I love to open Notes and write what pops into my head when I am drunk. But what’s even better is discovering these notes after the fact, when I am sober. I usually don’t remember writing them until I read the (sometimes crazed) ramblings, then I can usually place myself back in that moment, in that state. Sometimes it’s awesome. Sometimes it’s sad. Often it is special kind of awful.
I frequently choose “poetry” as my creative outlet (I use that term in the very loosest sense).
Last night, for example, I penned this masterpiece:
I wrote that while I was waiting for the bathroom (which ended up being open…yeah). The bar had a pool table in the back, and there were several girls attaching themselves to any middle aged man that looked like he might have money to spend. They were tall, disturbingly thin, wearing minis and stilettos. But as I trekked to the bathroom, a group had formed at the bar and began singing “happy birthday” and a cake with a glowing 29 was produced. One of these girls was turning 29. It seemed strange and incongruous to imagine the lives of these Victoria’s Secret junkies. Almost 30.
In my notes there are countless entries about waiting for the train, like this 3-part (as in 3 separate notes) opus:
I have very mixed emotions about this one. I mean, I actually wrote “spinny” and “rectangle hanger” and couldn’t hold my train of thought (or my bladder, apparently) without getting distracted by mundane thoughts about my cat. But somehow I still like it. It captures a unique part of the NYC experience - anyone waiting for those late night trains knows.
Actually, a lot of my notes take place in that very specific space, trying to capture that feeling like air in jar. Often the notes take on the anxiety of being a woman alone at this time…tipsy, tired, vulnerable. Putting on a face or a swagger to mask any uncertainty or terror. In the poem below, for example, I apparently called on my childhood, remembering the numerous times our neighbors’ bull would get loose and we had to face it down, coaxing it back across the clearly ineffectual barbed wire fence.
And another vaguely anxiety-laced piece about the nebulous late night solo haze, opening with a dying phone battery
That's all for now, although I'm sure I'll pen many more questionable missives to myself in the future.