Selections from the box

I enjoy me in a foreign country, even 10+ years ago, but seriously, go talk to the bartender...

3.14.00

Well, here I am, sitting in a café populated by a large-nosed Spaniard, his tall and somewhat attractive girlfriend, an an attractive bartender.  I have no idea what to write about.  I feel good.  I like this place, it makes me comfortable.  Mellow music, no Americans, light enough to see, dark enough to fade into, you know.  Sweet taste of café con Bailey's only a buck and change...better than Starbucks.  Damn Seattle folk.

The Spaniard and (I assume) his novia (because Spaniards can't be friends with girls) just left, leaving me alone in this place with the bartender.  Maybe I should go talk to her.  I guess the only issue left here is to decide whether I want to talk to her or not.  Indeed (efectivamente), this is turning into more of a "slice of life" than any sort of argumentative attempt.  Sometimes, though, these are the pieces that are the most valuable.

The atmosphere is lovely.  I'm forced to write by social graces.  What I mean is, I couldn't, in a socially acceptable manner, just sit here and stare at the bartender.  A sort of indirect, but pleasant discipline.  I don't like to take photos.  Indeed, each photo is an abortion of a thousand words.  What's happening here?  Some guy just walked in and is speaking in a disagreeable tone.  I never saw his face.

This piece seems to lack a certain interest, but perhaps the meaning will be realized later. 
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Selections from the Box

I keep a big black plastic container next to my computer. It houses the contents of an old Marshall Fields box into which I tossed pages and pages of printouts that I don't want to throw away, but for which I don't have any immediate use. From time to time, I like to share excerpts with you all. This is one of those times.

This is the highlight from a love letter to Emma (I don't remember writing a love letter -- obviously it didn't work), probably circa Summer 1998:

"...joy and despair coupled are infinitely more preferable than existing in a prolonged desensitized state. However, I do not wish to employ you as my therapist, so I'll get to my point. In the coldest periods of the past year, every once in a while your presence could make me feel the pure happiness that I used to be able to feel. However incidental this phenomenon might have been, the fact remains that I am indebted to you for being the only one with that ability. So thanks."

Wow, dude, that's really good -- fantastic effort young Jon. It's a touch clinical, or maybe I mean academic, or maybe I mean reserved, but I don't know if I could do it much better.

Well...

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Selections from the Container

I keep a big black plastic container next to my computer. It houses the contents of an old Marshall Fields box into which I tossed pages and pages of printouts that I don't want to throw away, but for which I don't have any immediate use. From time to time, I like to share excerpts with you all. This is one of those times.

From a journal entry dated 12/30/98:

Meditations on a Lamp

What's with lamps? I don't understand why when you're drunk you have to act like one. And why is it called a lamp? It's not like you're plugging in a baby sheep. I think that the baby sheep would object to being plugged in, especially if the connection was rammed up its ass.

Not ass in the donkey sense, but rather The Colon's Cave, as I like to call it. And why is there a punctuation mark named after part of my lower intestine? Instead of two dots, it should be represented by a brown smear. That might be tough to convey on a typewriter though.

Typewriters remind me of my grandma's dentures. They both make the same sound, especially when my grandma coughs, and her dentures go skating across the floor. Usually she coughs because I've punched her in the stomach.

Note: I've since ceased making abuse of the elderly jokes, because, well, it's kind of real.
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Only Colors and Flavors

I was digging through the big black plastic container where I throw all my old writing and uncovered an essay which most likely was written in 1999. The whole copy can be obtained for $5, check or money order only, include $6.95 shipping and handling (mostly handling -- it's tough to handle, it's heavy, well not exactly, more awkward than heavy), blah blah blah. There is no date on this essay, but the paragraphs are marked with the time. This paragraph is from 1:26 A.M. Enjoy.

I'm going to a paradise, a world in which there's only colors and flavors. Big rainbow lollipops floating around in a dreamer's paradise. In this paradise, there are angels and saints and cherubs, each with a different flavor and color. You can taste them and see what they're like. These cherubs carry candy arrows with multiple flavors and colors. Some are orange and others are red. Some are blue and others are green. Each flavor makes you see colors and each color makes you taste flavors. Everybody floats around in a dreamy haze.
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Young Poem

I was digging through the big black plastic container where I throw all my old writing and garbage writing and scraps of paper with incomprehensible ideas -- I think of it as composting -- and in a folder whose cover features a white seal holding the Earth between its paws and another white seal peering cutely outward, both beneath the aurora borealis, I came across this poem, which is dated 1997 (putting me at 17 or 18):

Ladies

The ladies want a big meaty man:
Bold, juicy, and flavorful.
He should strut about and boast of his protein content
So people will ignore his saturated fat.
Call me rice pilaf.

I laughed.
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Selections from the box

I keep an old Marshall Fields box next to my computer. In this box I toss scraps of paper that I don't want to throw away, but for which I don't have any immediate use. I will dig through that box and tell you what I find.

A leaf of lined paper from a mini legal pad. The wrinkling suggests that I used it as a coaster for a rocks glass. My rocks glasses usually contain gin and ice (I have learned, through bruising and/or waking up on the floor, not to use a tumbler). The paper reads "Schnuckiputzi was sexy b/c her angle matched his deformed penis." Google reveals that schnuckiputzi means "sweetie pie" or "cutie pie" in German. I'm a big fan of angle.

My income tax forms. Bobby Gates won't get a nickel from me. I kid. I paid my taxes. It cost me a shit-load to overnight all those pennies to Washington. In a box. With a sedated chimpanzee.

An index card reading "To me, a good end table and a fax machine have about the same value." How true. I'm still using the box with the fax machine in it as an end table. I do have an end table, but I use it to kill the neighbors.

The page that I sliced off the inside left of a Mother's Day card. It reads, "I've always loved you Mom! Thought I should tell you that, because there were times when you really must have wondered. I know I wasn't the easiest kid to bring up, but you were always there for me -- and deep down inside I was grateful..." I just couldn't picture myself yelling the first sentence. And deep down inside me, there's only blood and tar.
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