FREE PEOPLE (orig. published on myspace, April 3, 2006).

I got my "Free People" catalog in the mail tonight. It was as apropos a catalog as I could have gotten. The women in each shot are standing alone in some artistic setting. Their faces are unexpressive in artistic ways. The message: these women are probably thinking something terribly interesting. How could they not? Dressed in their cruelty-free, victorian-era-floozy-rosy-cheeked-prarie-girl-inspired duds... These are the clothes, the settings, for interesting thoughts. I don't know what the message is suposed to be (other than buy, buy, buy), but the one that struck me was how comical it is that the women in the "Free People" catalog all look remarkably like inmates at the Andersonville Women's Penitentiary. Things have been rough on the prarie this year; the rosy-cheeked maidens have gone without milk, bread, and meat for months...
Anyway, minus the super-skinny and trendy clothes part, I, too, am sitting by myself in a completely artistic setting tonight. It's a Monday (that's a day with a mood and a feeling; tuesday and wednesday aren't nearly as evocative). There's a tornado threat sweeping through and it's pouring rain, lightening, thundering (interesting weather). My roommate moved out this morning and the apartment is so empty it echoes. Because there aren't overhead lights in some of the rooms, you can see the shine of the wooden floor and the dustballs illuminated whenever the lightening strikes. The kitchen light conveniently burned out as soon as I walked in the door. My cat keeps trying to eat from my bowl of honey nut cheerios (the only meal I can cook from the light of the refridgerator) and every time I push her away you can hear her meow of protest three floors down, reverberating off the front door. This place is EMPTY, and in so being, is completely ripe with artistry. But I've got nothing. All I can do tonight is look, flip pages, acknowledge the pathetic fallacy, turn on "Nanny 911," weakly permit the night's narrative to come from prime time TV instead...