A Yeti’s Cold Dick
Just got back from my prospective house where the heat has been shut off. Miscommunication with the seller, I guess. However, it’s about 9° F outside. I wanted to make sure the pipes hadn’t burst, so I started crawling around the foundation with a metal flashlight that felt like a yeti’s cold dick in my palm. As the impartiality of the universe would have it, the pipes were still pipes and not leaky tubes. I could even get the faucets to run.
So that was nice.
Hopefully nothing will happen between now and when the gas is turned back on tomorrow.
Knock on wood, I’m going to have a house next week.
I will have all the carpets professionally cleaned before I take residence because… there are some suspicious stains on the carpet. Very suspicious. And a room that had a gerbil that left behind some presents. But on the other hand, I will finally be upper lower class. These are all first world problems, I know. Especially because I’m just going to rip up the carpet in six months. I just want it livable until then.
A splash of maroon paint on an accent wall. Some bookshelves for the front room. I want a wall of books. A big wall of books with a little tiny ladder. And some copper counter-tops. Eventually, a cork board floor. Oh, and I want a big round hobbit-hole type of window. Lots of things to do.
I’m planning to live in this place for the next two or three years. Fix it up nice, pay down the ridiculously small amount of money I will owe on it. And write some goddamn good books. Some really excellent books of the kind I can only write when I’m left alone in quiet lonely places and am afraid for my sanity. I can feel the tide of it rising inside of me like it did when I was alone at college and started at Rudius. But stronger this time and more refined.
This website sucks, I am aware. Embarrassed conversations with long time readers always reveal that no one is reading it. This website isn’t supposed to be the “product” like the other website was a product. It’s supposed to be a random puking ground for thought barf. Or maybe more than that, eventually.
But I’m moving toward something.
Something much better and more concrete and more real than before.
I posted a story because I wanted you guys to know how far I’d come, since a lot of you are still sending me some disapproving e-mails. I was just being honest. You have got to be honest with yourself. It was originally from the Transformation piece on Dunce Upon A Time, so please read it in that context. It’s from about eight months ago as I far as I can reckon. A lot of that time is confusing. I remember some things I’m pretty sure didn’t happen, like meeting an old woman in some fog and being trapped in a room and other stuff. But it’s from when I was first started to put my mind back together.
Like I’ve said before, I went CooCoo for Cocoa Puffs for a bit there.
End of January will be the first story. It will be available exclusively through Amazon. It is called “Soul-Shaped Atoms.” I think you will very much like it.
You read anything by Ray Kurzweil?
Leave the faucets dripping a tiny bit and they shouldn’t freeze!
I used to own a house. Coincidentally I associate this era of my life with feelings you are just escaping: nightmarish, fraudulent, hateful. I was bothered less by the sprays of arterial junkie blood on the ceilings and the terrible room where clearly a dog had been locked to tear and eat at the walls, and more by the fact that this space was being shared with absolutely, absolutely, the wrong person.
Houses are potent and important in both literature and life and ideally this upper-lower-class (huzzah!!) haven will be everything you need, and more. With your own place, you can do very good things. I don’t know why this is, but strength can be derived from having one’s own place. The notion of the itinerant novelist has never seemed very feasible to me personally.
@Ray
Si, senor. Very trippy stuff. Although I would imagine that once the future gets here it will be pretty boring.
@Krista
I took a thermometer with me the other day and it never gets below 40 under the house so I know I’m good on the pipes. I went back out today and double-checked so I’m in good shape.
@Hunter4086
I did not know this about you! I’m sorry your house did not work out. I am, however, happy that you are in a better situation now and my people will sing of your name for a thousand years.
Yeah, I was standing in it today thinking “Holy shit… this is actually happening.” I don’t expect I’ll break down and cry until I close the door that first time and I’m by myself. It’s like the first time I went out to eat something without the kids in forever and it didn’t even cost $10 and I just started sobbing my eyes out.