home sweet home.

I finally unpacked the last box of my belongings today. I am officially moved in!

summer days

I found my grandma walking around in fishnet socks today. When I asked her why in the world she would wear that she said " because it's sexy."

ashamed.

i feel like shit.

Priceless

Thank You Letters $ 8

Sorry Brownies $10

Alcohol $300

Hospitalization $ 500

Ambulance $1500

Housing License Repeal $5520

The memory of swimming in pools of my own vomit, reminiscing whether or not I would die there in that hospital waiting for my roommate to pick me up and take me home

The throbbing aftermath confronted with a 24- hour hang over, counseling, essays, meetings, and millions of alcohol pamphlets all concealed with a curtain of smiles and the belief that I am okay

The humiliating confession of my vulnerability and weakness to the broken faces of my parents as they see the thousands of dollars in damages for my poor decisions that has caused fights between me and my conscious, reputation, friends, family, and loved ones that has only amounted to a lost in trust within myself and within my friends

Priceless.

nose bleed.

I was standing there; head down, naked from head to toe with hot water beating down against my back, watching the never ending drops of blood fall from the tip of my nose. I stood in that pale beige stall for what seemed like hours, lost in this strange sense of time where nights were days and days were nights and life seemed to become one long continuous cycle of mechanical tasks. There was no distinction from sunset to sunrise or from sunrise to sunset. And with each drop passed another day that I could have had. Another day where I could have made a memory, but instead I am left with this infinite day.

I find myself watching people. Watching people come home and people go home and people leaving and people running, but all the same people going somewhere and I am no where but here. My days filled with nothing but air. My heart forgotten. My breath slow. But there is an inconsistency to my predictable life that is the basic foundation to my existence.

It is the waterfall of crimson red from the tunnels in which I breathe. It revives my being, reminding me that there is life in the warm blood that rushes with a fervid force throughout my veins. It is an opacity that will not last. It is the reason why I know that this day will end whether it be tomorrow or the next day or the next year. It will end because there is something finite to this infinite bloody cycle and it is that that makes my heart remembered and my breath strong.

skit 1

enter kat.

K: Why hello there, friend!

alex: Hello, Kat!

K: You know, I wish I had two cans and a piece of string so we could connect them and talk to each other.

alex: Well,what do you know! I just happen to have two cans and a piece of string.
(pulls out cans and string)

K: Wow, that's fantastic. Now, I can talk to you whenever I want!

end scene.

Lemons.

What do I see?
Vibrant yellow lemons
Each cut into perfect thin slices
And there are millions of them.
And why are there lemons, you might ask.
Because my dad likes to cut lemons. Lots of them.
And for what?
Optimism

You see, each lemon has a little slit in the center of its yellow sun where it will be placed on a polished glass by a dishwasher’s cracked hands, filled with cubes of glistening ice and cold water by a nervous busser, and finally taken by the delicate, but fastidious server to the gentleman in a cashmere sweater who is sweating profusely.

Naturally the more lemons that are used, the more customers there will be. So at the beginning of each day, my dad cuts four extra large lemons into slices of 12 each. And he continues to cut them every hour. This isn’t so bad… if we were an established restaurant with a steady inflow of customers. But we’re not. So by the end of the day, we are swimming in bright neon lemons, breathing in the citrus with our permanently pursed lips and crying because it’s stinging our eyes.

No one wants to tell my dad to stop cutting the lemons. No one wants to tell him that he’s wasting money and that those lemons are probably just going to be stored in the fridge for the next day when they turn brown at the edges and hard on the outer skin. And why not? Because we are all hoping for the same thing: for this restaurant to be successful. We’ve put our hearts and our hopes and we’ve sacrificed so much for this restaurant. We’ve given up the concept of family for this restaurant and now all we can think about is the success for the restaurant because we can’t bare to think of anything less of that. It would be too heartbreaking. So here we are holding our breath and listening to the incessant chopping of the cutting board hoping that a hungry prospect will gallantly walk through those cream colored doors.