You are a stranger, but you're a friend of mine.

My fingers are burning from scooping scalding hot food indirectly onto them. I've figured out how to rock a baseball cap. Thank goodness for work this week. Thank goodness for busy hands and awkwardness. I'd rather learn Spanish words for dishes, vegetarian, and cold, than face reality.

I'm running on fumes, listening to Patrick Wolf with my headphones on, wrapped up in my sweatshirt. Still pushing, still trying.

"I saw you fall down the stairs this morning."

"Shit, I thought I got out clean," I responded. Strangers in the dining hall.

My Dear London, Goodnight.

Kemosabe (kiss my ass I bought a boat)

This is why it hurts so bad. I think about the friendships I have with people. While I sat, picking through pasta and string-beans, Nick stayed behind and talked to me while I cried. Tyler has held me, offered to save me, and driven in circles with me way past his bedtime, because I needed him. So when you ask if I need to go, it's true, I need to go. When you ask if anyone else had to do with it, I think Tyler is better, and stronger than that. I just keep going over and over our memories, trying to rectify the warmth they give me, trying to look back and see how wrong I was. How I should have been more patient, even though I was tired from doing my job. How I should have been more understanding. How I should have been a better friend to his friends. All I can do is learn. Learn to be a better friend, a better bandmate, and not drive away the people that mean the most to me. My head hurts.

It's like stubbing your toe. You just want to sit there and wince because it hurts too bad to do anything else.

Brown Lights

You don't look like the little kid who stood around in a circle with us. You're more filled out, more defined, with facial hair and a shaggy head of hair. I don't think I ever really knew you then, or ever. Not even on the couch when the power when out. You taught me how to feel used and broken. Is it supposed to feel as bad the second time around? You never told me. After months of devoting your daydreams to something, how is it supposed to feel when it walks out the door?

A young man in an office chair is snickering somewhere now with vindication on his tongue. I'm scared, and alone but I'll never drink that cup of poison. I'll start again somehow. One phone call and I'm bound to Tennessee.

I have a mental image of returning to the ghost town where I grew up. I'm sitting on my bed with a guitar on my lap, going over my high school memories in my head. I could call my old friends, but they're off living their lives and moving on in every way. I just don't feel finished here yet.

I have failed.

yesterday

The only difference between tomorrow and today is the calender, and I can't let that stand in my way.

Ramblin'

I was staring at it again: pins on a digital atlas in the shape of a running man. An 11 day route out towards the Mid-South and up the East Coast. My fists were shaking with excitement, but of course, I was the only one to feel that way. I-77, I-85, I-95...It's not like I haven't been there before. I just want more.

So I'm back in my head again, postulating whether or not I should just go by myself. Some androgynous human: if the car dies, the car dies. I can keep going.

I could find my pitbull Diesel, and we would get lost 50 miles south of Johnston City. I am as real as wanderlust can be.

Study

Writing lists helps you get things done.

Today I swallowed my fears and walked up to a factory door. I sat in a clear shower stall while they handed me chemicals to smell and showed me colors to identify them with. Just once I want to know what its like to be bitter, or to hold a grudge so innate, I would hurt myself to see it through.

Are we supposed to stay the same our entire lives? I've been practicing because I want to be better, reading cause I want to be smarter, answering phone calls and emails to act responsible, and most of all, moving on.

If you were still alive, and we met, I'm sure we would like each other. You would be able to see the battle raging inside of me. We would drive straight to Saratoga, New York and resolve it. We'd put our guns in the ground, and shake hands like gentlemen. If you were still alive, I am sure you'd understand. Therefore, I think its okay that I'm sad you're gone.

Romance!

I have never felt bolder than I do right now.

At 3 A.M. the world is sleeping: my friends are in their hotel beds, dreaming about long drives home, and marshmallow clouds. I'm awake, devising a plan for a better tomorrow, so that when I woke up this morning, and scrubbed the sharpie tattoo off my arm in the shower, I would be able to list all the things that make me constantly happy in life: contemporary music, dinner with my friends, riding my bike home from class, eating breakfast on the porch with Luke...

It's so easy to write when you're alone with the shades drawn. Creating is not hard when you're not in your right mind. Staying the same is simple... "All this passion and fruit," is a Mischief Brew quote, and no matter how much I've expanded my tastes, Erik Peterson still changed my life.

I have a fuzzy memory of running around on the playground playing Redwall: Little Heather Leadbury told me she didn't want to be my friend anymore. I was crying because I didn't understand. 9 years old, climbing over a iron caterpillar, buck-toothed and wild with a blue-bandanna to keep the hair out of my face. We were seen holding each other's hand only a day or so later.

Mrs. Burke is standing behind her desk with a younger Ali explaining that it doesn't feel good to be excluded, or ganged up on. I might have gone home that Friday and pretended to hurt my ankle so that my Mom wouldn't make me vacuum the stairs.

And that was me on the tour bus in upstate New York with my head phones on listening to a New Found Glory CD with my face pressed against the glass. I was watching a freight train, this intense love and curiosity welling up inside of me: this great mechanical snake, confined to a road where no humans go.

3 years later, I would cut class and board a train to Boston to get my first job. I would work hard and excel. I would learn to watch out for myself, value my possessions, and get home safely. Then 3 years later, when I felt overwhelmed by the commute, I would learn how to get another job, and another if I was unhappy. So that I could by myself a new pair of sneakers, or a cellphone when it broke, or put a deposit down on apartment.

So in the end, I'm not bitter that my Mom forced me to keep vacuuming...even after throwing myself down the stairs.

Mom Tattoos and Other Great Things in Life

It's Our Spot and We Found It.

I'm under fire today.

Like those times when you try to be so good but your big tail is wagging and books are falling from shelves, glasses are tumbling to the ground.

Like the girl who's sweet to everyone except for you because of that rough patch you went through, because of your bad jokes, because she never wants to loose her best friend.

Like trying to do your job, then finding out that nobody wants it done that way. Or putting the wrong numbers into excel equations. Like telling you happy birthday, when your birthday was weeks ago.

It was me who broke down the gate in the Faculty Lot while trying to park my car this afternoon.

Two blue-eyed brunettes, running to that spot in the woods on your property, in that town where I no longer live, to bury treasure and pretend we are elsewhere.

Life is Beautiful...Even When its Ugly

I'm listening to your recordings just to hear your voice of reason. I'm sitting in a corner behind a guitarist that never quits, but has quit on me. I'm studying for a test that I hope that I wont fail.

I woke up with a bloody nose this morning. I ate my bowl of cheerios with rice milk. I no longer have enough money in my bank account for that train ticket. I guess I have the whole summer to figure out if I'm gonna leave or not.

I wish I could stick my head in the dirt and let myself bloom, but the air is too cold, and I am too afraid of staying in one city my whole life.

Also, my friend's boyfriend looks like an alien.

Norfolk, VA

Maybe it was yesterday's rain, but today, the trees in Lowell bloomed white flowers, like the trees 3 weeks ago in North Carolina. We've finally caught up to what is perfect in my mind, but we're still so far behind.

The sun was going down, and we were racing, Tyler at the wheel and me right next to him with the warm GPS in my hands...."300 miles doesn't seem that far". By the time we hit Virginia, it was dark. We were both alert, listening to the engine of my blue car, and trying to see the exit for route 15 to take us East towards Norfolk, where a boy was born by my brother's name, raised, and wrote music that touched hundreds of people before he died, too young.

I know someone with shaggy hair and square-rimmed glasses who still believes in this life. He's never been broken down in Walterboro, or locked out of his car in Ipswich, Massachusetts. But he can laugh at himself when he sings out of tune, and wrap his head around the way his parent's made him feel.

He knows, that when you say goodbye because you are going to your next destination, your sadness is countered by anticipation. When you say goodbye to someone that is leaving you, it makes your head ache, and your heart long.

Everyone was leaving today...and I wasn't going with them, so what was I supposed to do?

Can't we talk about sound? About Dr. Lloyd's sound world? About time-graph notation and the knowledge that comes after 2 years of training? I can't study. I could go work on the farm, but it would only take me 3 tanks of gas to get south and I have that kind of money in my bank account. So what do I want more than anything?

It might be time to move South. A semester or 2 of community college. Music that makes my heart feel warm...singing the way I want to sing, no matter how out of tune, to the words that I want to be singing. I am a young mountain, a factor in the equation without a solution, and 45 minutes from Baltimore, MD.

Freezing on My Bike

Thanks MHSDG. Is that what they wanted me to say? Even though I'm not on stage, I still dream about it like its my job: The lights are on, the horns are blaring. I'm wearing a wig and staring wide eyed into a sea of darkness. What was my line again? Mrs. Faust is there in faded-black jeans. Mr. Ames...they are all there and I am thanking them for pointing me in the right direction and for hugging me when I was crying by the piano.

I'm riding my mom's bike down Market Street in downtown Lowell. It was sunny this morning, but now its dark and windy, and I'm cold despite the motion of my legs. I almost wish I was in Richmond, on Bell Isle, but who could I tell that to? These cities in these states are like high school crushes: you love them, and then you move on.

Besides, the humidity would crush me.

I would probably adopt a Pitbull mix named Diesel and we could hop from city to city. Or I could apply for an internship somewhere and learn how to be professional. I would wear a suit, drink bitch-beer, and comb my hair.

What kind of battle is this? In the end, will wistfulness conquer all? I know what feels right and easy, I'm scared of regretting some turn down the road. I don't know if I was born to sit still, or be quelled by daily operations. I'm a fighter, and a traveler. We're both fire signs, both born in July, and both ruby red on the inside.

One of these days I'll make some money
and buy myself those things that I want:
acrylic paints, acoustic guitar strings, a new bicycle seat
for my ride over to your house each night.

One of these days I'll look Mike Kinsella in the eyes and thank him for being so right.

It's a Habit

My enjoyment of biting my nails has transcended my desire to keep my nails short.