ElectricVacation

some kind of getaway

[electricvacation]

I shriek and try to collect the air around me like blankets nothing pulls forward from nothing and the narrative I've always known barrels along not forceful enough to make me a casualty still, I am not left standing

[electricvacation]

practice falling

She often pictures herself tripping up the stairs--a chin-first affair with teeth knocking on grip taped concrete. She often pictures herself sliding across the road on her cheek, hair pulled from scalp by sticky bits of asphalt. She does not often trip, or fall. But she is an expert on exactly what it is like. She thinks that maybe all of the practicing in her head is what keeps it from happening more often; the way a person who often drops things begins to be quite good at catching things. She is aware that one day she will find herself to be no expert at all. A shock can have no schematic. A thing once dropped can only be so often caught. Still, she emerges from the subway station, practicing.

[electricvacation]

New jobs always take a minute to settle into, and I definitely have a few things to get the hang of, but loving the first album we’re promoting isn’t taking me any time at all, luckily.

[electricvacation]

Rookie » Faith Healer: Cosmic Troubles

Just what I’ve been needing. 

[electricvacation]

run out

It's just not in me, she exclaimed-- not in my pockets, not in my waistband or my sock elastic, not in the folds of my skin or the nest of my hair. You will not find it--I have not found it. Will you help me find it? A collection of clanking coins and moth-like gum wrappers made their way to the pavement as she shook out her purse in aid of the search. She was on her knees now. To be honest, I don't know that it ever was here, she whimpered.

[lindseyifkljdskfljdskl-deactiva]

[electricvacation]

How we get into these things

They watch me, look at me with some kind of interest. Only after a minute I'm not such a good idea, so they quit. It takes them a minute 'cause men's reflexes are so bad, she adds. Mine though, mine are good. I know right away they are not so good an idea, but I think, why should it matter? Someone's got to use the bad ideas, too, or else the world won't do no figuring, the world won't have no mistakes to learn from. I ain't gonna hold up my arms and make a cross about it, but learn from me, she says, and gets into the car with a man she's met just tonight while trying to buy a single cigarette, while searching through her purse trying to tell a nickel from a dime.

[electricvacation]

local/express

"What 're you mad for? What're you so mad at?" They teased her while sitting on the benches. "Cause I didn't fall in love with no one. No man, no woman. And she's in some cab, off in love with some new one all of a sudden, and I'm waiting on this train that's barely coming, and when it it does it won't take me anywhere but local, and I've been there--never in love even once."

[luckypeach]

From issue 14, a new comic by Lisa Hanawalt about horses, meat, and obsession.

[electricvacation]

Why Lucky Peach nails it: Part 1 mil

[willbryantplz]

Untitled, 2012, ink on paper.

[electricvacation]

So very into this whole album and ready for it to come out already. She's going in such a solid direction.

[electricvacation]

Yaaaas

is it Thursday yet?

[electricvacation]

Patti Smith’s Eternal Flame

"...and I just want to get Elvis Presley’s gun out and shoot the television out of their soul."

Patti Smith forever and for always.

[electricvacation]

sitting down to dinner

"Nancy, now is when we drink." She gave her cheers, "until we see the bottoms of the bottles, as they say!" "Oh, Nancy, until we see the bottom of the sea!" I pushed her glass from her fingers to the table and pushed my hot mouth to hers. I wasn't kind about it, but I knew she hated niceties-knew she hated those who might hold her hand all winter's long when it might just as well be warmer out of the wind and in the pocket of her own wool coat. She allowed the kiss to go on until the taste of lemon and whiskey wore off. "You've begun to taste like an old man again," she sighed. "And what's so wrong with that?" I did not point out that the 9 years between us did not make me so much older than her as she might wish. "Old men are not for kissing in bars--they are for sitting down to dinner with, for going on morning walks with, for drinking pot after pot of decaffeinated coffee with. They are for growing old with, and I have no intention of starting that just yet." "We must be good for more than just that," I complained, but in that moment I could not honestly think of a thing. "For whisker burns and ruining my soft cheeks and my good name, maybe!" "We are apparently at least good for teasing," I reasoned, pulling her hand from her lap to my thigh. "Yes, oh yes, I'd almost forgotten about teasing..." she moved her hand upwards slowly now, without looking me in face, as if searching out an eye to meet and wink at, someone to let in on the joke she found our physical association to be. If I were Hemingway I would've grabbed her then and gotten it over with and then written about how much she liked it, but all this talk about old men (specifically the fact that I was one) had put me off the path to be in that sort of motion. Besides, Hemingway was an old man too and I'm not so sure she would've taken to him any better. Instead I set her to talking about her job, about my children, about her sister, about the illnesses in our parents that might very well lay dormant in us.And when our talk began to slow I picked up the tab and I helped her on with her coat, another pair of things I had suddenly remembered old men to be quite good for. We said our goodbyes and as I opened the door and let her out into the street ahead of us I made sure both her hands were pressed warmly into their pockets.

[electricvacation]

That was the hardest phone call I've ever been a part of.

I miss my sister.

[lukesdiner]

[electricvacation]

The hardware store she'd entered into seemed a bit confused. In the display window was a large sign that glowed NAILS in large, pink letters that appeared to have been lifted from the entrance of a manicurist's shop. Alongside it were banners in a red, white, and blue wavy font that declared an Independence! Day! Sale! into existence every single weekend of the year. Inside, a shopper could find whatever they might be looking for--frayed and half used balls of twine, water logged boards, and washers in every size but the ones the bolts came in. She knelt down to give a needy Persian a stroke, then flipped the sign on the door to OPEN. The world was full of small impossibilities no one would admit to, and she took pride in offering only the wrong tools for the job. If a thing had hitherto been unfixable, it had remained that way because people had only ever tried the right tools.