Tag: Chris’ Writing

Two Of Everything Good, Please

“I’ll take two,” I told the young waitress behind the counter wearing a pale blue dress and filthy grease-stained apron. Her blond hair was pulled back tightly into a bun that looked like a small abandoned barrel of hay. In a hurried motion she swept her untrimmed bangs behind her right ear. As her fingernails, painted black, came back to her side I noticed she wore no earrings. There were two sets of holes but no earrings to dangle from or loop through them.

“Anything else,” she asked.

I stared at her and imagined that she was wearing strands of diamonds from each of the holes in her ears — that the diamonds radiated a bright white light that washed over the painful blue fluorescence. When I looked through my imagination, though, I saw that her eyes smoldered — perhaps with impatience — in the pits of her face and her ears were still unadorned.

“No. Thank you.”

Written from 12:05 am to 12:26 am on Monday, December 15, 2008 in my apartment in Concord, NH.

My Daily Routine

I am a student, which makes me many things. The upside to being a student is the flexible schedule. I may have three days of early classes and four days off. I may have to get up at 7am three days and be able to sleep until noon (which I don’t like doing) the other four days.

The downside of being a student is the lack of routine. I don’t like the splatter-paint approach to getting things done. There is little lead time allowed when I need to remember five to ten cases worth of reading for the next day’s class. Thus, reading ahead is a thing of the past, replaced with a chaotic sprint reading session that leaves me burned out. Being burned out everyday gets old, but that is the approach that has come to work for me over the past two years of studying the law.

I don’t want routine, so much as the ability to sit in silence when I need to. I read best very early in the morning. From 5am to 8am. During these hours there are no possible distractions. But it is more than that. I am able to hone in and read efficiently. My well-rested mind is fresh and receptive to the words on the page. As the day runs on, my ability and desire to read anything greatly diminishes.

I am most creative and write best late at night. From 10pm to 3am. I discovered this in undergrad when, regardless of early classes, and sometimes because of them if there was a deadline to meet, I would write just to write with a single favorite song on repeat and the lights turned off. It was during these hours that I could develop a rhythm and maintain a flow — two very cliche words, I know. There is more possibility for me in the silence of the night than there is in the rushed noise of the day.

My writing is not an efficient process. I am neither quick nor accurate on my first attempts at expressing what I have to say. Instead, I chip away. I love reading what I write. I like hearing it in my head and out loud. A successful phrase is the catalyst of my insomnia.

Aside from studying, writing, and other work, my day is, as I have said above, often scrambled. I make a point to eat breakfast and dinner. A snack suffices between. Since the beginning of this past summer I have worked out semi-regularly (far more regularly than ever before in my life). I appreciate the workouts. They relieve stress and tire me out.

This post was inspired by what may be my new favorite blog — Daily Routines — which collects insights into the daily routines of writers, artists, and other interesting people.

Blogging Regrets

I’ll admit that in my four years as an amateur blogger I’ve had some missteps. I’ve posted things that were too personal. I’ve turned friends and family away at times. I’ve crossed the line and been to vulgar, for I am not a vulgar person. (Not in print anyway.)

But, my biggest regret of all is not keeping an archive of all of my writing over the years. Even offline, I seem to have misplaced much of my work. Most of it was post-adolescent drivel. But floating in the drivel were a few good posts — posts that were particularly insightful to my situation at that moment in time.

I miss all my old blogs. I’ll never forget my first post ever, which was about how many green M&M’s I found that day in my snack. I didn’t have rules for myself when I started blogging. I just wrote whatever I felt like writing. I linked to stuff. I posted videos, pictures… I posted drivel. If there was a way to import drivel — real gooey drivel — into the interweb, I would have posted it.

Please forgive my nostalgic yearnings. I wish I had better records of a lot of things, but that’s not what I’m told I live for. I’m here to move forward. Grow up. Keep writing, but not worry about the past so much. I’ll just consider this a lesson learned. To keep the blog running, even when everything else seems to be ending, changing, or swirling around me.

The drivel will tell all!

Sitting Alone in My Kitchen

Tonight is quiet. It is not lonely. Just quiet and alone. Accompanying my wandering thoughts is a steady rainfall that will soon become silent snow. The streetlights outside my window run along the entire length of my block in muted yellows. The cars that drive by sound like a coat zipper and their red lights blend with the yellow lights from above.

It is raining and I am sitting alone in my kitchen.

It seems darker outside than usual. And brighter inside. The fluorescent light above me is harsh and annoying — reminding me I am alone in my kitchen and it is dark outside. And raining.

My pen casts a faint shadow on my yellow paper.

Besides the rain and the darkness and the general sense of alone-ness, there is no football on television tonight. College or otherwise. I don’t like when there isn’t a football game on and I’m alone. It is what I watch when I don’t want to think. Don’t want to be involved in a story. Just want to observe distant collisions between others. Ignore my own.

I read today that America may split into six separate countries. West Coast, Texas, East Coast, Northern States and a couple others. That seems insane like $4 gas. But that happened. And now I’m paying $1.72. So, everything ebbs and flows. The downfall of America today. The strength of the dollar the next. In my email today I read that I should travel to London. That the American dollar is at a five-year high against the British pound. Never mind that no one has any of the strong dollars. That billions are being spent by our government to save companies that should fail. That deserve to fail.

Anyway. It is dark and raining. I am in my kitchen alone reading and wondering whatching the orange lights and listening to the zippers zip by my apartment.

Cracked Heart

His heart was cracked. With each slow breath of dry Midwestern air he winced. His eyes watered, not only from sadness, but from the shriek in his chest. As he lay picture still in his room his mind replayed what went wrong and forgot to remember what went right. The pain made him numb. Except for the cracked heart, which was un-numb-able.

Sometimes when she was not looking he tried to push the fractions of his heart back together. He would place his left palm on the left side of his ribcage and his right palm on his sternum. Then he would feel with his fingertips for the crack deep beneath tissue and bone and press his palms firmly together. He did this until beads of salty sweat stung his eyes and his butter-cream complexion was splotchy red. Nothing in his life had been so hard as this.

*****

I wish I could pound my chest like a savage beast and break my own heart, but that is not how fractured hearts work. Instead I am left to mend it myself and to hope she will lend a hand when I grow weak.

Written from 11:11 pm to 11:31 pm on Tuesday, November 18, 2008 in my apartment in Concord, NH.