listen, guys, I love Anthony Bourdain. he drives me bananas. I don't care that he's a giant and he's got awful teeth; the man's a class act. in high school I used to come home from swim practice and collapse onto my bed with No Reservations playing in the background, just so I could nap to the rasp of his finely-aged-by-tobacco-and-alcohol voice. I did this. like daily. the dude really gets me going.

not too long ago I went over to a friend's house and saw that he had an Anthony Bourdain poster on the wall. it was pretty cool too. he was all smoking and stuff, being a badass. he was wearing a tank with some serious guns on it. anyway so I see this poster and I basically lose my shit, I'm all like, "Tony B's the baddest bitch in the game right now, etc." and my friend's like, “yeah totally, I heard he used to smoke blunts with Biggie when he was cooking in New York” (I’ve done a little bit of research on this claim and there's really no evidence to support it whatsoever). so we talk a little more and I ask him where he got the poster and he says it belongs to his roommate who isn't there, and he's not sure where he got it. I'm sort of bummed, but I figure I can find it online. later I'm at home and I'm looking for it but I can't find anything. I mean there are definitely some posters of him, but not the one I'm looking for. the next best thing I could find is this photo called “Anthony Bourdain Naked With Bone” which is superb, don't get me wrong, but I feel like an 8" x 10" print of a picture entitled "Anthony Bourdain Naked with Bone" doesn't really do the man justice. I'm looking for something legitimately poster sized.

anyway so I figured that's where you guys come in. what I propose we do is scour the internet for Anthony Bourdain posters like the randos scour Panic at the disco lyrics here for the the symbolism behind Brandon Urie’s vocal range. the idea is that with our greater numbers we'll at last be able to solve this most important of mysteries: we'll figure out once and for all the source of the enigmatic Anthony Bourdain poster I saw at my friend's house. It'll be fun guys, trust me. Like a cool little bonding project. back me up Brian. make them do it. 

listen, Daniel. you oughta

eat more yogurt. There

was this study done at Harvard

with these suicidal rats:

the scientists gave them 

some yogurt and then

they were completely fine. 

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

today I accidently bumped into this one TA I had in this one Bio class I took back in sophomore year. 

I had a pretty serious (at the time) crush on her. she was 28 which I thought was hot. she was wicked smart and knew a lot about terrestrial ecology and had eyes that looked like an ocelot's. I was pretty smitten. 

one time when we were doing field research in the meadow, she arrived 45 minutes late wearing an indigo Wu Tang Clan tshirt and red poison oak rashes on both wrists. everyone took off pretty quickly after the field trip was done, but I lingered, picking thorns and burs off my socks and side eying her as she transcribed her field notes. I felt like an asswipe, for five silent minutes I tried to tell her how much I loved the song "Da Mystery of Chessboxin'" 

a year later I ran into her at a friend's gig and she had no recollection of me or my face, which was both confusing and a relief at the same time. the whole thing was surreal. that whole month of my life was surreal. the night of the gig she earnestly asked me to order her a drink: "Svedka with drop of vermouth with a glass of olives on the side." she emphasized the "drop of vermouth" part. "yes ma'am." I felt so grown up. mature. turgid with pride. 

until later that night:

"oh my god"

"what?"

“you have those fucking glow-in-the-dark stars on your ceiling.”

a week full of rocks and thorns has me backing to the depths of my claustrophobic room, back to sending long cathartic emails at 2am to my thesis advisor, to my mother, to my best friend from the 6th grade who is now a wunderkind movie producer.

some days I'll wake feeling weird and light and hopeful. I'll whistle that talking heads song that my friend once tried to convince me was a love ballad. I'll do laundry, I'll crack my knuckles and work and write and go to the gym.  

one evening last week I went for a walk in the woods and saw a modern apollo and artemis arguing in the shade of a laurel tree. apollo was sporting an acryllic splattered hoodie, doc martins and dudebro raybans. he had a harmonica hanging from a rope cord around his neck, I kid you not. artemis was beautiful and disheveled and agitated. she was arguing about climate change and picking at her ripped jeans. if wood nymphs were real I swear they'd be flanking her on both sides. apollo pulled a pack of marlboros from his pocket and walked over to me and asked for a lighter, which then provoked artemis to rotate her glare onto me, which provoked me to freeze like a deer. I was scared that she'd call a pack of wolves on me or something.  apollo smirked a subterfuge smirk.

after I gave him my lighter he said, "it's a blessin to be stressin, my friend. means you're on the right side of the grass."

I am baffled in a bar in the middle of the night for what seems like the millionth time. the server behind the counter somehow makes fleet foxes sound good even in the pinnacle of spring. I can almost imagine snow flurries twirling in the cold night outside. in reality it's 76 degrees F but I feel so cozy I could curl up and hibernate right then and there. 

I'm baffled by the person sitting across from me, the smart but spacey, undervalued girl with the self-cut hair and threadbare tshirt who talks in riddles and loves stray cats.

something is hibernating in both of us, a fire that is underwater. maybe a year from now we will meet again and we will have overcome whatever is smothering us and become the people we dreamed of being when we were six years old. 

Seaside, 12a.m.

& slamming the car door closed
& an ocean roaring in the dark
& pushing a cut key through the lock
& a deadbolt turning clockwise
& stepping through the threshold
& climbing the carpeted stairs
& taking off my clothes
& collapsing into bed
& there is a deadbolt in my chest
& there is a lock I cannot see
& I wish there was an ocean
roaring inside of me

I will always remember the taste of the pine resin and the weight of the binoculars around my neck, standing next to Dad and the edge of a precipice. I was bored. I was nine. we were looking for sparrowhawks. 

this memory is candescent and paralleled by another memory, cutting and fresh.

I'm in my last year of college and I catch sight of a sparrowhawk in the bookstore. In profile, gray hoodie, eyes the pale color of reindeer moss. she's flipping through The Essential Works of Rumi and I'm already backing out, the hem of my shirt catching on edges. I know what she's looking for in Rumi, word for word and I might have told her word for word. saved her all the decoding.

but I didn't because my friends and I used to shoot birds with BB guns in the dregs of the suburbs. 

my forhead is bleeding

my bike chain fell off

scuffed up my huffy

pay

attention

to

me

of all the sensations I can manage to conjure, the clearest is the memory of fingers tracing patterns into the crook of my arm.

today, walking to 7Eleven, I caught sight of a rusty nail sticking out of wooden fence. I thought of another time a fine point needle was shoved into the vein between my bicep & forearm, injecting me with tetanus.