lonesome late night, punctuated by the flare of wet matches & hairbrush tugs
��������� �����after an evening of insanity working with the lizard king (so dubbed because he stands still and blinks stupidly a lot) i come home to more of the same cardboard silence, cut out and placed ingenuously like a celebrity with a frozen smile dead-centre in my room.(try to imagine REM's "everybody hurts" playing while you read this entry.)
brittany murphy's stark blond-white face is caught in the forefront of my imagination right now due to the fact that my job mandated cleaning up the shelves tonight past 10pm to make sure everything looked "pretty". she is on the cover of "spun" - a new movie about speedfreaks. i could be a speed-freak in an alternate reality. we could also still be living in a facsimile of the fifties.
a note from the director after the previous rehearsal, her perpetually anxious face .. well, anxious - "chris .. where are you .." searching for me in the audience of the cast - "smile more. remember, this is musical comedy!" and the note has been stuck post-it style on the inside of my skull for the past day. catching myself in mirrors. the particular small brow-furrow like an affixed carat (the ^) like a mountain-symbol on the peculiar map of my face. just above my always-crooked glasses. hate mirrors. smile more.
is it my fault that most of the time it's just on the inside? anyhow. i don't smile because i reserve it for when i really mean it. i don't do anything unless i really mean it. thus emotions and actions are distilled to the purest form. or so my goal usually goes. smile more. laugh more, be happy more. it's like in photographs how everyone's smile always looks just-on-the-verge of fading. when you look at it long enough.
an itch. a pervasive, scratching itch of analysis and looking-forward-to the fall. damnit, why can't school just hurry up and get here. i long for the repetitive structure of class, work, rehearsal, eat, class, sleep, work, class, etc etc. it's nice. usually. jason, my manager at work, tells me that -- all i want is something good / it gets harder all the time (sorry random interlude from "four days" by the counting crows) -- he backpacked europe for a year, juggling and swallowing fire, etc, for his money. i am continually astounded by him. tonight he pulls balloons out of his duffel and shapes it into a teddy-bear with a white balloon for these two small girls.
he'll be gone next week and a balding older man with glasses and a white polo will be in charge. this man, this fucking moron, has only scheduled me for one day next week, at night, which i am just now reminded i can't work due to dress rehearsals ANYway. not to mention the lizard king moved derek (the cool kid) out of that slot because he wanted to work then. i hate the lizard king.
but his appellation makes me laugh. joke of the night:
[me]: "you have a late fee, sir."
[a customer]: "oh? on which movie?"
[me]: "jackass."
[a customer]: "you don't have to call me names."
i think i laughed for a minute straight. then the printer malfunctioned when the line of people was nearly to the back of the store.
enough for now. i'm going to go read some f. scott fitzgerald, sink merrily into the world of the jazz age (soaked with liquor and secret hushes like muffled hummingbird wings) and i will eventually sleep.
humming jason mraz, who fits so well with late nights and desk lights and but us, we found peace in the shadows, long enough to see the monsters rise -- living high on yesterday's lies soft smooth mellow voice. face-just-shaved. sleepy eyes and the slow bobbing of heads and an uncaring, frothy smile which lives more in the eyes than in the lips
z.