no hablo ingles.

swirly-eyed monkey
breakdancing in the moonlight;
he's not down with bees



it is 1:30 in the afternoon on a thursday, and i am loving life in my flannel pooh-bear nightie with nowhere to be and no work to do and a new built to spill cd and SUN, oh my god there isn't a cloud in the sky! i'd think i hadn't actually woken up yet if i didn't still have this creepy blister on my left eyeball.

so i'm talking to my invisible friend natey, and he's telling me how many of his closest friends are people he doesn't speak to in person, and i'm thinking about how two of the best friends i've ever had were only in the same room with me about once every six months, and just as i'm getting ready to pitch a whizzy about being emotionally handicapped and incapable of allowing anyone to get close to me natey provides me with something that might be an excuse, but that i choose to view as a revelation:

people who are writers by nature, who use the medium as an emotional outlet and would rather attend a poetry open mic than a concert, are infinitely more capable of expressing themselves successfully in print. it isn't that we don't want to make small talk; it just isn't our sport.

i literally can not think without a pen or something like a pen in my hand. my entire academic career turned around the day i realized i remembered five times as much information if i studied while holding a highlighter, even if i never once used it. generally, it takes me twice as long to write anything if i try to type it out right off the bat rather than write it longhand first. the only sort of artwork i've ever been half-decent at is pencil sketching. when i was born i didn't make a sound for two full days; i could read at a year and a half. this is my nature. this is who i am. the fact that i couldn't keep up a running dialogue with another human being for more than four minutes if that person were holding a gun to my head is not my fault in any way.

the problem is, the majority of the people i come into contact with are not the same. they're normal, and being such they want to meet for lunch and talk, or call on the phone and talk, or go out for drinks and talk, and when i send them postcards and letters they don't think it's sweet or comforting. they become quite frustrated, actually, and that's the end of that, as a rule.

i don't know. i don't know what i can do. i try to chat politely, i really do, but i always end up beginning some outlandish esoteric debate about nothing at all,

normal person: this restaurant is pretty nice, isn't it? i'm glad you mentioned it, i've always meant to try it out.

me: yeah. i like it.

(uncomfortable pause)

normal person: so, how's your dinner? is that penne?

me: mm hmmm. it's good.

(eerie airless pause)

normal person: *chewchew*

me: *chewchew*

(deafening apocalyptic silence interrupted only by the squooshing of the food in our mouths echoing in our own ears)

me: pasta's kind of sad.

normal person: what?

me: well, it is. i mean, to live your whole life in a box, only to know you're going to end up boiled alive. it has to be a downer.

normal person: (confusion tempered with mild alarm)

me: or maybe they aren't upset about it, maybe they know it's their destiny and they're at peace with it, you know, just happy to be able to do their part and come into their place in the world.

normal person: you're on crack, aren't you?

me: do you think the lasagna noodles feel superior to the other noodles because they know they're going to become a part of something greater than themselves, or do you think they resent that level of predetermination in their lives?

normal person: i have to go now.


i have known two people who were willing to participate in this type of conversation with me. one was, unfortunately, a paranoid schizophrenic whom i came to fear and hide from. the other was a lovely girl who met a terrible boy and joined a strange cult, never to be heard from again.

but my pen pals have never questioned any of my topics of discussion. the origins of jell-o, what faeries use your socks for when they steal them, my psychic connection to charles dodgson, it was all valid. apparently lots of things make zero sense when you say them out loud, but the same sentences in the form of familiar letters in black ink on white paper somehow become rational. i can't explain. i just know it's true.

maybe you're right, natey. it probably is the chicken.