December Here is Super Gentle

me:  I am going to listen to this Mariah Carey song like at least 150 times in the next week I bet

 scott:  why?

that's bad

 me:  shut up this song is amazing

it's the best christmas carol ever

 scott:  oh the christmas one?

 me:  "the christmas one"? OF COURSE THE CHRISTMAS ONE 

 scott:  i hate christmas songs

 me:  No, I mean Butterfly

wtf

I have been stuck for something to write about it. I've had schoolwork, and work work, and then the book the book the book. Every time I think about sitting down to try, I'm just tired. Tired and bored with it, the internet, the computer. 

I'm listening to Mariah Carey sing her grand Hark the Herald Angels Sing/Gloria medley. It's played straight church. I love it. Those used to be two of my favorite songs to sing when I was in church choir. The holidays were so great, all lots of colors and swathes and candles, and then dressing up and singing in front of people. I remember one particular midnight mass at St. Boniface, where the church was darkened and everyone had those little white candles with the paper holders on them. It was just after everyone had lit each others candle. I don't remember what we were singing, and now I sorta wonder if it was one of the more morbid Easter masses, but regardless I remember being extremely happy right then. My mother used to tell me that I should pin my bangs up, that my face looked better that way, bangs up, hair down. Man, glasses ruined my face. I used to wear the worst glasses, and they were terrible on me. But I mean, I was a kid. You can't give kids contacts. That's just asking to put their eye out. Anyway, in this memory, I definitely have my bangs pinned back.

When I listen to the more religious songs, like Hark, or anything in Latin, I like to picture the singer gazing upward adoringly at the church ceiling, where a giant nitrous breathing ice encased ancient demon tentacled monster is hanging suspended in space time, his one huge sparkling eye crusty with age and malice, his squid-like beak mouthing along to the words. 

I do this a lot to Come Oh Come Emmanuel too. 

Who was it I was talking to the other day who had never heard of Classical Gas? I was trying to explain that I thought Classical Gas was the guitar recital equivalent of Fur Elise for the piano, or the Tarantella. And I was telling you about how I had such a crush on the boy in my grade who did play this at his recital, which was also where I was playing Fur Elise, or maybe I was just thinking that and never said it out loud to you. Which should probably explain the whole thing, huh? Anyway, here, you should listen to this. 

The other thing I've been thinking about is that Green Mamba at the Serpentarium, and that feeling I had watching it watch me. Yesterday I was talking with a poet I knew a long time ago, like Livejournal days, and he brought up that he was mildly obsessed with that feeling to, how did Andrew put it? I don't know, he may have been quoting someone, but it was something like "its us looking at nature, and nature looking back." Which to me is a primordial flight or kill feeling, mostly flight. My civilized interpretation of Kill is "well I'm not going to kill it myself, but I wouldn't mind if something else killed it." I think our chat helped me finish a short story, but it also got me listening to The Gerbils a lot again, so it's a toss up. What if The Gerbils has done a Christmas Album? omg

Work is good. It's been a long time since I've worked retail. I had forgotten. I got sick like immediately, and then was like "oh yeah, public money, public school, public bus". Really what's gotten into me is the virus of Man. I am a chicken in a cage, all packed in. My body is a nesting ground for every personal failure in a 5 mile radius of me.

But I like the job itself a lot. I like people in general. I have some really nice smart friends here, I feel like the proportion of decent interesting people is higher than normal here, at least Downtown. The other night I was sitting in my friend's (super beautiful high ceiling third floor of a goddamn southern mansion) apartment, and we were eating pizza from the tequila bar, and talking about books and PTSD and the self awareness paradigm shift, and so... this town has done pretty well at people so far.

Except when it comes to dating. This is weird, but almost every person I've gone on a date with has been from Huntington, WV. And they all went to Marshall. Also one of my very favorite girls in town, this girl Melissa, who was my first school friend and then helped me get a job, she's a happy piece of luck but also? From Huntington, WV. So if I was writing this as a chapter of an autobiography, I would write about the weekend last October when Sean and I went to Huntington for the first time to see Elvis Costello for his birthday, and some drunk guy tried to pick me up so Sean let him try because he wanted to hit on some twitterati girl at the bar, and how that was Total Fucking Foreshadowing. Only at that time, I had not even conceived of moving to Wilmington, I hadn't even applied to UNCW yet. So hello Weirdest Year Ever, What's up? An idea I had at roughly this same time last year has led to me being here now in a totally different city, job, school, and social group. Fucked Up. So much has happened this year. This New Years is gonna be weird. Anti-climatic almost.

The other thing I like a lot these days are  People Reading My Book. First of all, because I can't believe I got that Tumblr name, that it wasn't taken already. I mean, that's going to be useful forever. Second, it is possibly the cutest thing that's ever happened to me. Selling a book on the internet is a weird experience and one that leads to a lot of moments of gratefulness. Maybe that's the other reason for all the Christmas music.

I really don't know what I'm going to do for New Years this time around, it's weird and vague. I want something really neat to happen, but I suspect I've used up my quota for a while, and now it's just time to work a lot.