i can't say it's the most exciting article ever written, but it is my first one in a pretty big newspaper:

http://www.pennlive.com/patriotnews/stories/index.ssf?/base/living/1197505566284610.xml&coll=1&thispage=1

eastern state

This summer, we visited the Eastern State Penitentiary because I wanted to see Al Capone's jail cell (it was lavishly decorated with velvet furniture and gold-colored lamps-- what a life, those goddamn mobsters). At one point we reached in the middle of the jail, which is shaped almost like an octopus, with a clearly defined center and hallways that spring out from it like tentacles. Each hallway brings you to a totally different part of the place. "Which part should we go down?" I asked Jen. "I don't know," she replied. "I guess we can just pick one." We went down Hallway No. 6, door after door of moldy bricks, waning sunlight streaming in through the dusty skylights. We reached the end, which brought us into the setting sun and the grass of the surrounding jail yard. Where would we have came out if we had chosen Hallway No. 5, or Hallway No. 7? Would we have ended up in Death Row, or maybe the exercise yard? All we knew is that we had taken this path, Hallway No. 6, and now here we were, not totally satisfied, wondering what we had missed. So we turned around, walked back down the hallway into the middle. We started all over again.

fear

"You know, the world is a big place," the father says to his son. He stretches his arms out widely. "Larger than this, even," he continues. The son, through his tears, cracks a smile. "Dad," he says. "I know." They sit in silence for several minutes as the son struggles to regain control of his sobbing. Finally -- just the afterquake, an occasional spasm. "Dad. Please tell me what to do," he says. "Please tell me what to do." The father shakes his head sadly, disappears.

her anger comes in waves. low tide: it is a muted yet ever-present feeling. she can push it aside or bring it forth as she wishes. high tide: she shakes underneath her covers. her mind is a blood-red slate. sweat pours from her forehead, back of the neck. sometimes it feels like a riptide, like she has been pulled away from reality, only able to focus on that, the anger, the unfairness of it all. she feels as though she is the only person in the world who has experienced this kind of anger, or that kind of love. often she feels as though she is drowning in it, in this sea of anger, and she can not be saved, she can not learn to let go of the weight that pulls her into her own blackness, she does not yet understand forgiveness, moving on, the letting of others to be happy.

sunday morning, 12/08

It's 8:10 a.m. and Mom is already standing in the living room, hands on her hips, her face cocked to the side in a state of steadied concentration; it's Christmas-decoration time, which of course can not be taken lightly. Neither, apparently, can it be done at an un-ungodly hour. I sit on the couch for a good 20 minutes yawning pronouncedly until she tells me, "You know, you could be putting decorations on the tree." She disappears into the laundry room and I let out an audible scowl, but secretly I feel lazy and am glad to be given a task. Sifting through the boxes of our decorations -- my and my brother's pictures glued on styrofoam balls, circa 1990; a reindeer clothespin i decorated in kindergarten; seventeen different variations on a Santa Claus head -- I begin to feel a bit nostalgic. The Christmas music is playing, there's snow on the ground, the tree is lit up already -- but I don't feel anything. Nothing, in fact, except the vague feeling of wanting to feel something, some kind of Christmas magic like I used to feel when I was little. "It doesn't really feel like Christmas this year," I say to Mom as she comes back in the room and admires my efforts. "No, it doesn't," she agrees, and it's because I'm old now and I know everything I'm getting; it's all sitting in plastic bags on the floor of her bedroom. Sure, it will be boxed and wrapped in holiday paper with a gift tag reading "To Meg from Santa," but it will be that sweater I picked out last week at the mall. No surprises this year. Is the magic gone again until I have kids, until I can make surprises for someone else, see their faces light up with glee as mine once did?

"Well, your father went to the Men's Club this morning," Mom says with a sigh. The Men's Club, or "church," as my dad puts it -- not quite a religious man -- is an "exclusive" club only for men so that they can, presumably, sit around, get drunk and talk about women. And then my dad will come home at 1:00 p.m., and he will lay on the couch, start to watch an episode of "The Sopranos" and then fall asleep and snore loudly while Mom makes dinner. It's nothing new, same old Sunday routine, has been since we were children, since I can remember. He will wake up for dinner and make a bunch of stupid jokes because he's been drinking, and we will laugh a little, pretend to ignore that he is drunk. I will do the dishes and Mom will go up to her room and watch TV until about 10 p.m. and then she will go to sleep, because she has to get up at 6 a.m. to go to work in the morning. My dad will remain on the couch all night and watch TV intermittently between sleeping. He will wake up for smoke breaks. He will cough loudly. He will microwave leftovers and eat them. He will change the channel.

Maybe, like in my family, it's the routine that makes this Christmas less magical. We are not decorating because we particularly want to, but because that's all we've ever known to do. We buy presents for one another because we're supposed to; that's just what people do on Christmas in these parts. What if we broke the routine? If one year I didn't decorate the tree, but left it bare, in fact didn't put it up at all? What if we changed everything? What if we weren't afraid?

That tree, though. It really does look nice.

i guess i'm one of those weirdos who would rather be wearing eight layers of clothing than a thin tank top. but when i breathe this air in -- it goes the whole way through me, and comes back out. i can see it, this miniature cloud i've created, proof of my existence. you don't get that shit in the summer.

our dilemma

because try as i might i can not stop looking at the picture of that beautiful woman in the perfume ad, her blonde hair curling down her back in waves, hands caressing a door frame, everything perfect down to the sleek, black, manicured nails. a man in the background, perfect five o'clock shadow framing his chiseled face, wearing a plaid shirt and Converse shoes, the ultimate manly outfit. he says: "men like me like women like this." the woman, of course, is wonderfully thin--- not too much so, so that she looks sickly, but just enough so that her body is gently curved in all the right places. i think about my own body and feel ashamed, and then feel ashamed for feeling ashamed by this ad, this propaganda for Dior, but what can i do? i buy the perfume. i dream about perfection. it never ends.

red light

there is a lady waiting for the red light to turn green, and when it does, she does not move. the travelers behind her are becoming agitated, their faces bearing expressions of annoyance. and still the car does not budge. now they begin to honk, rapidly, their hands flying in the hair as if to say, "c'mon lady, move it!" She hears the honks and slams on the gas pedal to compensate for lost time. i see her expression as she passes me -- flustered, confused. that's life, lady. you can't keep your foot on the brakes for too long, can't stay in one place for too long. you gotta keep moving.