Funerals are, the worst.

I get that we are all just a collection of bones, muscles, blood and hair, but it is still so sad when a heart stops beating and you lose someone you love.

We'll miss you, Jeff.

"Hang Loose"

My plans to befriend and domesticate a young skunk this year have been thwarted. Who knew it was pretty illegal? If I lived in Indiana or say, New Jersey I would be well on my way to owning a pet skunk. Damn my Illinois Residency!

                                               

I was going to name him Guille. Guille the skunk. We could have gone on walks together, sat quietly and read. I was looking forward to spending time teaching Guille to do the Macarena and to make peanut butter cookies; you know, the kind you mark with fork tines. Oh Guille, the life we could have had. 

it's 4am,

the red lights blink,

the smoke stacks puff,

a young girl thinks,

this life, without love, is barren.

loads and loads of laundry

I spilled laundry detergent on my hands this morning.

Didn't need any soap to wash my hands.

Ha.

the joke is, we all have the same punchline.

My love affair with Steinbeck was followed with a one night stand with Palahniuk. His biting satire of the media, our conception of importance, fame  and modern religion is striking but fails to function as inspiring commentary. With lines like : "You realize that there's no point in doing anything if nobody's watching" and "If Christ had died from a barbiturate overdose, alone on the bathroom floor, would He be in Heaven?" Palahniuk makes it clear his reputation as a nihilist is well earned. 

Survivor, like many of Palahniuk's novels, thrusts the ugly and the embarrassing upon the reader. He exposes mankind, society, you and I as unthinking, animalistic nobodies. Tender Branson, the protagonist, is doomed from the very start of the narrative- he is alone on a commercial airliner slowly running out of gas. The book's first page is 289, the first chapter 47. The plane will crash, Branson will die, yet the reader still finds him or herself begging for Tender's redemption, his salvation. Tender is our innocent mortality. Just as we all one day will die, Palahniuk makes it clear that Tender will follow suit before the novel comes to an end. 

Just as our own rationalizations curb our fears of mortality, failure and rejection, Palahniuk crafts a narrative in which the reader begs Tender to get the makeover, take the drugs, have the sex in order to solve his problems. By changing himself, his psyche- he can find happiness, redemption. Although the novel closes with inevitable death and imminent destruction, Palahniuk offers us salvation and immortality within our own humanity. Within the blood, hair, bones and semen of our human cesspool we can find some beauty or connection that will outlive our timeline. No divine intervention. No miracles. Just flawed men and women living a a flawed world.

sleep with one eye open

The mosquito on my ceiling and I are eyeing each other.

I know as soon as I fall asleep he is going to bop over and bite me.

him and all his other mosquito friends lying in wait.

fuck.

the minnesota clouds have belly buttons

18 people, 15 pounds of fish. My Grandma Margaret, martini in hand, flour and crisco up to her elbows, was standing over the stove simultaneously flipping battered fish screaming with oil and fending off my mom and Aunt Robin who had intruded into her kitchen. Dave and I were discussing the pros and cons of owning a pet skunk while my Dad and Uncle Mike stood on the porch puffing cigars and planning what fishing spots to hit after dinner.

The Dittmers were hungry and happy hour had been in full swing for a while. Dinners in our little clan are the highlight of the day, so we all crowded into my family's cabin. 18 people all talking and laughing at once. As soon as it was announced that all the fish had been fried applause erupted and my Grandma was congratulated on a job that was surely well done- she is the pro. Without missing a step all 18 of the  Dittmers/Kurtzes/Owenes joined hands and said grace. I am not profoundly religious by any account, but as I looked up at my family with their heads bowed, reciting the same Hail Mary we always say before dinner, I was reminded of how much I absolutely love this crazy bunch of people.