budding gumshoe

The office is tucked away between a few fenced lots and a couple shady storage units. It sits on the other side of the railroad tracks, so close actually that when a train rolls by, I have to reach out and steady the office supplies and decorations that are within my reach. There is no window in my back room, but I imagine if there were, it would let in light that would cast a sepia-type glow to the entire room. There are stacks and stacks of dingy papers that are covered in chicken scratch and lawyer jargon. Pictures of repeat offenders. Cartoons about process servers. Confiscated goods, and a nice collection of guns, which are most likely real and range from palm size all the way up to shotguns with sawed off barrels.

This is my new job. I work in the back of a private investigator's office. I'm the detail girl. I run background checks, track down car tags, and social security numbers, warrants and offenders. I report to the boss who is a tall skinny man who doesn't like people and always rubs them the wrong way. You would too if you've been kicking people out of houses, and finding people who skip out on their loan payments for the last 30 years. There is always work to do, and he works as hard at chewing the cigar that is always in his mouth as he does finding the person he has been hired to find. He requires you to do everything his way, no matter what it is. He dictates everything into his voice recorder, doesn't waste words, and changes the way he wants things done everyday. Most people get frustrated and give up rather than take his abuse. But I've always known him as Poppy, my best friends' grandfather. So each berating message just makes me roll my eyes, laugh, and get back to work.

I spend all day recording people's bad decisions. Some days all I do is enter arrests and evictions into databases. I see everything from stalking to prostitution, exceeding the maximum speed limit to rape. Some days I can handle it, some days I can't. I play a game to keep it from getting too tedious, I try to find the best name of the day. Xavier Mandragon won yesterday.
The game keeps my mind from thinking about the bad things that are actually happening out there. Or even at how, after two weeks I've become rather hardened, surprised really when someone's record is clean.

This is what is keeping me busy now. It's like professionally facebook stalking someone. At it always peaks people's interests when I mention that I'm working at a PI's office.

And don't worry out there.... I'm not checking up on anyone. At least not yet. I'm still too worried I'll uncover some deep dark secret that will ruin everything. So you're safe. For now!

purgatory

Have you ever seen a one trick pony in the field so happy and free? If you've ever seen a one trick pony then you've seen me,
I come and stand at every door, Then you've seen me, I always leave with less than I had before, Then you've seen me, bet I can make you smile when the blood, it hits the floor, Tell me, friend, can you ask for anything more?


I've never been very good at sitting still. I've always needed to be moving. Whether that be on to the next bigger thing, or walking the dog, or just finding something to do while watching t.v. It's not odd I don't think.

It's hard to explain to people why I feel so unsettled when I am by definition settled. Adjectives just don't do the feeling justice. It's like nails on a chalkboard to me, or chomping ice with super sensitive teeth. Grating.

Most people, when I explain my situation tell me how wonderful life must be. I have absolutely no deadlines, can sleep in all morning, stay our late or go to bed early. I have nothing to do, absolutely no reason to even get out of bed (don't worry, I am. I'm even showering everyday....impressive no?)

So why is it that I am absolutely miserable?

I'm being pulled in three directions but none are strong enough to make me move off the couch. What is my hesitation you ask? No idea. I've got the pros and cons list made for every single place and not a single one sticks out.

My adventures now consist of chasing geese with my dog, and finding long lost tennis balls in the river. Where will my new adventures take me, you ask?

.....as of now, nowhere.


These things that have comforted me, I drive away, This place that is my home I cannot stay, My only faith's in the broken bones and bruises I display

Wichita Day 7

Snapple "Real Fact" #762:
A duck has three eyelids

This is what my life has come to. Being blown away by the fact under the snapple lid. Wow.

words

Why'd you call me today with nothing new to say?, You pretend it's just hello, but you know what it does to me to see your number on the phone...


I was engaging in my one T.V. weakness tonight (it's one of those shows that it is so embarrassing that I'm not even going to disclose the name, i'll just say that it is produced by Morgan Freeman, which seems a little below him...)
The mother on the show is giving a teary expose on the failures of her family. Her speech is captioned, but I catch the Spanish that is peppered in with her English.

I'm in love with languages. Any language really. And culture. I would be perfectly content to spend the rest of my life people watching, and listening. I fell in love with the sing-songy portuguese language and recently i have always find a smile on my face when I'm speaking with someone who has learned english as their second language. I'm in love with how spanish always found its way back into the conversation. Most often the conversation would start in English and then seamlessly transition into spanish, which could explain the topic easier than the previous language.

My favorite, however was everyday conversations that were in english but every preposition was spanish. The 'pero' and 'luego' and 'entonces' somehow made the conversation deeper. It made it flow quicker and easier from one sentence to the next. It was like the periods and commas weren't needed, spanish prepositions were used instead. No need to translate them really, just let them fill the space between the english and do their job as spacers.

Maybe I don't realize these types of ploys that we use when speaking only english because I don't have to think about it, but when another language is involved, you are forced to think about each and every word. To mull each one over, taste it, see how it feels, and then move on to the next one.

Tasting words is the kind of thing i could do all day.


What do you want me to say?, That I'm content? That I'm on the fence? That I wish you would've stayed?, Oh baby what do you want, what do you want, what do you want from me?...

Boxes boxes boxes

Today I took on the storage locker.

If you all remember, the contents of my life belong in this storage locker, my car, or a small closet at my parent's house. I've come to terms with it, don't worry about me or my sense of belonging...

Anyway I approached the fifteen by five foot locker with the idea that it was me against the world. Or at least a mountain of boxes and furniture. I opened the lock, pushed open the door and got to business.

My goal was to find my winter coat. I had a relatively good idea of where it was. In a wardrobe box, tucked in the very corner of the locker. I pulled out the chairs and the bike, climbed over a box of glasses, shimmied along the mattress, crawled on top of the dresser and finally located the wardrobe box.

It was there in the corner gleaming menacingly. Daring me to approach. It stands approximately five feet tall and has a bar running through the top of it so that clothes can hang while they've been in storage.

I removed the boxes of dishes and a tennis racket and leaned down to open the box, from my perch on the dresser. The bar was full of clothes and as i pushed them out of the way, I saw the holy grail. My jacket was folded neatly at the very bottom of the box. At this point, however the bottom of the box is five feet below my post.

I bent down and reached into the box only to come about two feet short. Trying again, this time I tucked my head under the bar, and reached a little further, straining to find the bottom of the box. My arm stretched and the fabric of the coat teased my fingers.

I stretched again, this time reaching the coat, and then in a flash, my feet slipped and I went headfirst into the box.

Yes. There I was. Stuck headfirst in a wardrobe box. I can imagine anyone watching would see just a pair of legging bedecked legs and a pair of boots sticking out of a box. This thought made me laugh even harder at my current situation.

Luckily the box wasn't meant to hold up a 140 lb 5'11'' frame, and there was a shelf there to catch me.

And I found my coat.

What a day....what a day....

how about now?

That rebel moon is shining, Those stars burn like diamonds, Hell bent on chasing down, that crazy spark...

There's something soothing and wholesome about nursing a cup of coffee. I ask for it super hot so that I can sit and just hold it for awhile. It's finally at the point where my fingers can wrap around it and actually stay without the thermoreceptor nerves in my fingers sending screaming messages of pain to my brain.

I've been in Kansas City for five days now. Five days and I have still yet to figure out my life. But I wasn't expecting answers. Maybe just some peace.

In Texas I'm wild. Like a horse yet to be tamed. I'm free to come and go as I please. I don't have to answer to anyone, I get to do what I want. No fences, no one to rely on, just me.

In Kansas City you would expect it to be the same, but there is something different. Maybe it's the urban setting, maybe it's the people. But the longer I'm here the more I feel the whisper of domestication.

This wild filly has found herself a horse whisperer. The whisper gets stronger and yet I still see myself sitting on the fence. Getting only close enough to enjoy the comfort of presence, but not close enough to get roped and caught. Far enough to be able to turn and run at a moments notice.

I guess I just have to decide when that moments notice will be...

I ain't here to do anything halfway, Dont give a damn What anyone might say. I just want to freefall for a while...

Texico

Your fingertips across my skin, The palm trees swaying in the wind, images, you sang me spanish lullabies, The sweetest sadness in your eyes clever trick

I'm back in a world that measures its success by the percentage one has earned on a test, and the school they have been accepted to. I'm fifteen hours north of my new home, in a land where the leaves change and ice coats the ground in the brisk mornings, and I'm not sure I belong.

My life for the last summer has been one where I've translated everything into spanish and measured success by happiness and relationships rather than grade point average.

I'm back to not thinking about borders or even breakfast tacos for that matter.

I play life by ear. I like it that way, and yet it's hard to explain to people here the fact that I don't really have a job or that I live in a church. Or that I'm not using any science. Or that I like it that way.

I always knew my life would center around other people. I was raised, being taught to put others first and to reach out to those who are marginalized. For the longest time it was going to be through medicine, and then my heart tugged, adventure called and I realized I couldn't plant my feet in one place for that long. Or give up the relationship side of helping others just to learn science terms and prescriptions. So I ran to Texas to see what this whole other side of life was like. The social service side if you will. It's tiring, it's demanding, even exhausting, and yet this is what trills me. This is what makes me roll out of bed in the morning.

One day, maybe I'll decide to go back to science. Maybe I'll find the perfect job that combines my two loves. And my hatred of settling. But until then, i'll wake up, but on my boots, and keep on keeping on.


Goodbye my almost lover, Goodbye my hopeless dream, I'm trying not to think about you, Can't you just let me be?