Obzocky

Built-in metaphor: today marks the Full Hunger Moon. 51 degrees. Opened windows upstairs and tried not to jump out of them on creative impulse.

Everyone's ten fleshed out this emissary of digital data in such sincerity and uniqueness I reconsidered scrapping the exercise. Also something about the image looks like Communist propaganda. Thank you Vampire, Undesirable Number One, Cinnamon, Eager Enid, and Tai. You're overdue Jani, All.That.Wander.Are.Not.Lost, and Alba.

1) My internal clock runs on a night rhythm, always has. As a little kid I stayed up reading beneath blankets with a flashlight radio and drank warm tapwater tea. A 4-6am to 10am sleep schedule  disdains breakfast, dinner at 9pm demands a smaller portion and thwarts bingeing despite elevated ghrelin.

2) I'm obsessed with plane crashes and failure analysis. Mostly because I'm pteromerhanophobic. Thank me on your flight for mentally repeating mantras that keep our Boeing from falling out of the sky.

3) Too busy fast forwarding a cassette to the Stone Roses' "Love Spreads", I didn't notice a truck running his red light and totaled my car at 17.

4) Thighs touching means no pants in public and nine years in skirts, collared shirts with 3/4 sleeves, high-waisted dresses, drugstore brand black tights, combat boots or wooden heels.

5) I wish I developed artistic ability beyond doodles of faceless people. (A sorry outlet, Pictionary.)  People assume I must be an artist because I’m weird and it kills me.

6) In second grade I started reading the newspaper daily, just obituaries at first. No idea why.

7) I cannot produce an accent in any language I've studied. When I worked retail, customers asked if I was foreign or my parents immigrants, which must indicate some unknown speech impediment. Three possible causes: southern upbringing, Yankee parents, orthodontics.

8) I admired prominent vertebrae at my lowest weight and became an amargasaurus in the bathroom mirror. Hunched profile, tossing back my dry lank hair, roaring like a dinosaur. I weighed myself far more than necessary for piece of mind to perform this embarrassing Cretaceous caricature.

9) I've been out to friends since eighth grade, founded my school district's Gay/Straight Alliance, received a community award for LGBT activism, did an interview about gay youth for the local alternative paper, was nicknamed "that dyke chick," yet family members aren't in the know. This previous National Coming Out Day (10/11) I explained how queer is part political identity, part rejection of binary gender and implied equality of affection in bisexuality to my mother and 22 year old sister. The former thinks I'm (still) forcing myself to be different, the latter thinks I'm (still) in denial about latent lesbianism.

10) Zen sadism appeals to my spiritual vacancy. A favorite koan:  Whenever anyone asked him about Zen, the great master Gutei would quietly raise one finger into the air. A boy in the village began to imitate this behavior. Whenever he heard people talking about Gutei's teachings, he would interrupt the discussion and raise his own finger. Gutei heard about the boy's mischief. When he saw him in the street, he seized him and cut off his finger. The boy cried and began to run off, but Gutei called out to him. When the boy turned to look, Gutei raised his finger into the air. At that moment the boy became enlightened. Another: Say this is a stick and I will beat you with it. Say this is not a stick and I will also beat you with it. Now, what will you say? Accept life likes to fuck with us and suffer your own terms. Would you lose a finger for enlightenment?