"your mouth is poison. your mouth is wine."

In the spirit of the holiday, I’ll re-post something from a blog last April:

April 13, 2011

never date a miniature gamer.

Recently, on a strange cocktail pseudo-date, I was asked about my worst date ever. Until today, I eased myself into the idea that “The Boy Who Cried*” was the worst “type” I had dated, but nothing so far has categorically fit into the “Worst Date Ever.” So, I suppose I had no real acceptable answer. However, while thinking about creating this blog (you know, this thing you're reading) on “dating 'mis'-adventures” on my commute to work this morning, I remembered a man I dated for about six weeks a couple years ago. It's amazing I'd forgotten about this. It all came screaming back.

So, "this guy" (I will continue to refer to him as this, so get used to it) I was introduced to by friends was super smart and he was a writer. A WRITER! Naturally excited to spend time with someone I could carry on a conversation with, I overlooked small details like that he met weekly with friends to paint small figurines of warriors and play games with them (the friends AND the miniature warriors). In hindsight, the latter should've been a flaming red flag; however, I was young and somewhat inexperienced in dating (code for desperately lonely), so I casually dismissed this "hobby." I mean, we could talk! Not pretentiously cerebral while also being real, engaging, even current. Right? Regardless: in addition to miniature figure gaming, this fella drank his weight in scotch (he was a big guy) each night, his car smelled like dirty laundry, and for Valentine’s Day he got me a bouquet of rainbow pastel-colored roses. Disgusting. This now brings us to Valentine’s Day two years ago: my worst date ever.

I should have really seen this coming when a few nights previous to our date I received a picture message from this guy on my phone of his step-mom and dad making out. First, WTF?! Seriously. Second, who takes a picture of this and sends it to someone they’re dating? Tell me, please: WHO? The icing on the cake: apparently these folks of his, in addition to matching the classiness of their son’s photo snoggy skills, are swingers. At our dinner, he asked me if he could take a picture of me so his parents could see who I was. I agreed, of course, assuming he’d just show it to them. Oh no – he loaded it into a message and hit send right there. Okay, so a little weird, right? Picture-messaging a photo of me to your dad and step-mother? Yeah, I think so too. Except, this wins: the reply text he received (and immediately showed me with a grin) from his step-mom. It simply asked: “Can I play with her?” Oh. Fucking. Christ. Throw up. In my mouth. Oh. Total sad face.

I broke up with him the next day.



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By no means an audiophile, I position my somewhat novice expertise (see what I did there?) to allow me a certain “green-ness” when compiling “you oughta” lists. Not any random litany, but indeed the best kind: pop the ear buds in, turn the volume up, and grab the tissues – this is the heartbreak month. Smack-dab in the middle of the dreariest month of the year is – you guessed it – Valentine’s Day. We could revisit an abandoned(ish) blog of mine to see how I spent it two years ago (four words: pastel tie-dyed roses). And last year, I was crying in my bedroom over Los Angeles and an abandoned plane ticket. And for the rest, from what I can remember, well, none of them involved copious amounts of romance, really… unless that means leaving love notes on index cards for your mother wherever she could find them, or looking forward to that box of Godiva chocolates from your father. Romance schmomance – love is forever present in my life. For whatever defeat I’ve encountered, something or someone has always helped me back up to the surface for a little gasp of air.

Needless to say, I’ve survived plenty of days like this one.

Not all of these are for the broken-hearted. Sometimes, you just need a little catharsis. A little reminder. Something to move you through whatever-this-feeling-is. Sometimes, just one line is all you need.

So, visit iTunes, buy these tracks, and open a bottle of wine.
You’re welcome.


Your Ex-Lover Is Dead – Stars
I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You – Colin Hay
Lies – Trifonic
Mercy Street – Peter Gabriel
Make This Go On Forever – Snow Patrol
Sheets – Damien Jurado
Holocene – Bon Iver
Nicest Thing – Kate Bush
Sweetest Kill – Broken Social Scene
Burial – Alexisonfire
Like You Said – Tiger Lou
Sæglópur – Sigur Rós
Sodom South Georgia – Iron & Wine
Romulus – Sufjan Stevens
Gorecki – Lamb
Hand on Your Heart – Jose Gonzales
Raise Your Weapon – Deadmau5
Set Fire to the Rain – Adele
9 Crimes – Damien Rice
No One’s Gonna Love You – Band of Horses
Skinny Love – Bon Iver
Goodmorning – William Fitzsimmons
Daniel – Bat For Lashes
Element – Moses Mayfield
Poison and Wine – The Civil Wars
What Else Is There - Royksopp
One More Night (Your Ex-Lover Remains Dead) – Stars


I love holidays. Perhaps this one isn’t my favorite, but I believe in love; it’s only whatever you make of it. Head-first, fast, and overwhelming – it starts and ends about the same. For Los Angeles, for Detroit, and for myself: I love you.

ex oh ex oh. HVD.

the feverish hoarding of goodbyes.

wislawa szymborska died today. her words always meant so much to me - they helped to sew shut wounds when i couldn't see enough to thread the needle, they helped to locate heat when the windows were sealed with ice, they echoed across continents merely for the joy in the beauty of words.

i can't feel anything but gratitude that i felt/feel the impact of the blow. it doesn't have to be an explosion... sometimes a slow burn is enough (it's more than enough) to draw out the memory. these memories carry us through, don't they?



A LITTLE ON THE SOUL - W. SZYMBORSKA

Periodically one has a soul.
Nobody has it all the time and forever.

Day after day, year after year
can pass without it.

Sometimes only in rapture
and in fears of childhood
it dwells within longer.
Sometimes only in the astonishment,
that we have become old.

It rarely assists us
in strenuous pursuits,
such as moving furniture,
carrying suitcases
or tromping through a road in tight shoes.

While filling in forms
and chopping meat
it usually takes the day off.

In a thousand of our conversations
it participates in one,
and not even necessarily in one,
preferring silence.

When our bodies start aching more and more,
it silently leaves the ward.
It's fussy:
it doesn't see us immediately in a crowd,
it sickens at our attempts at mere advantage
and the shrill clamor of business.

Joy and sorrow
are not all that different to it.
Only in the combination of them
does it stand up.

We can rely on it,
when we are certain of nothing,
and when everything seizes us.

Among all material objects
it likes best clocks with pendulums
and mirrors, which work fervently,
Even when nobody looks.

It doesn't say where it comes from
and when it will disappear next,
But it clearly awaits such questions.

It looks like,
as much as we need it,
also it
needs us for something too.


Translated from the Polish by Rick Hilles and Maja Jablonska


maybe it's for my father, or for jay, or my grandparents, for leanna or tom, and heather, or perhaps just for the moment in time we are all stuck in the ether - fixed - waving goodbye. though through the veil, it looks much like hello.

so, for the thousands of goodbyes and lost tokens, for the hundreds of broken hearts and aching spirits, for your unrequited confessions and risks unrewarded, for the lack of change to place in hunger's palm, for the words that don't do justice for the sunset or the thick silence of sleep... i'll tick each goodbye as a mark on the wall, with the promise of reunion to pay in kind.

until we meet again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmQuIsDnQ3k

(you are still next to me, alright.)