i told richard i didn't know as whom i should post. i am still lost on that, and i feel old and out-of-practice, that sheep who strayed just far enough from the flock to be a member still, but not part of the whole. ya'll be hooked up now, and here i am, as hopeful as ever, i suppose, but with a thousand different identities and not one i can grasp. huh. looks like i'm to be me after all. *** i wrote a poem once about tiles on a bathroom floor. how, if you look at them long enough with an unfixed gaze, the grout lines between sort of dissolve. eyes playing tricks on the seer, i guess; at least it happens to me. i was in the same tiled bathroom tonight, the same one i wrote about, and i looked for a minute or two at the tiles, thinking how perhaps all life is like a tiled floor, small separate pieces held together in this great chalky mass of solidarity. and it looks new and even when freshly grouted; then, after a while, the grout wears away, the pieces look disjointed and some of them just fall away. i'd like to think the moments i have, though, are not uniformly shaped and spaced. though my grouted base is measurable and ending, my moments aren't, shall we say, communistic in nature. they are not all equal. but they are not all less important. *** when the boy got to my apartment last night i was searching my drawers for a pair of knee socks. argyle, to be sure. but the brown and orange didn't fit, for some odd reason, so i went with the gray and white, big, high-contrast diamonds curving around my calves -- i felt conspicuous. all the recent talk of patterned stockings has gotten me thinking about my unmentionables drawer: hot pink stockings, brown and black striped, two kinds of rainbow-striped knee socks, white, navy, gray, black lace and a multitude of faux-lacy flowers. cream-colored, which i wore when i met miss mandee may for the very first time (and subsequently smoked my very first dunhill). plain black, of course, pink and blue knee highs from the little girls' department and, for the very cold and crazy days, full argyle stockings. i may have a bit of a patterned problem. or at least a bit of a stocking problem. perhaps i am turning my tiles into various kinds of socks; some understated and, dare i say, typical, and most really bright, rather trendy and fairly expendable. maybe that's too generalized, though. maybe i just wish things could be as simple as socks or tiles, threads interweaving and little rows of even sqaures. *** i made a friend quiz a week ago. remember when we did those? yeah. i do. i made one again and sent it out to all my friends. the highest score was five out of ten. apparently my quiz was too hard, and people thought i liked my glasses more than my blue chuck taylors. question number two: how many boys have i dated (meaning: how many boys would say they have dated me)? question number three: ok, so with how many boys have i gone on dates? both multiple choice. i had to count out myself for number three. i got out my red editing pen and a note card and make tick marks as i counted off the names in my head. twenty-one. now twenty-two, i guess, and that reminds me of a good life song. i kind of miss those twenty-one dates, when i woke up the morning of and picked out a skirt and a pair of cream-colored tights. is it bad to say i kind of miss the dates in january? i kind of miss chicago in may, too. does that mean i miss my old life? or is there a difference between then and now? between all the twenty-one and the new number twenty-two? or is it all just the same after all, the same tiles in the same floor, the same size and shape and color, just in a different spot with an exact measurement and boundary. maybe i am not a thousand names. maybe i am just one. well. fuck. nevermind. *rae (thanking fuck for the end and ken.) __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - Let the expert host your site http://webhosting.yahoo.com +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. To unsubscribe send "unsubscribe sinister" or "unsubscribe sinister-digest" to majordomo@missprint.org. WWW: http://www.missprint.org/sinister +-+ "sinsietr is a bit freaky" - stuart david, looper +-+ +-+ "legion of bedroom saddo devotees" "peculiarly deranged fanbase" +-+ +-+ "pasty-faced vegan geeks... and we LOST!" - NME April 2000 +-+ +-+ "frighteningly named Sinister List organisation" - NME May 2000 +-+ +-+ "sick posse of f**ked in the head psycho-fans" - NME June 2001 +-+ +-+ Nee, nee mun pish, chan pai dee kwa +-+ +-+ Snipp snapp snut, sa var sagan slut! +-+ +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+