full of moxie and viscosity

Everything is falling apart, but it feels alright.

Oh, and for the record, the new title of this blog is NOT about Mark. It's about someone ugly. The precursor to the title is:

I will go to sleep smiling tonight...

and the epilogue is:

or maybe it's because I know I've moved on.

Mark Small is the subject of this blog.
Mark is tall, wonderful, and my favorite person in the world to phone talk with.
He is smarter than everyone.
He laughs like a puzzle.
If I could, I would tape record every conversation we have (mostly because I know he would hate it that I would love it) and listen to them on long drives.
I apologized tonight for things I apologized for a long time ago, but he knew it was real this time and he took the apology, and that felt good, and right.

But this blog isn't about me, it's about Mark.
He is wonderful.
And he doesn't even KNOW it.

I woke up at 5 this morning with searing shoulder pain. Couldn't sleep so I took some drugs and put a heating pad under myself and woke up at 8 with no pain. Gotta kiss some district manager's ass today. Then, home, probably to sleep more, because I'm really tired. Waking up in the middle of the night really truly interrupts that good sleep pattern.

don't forget the pick earrings

I'm just going to write exactly what I want to write because I can and it's my blog and that's what this is all about, right? BLOGGING IS FOR VOMITING OF EMOTIONS.

I have a friend, let's call him... Doorknob. Platonic as platonic can be, we are. I stayed at his house two nights in a row and, not wanting to completly steal his bed from him, required that he stay in the bed with me. Let me confess here, I have had a crush on Doorknob in the past. This is only partially relevant, however, seeing as I had NO INTENT of getting jiggy with DK at this time. I stay over, we cuddle, I ask him several times if it's okay with him what we're doing, and he says, yes, yes, yes, yes. Two nights in a row.

NIGHT THREE: DK enters asshole zone for some reason, treats me like ass shit crap and leads me to believe he has some confession to make to me but he can't tell me, because it "needs analysis." I allot him a week to think, leave confused but hopeful that he will be able to explain his rotten behavior.

Doorknob avoids me for TWO and a HALF weeks. After this time period, I am able to extract from him (online, AIM) that he was so offended by my insistence on cuddling in his bed those two nights that he freaked out and had to ask all of his friends for advice on how to handle the situation. Their interpretation? VERY odd for a girl to cuddle up with a friend in bed. Very inappropriate.

Two hours and fifty nine apologies later, I'm still receiving reasons from Doorknob why my actions were uncalled for, strange, and inconsiderate. I state "perhaps I should stop IM'ing and calling you altogether, because I'm pretty concerned that I'm going to offend you again since I had no idea I had done it before." His response?

"Good idea."

Now I sit, COUNTRY FOOL THAT I AM, and wonder how I became such a horrible person, and when I will learn how not to offend people so frequently. Somehow I am more alone now than I was in Vancouver, if that's freaking possible, and wondering how many sessions of counseling I have on my damn Aetna insurance.


Part Two of this Blog is in regard to the four times in my life I can remember feeling truly guilty about something and not being able to shake it for a long, long time.

1. I tried to have a threesome once with this girl Stefanie and this kid Grant. Not a real threesome, but I was drunk and wanted to kiss both of them, and attemped to several times. I couldn't even REMEMBER doing it the next day. Felt awful forever until I became real good friends with both and realized they didn't care.

2. Made out with Mark while a certain person was in the other room, watching. Got over this one pretty quickly but really took it badly for about a month.

3. Did something, which I don't know, to Nathan Willett one night. Nathan Gadd won't tell me what it was, but it was awful and made Nathan G hate me for a bit. Still feel terrible about that.

4. Made Doorknob feel bad about cuddling. I should get over this one even faster, but it still makes me wonder...

Do the things that I do make me who I am? Or who I was? How can we measure what we learn if not by our actions?

One more thing: is building someone a cake really random, or really cool? To ask them a pertinent question, I mean. Is a cake a good catalyst for difficult questions?

This isn't meant to sound desperate by any means, but does anyone else ever get the feeling that their prime is slipping away? I hadn't thought about this in an artistic sense, only in a very corporeal sense (my hair is never going to be this shiny again, my breasts this firm, my ass this round, my skin this taut). But tonight, I have revisited this idea in an artistic way.

My conclusion is, it doesn't apply. As artists, we can only get better. I used to look back at old stories I had written and think I could never do any better. Then I'd write something so different, so much more grown up, the other stories were dwarfed. There's something lovely about those first stories, first poems, first attempts, but they're simply immature. Anyway, I think our prime as artists will be seconds before death. We'll be at the absolute best of our capacity. We can only get better.

So therefore. If someone wants to get the prime of my body, they better hurry up. But the prime of my mind, my art, my spirit, be in it for the long haul, cause I barely got on that train yesterday.

I remember why it was I stopped with you. It was that look you gave me, the unknowingly condescending, irrational judgement of my emotions. I tried to tell you about what my tears meant, but you were too caught up in what was wrong with you to realize your love was my poison.

Alright folks, the moment we've all been waiting for:

THE FENDER PICK EARRINGS ARE MADE AND THE PICTURES ARE ONLINE.

if you want some, send me an email (rachelroellke@hotmail.com) and i'll let you know the price of the ones you want. if you see a style you like that you want a different color of, just let me know, it's no problem to do it.




eight to ten bucks and you'll look sooooo coooooool.

Why is it that I cannot leave this office where I am a temporary worker FIVE MINUTES EARLY? Instead, I must post this blog. I have time to write a blog, I thought. Instead of leaving. They're paying me for these five minutes, I thought. Now here it is. The five minute blog that I'm getting paid a eighty cents for. Or something. Alright, time's up.

while dylan waits for the night owl,
he lets me
blather on about my inability
to contain, control, coerce
my emotions.
watching the street lights
on my father's beige truck
i am convinced
that my eyes are alien,
and my voice is heard.
my mother is not asleep when i go inside.
she does not approve of my
uncontrolled emotion-
fearing i end up in pain.
has she already forgotten
how easily i cuddle up
inside of my broken dreams?
we both try not to roll our eyes
and i kiss her goodnight anyway.
children sleeping in my bedroom,
and my sister's,
i have to be quiet
while i get ready for sleep;
lest the children wake up
or my mother turn her eye.
in the morning, perhaps
the test will not be on paper
but rather in dreams and night lights.

A new epiphany in light of my moving to Fresno. I think that the juxtaposition of another move with seventeen months of introspection and meditation has provided me with inexplicable perspective.

This may seem like a dramatic thing to say, but I believe that I have objectified myself for the last four years of my life, believing that the only way to truly win a man over is to become sexually involved with him. If I examine my track record carefully, it proves the point. I never thought anyone was ever really into me unless we were hooking up. It's true. No matter our spiritual, philisophical, intellectual, mental or lyrical connection- if we never kissed, never held each other, it meant nothing. Or rather, my perception was that it meant nothing to THEM.

But at the brink of this new experience (home again and feeling fine), I find myself begging for something more. Can I dismiss all of that objectifying? I did it to myself, I can't blame the men for subscribing... I told them to do it, and repeatedly. There were other issues involved: of course I can't claim that my self-objectifying nature was the only thing that caused the demise of these relationships, but I can certainly admit my own fault in this particular vein.

I have other things going for me than my body (and I'm no Elle MacPherson anyway, but you know what I mean). I have a lot to give, and I've always wanted to give it. However, by forcing the physical end of things, I've denied those other gifts a chance to be given.

I just hate it that I forced that kind of intimacy onto the relationships, when really, they didn't necessarily need it. I'm sure that there was room for growth in many other areas, but maybe I just wasn't ready for that kind of commitment at the time. Even writing these words I realize their weight.

So from now on, I will try my hardest to move beyond that kind of objectifying ideal of myself (without denying a relationship a chance at physical intimacy), and at least give my other sterling characteristics (wink wink) a shot at the stage.

The new challenge here in Fresno is the job hunt. I could be temping, but the hours are really constricting me at Starbucks, where I am going to be training for a shift supervisor position. I need another job. Waitressing isn't going to cut it, I don't think 60 hours a week of customer service is really that good of an idea. I have a few side projects that should help out a tiny bit, but does anybody have any other suggestions? Maybe tutoring... I'm going to sub after I get my CBEST scores back, but I don't know how long that takes. Goodness, I just got overwhelmed at all of the stuff I have to do. Time for a list!

uneven, and holding my shoes, i am wondering why there is sarcasm.
qualifying sentences, we kneel to pet.
am i the overemoter?
no, he tells me. there are reasons for further sharing.
i believe him and hold him seven times awkward.
this week, i will cut my fingernails down
and try to ignore the shaking kneecaps.
i hope he makes it home okay.

How can I be so unsure, but so driven?
How can I be so young but feel so old?
How am I artistic and confident at the same time?
How does he see through me and still be able to touch me?
How is it that I fight, fight, fight, and nobody wins?
Why do I feel compelled to sing to someone else's music?
There is always a lot of traffic. Perhaps I should sell my car.

Last night I realized that I love the way men smell. I don't care if they smell a little rank, (no one did last night, but I still don't care when they do) or a little sweaty. The best is just that men smell like men. Women never ever smell like that, or at least in my experiences. Or maybe they have the same combination of ingredients but guys just have different horomones/pheromones, so it comes out truly, uniquely male. I love it, in a really carnal, visceral way. I'm a predator, raar.