Coming home from work Wednesday, pulling off downhill parallel parking with ease, some ten-year-olds on cool bikes accost me as I get out of my car. “Do you want to buy a C-Book so we can buy a new teacher?” “A new teacher?!” “Yeah, and we don’t have any gym stuff, either.” “Huh. What’s a…
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deter.mining
I have grown weary of the politics of not talking about politics. As Election 2004 approaches, we are bombarded with misinfotainment and general media absurdity (both ketchup and mustard?). Being blessed without cable television, I’ve been able to avoid the majority of the least common denominator noise brought to us by filled with blanks. But…
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warmer
It’s been over a month since my last update. I would love to regale all with tales of fantastica, but not much of celebratory or even noteworthy note’s been going on. Joy’s concrete but diffuse and too tied to the dark too deep, especially when I’m out of it. Saturday morning I got up at…
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not safe for humans
i swore i wouldn’t watch it. the moment i heard it happened, i swore i didn’t want to see. it was linked from a friend’s site. “not safe for work, life, humans” is all it said, and curiosity clicked. when the media player stalled at the opening, i knew immediately this is it but only…
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happy new year
I don’t make resolutions, I make demands, and I want to get what I want. I want a job I care about that’s not in a suburb, I want to return to Uptown slash “that feeling,” and I want to ride a bike everywhere I need and would care to go. Yesterday I saw the…
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r.i.p. x.o.
Next Tuesday the 28th, Prefuse 73 plays at the 400 Bar. Shortly over a year ago, I vowed never to return to that venue—humid, smoky, and insufferably jammed—where I witnessed one of the musicians I admired the most make an ass of himself and a fool of me. I don’t know whether he was drunk…
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catching up
Sometime in 2000 Fargo-friend Luke asked if I went to the Marilyn Manson concert. I probably snickered. I remember being curious but not enough to pay to stand in one spot at the seats-only venue, especially without being a fan. I would’ve been bored. Probably would’ve broken something. “You missed out,” Luke told me, and…
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the therebefore
Friday after work I drove to Fargo doubting, was I doing the right thing? hanging onto seven years that hang and hold me. One of the very few things that happened that happened in The Teaching Emotion is that a nobody band named AFI played in a basement in West Fargo, North Dakota, September 27,…
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last long
Check it—I have the IN-TER-NET. It was a long and difficult two and some weeks, but I have survived, and may even be slightly better for it. I’m all moved into my übercool apartment which is shaping up ship with my collage-crazy way of having my way. I also pull busted things off boulevards. The…
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disparity key
I listen to music I like. I often read liner notes at least once and attend shows like a fiend. But I am not a fan girl. I rarely know the names of individual performers and nine times out of ten the first time I see them (what they look like at all) is when…
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a perfect cycle
I move Labor Day weekend, all right! and it will be the seventh time in four years. I don’t have a real good reason to push on this time—the rent’s cheap and the place ain’t bad—but I do know this: every time I move, things change. New environments make new thoughts, and I escape routine…
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get comfortable
…because this entry is long. Go make some iced tea or something. I’m serious. Ready? All right. First off, 28 Days Later blew my freakin’ mind. Apocalyptic, telling, thought-and-feel-provoking, the plot was maddeningly simple almost edging absurdity but delivered so well I didn’t care. Belief suspended, I was shoved inside, and the cinematography… astounding. Very visually…
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the thief is me
For graduation I got new shoes, oatmeal cookies, and a digital camera. Today I look like this: I visited Fargo this past week in pity-preparation for ureteroscopic surgery to remove my kidney stone. All those hugs from family and friends must have jarred it loose, because I passed it through my system Saturday night making…
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have fun at recess, kids
Saturday night at eight my friend Anna and I went to the Kitty Cat Klub (horrible name—gorgeous-awesome atmosphere) in Dinkytown for some chai and life/thought catch-up. After about an hour we noticed a horde of people flooding the streets. The University of Minnesota Gophers had just won the NCAA National Hockey Championship in Buffalo, NY.…
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whoaaaaaa-ohhhhhhhh i’m still alive
I passed a kidney stone on Wednesday—it was the most excruciating experience I’ve ever and will ever have (until I pass another; this was my second, and I am too young). It’s reportedly the most painful event one can undergo and still survive—worse than broken bones, major surgery, giving birth, and getting shot. I like…
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joy, rage and adventures in interlibrary loan
Greetings. The holidays were great. I’m still on vacation until the 21st, yay. Been busy working and trying to nurse my sick computer back to health. If you have the piece-of-junk MSN Messenger tag-along program “loadqm” running in the background of your Windows, kill it, now. At least I’m pretty sure that’s what’s been giving…
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Things To Bring: Ticket, Earplugs, Aspirin, Sweat, Pen, Paper, Awe
Tomorrow at seven a.m. I embark on a nine-hour journey via Greyhound to Chicago to see Underworld, the techno-electro pulse-trigger god brigade who in my circa six years of listening to them have provided nights on end of mediation and dancing around my room like everyone’s watching, not to mention imbued within my writing the…
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Northeast Minneapolis, 10.06.02, 1:13 AM
Nic begins a story when holy shit! the car ahead of us hits a pole in the median of Hennepin and sails through the air. We watch between the wipers/through the drops as the vehicle does a quarter turn considers flipping clean over but nosedives instead into the concrete CRUNCH I panic pumping brakes barely…
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stepping beyond
This piece was first composed July 10, 2001, as an email to three friends then expanded and revised in the spring of 2002 in a creative nonfiction course. Yes, it’s a true story—the Real MacKaye. 🙂 If ever you eat at My Viet in Fargo, North Dakota, check out the upright beverage cooler crammed with fruit…
Narratives
Longer posts of creative nonfiction.