(See what I am saying?)

to the highest bidder

somewhere near the 300khz range her voice relayed from tower to tower and to my ear. she is singing garth brooks to me across the time zone as mike doughty's new song echoes through my empty house and the out window into the rain. my inbox is full. my answering machine is blinking. i am staring at the beginnings of his website that was supposed to be shown in the class i skipped today.

I finally made it home 10 minutes ago. in the rain on my way back i watched prada instinclty keep her four feet out of the puddles. i though about sam's reply this evening:

"even though you are busy, think about what is going in your life right now. if you could itemize your expierences and life right now, and could sell it to someone else, how much would it go for on eBay?"

I have the delivery conformation reciept for the photos on their way to the magazine in miami beach. and another lime green reciept for the video tapes sent to sausalito. My hands smell like fixer, and the sharpie marker i use to take attendence in class broke in my pocket while i was crouched over in the drain tunnel at stroud's run during fishing class.

prada is sleeping in the doorway. bonwag left a fan. she likes the air it pulls into the house and down the hallway. I have pages of sketches for the DVD project strewn across the table with spent calling cards and broken jewell cases. there are rolls of 120 in a pile that i feel i will never get exposed.

we left the darkroom tonight, and on my way home in the rain, stopped and crouched under the awning of the buggy on union and court st.

"for being this busy," i said to sam over a burrito i bought with a $4 loan from him, "i wish i was getting some money for it."

i wonder what the winning bid would be for all of this.

under one roof

woody piled on an armful of the tree that almost took his dog to bottom of the lake this past winter.* it blazed up as he staggered into the big bedroom where my sister was sleeping. the fireplace flared up and the shadows from the rafters waved across the ceiling. the sounds from the fire burning and the voices of my friends bounced through the dark cabin like the crickets in the yard at dusk.

jokes were told and delayed laughter and mixed up punch lines floated through the bunkbeds and over the walls. the empty handles of george dickel sat proudly on the mantle joining the other decades worth of drunken candle waxed covered tropheys.

After marinating most of the day in beer and most of the night in whiskey, we all had found a bed. every spout of laughter was followed by the dog's tails wagging and slapping bonwag's guitar he left by the door as he staggered out into his tent.

i thought about the people talking in the dark as i fell asleep laughing. who they are and where they've gone and where they came from to be there. i thought about the connections that run through me. and for one rainy bottlenecked night of our lives, those connections that are usually attatched via cell phone calls from alabama business trips and emails from corporate laptops were all under one roof.

and one more passed out on the wet floor of a tent out back.

accomplishments

3 plastic grocery sacks are sitting in an otherwise empty room of my house.

leanne left for new york this week. she left me behind, tangibley speaking, 3 bags full of shirts, a polaroid camera, and torn out scraps of magazine pages. the sacks have been there all week. prada is with my sister tonight, and without her here, i notice how awkwardly cloistered my situation is.

perhaps on some banistered porch, in my rocking chair decades from now, i will reconcile myself with all of this. but until then, i will struggle to embrace the seemingly endless string cameo apperances in this plot. this year has been even more a petting zoo of personalities than previous. i always wonder what i accomplish by so often saying goodbye to people in the same breath i say hello.

One particular scrap of coated magazine stock leanne made mention of, i dug out this evening. it says: ACCOMPLISH NOTHING.

she said it reminded her of something i should try to do someday.

ironic that i sit here in the middle of a thursday night with 7 applications on my computer open.

the academic calender sitting in the pile of auto insurance bills and empty film canisters reminds me of too many things i am supposed to accomplish. and the nearing of the end of the school year means i will be saying goodbye to many more faces i feel i hardly had the time to say hello to.

i was talking to a friend today about how many of my projects i won't get done by the end of the year. a shame, i suppose, that the dismal GPA that will appear in ASCII text next month in my email's inbox won't reflect the friendships i have happened into this year.

"truth be told," i said, "i gladly trade some of those accomplishments to have met even just one person this year who means something to me."

surley, leanne ford, wherever you are, you would agree that i accomplished that.

65 mph

it has been raining a lot here. and i have been a car a lot latley. i am starting to sympathize with the raindrops that slide around on the windshield at highway speeds. I have been in the habit of watching them stretch and slide across the glass, sometimes they meet and join, move, then separate again. They seem confused; wandering around, percolating among themselves, always changing shape; and constantly moved by something invisible and much stronger than they are.

2.5 out of 3

if i look from the right angle, cover my left eye and squint with my right, my life could be seen as very serendipitous. since my friday afternoon stephey-ism i have executed the following:

1) went to a party

2) got drunk

3) fell in love (if i look from the right angle)

i woke up this morning to Ron pounding a ball-peen hammer against the the lug nuts of a 1989 cavilier in his driveway. he was trying to change one flat spare donut-tire for another, less flat spare-dounut tire. the same spare-dounut tire that was flat in november when i drove him to the gas station so he could get a spray can of fix-a-flat to put in it.

it was 8:30 am. so i took prada for a walk then checked my e-mail. i had one message. it read : IMPORTANT - PLEAES READ - BRUCE STRONG

that was about 12 hours ago.

this is my life. i know the outcome. everything else is unexpected. my time from now untill then is for me to make with it what i choose. so if i look at my time here from the right angle, cover my left eye and squint with my right, my life could be seen as very serendipitous. in less than 24 hour's notice i have abanondon all previous plans for something unexpected.

"you don't mind sleeping the car some nights, do you?" bruce asked me over the phone today.

(my mind immedialty flashed to the night in grand junction when woody and slept in his mom's car and i slept in the cooler in the back and blew out the drain plug and all the melted ice poured right into my clean clothes and cameras)

"heck no, bruce. i rather enjoy it." i say back.

so here it goes. we leave at 5:00am. it will be fun. but what i like most is that in 1 days notice, things can change. in one days notice, i can let myself be changed. it is the fleeting feeling that i am in my car's drivers seat. sure there are consequences. things i will miss here, things that i am not going to think about. but at least my car is moving. and i am the one driving it. and i am quite sure i don't even have a spare tire.

logically speaking

A wise frend of mine and i were sitting around the kitchen table at the cabin late one night this spring. We were watching the first moths to pioneer through this spring's evenings around the porch light. He said something that has stayed with me.

First off, the friend was stephey, and this is what he told me:

"Logic would tell you that the only thing we shouldn't be suprised by in life is dying. Dying is the only expected thing we know of in this life. Everything else is unknown; but as it turns out, nothing takes us by surprise more than death. And everything else we do, the infinite possiblities and outcomes that make up our days from the cradle to the grave seems to get more and more formulated. and it seems all the amazing things we see and do get taken for granted".

That might be paraphrased somewhat, but that conversation had impact in me. As i write this, a storm is rolling over athens, and as i rode my bike through the streets on my way home, the light above me looked like a calico cat and the air i rode through was cool and the trees shuffled on their trunks with anticipation. And tonight i might go to party. i might get drunk. i might fall in love. but whatever i do it will be of my making. it will be unexpected. and i won't take it for granted. and tonight, the people who sat in the houses and bars watching television and talking on cell phones as i rode past them under the calico sky will be working their way towards the logical end.

I just wish some of them could have been there with stephey and i at the kitchen table in the cabin.

spin cycle

Perez said good-looking girls are always here. But I guess they have better things to do on Saturday evenings. Right now it is just me and the owner. It is so quiet here she is doing her own laundry.

I was partially hypnotized by my carhart trousers somersaulting in the dryer. It was almost as if they were walking by themselves. One leg in front of the other fell in perfect rhythm as they tumbled in my silent, fluorescent-lit, off-white Saturday night. I wanted to think about her, but i folded my t-shirts instead. There are lots of cycles to choose from. Cycles for whites, colors, mixed colors and woolens. Permanent press and delicates. My cycle wasn't listed on the inside of the off-white washing machine lid. It is a cycle of coming and going. Departing and returning. Finding and loosing. Loving and leaving.

It was bright in there. 1980's Maytag appliance design is uncomfortably off-white. So was my underwear spinning in the dryer. I missed her. However the typography on the single serving laundry detergent vending machine was beautiful. But what i kept looking at was the off-white machine hanging from the wood paneled wall. It said: CHANGE MAKER. and it only cost 1 dollar. I would give a dollar for some things to change. I would give a lot more for others not to.