walking outside is much like walking around in a fresh cup of tea. i think my lymph nodes are swelling with the exposure to 99% humidity; i am miserable and teetering on passing out. the moisture level of my body is exactly the same as the surrounding air and this makes me suspended in slow motion as the backs of my knees slip with moisture.

People lay sprawled, five points of their body; starfish baking in the sun being prepared for sale, in Bidwell park. Often, i question the comfort of these people on bare grass: Harry has often urinated all over this park...what if i told him that people all over the city had been marked by that little dribble? It doesn't matter. Harry is a dog, and he probably doesn't care.

squinting down each side of the park, the trees are pillars emerging from a green river, this is not Chicago and it is not St. Patricks day. I am Alice, through the looking glass; my head is so swollen with moisture, i can hear the sizzling of that man's chest and the gnats in her unwashed hair.

Olmstead, you sick bastard.

times like these, when i'm drunk at 9:30 pm (friday only, mind you,) and i end up cruising social websites (facebook, myspace,) that i realize how much i ACTUALLY REALLY HATE some people. its awful. im a terrible person.

<3 parents.

Carol Krywalski and James Latchford were married in Paul’s backyard pre-swimming pool, before the click and whir of the large pool filter in the garage, before the pool’s cement would rub the bottoms of my toes raw and painful, just to the point of bleeding, or snag the shiny spandex of my suit bottoms when I sat down to just put my feet in, when I would swipe my fingers across the deck to smear those tiny speck bugs we called Bloodsuckers; before the shellacked but slivery pool deck was the site of card games and boxes of wine. It was 1980; I know so from the Gold Circle Photo stamp on the back of the small photo. This sepia world faded the green of the plastic porch furniture strewn about the yard; it shaded everyone’s limbs a crisp brown that seems impossible for an Irish guy and a Polish girl in July. Sepia has since absorbed like iodine into their bodies and bloodstreams, a poison that surfaced as wrinkles for Mom, and skin cancer for Dad. But here, they are languid and lazy, wispy-haired and as soft as linen, their mouths formed mid-sentence O’s; this whole place is a whisper from their ring-mouths, the smoke from their July cigarettes.

sometimes, people from my past have sifted through time so quickly that it seems as if i never even knew them; not even for a second. the time was never spent and i have no recollection of them other than a trip to the flea market or a high school locker combination: i am indifferent about these folks but this does not cause me sadness. i will not mention their names; most of which i have forgotten anyway.

others pop up repeatedly and happily; a slight wave, "hello! you'll never see me again!" and it warms my heart as much as it makes it weep: evelyn, the old volunteer at the hospital gift shop; larry, my tenth grade buddy with the blonde skater haircut; mr. olly, the neighbor across the street from my grandmother that worked for general mills.

some people's limbs turn creamy caramel;
mine stays sallow and spotted, like the cement sidewalks i observe walking down Ashland.
the copper/bronze company implants in the sidewalk make me wonder why they ever changed the formula for cement.
why?

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf, Virginia Woolf...

I am...george. I am.

today i attended an estate sale at the mystery house on the corner of my street. often josh and i would question the fact that nobody was ever there, but an eerie blue light, much like a computer screen, would remain on in the upstairs window. for eight months, nobody occupied the house, an adorable red brick thing on the corner. it was one of those flat front brick houses; probably there before my house was built, with tall, rounded windows that had swirling black iron over the bottom half of them. historical.

the tenants, we concluded, were in their winter home on the sunny shores of Florida. vacationing from never finding a parking spot near their house in the snow.

the mystery house's interior is an absolute wreck: the walls were yellowed, even brown (at the intersection of wall and ceiling) and the majority of the ceiling was shredding off in strips. one could contend that she was a smoker, this Sarah Jo Barth (i peeked at a single piece of mail sitting in her mailbox from the City of Buffalo. was this her death certificate?), as everything inside was cast with unfathomable dinge. the once wallpapered hallway exposed layer after stained layer of the history of the house: i wanted to see what the very first layer was, what year it was put there. the corners of the house smelled strongly like skunk. i like to imagine feral cats claiming chairs and creating villages out of this woman's withered books. the furniture was remarkably high quality AND out of my price range, although i would trade my shitty Target Wobbly Desk for a mahogany end-table with brass knobs and a velvet-lined drawer and just make due.

there is no continuity of objects in my bedroom; there is a halo of cloth and denim surrounding my bed.

there is nothing quite as satisfying as a bowl of Campbell's Tomato Soup with noodles. Bleached, white, floury, tasteless noodles! From a can, mixed with water, salty tasty soup!

as a child, i was not interested in the fake, rubbery chicken of Chicken Noodle: one time, i spit out a chicken chunk and TO MY HORROR, it was riddled with tube-ish arteries jutting out all over. never again did i eat chicken soup other than that which came from my mother's or grandmother's stock pot.

perhaps around the age of four or five, on a nondescript saturday in my life, my mother answered, when i asked, "what's wrong with dad?", that dad was sick and couldnt go to work so we had to work on something for him to eat. he was throwing up. he was out the night before. now i see: he was hungover, but he was never a terrible man. he was awesome; he taught me to fish. in my memory, i see a bowl steaming in my mother's hands, and a few pieces of toast wedged in a paper towel in my hands. we crept into the darkness; i could not see him, i knew to be very quiet. we placed our parcels on the side table carefully and he rolled over and smiled. i bet that soup was awesome.

joshua, up until about three years ago, had lived a childhood with no tomato soup. whatsoever. there was a day in which we decided to get some lunch and buy kit bowman a birthday present (which ended up being a Lightning Bolt CD, some pencils, and an andy warhol postcard of a man's body with a flaccid penis.) at globe market, he was introduced to tomato in a much richer, fancier fashion: tomato basil bisque. that was the day he told me he used to get yelled at for drawing poop and i told him i used to draw buffalo bills football players on the field.

tonight, my yawns are powerful forces; it is only midnight.
a yawn's main purpose is to cool off the brain; a thought fan. i am untangling a vast web of literature that will not untangle for probably the rest of my life. surely not in one month, the end of the semester.

my bathrobe smells minty, a sure sign that someone grabbed whatever terrycloth was hanging behind the bathroom door, and, pausing for only a moment to reflect on the deviance of their act and simultaneously regarding it as necessary action, swiped their toothpaste rimmed mouth on it.

i've purchased myself a bicycle. it cost me a pretty penny, but whatever.
it's green; i did not get the st. patty's day reference that the bikeman made.

"what a day to get a green bike!!! hyuh hyuh!!"

it is speedy, but not the lightest thing in the world. ah well.

and if you ever EVER EVER EVER stop me in the middle of west ferry and yell at me again, i will run you over.

=) =) =)

construct your response around affect, sentimentality, and globalization/cosmopolitanism."



ready? set? GO.

upon leaving florida, i still had those impossible hopes that my horrible, painful sunburn would turn into a tan. for 25 years, this has never, ever happened. my tan is anyone else's pale. nobody noticed my fresh splattering of brown freckles across my nose.

i would like to start having some sort of weekly-meeting discussion group of all things desired, the only exception being talking about other people; that will not be allowed. i would like non-cheap wine and wonderful dips and things to put in them. this idea inspired by the lovely ms. megan lee and our quick lunch at the Java U campus coffeeshop. seeing megan always makes me think of having wines and dips and discussing. lovely!

in this endless winter, i see that i have chosen the proper lighting in my bedroom. yes, this lamp is from st.vincent de paul and the shade is from some other sort of thrift store. no matter the time of day or glum bluster there is outside, i can safely turn the knob just one notch and illuminate my room so that it feels like 8pm on a friday evening, with him playing the guitar in the dining room and a stomach full of date-dinner, cats cuddled up on the bed. covers thrown about.

on another, more professional note, it has been stated that i have an excellent ethnographic eye, and little was said about my faults within my drag queen study. Lauren Berlant's The Female Complaint proved to be a lengthy read yet completely understandable.

this is the first time i've come home to find you sleeping already. tucked in tight; a little sushi roll of light green wrapping and brown bean sprout hair. burt resting at the foot of the bed, lazily eyed me as i tossed ALL of my things in the laundry basket at the foot of the bed. i will most likely throw all of them out of it in the morning in search of something ultimately important; like keys. when you snore i feel bad for the insides of your nose, but i can't help those, because i am not small enough to fit inside. you just stopped snoring. am i sending blog vibes?! BLOG VIBES!

ages and ages ago, a friend of mine scoped over my new livejournal layout and informed me that i have an exceptional ability to utilize colors.
a past professor, in all of his afrocentric, cowboy-booted glory, wrote on the back of a particularly difficult midterm exam bubble sheet, "i REALLY like your colors today, ms. latchford!"
countless coworkers exclaim, "oh! that scarf looks so good with your hair i could NEVER WEAR THAT!!!!"

this leads me to wonder, as of late, wether i've been wasting some hidden talent whilst (i really love using whilst instead of while) theorizing my brain to bits to attain a goddamned degree in Sociology.

patellar tendonitis

phew. i busted my knee. my body is getting old, falling apart. I BUSTED MY KNEE WHILST DANCING, MY FAVORITE PASTIME OF ALL TIME!!!! i suppose being almost 26 means that your body starts falling apart? have you ever been able to not use a muscle in your body? its fucking strange. i am a helpless gimp with a man servant and a big screen tv playing endless sex and the city episodes. i have cabin fever.

winter whites winter whines
my cats do not know winter as i do: they also do not know hate.

last night, as fever waxed and waned through my body, thoughts of the ages of our souls came up. perhaps delirium from the combination of black tea and cold medicine fueled it: thoughts that seemed poetic and justified just ended up as forgotten as silence. we are old souls in an old apartment on an old street; we are old friends. monsters and idiots are haunting my dreams, products of eating too late at night and that rediculous anxiety over whether someone is going to smash a glass on the floor or over our heads. i no longer feel sorry for the situation: fact is, i NEVER did. so ha ha.
i gave many a thing to many a person; you've got to give to get back; but i never got back, really. this time around is different. there has never been more understanding. balanced and creative and perfect.

i've waited a long time, honestly.

ocala schmocala

my mom, aunt, cousin, and baby second cousin took a shopping trip, as all women i guess do on pseudo-vacations; even though we are in Retirementville, FL, the reason being my uncle is dead, wherein my mother insisted that she buy me anything i picked out (awesome!) including mascara that promises "4X BRIGHTER EYES!" even though, and i say this in a truthful, modest tone; i do not need brighter eyes. even after a night of heavy drinking or when i get eyelash glue in them and they feel like they are bleeding.

my second cousin is one and a half, and he refers to me as Lee Lee, because he is adorable. my dad went fishing today without me; i was really looking forward to it more than i was pointlessly spending money on a pair of levi's that i most likely will not like once i get home. i want to show my father that i can fish; it is important for me to do before he gets TOO old. for christ's sake, he already has titanium knees.

i have found myself in more sane of a spot than ever before. soon to be twenty six the most awesome of ages where everything has clicked together and makes total sense. i have, in the past year, felt a very many things fall apart, had the best summer of my entire life, moved my best friend from los angeles to my sweet, sad hometown, raged, raged, and raged, saw friends drift away, brought new friends closer, found an amazing job, almost graduated from college (finally, in may,) and set out on mission: impossible which turned into HOLY SHIT what was i thinking two years ago when i could have dated him but didnt and now that i am, things have never been more perfect?, had my life threatened, got chased on a bike, and fell in super huge love. im not even that girl that i used to be when i would be afraid to even say it. i say it all the time, because its true and wonderful.