My hands are covered in wet slip from the tiny coil vessel I built, and the coffee-mug-throwing collegue who’s been begging me to set him up with a girlfriend all year pulls me aside.

‘You’ve been so quiet tonight’ he said.
‘Just trying to get my groove back’ I explain with concern.
I wandered away from the studio for months, and I’m not sure I’ll find it.

He motions me to the glaze room. I pause, and then trail behind his shuffle and watch him dig his wallet out from his back right pants pocket. He spins around with a business card between his fingers. We lean over it and stare at the block letters together.
‘This is where I’m living now.’
‘Oh. Santa Cruz hotel in Carrollton…hmm…that’s cool.’

I’m not surprised. He’s told me he’s just been out of jail a short while, and he’s had to live in hotels. He used to teach college, and now he’s a courier without an air conditioner. It’s all part of a secret that I’m more comfortable that he keep.

‘No, it isn’t cool it sucks. I got kicked out of my other place in July.’
‘Really? What did you do?’
‘It’s a long story. What’s the worst thing a person CAN do.’
‘Murder?’
‘No…in the eyes of say…an apartment complex what’s the worst thing?’

How does one back peddle out of having this little conversation?
The conversation that happens when someone wants to ‘take it to the next level’.
A level that makes you question ‘fabric of the universe stuff’ that you don’t know or like enough to visit.

When is wrong?
How long is guilty?

Silence is so much more golden since my….

Interview with a Registered Sex Offender

Whew! Busy. i spent most of the morning unpacking my office. It hurts to come into the office...DRAGGIN', and then your favorite 'Boys are smelly' coffee mug is buried deep in one of 3 boxes. :(

Anyways, I recovered...but I was really cranky for the first few hours about this. I didn't want to talk to any of my new nieghbors...I just started putting my things away VERRRRRRY quietly. Then I heard 'Heather! Is that you??' Grrrrrrr 'Yeah, hey. Where's my mug?' 'Boys are Smelly?' 'Yeah.'


Also, I called up my management office first thing this morning. Spoke to both guys in the office. The first guy, asked if it was truely 'building' going on as I said, or whether it was the pool table up there. 'No, not the pool table. Definitly construction. The building goes on up there all through the night. 3 o'clock even. I don't like being there. I sleep in earplugs.' Then I was transferred to the manager.

The manager said that he would provide John with a 'Violation of Lease' notice today. No questions asked. I'm not sure what that means exactly...whether he just gets a paper warning, or whether he's out...I spoke to him for 1 minute and hung up.

That's that matress man.

12 dead and 1 alive.

I’ve been watching the video footage of the West Virginia folk mourning and questioning…and questioning and questioning. Every time I’ve seen them cry, I’ve seen myself cry too.

Now ‘The 1’, as the West Virginians refer to him, should be coming back into conciousness any day now. Even though in a medically induced coma state he seems acknowledge his son, his daughter, his wife. The doctors are hesitant and humane about ‘miscommunication’: Brain damage is sustained after just three hours of oxygen depravation, and Randy went nearly 40 hours without. Still, his family maintains hope that he will wake up and join them again just the same.

I can’t believe with them that he is wanting to wake up in this lifetime. 12 dead, and he is ‘The 1’. Surviving that scene of grown men crying and fumbling for pencils and paper and writing out their final calm fatherly words in a dark suffocating cavern should be something you could wake up from. Like we did when we’ve had this nightmare.

The new year, so SAY SOMETHING.
For New Years Eve my date and I enjoyed a full head on sushi dinner, and a trip to the hand museum. ‘Look at your hands, see what they are trying to say to you…’ the good doctor and creator of the hand museum petitions.

My hands tell the time, and there is not much change that I’ve noticed. They are clenched now, my fingers wrapped around my thumb the way I grab a hold of Chris’ sometimes-

I begin 2006 work at the office, and the first e-mail in my work box is from a Lebaneese man…Beirut specifically- (would that be beirutinian or beirutinese?)

It reads only:
‘I am in the UK, she messed me up real bad that night.’

I’m sad to think of my friend in trouble…Killing an Arab plays scratchy and far away like the Atlantic, and I imagine a woman with dark made-up eyes glaring over a pale veil as my friend jumps from dusty oversized pillow to dusty oversized pillow; his arms flailing in the air like an escaped chicken. Thick smoke chokes the lamps overhead. In mid-hop he dials the airline and books his escape…

‘I am in the UK’ means he is not here in Texas and he is not back in Lebanon as we had tried to arrange on the 22nd. ‘she’ is his wife, and ‘messed me up real bad that night’ could mean any thing at all, but probably not any serious lacerations.

My new years resolution is to cook at home and not eat out so much. To get a feel for settling down a bit more.