Katzenjammer \KAT-suhn-jam-er\, noun: The discomfort and illness experienced as the aftereffects of excessive drinking; hangover.
"So the asceticism and self-denial of the ancient anchorite and saint was merely a form of katzenjammer?" -- Nietzsche, Thoughts Out Of Season
I’ll apologize now for flaking on you or for taking a break from whatever we’re doing to jot some stuff down. (See the above note about not being able to help it.) If I’m in the mood to write, I have to take advantage of it, especially when I force myself to write for pay all the time. Hell, I wrote one of my best poems half drunk waiting on the train while fumbling to roll a cigarette in anger. You just never know when it’ll strike.
—
Things You Should Know Before You Date A Writer
HA! C’est vrai, mes amies…
Today I met a girl
Who loves British stuff as much as I do. It’s a bit different - she’s never been to the actual country - but she is a true anglophile, we can always tell the genuines from the ones who think it’s trendy. She has two Harry Potter tattoos, but they aren’t pretentious. Her Iphone cover has a photo of Big Ben on it, and she wants to go party with Prince Harry.
“Have you ever studied abroad?” I asked.
“No, but I really am hoping to do the student teaching in London,” she replied.
“You absolutely have to,” I said. I don’t know why I was being so encouraging and enthusiastic. We’d only just met.
I think it’s because I want to live vicariously through her.
“I’m trying to convince my parents to take us all there for my 21st birthday,” she told me.
“Yes,” I replied. “You definitely should go. Please, do it.”
Go. Just fucking go.
Grecian Isle
Sitting by the pool
I can hear jazz playing softly
As you knelt down beside me,
Your trousers matched the terra cotta tiles
Your eyes, green as wind-swept fields at night.
The sky was three different shades of blue above us
You asked me, have I loved before?
“No sir, I have never experienced love
Would you care to show me?”
And you pointed to the stars above,
Told me to pick one
And I did.
You kissed me,
Not once,
But twice
And said you’d kiss me again
For every star in the sky.
You said when you finished,
Your love for me would end as well
And I looked up,
Smiled to myself;
For this man beside me
Would love me forever…
(Circa 2004)
Winter Thoughts
The morning rain
Makes the sky a majestic blue
The smell of freshly-dewed earth
Lingers in the air,
Reminds me of summers past.
Like waking up for summer camp,
Making chalk drawings on the sidewalk
The kiddie pool that costs ten dollars -
This is summer.
Walking with your best friend
To the outskirts of town
Seeing just how far you’ll go
Until you turn back, with uncertainty.
Fourteen and still swinging on swings
Why not?
Let’s get ices instead…
The only time we can walk around barefoot
Outside
Until the sky turns orange.
Bubble-gum ices drip down your fingers
Makes your skin slightly pinker
And filmy, sticky,
As you walk home in the dark.
It’s still warm out -
Stars dot a cloudless sky…
This is summer.
Circa 2003
Date a girl who reads. Date a girl who spends her money on books instead of clothes. She has problems with closet space because she has too many books. Date a girl who has a list of books she wants to read, who has had a library card since she was twelve.
Find a girl who reads. You’ll know that she does because she will always have an unread book in her bag. She’s the one lovingly looking over the shelves in the bookstore, the one who quietly cries out when she finds the book she wants. You see the weird chick sniffing the pages of an old book in a second hand book shop? That’s the reader. They can never resist smelling the pages, especially when they are yellow.
She’s the girl reading while waiting in that coffee shop down the street. If you take a peek at her mug, the non-dairy creamer is floating on top because she’s kind of engrossed already. Lost in a world of the author’s making. Sit down. She might give you a glare, as most girls who read do not like to be interrupted. Ask her if she likes the book.
Buy her another cup of coffee.
Let her know what you really think of Murakami. See if she got through the first chapter of Fellowship. Understand that if she says she understood James Joyce’s Ulysses she’s just saying that to sound intelligent. Ask her if she loves Alice or she would like to be Alice.
It’s easy to date a girl who reads. Give her books for her birthday, for Christmas and for anniversaries. Give her the gift of words, in poetry, in song. Give her Neruda, Pound, Sexton, Cummings. Let her know that you understand that words are love. Understand that she knows the difference between books and reality but by god, she’s going to try to make her life a little like her favorite book. It will never be your fault if she does.
She has to give it a shot somehow.
Lie to her. If she understands syntax, she will understand your need to lie. Behind words are other things: motivation, value, nuance, dialogue. It will not be the end of the world.
Fail her. Because a girl who reads knows that failure always leads up to the climax. Because girls who understand that all things will come to end. That you can always write a sequel. That you can begin again and again and still be the hero. That life is meant to have a villain or two.
Why be frightened of everything that you are not? Girls who read understand that people, like characters, develop. Except in the Twilightseries.
If you find a girl who reads, keep her close. When you find her up at 2 a.m. clutching a book to her chest and weeping, make her a cup of tea and hold her. You may lose her for a couple of hours but she will always come back to you. She’ll talk as if the characters in the book are real, because for a while, they always are.
You will propose on a hot air balloon. Or during a rock concert. Or very casually next time she’s sick. Over Skype.
You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.
—
Rosemarie Urquico
(ps I am totally this girl)
NEW BLOG!
I’ve started a tumblr strictly for posting my travel writing. It will have at least one piece a day, to keep things fresh and to help exercise my memory. I’m hoping to turn these little vignettes into either a self-published magazine or e-book, but of course that is all based on critical acclaim.
The blog also features my travel writing and general travel tips. SEX!
So check it out yo! Officially presenting Single White Female Traveler.
Smoke
I remember walking down that one, gritty asphalt road to the market that sold everything. It sold everything, but I don’t know to who - it seemed like all around me that no one had any money for everything. I guess because they would always ask us for money, and I’m sure they inflated their prices for us too. But even so, the prices were cheap to begin with. I really don’t know who was buying those things in the market, but somehow, they were bought.
People cooked things in the market - I often bought roasted sweet corn from a small, thin boy with skin the color of cocoa powder, sitting behind a makeshift grill. He wore orange flip flops. People cooked things using flames - that’s what made the smoke, made everything smell like a camp fire. Sometimes you could get an omelet, if you were on the go they found a plastic bag for you and slid it inside.
Everyone cooked over an open fire in Ghana. Microwaves don’t exist. There are no stoves or ovens, except those made from clay. You might be able to find a hot pot or a small range, but why bother? You can boil anything you need over the flames. Everyone else does, and it saves on electricity.
In Slovakia we made a fire to commemorate special anniversaries of Czechoslovak history. An eternal flame, no one really cared about it so much. We roasted Eastern European marshmallows over it and toasted bread and onions on the logs. My favorite sweater, the sweater I wore all the time, always smelled like singed wood. My favorite sweater kept my favorite smell.
We stayed in the Jizera Mountains during our last week in the Czech Republic, at a small pension made up of two cabins. It was bare bones but comfortable - the toilet gave off a raw sewage scent but what did you expect from a rural, former Communist town? The whole complex was heated by wood burning stoves. I sat near the largest, in the dining room, uploading four months of photos onto Sarah’s computer. She was making a slide show.
I started to cry.
HEY PEEPS!
Do you guys even like the stuff I write? I’m toying with the idea of submitting a manuscript with some of my travel memoirs but obviously if they suck, I’m not gonna do it.
Gimme some feedback yo?
A Polish Moment.
We walked around the streets of Krakow without a destination in mind.
“Let’s just walk around and see where it takes us.”
A futile attempt, for we walked into a residential district. All of the houses looked the same, there were no shops or cafes we could just “pop” into. The weather was warm, the sun made the buildings look somewhat inviting. But no one would open their doors.
Suddenly the signs and streets became unfamiliar, the words barely discernable and their meanings masked by a language we did not know.
“I’m going to head back,” I said. “It doesn’t look like there is anything else around here.”
I was looking for something, but couldn’t find it.
NIGHTNIGHT by DEDDY
