This must be the place.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv3-vANWwcU


I flew back from North Carolina this morning. 


It wasn't easy. 


I fell asleep on the planes, ate a cheeseburger in Dallas - the lone solace of sad airline travel, my ability to forgive myself for devouring terrible fast food. I read a book borrowed from my beloved's shelf, and I don't say beloved lightly, because he is the lone source of sunshine, perpetual and actual, in the trans-state mess that seems to be my life right now. 


This sounds like a Xanga post, I know. 


I was supposed to graduate on Saturday. I've seen pictures on Facebook of my peers, all capped and gowned, and I'm not with them. I'm here, in my parents' house, a bottle deep in wine, typing in a white box. 


I tried not to think about it, but I still do. I still do. I will, for a while. 


But there was some glory in my visit to North Carolina. I finally bedded the beast of my old DUI, stood meek and scared in front of a judge in my nice interview clothes and had my sentence doled out. I went and ate oysters afterwards. I sat at a table on the sidewalk and enjoyed the Front Street Brewery's Black and Razz--half raspberry wheat beer, half oatmeal stout--and read my book and smoked my cigarettes. And I was with Dean, and we spent a lazy, cloistered Saturday in his apartment brewing beer and drawing comics and playing Rock Band and dancing and baking bread, and it was only sad when I was piping Bon Iver through the speakers. 


But. 


All in all, it was an ugly, angry reminder of everything I've done wrong. I'm not hooded with the colors of my graduate school. I sent a plea on a social network and met silence, and I'm used to that, but it still stings. 


In short, I have no idea what I'm doing, and I exhaust myself with would'ves, could've, should'ves. 


And I torture myself when no one else will. I make my boyfriend into people he isn't, then realize that portrait is unbelievable; he is not a black cowboy with a PhD and chef skills and a hefty inheritance. He isn't, because no one is. 


What he is is a boy who takes me to the Battleship North Carolina Dock Diving event solely so I can pet all possible dogs. What he is is someone who pays for our fancy sushi meal and doesn't mind when I fall asleep on his chest while we watch The Hunger Games. What he is is more and less than I could ever imagine, but none of that matters because he is real. 


I scrawl in my notebook on the plane and catch the wife in the seat next to me eyeballing, and I want to tell her, yes, this is what I do, but no one wants it. I want to ask her sunburned husband where they've been, and how was it, and were they really, actually happy, or was it a vacation just to get away from themselves and the lives they've made. Do they regret it? Do they fantasize about elsewheres, and hows, and whos? 


Because it's scary, to be so simply content. To sit at the counter and doodle while Dean brews beer. To walk around the old cemetery and peer at the names and think about ghosts, then find the trellis walkway where his brother was married and kiss while the swans swim in the lake. To find a conch, a full, total conch shell buried in the sand and carry it back, leave it on his desk, a testament to one stunning afternoon of sun and sand and pelicans, beer and oaks, movies, love. 


I was in my workout clothes, having danced like a fool in his living room, reeking of cigarettes and my face unmade, and he said, "This is what our future will be." We said a lot of goofy shit in the meantime, ridiculous jokes, imaginary personalities, but that phrase sticks to my heart and makes me hopeful. 


I'm back in Oklahoma. I'm in my parents' house, 25, the day after I should've graduated. I'm a bottle deep and terrified when I stop to consider it all. 


But I'm hopeful. And that, kids and friends and readers, is love. That's actual. That's true. That's wild and foolish and crazed and great, and it's good, and it's real, and it's mine. 

Why We Should All Be More Like Dogs.

Pinto was found beneath a cardboard box in a field.

The litter was strange: half-fluffy, half-furry, all with big paws. One had brown spots on her white coat and a deformed leg. Many looked like brown dust bunnies.

I found Pinto beside the Cape Fear River on Valentine's Day, 2010. My boyfriend and I were walking, stopped to ogle the two puppies trying to make sense of the dried fountain, corralled by two red-headed kids and a busty mother. We stood and gawked long enough that the mother lifted both and carried them to us. I held Pinto, a sleepy warm mutt baby, and we chattered about our apartment, how we missed our family dogs, how I was in grad school but no, no, we couldn't get a dog.

I took long walks in my neighborhood. At the time, I took them because I wanted to be fit. I know now I walked past the huge colonial houses to peer in their windows and pretend their lives were mine. I was escaping the small hell my boyfriend and I had made of our own house: the daily agony of what was for dinner, how was the job hunt coming along, who would break down and cry first that night.

I didn't change out of my bathrobe unless I had to.

I didn't tell my boyfriend that I'd put an ad on craigslist searching for the riverside puppy until I got a response: Great, yes, he's available this Thursday, he's yours.

Pinto rode in my lap as we drove back to the apartment. He was soft, excitable, noisy. He never smiled, and I hated him: I hated how oblivious he was to the pain his needling teeth inflicted, how he woke us with his shrieks from his crate. My boyfriend and I lay in bed, not facing each other, stiff with tension. We'd already started sleeping on the couch by then solely to get away from one another.

We fought. We fought a lot.

I took long baths though our tub was uncomfortable. I did it because the door locked, and I sat there, naked and overweight, looking at my body and trying to rationalize my misery. He loves you, I'd think. He loves you and no one else ever will.

Pinto is in my parents' backyard right now, whipping his tail and running in circles and barking at the squirrels. He sleeps in my father's recliner, tucked up like a fawn. When I was moving, first from the apartment where my boyfriend walked out on me, again from the apartment I rented alone to move back to Oklahoma, Pinto acted like a dog half his size or less. He has alligator jaws and legs like a gazelle, a tail that could--and has--broken things. But he whimpered and whined and trailed my ankles, and finally I pinpointed the source.

Cardboard. Stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes, horrifying to him, this ridiculous dog who could shred a refrigerator box in minutes. He was scared. He remembered.

Now Pinto grins whenever I enter a room and his tail whaps like a metronome. He tries to fit some of his eighty-pounds onto my lap whenever I sit down, oblivious that he no longer fits there.

But he tries, because there were many months when we were alone, me and my dog, and I would just hold him or let him out to chase frogs or run with him through the neighborhood, and though my mother uses him as an obliging foot-warmer and my father lets him lick his ears, it's still me he loves the best.

I would still stab my ex in the gut if given the chance. I've tried to tell him how his leaving on a normal afternoon, just up and driving away with no warning, was akin to a house-fire started by some mad arsonist. I've sliced him out of my life as best I know how, but he still creeps in, an awful ghost.

I have other ghosts; some are people, some are times. I might be on the brink of ghost-ing the past three years of my life. I don't know.

But Pinto? When I take Pinto to Oklahoma City to visit my brother, he hops in the car and doesn't whine or whimper. He curls up in the backseat and falls asleep, and when we get there, he's happy to hop out and start sniffing. When we get inside my brother's apartment, he finds the best spot on the couch and curls up there. He's home wherever he is, so long as I am there, too.

I envy my dog his trust in everything. I envy his unflagging optimism. I know he's an animal (and not the brightest one at that), but there's lots I've learned from him: that someone will take care of you. That it's beneficial to live in the present. That the best joys are sometimes the most mundane: a hole, a squirrel, a ride in the car. That you can't catch a ghost, and that, so long as we are together, nothing bad can happen.

Bumblebees.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1N_K-zZ0nQ - Architecture in Helsinki, "One Heavy February"

When I was young, I was a bumblebee. There's a VHS of it; a small herd of little girls standing in a driveway, doing "ballet." "Ballet" is in quotes because what we were really doing was squatting and spinning and pretending. The whole affair was homegrown--the instructors were teenagers, the girls were all neighborhood recruits. For our big recital, we dove through the costume trunk: a princess, a fairy, and me, the bumblebee.

ABRUPT SHIFT IN TOPICS: Last year, I cleaned out my closet at my parents' house. I found a journal I'd kept as a first-grader, long after the bumblebee. The journal was one of those books where you fill out the questions. In my tiny, child handwriting, beside What I'd Like to Change About Myself, I wrote: I wish I was not fat.

I wish I was not fat.

I was seven years old.

I'm twenty-five now. Twenty-five, and I still scrutinize myself in the mirror. I still suffer from Mirror-Photo Dysmorphia, which is a term I made up, where you see one thing in the mirror--pale, weird face, flabby--and another in photos--blonde, big-eyed, cute. And then you see yourself through your own eyes and it's a conflagration of the two; I have a beautiful face with bad skin, I have a good skeleton with too much over it.

It's complicated and it's hard. But then what? What do you do? Something. You have do to something. And something is more than a lot of people do.

For instance: I drink buckets of water. I work out with my Wii, and then I step on the scale and it doesn't change, but I feel a lengthening in my limbs. I stand taller. I put on bright red lipstick and a smudge of blush and goddammit, I'm ready to take on the fucking day.

Body issues are nothing new for any female, and I write about it now because some idiot asshole walked into my liquor store the other day and proceeded to keep up a running monologue of how attractive he found me: "Oooh girl, sister, honey, you so fiiiine, mmm, I bet you got a man, yeah, you got a man? I bet he can't ride it like I can, mmm, I'd ride that all night, uh-huh, chunky chunky, you sure fine."

I have long felt bad about being an unattractive girl when I considered myself such, and that marked the first time I felt bad for looking good. I once made a massive mistake and aligned my life with someone terrible because I thought I was terrible enough to deserve him. I'm now with someone who loves me as I am, flabby in spots, sure, but beautiful all around.

It's hard and it's complicated.

I think about when I was the bee. I remember feeling shame because the bee costume was the only one that fit me. But I also remember everyone laughing as I did plie after plie, bending my knees when no music was playing. I won the spelling bee in third grade; I was a fat girl in leggings and a turtleneck, but I could spell. And now, no, you won't approach me at a bar because I have an epic rack and svelte legs, but when we start talking, I will make you laugh and toss my hair.

Love yourself. Hate yourself and change what you hate, and what you cannot change--my pointy nose, my height, my over-sized eyes--you accept and learn to adore.You are the only you there is, and that alone is worth something.

Okay Things

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_R9fId_Rqo

Addendum: I never watch the videos, but Youtube is the simplest way to post music. And this particular jam, "Gong On" by Gnarls Barkley, is one of many jams that I appreciate and hope you do, too.

Let's write about life goals, but first, let's recount the day, and it will all come together in the end. I have a degree in this madness, children, so you must trust me.

Today I woke up, drank my coffee, and read about Snow White's many incarnations throughout the years. I regarded my fingernails and thought about painting them. I looked out the window, I washed my hair and dried it, deemed it glorious, drove like a mad thing rapping and screeching with the windows down, and arrived at work.

At work, the following happened:

A man came in, said, "You're Linda Richardson's daughter." The eyes are a giveaway. "You came and saw my roses ages ago." "David!" I said. "Yes!" He couldn't remember my name and I didn't remember his face, but the man knew his beer and we commiserated over the disappearance of Sierra Nevada's Ruthless Rye.

Another man came in, an Australian in Tulsa for the gun show, and told us about the Aborigines who cover themselves in dirt and wait by the roadside for a tourist in the outback, leap up and spear them all.

Another man came in, the stepfather of one of my truest and bluest friends, in town because her sister is right this moment pushing out a baby.

Another man came in, the father of my high school soul mate, a repeat customer who has yet to recognize me. In the meantime, the store is in frenzy because the lottery's reached some gajillion dollars, and everyone's prepping by buying champagne.

At the end, I scooped up Xena Marie, the 8-week-old Australian Shepherd mix, and rode home with her napping in the crook of my arm while I followed her owner on his new motorcycle back to his apartment.

And that, babies, is what Friday means to me.

But then there are things I want. There are things I need. There are things I aspire to. And if you know me, which you might or might not, you are aware that I live in my parents' house in Oklahoma, and that I didn't ditch my existence in coastal North Carolina by choice. There is so much I miss about that place and its people: the beach, the trees, the porches. My boyfriend and his beer knowledge. The peers who didn't look at me funny when I used multi-syllabic words like "multi-syllabic." Karaoke companions, and karaoke within walking distance.

So I pare them down. There are things I want, and there are things I do, and there are things I can do.

I want to sew a quilt. I want to never have twangers--that flabby upper arm area that keeps me from drumming--ever again. I want to travel to Belgium and drink beer with monks. I want to maintain harmony between myself and my bank account.

But think!

I've sewed dozens of smorgasborded T-shirts. I've lost fifty pounds. I've been to Norway, alone. I've saved four thousand dollars.

The point? Fuck you, for thinking there even is one. Because there isn't. I'm done with blinders, how any variation from the path is immediate failure. I'm tipsy alone in my room in my parents' house on a Friday night and guess what? That's okay.

I once texted my boyfriend: Will you brush my hair when I am sad? He responded: I don't know how to do that as I do not have much hair. Is this an Okay Thing?

And most things, if not all things, are Okay Things. I didn't win the mega-millions; Okay. I worked out with my Wii and damn near died, but now my back stands straighter; Okay. I drink by myself but I write, here, or elsewhere, on a postcard or a draft or a grocery list; Okay. I'm 25, I fled graduate school, I work in a liquor store doing a job probably anyone could master, but I talked with an alumnus from my high school who remembered meeting Ike Turner; Okay.

Okay, Okay, Okay.

So Cee-Lo Green sings: "Anyone that needs what they want but doesn't want what they need I want nothing to do with."

Don't be that person. And don't let that person be yourself.

Salutations

HERE IS SOME MUSIC

Here are twenty things you should know about Rachel, the person who wrote the words you are now reading.

1. I am a short story writer. I'm 5'3 on a good day.

2. I am a heavy drinker, but not as heavy as I used to be, as I lost 50 pounds at one point.

3. My best friends are Karlena Janelle Riggs, who is a real person, and Pinto James Bean, who is a dog.

4. I mis-typed "dog" as "god" in number 3 and that might be accurate, as Pinto is the best entity in existence and should you choose to read this blog, he will be oft-mentioned.

5. This blog is a lie. A nice one, but still a lie. There are the things you write to yourself - on your arm, a reminder to buy milk, to listen to more Radiohead, to update this or that - and the things you write to yourself - in a journal, secretly, in the quiet of night. I don't do much of the latter anymore and sometimes I think I should and I shouldn't rekindle that old habit. There are also the things you write in letters, to specific people, things you tell them and no one else, and there are the quips you post on Twitter (@pintojamesbean) or facebook, and there are the things you know but never tell. And a blog? Blog is an awful word, firstly. Secondly, it's an outward, shined up glorious presentation of your life that might not be authentic.

6. That being said; every day is an adventure.

7. I love dogs.

8. I am 25 years old, living at home in Oklahoma, currently in my room where I've strung up my damp panties on a makeshift clothesline because our dryer is broken.

9. If you read "damp panties" in a dirty way I forgive you.

10. I hope to give you a new fresh jam with each post, because I used to work in college radio and it was wondrous, and then I worked in real radio and it wasn't so much. Right now it's Florence and the Machine's "Shake It Out," and you should read these words like a poem with very dramatic breaks: "I am done with my graceless heart/so tonight I'm going to cut it out and let it restart...so here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my rope/and I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope/it's a shot in the dark/and right at my throat." You wish you wrote that, and so do I.

11. I currently work at a liquor store, so part of my job is drinking. Really. It is.

12. I got published once or twice.

13. I'm not entirely sure if getting published was the best or worst thing that ever happened to me.

14. A lot of things have happened to me, and almost all of them were all right.

15. I hilarify myself on a daily basis and once was described as such.

16. I went to a very fancy college and therefore have a lot of fancy debt but it's not so bad.

17. I have recently lost the ability to worry.

18. I really love dogs.

19. I also love words, and the postal system, and internet connectivity, and rainy days, and my boyfriend, and my hair.

20. I hope you enjoy this blog (whenever I say "blog" I just think about vomiting because that's kind of the noise you make) and I hope I do too.

America!