Springtime Drizzle

Caffeine, dried up in the back part of my skull and aching in my teeth. The sky is heavy and full, pregnant with all our discontent, will all our folded back dreams seeping up through the exhausted skin of the clouds. When will it all open up and come crashing back down upon our insubstantial shoulders?

In the springtime drizzle, we curl and unfurl, hoping to be entered by sunshine, to be kissed by indulgent bees. What else is in the wind? Our desires are too big to be buried beneath soil, we come creeping out onto the surface, tendrils needy as infants. Show me the white underbelly. Show me the ways in which you are not a tree, after all, but a small thing, a forgotten acorn.

Despite wet socks and unrestful sleep, we come out thirsty, bones cracking for more— keep shifting the earth from one place to the next, keeping sifting through the dust of me for some little treasure, amongst the moldy tea bags, the greenish orange peels, and the slick avocado pits. Somewhere is a soul, I think, waiting to be loosened with the curious fingers of summer, with the feverish call of the road.

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Easter egg endeavors.

Normally I think Easter is pretty lame. Conceptually it's a weird mixture of religion, zombies, rabbits, chickens, and candy that doesn't really make sense to me, plus as a kid I hated Easter egg hunts because everyone was always super intense about it and it didn't seem worth all that vigorous searching just to get some gross blue hard boiled eggs or like barely a handful of jelly beans. The best Easter celebration I've been to thus far was actually a zombie themed party at my house a few years ago, but the fake blood cleanup the day after detracted from some of the highlights.

Zombie throwback!

Anyway, I've been trying to do more projects and DIY type shit lately because I'm turning into a recluse and all, and my stepmom recently gave me some super sweet geese, turkey and chickens eggs, so I thought it'd be fun to try and hollow them out and make them purdy.

Three geese eggs, one turkey egg, one brown chicken egg- from Twin Palms Ranch,
plus two store bought white chicken eggs.

I followed some pretty generic instructions I found online:
1.) Poke a hole in each end (one bigger than the other) with a needle of some sort

2.) Use the needle to jab and scramble about the insides to break up the yolk

3.) Blow on one end and catch the goop that comes out the other in something

Apparently some people are freaked out about dying of salmonella but I just like...didn't ingest any of the egg, and kinda rinsed my mouth region as I went. 

The chicken eggs were pretty easy to poke into with a pin or needle, but the geese eggs (goose eggs?) were a LOT tougher, and I actually managed to break one of my thicker sewing needles! I actually found that using the tip of a small knife to break a little slit in it first and then following it with a thick needle (I used my cabling needle thingy) worked best. My first goose egg was a pretty big pain because the innards were a lot thicker than the chicken and turkey eggs, so for the next two I made the exit hole a bit bigger and that helped a lot.

I recently stumbled across this blog that inspired me to play with some natural dyes, and since I only had a few eggs I decided to just go with the turmeric, cayenne pepper and red cabbage. For the turmeric, I followed the directions and mixed 3tbs turmeric with 2 cups of warm water and 1/8 cup of white vinegar. I had a lot more paprika than cayenne pepper, so I decided to use them both to see how it turned out and mixed 2tbs paprika, 2tbs cayenne pepper and 2 cups of water with 1/8 cup of white vinegar. For the cabbage I followed the "hot method" directions and chopped up half a head of cabbage with 1/8 cup of vinegar and enough water to fill the pot, brought it to a boil, then a simmer, and then let them sit. Unfortunately, i didn't think at ALL about the fact that my eggs were hollow and wouldn't sink, so I had to get, uh, creative, to submerge them.

Yeah, those are cups on top of the eggs. Of course I could have dyed first, then hollowed, but I'm not sure that would have worked with the "hot method" and the cabbage ended up being my favorite color, so whatever. I let the eggs sit about 3 hours, at which point the cabbage and turmeric eggs looked pretty nice, but the paprika/cayenne ones looked pretty unexciting and brownish, so I rinsed them off and put them in the turmeric. But then I sorta forgot and went to bed, so they came out pretty dark and brownish anyway, but at least I was like, you know, well rested...

The brown eggs looked predictably dumb, so I decided to scrap it and use 3 yellow and 3 blue. The frustrating thing was that all the tutorials I found online explained the hollowing process in detail, but then just said something like, "String a ribbon through the eggs and you're done!" Which was not helpful because a normal needle wouldn't reach all the way through so I floundered for a while until someone sent me this link, which suggested using an unfolded paper clip with a hook at the end. I didn't have/couldn't find any pliers, so I just wrapped the yard (I used yarn, not ribbon, because it's what I had) around the clip and that worked fine.

Yippee! Some of the chicken eggs holes cracked a little when I was pulling the yarn through, but OH WELL. I just knotted the yarn so that it'd rest beneath the top hole and hold it up, then hung them in the door way at different lengths. A branch of some sort would also have been cool but our house is pretty teensy, so this seemed less obtrusive.

Ta-daa!

Mishka was obviously unimpressed by my efforts, but I had fun. Perhaps next year I'll try dying with red onion skins or tea or BEETS! Conclusions: geese rule, chickens drool. As far as egg-awesomeness goes, at least.

To the future:

Do not forget the slick green leaves, wet under February rain. Do not forget spilled coffee.

We were once a planet of questions and sore backs—what are you now? Do you have a lottery? We have a lottery; orange tickets sold over dirty glass counters. We pay for the fantasies of what we could become.

We cut down trees and turn their wood into pulp and turn the pulp into paper, pressed into thick notebooks that we carry, and when it rains they go soft. I hope you have paper and trees. I hope you have yellow books.

I hope you eat curly pasta, that you paint your faces sometimes, and that sex is safe and legal and good. I hope you are not defined by the arbitrary conditions of your flesh, desire, and belief.

I was born in a long state full of trees and sea. I hope your oceans are full and blue. I hope your lungs are big and clean. I hope you have beautiful homes, to cry in, to eat in, to fill up with memories.

Do not forget the grass bursting through cracks in black asphalt. Do not forget the spicy smell of nasturtium flowers, do not forget the feel of old tennis shoes. Do not forget how good it is to hold hands.

I hope you are better than I am.

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Pondering the Post-Humous Powerpoint on Thought Catalog

I just wrote an article about a weird professor I had in Spain, my delusions of grandeur, and death!
Check it out on Thought Catalog: Pondering the Post-Humous PowerPoint.

The Receptacle of Everything Unsalvageable

I, too, am the receptacle of everything unsalvageable, unwound dreams circulate in the vessel of me. Deposit in me: your dead ends, scrapped projects and lost lists. I am the expanding hole in your nylon tights, popping and stretching back over your bare skin. I am the faded jubilation shared with some extroverted stranger, sloppy intentions dissipated in cold morning air. I am the space between the mouths of your bickering parents. Deposit in me: the words you should have said, the long glance you did not return, the mold on leftovers from some beautiful meal made for you and not eaten. I am the blackened bottom of a neglected pot, the cracks running all through your grandmother's old dishes. I am the invisible aching hole in your slick tooth. Deposit in me: the health crumbled and dissipated into your unfaithful body, the naivete that you outgrew along with your high school jeans. I am the dream that slips away in the blue light of dawn, the sick brown leaves of a shriveled plant, dry as bone.

photo credit: thewoodenshoes via photopin

Forever.

I read about splintered marriages and shipwrecks and hold onto your shoulders, hoping we don't go under. Love is ordinary, but I'm finally coming to terms with that. As your next birthday approaches, and we take turns hunting for silver hairs, I say the word  forever with closed eyes.

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