,
or the “featured books” page in SPD’s newsletter,
or through a Google Alert that’ll send me to
the website of a small liberal arts school
near your hometown.
And it’s hard, I know, because the only thing terminal about all this
is that irreversible cancer of worry and negative capability,
and this little world of ours can quite frequently be a thankless mistress,
Thing is I cannot help but hold onto the handful of conversations
we’ve had that felt like revolutions in themselves,
or of the scent and sight of everyone
that I’ve sat at an oblong table with.
So the only thing I can do right now
to prevent this pathetic sense of Catholic guilt from slipping in
is remind you of what David has taught us about
“sacrificing for people in a myriad of petty, unsexy ways”
because at least for today
I’d like to convince myself that isn’t how it ends, but how it starts.
