Pompadoured

Our sago palms are low to the ground, so I have to get on my back to reach their lower leaves.

I put my back flat on the ground. Jenny was at the park with Royal, and I looked up and waved at them. I cut at the base of the palm leaf, removing it from the plant. Our dog wandered into the street. I worried about her being hit by a car. She barked at a dog in the park, and I removed a dead leaf.

My greatest fear is the death of living things I am close to. I backed into a car on Sunday.

The weather is great. I’m afraid, at all times. I have trouble sleeping because I worry about the consequences of my actions.

The sun is gigantic, and it consumes everything.

When I cut leaves off I feel pleasure. When I push the clippers through a green leaf, it’s satisfying and permanent, like cutting off a limb.

I laid on my back in the sun for a minute. I like the sun, because if it was a few miles closer, it would burn my face off, and my skin would burst into flames. I would let a single shriek out along with my family and we would all disintegrate together.

I have night terrors where I wake up and feel like it is the last moment of living.

The existential terror of my early twenties, especially after my cousin died, no longer exists after having children. The terror I feel now is a more external form, like my son watching me get decapitated accidentally at a football game, or the last minutes with my family before I pull my car into a pole and it rips me in half.

The price of living is fear. You channel it through some means– eating well is preventative, eating poorly is escapism.

I tugged at the base of a sago palm, and removed a smaller palm from its side.

Later we all played some video games, and I rode a motorcycle off of the side of a building, riding a parachute onto the back of an eighteen-wheeler.

Rarely leave the house to go anywhere but the grocery store or Walgreens. Sometimes I’ll go on a date with Jenny.

My grandmother got us a wind chime for Christmas last year. We cut the trees back in the backyard, and now the wind chime makes a substantially greater amount of chime. The wind chime is soothing and it also reminds me to call my grandmother.

Really feel like I should only eat animals that either I or the people I know kill.

Make the bed almost everyday. Thought of something clever to say about making my bed while I was working in the yard.

Scrubbed dried-up formula off of the kitchen counter. Watched a movie on obesity and then a movie about a Tokyo police force that fights monsters.

Ate a slice of pizza while I made a bottle for my daughter.

It rained a lot yesterday. I made dinosaur noises and ran around my house. It was dark.

I’ve been wearing break-away pants more often lately. I don’t break them away. Most of the time, I don’t wear real shorts underneath my break-away pants. If I was to break my pants away, I would be in my underwear.

Went to the liquor store with Royal. Wish wine came in aluminum bottles.

Cold pizza is good at awkward hours.

I moved the cookbooks to a central location, in the cupboard, near the living room. There are a few cookbooks I am ashamed of, and a few I have positive feelings towards.

I leave my phone off for most of the day. I have started to get paranoid about cancer and think about cellphone cancer at least twice a day. I’m not sure cellphone cancer is even real.

I pulled out all of the plants along the fence and in the front of our house. There was a slug I almost poured salt on.

Pulling roots out of the ground feels good. I’ve been eating all of the Halloween candy.

If I had to worship something, I think I would worship the Sun.

It’s hard for me to use the same keyboard for an extended period of time. I have two keyboards I use regularly, and both have advantages and disadvantages. Sometimes I will just stare at my alternate keyboard and think about what it feels like to type on it.

I watched a man yell angrily over his daughter at a quarterback that must have been a half mile away.

One of our clocks is broken, and it’s disappointing when I look at it.

When the Halloween candy is in the house, I need to be on the other side of the house.

I broke a spade on a palm stump.

I’m in bed with the heater on, and looking out of the corner window. Our neighbor has an antenna on top of his house. There is an empty kid pool that I have to dump out every time it rains.

Friday is pancake and bacon day.

My water bottle has a metallic taste, and I need to clean it out. I was afraid last night that my water bottle was poisoning me.

My bike chain fell off again. A man by the grocery store bike rack said that cable locks have been cut through recently at the grocery store bike rack, and that I need to use a d-lock. He carried his groceries in one hand and steered his bike with the other.

When I raked up the schefflera leaves yesterday, I was careful to avoid all of the wet dog poo in the yard.

Our car is massive. It has three rows of seats.

I ate stew twice yesterday. It rained all night, and Jenny and I barely slept.

The problem with changing diapers, is that sometimes you just randomly smell poop coming from an unknown source.

Our car has seats that are big enough to fit around my body. Jenny’s sound sculptures fit into our car without being put flat.

Not sure why anyone would want to strictly follow anything.

It’s raining outside right now. The leak in our ceiling leaked again last night, covering the wood floor in water. When the floor is wet, the scrapes on the wood become dark and visible.

After changing a lot of diapers, you start to think about adults wearing diapers.

Stew is great in shitty weather. I feel like a peasant when I eat stew. It gets better after being set aside for a while.

Feel comfortable rejecting superficial things. Feel like I want to reject Apple products but don’t have the money to. I’d like to reject casual clothing, but I also don’t have the money to.

When you’re up with your kid all night, there’s a point when you get angry at the situation you’re in, and then there’s the immediate realization that the kid is in a much worse place.

I swept the garage yesterday. There was so much dirt and glitter I had to sweep up.

The texture of an English muffin always seems fucked-up. I never feel good after eating an English muffin. I feel the same way with grocery store bagels.

I have a collection of books on my desk that I don’t read.

It’s overcast outside and a cool front is coming. It should be a nice weekend.

Talked with Jenny about sports last night. She said the only reason she likes sports is that it keeps cities from burning down other cities.

I may have, at some time in my life, believed in ghosts. I’m pretty sure that they do not exist. Do religious people believe in ghosts? Are ghosts, other than ghost Jesus, in the Bible?

The drugs that are legal, thank our government for them. Coffee is so special.

The trees are starting to blow hard. I’m going to need to rake the schefflera leaves out of the yard.

The clouds are thin and moving quickly. I like the darkness of the sky. I like feeling like I’m on some sort of alien planet. I like feeling that my time is limited.

It looks like there is a giant pee spot on the attic futon.

We decorated the front door with a skeleton and some sticky gelatin-based window clings. It’s very becoming. The people at the park will be impressed and assume that real people live in our house. People who have personalities and celebrate holidays.

I never know when to wear a sweater this time of year.

The pee spot is not pee, I think Jenny let something dry on the futon and it left a ring. If you sleep on the futon, your skin will not absorb pee.

Ride my bike everywhere now. Never needed the second car. Or cable.

It’s hotter today than it was yesterday, and I feel confused. I just want to sit on the chair in my room with the door open and read, but it’s too humid to do that.

The chain came off of my bike yesterday on my way back from buying alcohol and Fritos. A man on a bike stopped and asked me if I was okay, and I mumbled something and he rode away. I feel bad now, like I was rude to a concerned person.

I haven’t taken a shower in a few days, or changed out of my gym shorts. I should probably go brush my teeth right now.

The dogs barking next door sound like some kind of fucked-up dinosaur.

Going out-to-eat is nice, and I usually feel like a privileged asshole when I do it.

The worst is when you have a zit in your inner ear and can’t pop it. You feel like you’re breaking your ear.

I had an opportunity to dance last night.

Windex is a nice product. We had some streak-free Windex, but we ran out. Used regular Windex to clean our windows.

Houston has a lot of great restaurants, and I feel lucky to have eaten at so many of them. Eating at home feels better to me now for some reason. I never thought I would like eating at home more, but it’s nice to control your portions and eat food with less butter.

The weather is changing and outside is tolerable. Jenny and I rode our bicycles most of the weekend and sat down on the park grass.

Sometimes my chest hurts a little, and I worry.

We drank a lemonade outside of the Menil bookstore and talked about our children as families walked by.

My bike broke twice, and I had to take it in for repairs both times. The first time, my seat bent. The bike store fixed it for free. The second time, my pedal broke. I paid them a little money, and upgraded to metal pedals. I asked for the black ones, because I’m slowly trying to “murder out” my bike.

Usually, I mold it into a worm and then make it into a spiral. I have an egg of Silly Putty that sits in a cubby of my desk. It’s the Silly Putty from two eggs made into a single Silly Putty.

When I was a kid, I had a giant mound of Silly Putty made from like ten eggs.

When I read over sentences I roll the Silly Putty into a penis shape, which is also a worm shape.

The giant mound of Silly Putty would get mashed into carpet and hair, and those things would become a part of the Silly Putty. All of the Silly Putties were different colors when I would buy them, and as they became a part of the larger Silly Putty they would revert to the neutral Silly Putty color. The color of white people skin.

Sometimes the Silly Putty is used to hold my water bottle in place, because my water bottle is a little uneven on my desk and it rocks when I type. The Silly Putty is a kind of temporary gum that bonds my water bottle to the desk.

I roll the Silly Putty into a spiral, and then I smash it flat with an object on my desk.

I like that after a while, after sitting out on my desk, the Silly Putty glosses over. The Silly Putty loses my fingerprints, and whatever shape I left it in melts closer to the desk.

I have a problem with distraction. I had to buy a device to replace my smartphone. I would just stare at it for hours, updating my Twitter feed and not paying any attention to the things around me.

We used to have a rug in front of the kitchen sink area, but it would always get really wet. It’s a nice handmade native american rug that I bought when I was a bachelor and had a well paying job. Now, it just sits in the garage and is too small to be put anywhere. Seems like someone worked really hard making the rug, and now I’m disrespecting it.

Jorge is mowing our lawn. We can’t really afford him anymore, but he is a nice man and I don’t want to fire him. It makes me happy to shake his hand and make some awkward comment about the weather standing awkwardly in the center of the lawn.

Caffeine is making me feel really good.

It’s supposed to get up to 92 degrees outside today.

I haven’t gotten much sleep. I think my daughter needs to poop. I’m a little dizzy right now and trying to concentrate on anything other than the news is hard.

I crave terrible foods. I did fourteen push-ups the other day. I took more dimethylaminoethanol last night when I got home. I’m still a little depressed and sick-feeling, but it’s not as violent.

I wish interplanetary travel was possible, because I want to look back at the Earth and say some catchphrase that they would say in a movie that sums up the entirety of our planet.

A man told me last night that the benefit of having children is that they’re an imperfect reflection of yourself. It’s nice to pick this person up and look at the person and feel a certain amount of responsibility for the person’s existence.

I forget sometimes how much I like old country music. I wish I could stop reading the news.

I bought a book on the Sun dance last night. I picture myself spiritually as a hawk flying over a Taco Bell below a mountain.

I went to the store in the car to buy more formula. It was raining a little. I talked about football with my brother.

We had pho for lunch. Not ever sure if I live a physically healthy life. Right now, I feel like I have maybe thirty to thirty-five years left.

Riding a bike slowly is nice. The air outside is really thick. I think there is mold in our house, and I’m scared to find out.

I’ve been drinking more water and driving the car less. Ironing is harder than I remember.

When I try to get Pearl to poop, I’ll push her knees up towards her stomach and roll them to the outside. She makes little grunting noises and smiles when I stretch her legs out straight.

When I was driving the pho home, I kept having these visions of the bag tipping over and spilling out all over my car.

I don’t worry about the front yard as much as the back yard. The back yard is in the center of our house.

Lately, there have been swarms of mosquitos in the back yard. I took my rake and raked leaves for fifteen minutes, and came back with my legs fucked-up.

The front yard has a lot of dead plants, but I was able to save the grass this summer. Last summer there was more rain.

We got a quote last week to clean the front yard up, but it was too much, so I am going to find the time to do it myself. It will help with the mosquito problem.

Working in the yard is nice. I feel good about sweating and wearing my work boots and using a trowel.

I don’t like perfect-looking yards. I like a yard that looks like a home haircut, a little fucked-up but reasonable.

Some people that will read this will probably think, “Caring about your yard is shallow.”

Caring about your yard is the good kind of shallow. I live across the street from a park, and people compare my yard to the park. I don’t like people judging my family based on our yard. It needs to be acceptable so people don’t judge us. I think they’ve been judging us.

Not drawing too much negative attention to yourself involves some upkeep to make things acceptable for the people at the park.

I’ve noticed that mosquito bites go away quicker and that they don’t itch as bad as they did when I was a kid. My son gets a lot of them, and it’s really sad. I have to put Benadryl on his legs and face.

My dad came over in the afternoon and we watched Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations on Netflix while he played with the kids. Jenny made a smoothie. She was angry and said it was a mistake to make the smoothie with plain yogurt instead of vanilla-flavored yogurt.

I have a reading this week. A string of lights broke-off in the back yard, leaving the party lights broken. I have had bad gas lately.

It has been overcast and cold. We went for our normal walk around the neighborhood, and normal things happened. Sunday is pizza day, so we ordered pizza for lunch.

Jenny put this cute sweater/poncho on Pearl.

We didn’t discuss much today. I made this website, and Jenny made posters for her art show this weekend out of puff paint and neon paper. I watched the end of the Texans game while walking around and holding the baby.

We have been really into supplements.

I will start deleting things. Sometimes I just fill text in, because the poem needs something there. Later, I will fill that space in with something. I delete. I listen to music. The world is not predicated on what you will do, but what has been done. I pretend I am important. I think about how unimportant I am. Sometimes, if I think hard enough, I will cry. It is okay. I will stand on a mountain later in life and think “I fucked up.” When the poem is finished, I am almost not ashamed of it. All of the caffeine, all of the sickness of whatever meal I ate will wear off. I read the thing and feel like I haven’t fucked it up, for a day or two. I will give it to Jenny, and she will tell me the parts that are not like me. I will send it to a few people I trust that have a mild interest in my writing. I drink lots of water and listen to music. If there is something to eat in the kitchen, I will eat it. Maybe I will drive somewhere unimportant, just to remind myself that I am insignificant. It’s fun to be a person, and to sit in front of your computer, and to worry about the past and the future and all of the things you cannot control. It’s fun to pretend like you can control your fear of death and of living. Outside, there are things I cannot control. I can pretend to master them. It’s easier when you write to think of all of the people that have written things, from all over the planet, over the course of entire human history, and to think about life in 10,000 years, and how little all of those writers will matter. I am usually happy when I finish writing something, like I’ve accomplished something vital. Like I’ll be vindicated in 2042 by a tree growing out of a forest where Jenny has left my ashes. Like it’s okay to live in spite of liking to do dumb things.

I sit in my office and listen to electronic music, reading gadget blogs and drinking something that is usually not water. I like beer, but not in the morning. I read the blogs of everybody who writes online. When I read something I don’t like, I still feel happy and appreciative. I usually put my feet up on something and lean my chair back. I edit a little bit of HTML at a time, nudging DIV tags slightly to the left or right. If I have a few hours, I write a poem. I like Gatorade G2. Twitter updates pop-up in the upper right corner of my screen. Depressing music plays, and I stare out the window, at the back of the large neon building next door.

I used a cultivator to open the soil up. Within two minutes, I had broken the cultivator. I forgot that there was a large stump covered-up by mulch in the corner of the bed. I pushed the cultivator into the stump until it broke.
My two-prong cultivator worked okay, opening the rest of the soil up. There was a white fungus that sat under the top layer of mulch. Tiny mushrooms spring up every few weeks in that area of the backyard, after it gets humid. Jenny dug some holes for flowers, and we planted them. We planted vegetables in the opposite bed.

I usually use my computer in the Technology Annex lounge. There is a giant window that overlooks a nice section of campus, and for some reason everyone in the Technology Annex lounge sits on the interior of the lounge, away from the windows. The windows get no direct sunlight. They are underneath a giant ash tree. Lots of people walk by, but they are far enough away to not notice me watching them. Right now there is a group of thirty children, all in white shirts, walking by. A man in a red shirt is telling them something. I don’t think anyone is interested. They walked off, towards the east. Tiny golf carts are everywhere.

I usually sit by myself, near a window, and eat my chicken sandwich. I look at other people’s computers and cell phones, and try to not seem creepy. I dip my chicken sandwich in mayonnaise. The ladies who work in the school cafeteria are very nice, and usually the only people I talk to. I’ve tried listening to music on my headphones while I eat lunch, but it feels like I’m doing too much. Yesterday I felt pretty good. I finished my Diet Coke watching MTV U, which is the college version of MTV that plays bad music videos all day.