stories bijou stories - we all got 'em. 020101 ... chanaka of a teenaged dominatrix 020101 ... pralines&cream I have a story about the time I saw a pig running down the side of a busy street ... that one always makes me laugh while I'm telling it. It was just so totally random. 020212 ... c r 0 w l i've got a story to tell you... 080111 ... PeeT So what do you do or turn to to keep yourself growing and changing and evolving? Stories. Keeping stories in my brain is important to me. I can get a story at the grocery store. If I’m paying attention, I can get it on the subway. I can get it in a book . . . Just catching a glimpse of how somebody is interacting with their child, or how they shape their nails or bop their head to the beat, and storing these little moments . . . Dreams . . . I’ll take it any way I can get it. But you also have to be paying attention and keep notes. 120206 ... styx turning sunsoaked rainbows and full moons swimming in indigo skies into black on white...or white on red for that matter 120207 ... kerry he has become more of a talker than a storyteller. when he stopped taking pictures and just moped around the house we told him to go be a history teacher like david did when he put his camera away. he would be a good orator. she’s not the best talker. her words slip and slide a bit but she doesn’t drink anymore so that helps. i wanted his stories and only had a few, maybe because i naively? arrogantly? thought i could write her whole biography. i had plenty of material and i knew her well enough to fill in any gaps. it turned out the gaps really are voids. atlanta, early 60s, a little girl coming home to a very tidy but empty house and putting already-made food in the oven. raised by maids and later raised by herself, she was a dolled up rosy cheeked latchkey kid. dot fussed at her for slurping her cola through the straw like that. there was the time she tripped and went tumbling down the hill into the rose bushes. how sad it was to leave dolly the black and tan dachshund with that sadistic neighbor girl when they moved away. they both have some bloody spots in their past, but don’t we all? when i ask her about it she answers, and i can tell the answer is honest and true by the waver in her voice or the shine in her eyes, eyes that are blue and green with an orange fleck in one iris. for some reason she is proud of this little orange fleck. she has a spot on the back of her neck that glows red when she’s angry or hurt. but when i ask him about those little rips and tears, it’s like we’re guessing about someone else’s life. as a kid i asked if he was scared to go to war when he was only 20. i was already having nightmares about nuclear holocaust in elementary school. he said eh, i don’t know if i’d say scared, it’s different being there, and gave me some vietnam snapshots to take for show and tell. ms pitt said he looks just like you. it was almost as cool as when virginia’s mom brought a real human heart to our class. she was a nurse. i asked what was it like when your dad died, it just being you and grandma and terry and baby lyle. even then i knew the odds of my own father dying in a plane crash were slim to none, but the thought that i could suddenly lose my parents: i knew that was possible. i’d seen batman, i’d read the boxcar children. i asked wasn’t he scared then? what did he think about? he just said he didn’t remember much. i just worried i’d become an orphan, he said, and turned back to the television. 210915 ... raze there is no table of contents to guide you through this book. there are no chapter headings or page numbers. just a medley of scenes to remind you who and where you've been. and so many pages still to be written. 240302 ... epitome of incomprehensibility ...and old_shit. From a draft of a letter ten years ago that I put for some reason poetry folder: "There's a story where my strange but not all that traumatizing experience at Cedar_Christian_Academy (the school I went to from grades 6-9 - too Christian, too Academy, but just the right amount of cedar) is transformed into a dystopian nightmare parodying 1984 (the Orwell book) and Harry Potter." ...Dunno if the story is worth digging up, but I like the "just the right amount of cedar" bit. 240303 ... e_o_i (edit: that I put for some reason INTO my poetry folder) 240303 what's it to you? who go blather from