Cognitive Functions Brainstorm (Ti And Te)

in the sixth months after graduating from college, with my very expensive degree from a good college, i ate nothing but bread. i worked at a bakery / cafe / restaurant and got half off one meal per shift but it was still too expensive even then. but at the end of every night we would throw out all the bread loaves that hadn’t sold, which was most of them, every night. we would fill up ten boxes to give away to a shelter and then we could take anything we could carry, and i couldn’t afford a half off deconstructed sandwich, but i could fill the cabinets of my apartment with bread. everyone who worked there was just like me, subsisting on discarded, overpriced bread. 

(when the managers’ backs were turned i was taught to leave the trashbags of bread behind the dumpster rather than inside it, because it was locked after everyone left to prevent people from stealing from it. we would say we were going out to stack chairs and instead stack prepackaged salads prepared that morning in the narrow space between wall and dumpster, but that’s not what this is about.)

we were working valentine’s day, a little bit miserable about it, because customers are somehow worse on a holiday about love, and even if we were single we didn’t want to be here, and most of us had people we’d rather be spending the day with, and the snappish, hardass manager was working that day, and everyone could not wait for the day to be over. 

we had a boxes of those bakery tissue sheets around and i was twisting it in my hands and i thought about how the first night my uncle spent with my aunt he had to get up early for work but didn’t want to wake her and the whole thing hadn’t been planned, exactly, so he (a roofer by trade and a golden glove boxer by sport) went into the kitchen and took some paper towels and twisted them between his big, scarred hands until it formed a sweeter shape and when my aunt work up it was to a paper towel rose on her pillow. 

so i used a couple sheets of bakery tissue to make a rose and walked up to my coworker who stared at me with a rictus smile and i gave it to her, trying not overthink if it was a weird thing to do. her smile slipped and she asked “you made this?” holding it carefully, like it wasn’t something her two year old son could have made with his pudgy hands, and i shrugged and got more milk from the back. 

then another coworker held the steamer too long when frothing milk, not on accident but because he was irritated, so i rolled another rose and tucked it in his apron pocket as i walked by. then it was just one more of us up front and it was nothing, thirty seconds of twisting paper to take the stack of cookies out of her hands and hand her a tissue paper rose, her lined face lifting into a grin as she proudly tucked it into the chest pocket of her shirt and i may as well have been standing in front of the ovens for how hot my face felt. 

it was such a silly thing to do, i felt ridiculous, giving away hastily constructed tissue paper roses on valentine’s day, clumsy artful garbage. then one of the servers walked by and noticed and so i made her one too, and then other servers came by, leaning over the glass, and complimenting the flowers with big eyes, and i laughed and made more, still not sure if it was sincere, but even if it wasn’t, i figured making them one and handing it over was better than saying no. 

then i went to the back again and the dishwasher yelled out “where’s mine? what about us?” and he was too sweet to ever be anything less than sincere, so someone kept an eye on the door to the manager’s office as i stood in the sweltering kitchen and rolled clumsy tissue paper roses, enough for everyone 

and by the time the day ended, everyone had one, everyone wore one, tucked in their shirt or their apron or stuck in their hair or taped to the top of their pen. everyone was a little less miserable, smiling like we were all on in on the joke, although i don’t think any of us knew the punchline 

this story doesn’t have a punchline either. i just sometimes think of how much better some crumpled tissue paper made things and think that it can be that easy, sometimes, if we’re sincere and don’t overthink it too much

I think the human condition is just finding magic in the compositions of people's mundanity. Knowing they love strawberry perfumes and aloe moisturizers, knowing their favourite ice-cream flavours and the song they can sing in their sleep, gosh knowing their sleep schedules and sharing dreams during breakfast. Knowing the motifs of their grief and the childhood stories behind the swings, the joy of knowing how they completed their day with 15 math problems, one incomplete art assignment, a sandwich for breakfast, a kind smile of a stranger who passed them, and not to mention dropping their phone 5 times. The inherent comfort in knowing the stories inside their kitchen, where the glasses are kept with their favorite mug adorning a Studio Ghilbi character and why they eat noodles in a dented red bowl. Their heat/cold tolerance, their spice tolerance, coffee orders and their favourite snack aisle at the grocery store. The art accounts they follow and their comfort youtube videos and their unhinged coping mechanisms. Oh the mortifying ordeal to be known but oh the gratifying relief in being known. Comfort lies in these compositions of mundanity. I think love hides in mundanity and I think magic is just being human, just being unfiltered like toothpaste stains pajamas, just being in the presence of each other

I’ve been unnaturally happy all day and I am not sure if this is a good thing *throws phone up in the air and laughs idiotically while silly songs play really loudly in the background*

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cym as fav lyrics

Aaaaaaa anon you must forgive me for being so late about it, I had one hell of a ride choosing song lyrics *pants as if I'd been running*

But eeee it will be a long post-

• @shecriesalonemp3

"Listen close and don't be stoned

I'll be here in the morning

'Cause I'm just floating

Your cigarette still burns

Your messed up world will thrill me

...

Alison, I'll drink your wine

And wear your clothes when we're both high

Alison, I said we're sinking

But she laughs and tells me it's just fine

I guess she's out there somewhere"

- Alison (Slowdive)

• @its-toasted

"Take everything you have in front of you

Make every movement, do it to the groove

You will not be happy for long if you're working

And what would be the point if it did ever surface?

...

Wake up to the rhythm of the city and I try to remember

Even my brothers have some trouble with

Each other since since those things fell apart

It's the way that things are

It's the way that it is

...

Even when you split me up, groovin' to the sound of the laughter

And if I listen to it closely I can

Still hear all the love in his heart

Every time I take a look at the skyline it makes me feel better

'Cause I just miss you down here where the other people try to move on"

- Blue Coupe (Twin Peaks)

• @deviocat

"Oh, you can't hear me 'cause I sing to a different age

And you should fear me 'cause I believe in a different age

But I live in the city that lives in a different age

Oh, I live in a city that lives in a different age

Where all the poets are writing memoirs

And I'm still singing songs

Oh, all the poets are writing memoirs

And I'm still singing songs"

- A Different Age (Current Joys)

• @lacexleaves

"I used to think of ferris wheel light sounds

The Friday hum of neons and blue

But now they're like circular cages

Of grated tin and rusted wind

Hey, now, who really cares?

Hey, won't somebody listen

Let me say what's been on my mind

Can I bring it out to you

I need someone to talk to

And no one else will spare me the time"

- Hey, Who Really Cares? (Linda Perhacs)

• @francesco-bernoulli-gang

"Angels smoking cigarettes on rooftops in fishnets in the morning with the

Moon still glowing

And here comes Jesus in an Astrovan rolling down the strip again

He's stoned while Jerry plays

Life ain't ever what it seems

These dreams are more than paper things

And it's alright mama you're afraid

I'll be poor along the way

I don't wanna see those tears again

You know, Jesus drives an Astrovan

Yes, he does (I say woo)"

- Astrovan (Mt. Joy)

• @pani-puri

"Pulling up, getting down

This whole place is crazy town

Music bumping and the lights gone down

Never felt at home in any place I found

Oh, I live in a cold, white wind

And I feel the chill coming over me again"

- Butterfly (Adrianne Lenker)

• @anjo-umbra

"Put your hands on the wheel

Let the golden age begin

Let the window down

Feel the moonlight on your skin

Let the desert wind

Cool your aching head

Let the weight of the world

Drift away instead

These day I barely get by

I don't even try

It's a treacherous road

With a desolated view

There's distant lights

But here they're far and few

And the sun don't shine

Even when its day

You gotta drive all night

Just to feel like you're ok"

- The Golden Age (Beck)

• @roseusnoctua

"Satellite, headlines read

Someone's secrets you've seen

Eyes and ears have been

Satellite dish in my yard

Tell me more, tell me more

Who's the king of your satellite castle?

Winter's cold spring erases

And the calm away by the storm is chasing

Everything good needs replacing

Look up, look down all around, hey satellite

Rest high above the clouds no restrictions

Television we bounce 'round the world

And while I spend these hours

Five senses reeling

I laugh about this weatherman's satellite eyes"

- Satellite (Dave Matthews Band)

• @sidereusimber

"And though I may be getting older

Know that I'm going with you

Know that I'm hanging on

to the things that you said

The things that you said

...

I've felt my soul

Rise up from my body when

I look into your blue eyes

...

If cosmic force

Is real at all

It's come between you and I"

- Some Things Cosmic (Angel Olsen)

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have you ever had a friend, like as in a normal friendship? ever?

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my activeness on tumblr directly correlates to how much i should not be on tumblr in this moment

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Charles Wright, Nine-Panel Yaak River Screen

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