Write Like A Millerhouse, Think Like A West

New shoes make me envision the way my arches bend.  Especially over a bridge.  I pass an older couple taking a picture of the lake and I imagine they will talk about the way my foot bends after I run past.

"You can tell he's running for the right reasons," one will say.  The other nods knowingly, then points at a particularly impressive mountain.

Regular, formalized gatherings of friends.  A standing understanding. 

I try not to sound disapproving when I disagree.  Or maybe more importantly, dismissive.  I am approving.  I am missive.  I'm happy you're here in the first place, and balancing the feel of that with how it covers like a hot quilt to say so.

Anytime I'm not eating I think about nutrients and science and dietary plans.  But when I'm ready to eat, I only want food with a shape that will be pleasing to destroy.  Small crusty pies that deflate when I poke them with a fork.  Chickpea cutlets I imagine frying in the shape of things.  Like rabbits, or presidential silhouettes.  Chickpea Lyndon B. Johnson.  Yum!

Jennifer Grey on the dancing show, when she says "this feels like 7th grade," then whoops and corrects herself, "Maybe 8th grade."  It feels like an important distinction.  What does it mean that I still think so?

Indulgent playlists.  Whenever I make new friends, I pretend we are the Beatles.  I used to always be John, except for in the shower or the car by myself when I'm Paul, but more and more I just want to be Ringo. 

When Ringo signed up to be a tiny conductor on the kid's train show, did he do it for fun?  Was he just ready to get out of the house?  I guess he doesn't have a lot of fatty songwriting checks coming in quarterly.  In one of the Beatles Anthology outttake interviews he talks about working on that project as an excuse to hang out with Paul and George again.  I feel like if Ringo was on Facebook he'd be happy to be friends with me, with anyone, but everyone would be too nervous to ask.  But then again, he sent out that press release a few years ago to say he wasn't going to sign autographs anymore.  No judgment there.  It was nice of him to sign things for this long at all.

I think about Ringo all the time.

I've been writing in my office (in "my 'office'"), but until the new windows are put in, I wrap myself up in a blanket as I sit in the Ikea chair I bought a year ago.  This chair has the highest back of any chair I have ever owned.  For a few days Lola only wanted to go into the office in the morning, so yesterday I opened the door for her while I was on a conference call ("we are the sort of people who have to be on conference calls now, and who forward our itineraries to one another" {I just googled "iteneraries" to figure out how to spell "itineraries"}), and she hopped up on the seat of my chair and wiped her butt on it.  I pressed the mute button on the call and made her get down off of the chair.  She flattened her ears, meow-yelled at me, and ran out of the office.  She hasn't come back.

Instead of saying "look it up in the dictionary" when children ask me how to spell things, I will tell them to sound it out and google it.  Not to be ironic or funny.


Wordpress will show you how many words you have typed as you type them.  When I couldn't find a similar tally on blogger my first thought was how helpful that tally is; my second was how glad I was that the tally wasn't here.  "Oh, that's right.  *That's* what I want."

The shoes we're not wearing are in the kitchen next to the refrigerator, and I can see them from my desk.  Pink flats almost touching at the heel, with toes pointed away from each other.  Blue plaid rain boots perfectly aligned.  The heels of my white shoes that have been on grass in Virginia.  It's so easy to move anywhere you want to go.

I will write things and then stare at the words and try to decide if they are things I really believe. 

(It's so easy to move anywhere you want to go.)

Last night as I was falling asleep I tried to think of different ways to say chemistry problem.

"We're going to have to talk about the periodic table." 

(That's all I came up with.)

I decided to buy a lamp for my desk, but every one I looked at seemed too fancy, or too boring.  But there was one on the shelf called "banker's lamp" and it had a hard, green shade, and it looked like the kind my dad had or has on his desk.  I was quietly pleased and surprised that that was the one that I wanted.  All the time I have thoughts that would have horrified me when I was a kid, but every time it happens it makes me feel good. 

(I deleted the line "Do you think that's how Darth Vader felt?" because I thought it sounded like I was being mean to my dad.)

I like the older Elvis songs where it sounds like he's in his living room, singing old gospel songs, and trying to figure out how he got there.  Not because they're good songs, but because that's my favorite kind of Elvis.  It seems like a dick move that we voted for the Young Elvis stamp.  Like we're still saying, "Thanks Elvis, but you didn't really need to keep happening."  I like Vegas Elvis the best, because he's still working so hard, with no clear call or cause. 

(I don't know how you guys ever end things like this, because it seems like I could writing it forever.  But it's lunchtime, so I'll talk to you later.)