Oh, no, this is what it looks like inside my head
Stream of consciousness served to you from a moving train
I have motion sickness from writing emails on the train and it’s making me feel so very modern. I know exactly where my canister of Dramamine is and I hope she’s having fun with the cough drops and pens in my other bag! Earlier, on a different train, I listened to a woman call 3 separate people to tell them she was going to, “A Beautiful Noise, the Neil Diamond musical. Yeah, Neil Diamond. And apparently, it’s his birthday today…”–hitting the exact same beats every time. By now she is singing “Sweet Caroline” with the audience, or whatever it is one does at a Neil Diamond Broadway musical.
I just think if everyone had 2 hours to eat a big salad in the middle of the day, they would. In some ways, putting one together is the most meditative part of my afternoon (brag). Back when I worked at a gourmet doughnut bakery, one of my coworkers looked at me like I’d finally lost it when I said I was too tired to eat a salad, even though all I wanted was to crack open a Caesar kit and mix it up right in the bag like a walking taco. The chewing! I told her. The entire ordeal is time-consuming. Tell me you understand. My favorite thing about working in that bakery was jabbing a straw through the lid of a quart container for drinking water and writing my name on a piece of masking tape to mark my territory. My least favorite thing is not something I should post on the internet. Everyone who worked there was always exhausted and involuntarily filling their lungs with flour and sugar while Post Malone radio played — I loved nearly every single person in that bunch. After my first day working back of house, I couldn’t lift my arms and genuinely believed I needed to go to the hospital. After a few months, I was Jillian Michaels jacked. If you want to be strong, don’t bother with a gym membership–just move a 50-pound bag of flour from one side of a room to another intermittently over the course of 12 hours. On the not so rare occasion I’d work more than the scheduled 8 hours, I’d get home, heat up Trader Joe’s gnocchi in the microwave and then eat it in the shower (which never saved me time like I was sure it would). Once, after packaging a monstrous order before the clock struck 6 am, arranging hundreds of doughnuts in ratatouille-like wheels, we poured cheap beer (which was in fact there to flavor a Super Bowl-themed doughnut) into paper coffee cups and cheers’d just as the day’s customers began filing in. It was very The Bear before The Bear.
My friend Maddie gave me a pair of Kelly green pants and I think it’s safe to say they’re now Kayla green. This is not the same thing, but I remember getting into earth tones and thinking I’d reinvented fashion. “Getting into earth tones” is hilarious. In 2021, I kept saying that brown was “very in.” It used to make my friend Mary laugh, so I kept saying it. As it turns out, these delusions about fairly neutral color combinations are a lesbian rite of passage.
I wanted to write about the 20th anniversary of *NSYNC’s No Strings Attached and then learned that milestone was already stoned a few years ago. Randomly, a few nights ago, I found myself listening to that record from start to finish… so basically, JC Chasez and his friends told me a bedtime story that was like don’t fear Y2K, girl, you’re so sexy. Seriously, I was doing a close reading of “Space Cowboy” and the lines “We don't need all these prophecies/Tellin' us what's a sign/'Cause paranoia ain't the way to live your life from day to day/So leave your doubts and your fears behind” remain our best defense against doomscrolling.
I bought a box of animal crackers at Walgreens because I am always in pursuit of delight. Did you know they have koala shaped cookies now? The other day, I couldn’t stop using the word “nefarious” at the expense of everyone who had to speak with me. What does it mean now that the word “awesome” doesn’t make me cringe? What does it mean now that I am obsessed with reading on a Kindle? Did you know that Guy Fieri doesn’t eat eggs? If I ever meet him, that’ll be the first thing out of my mouth. Second, I will show him a photo of me in college dressed in his likeness (but scandalized) for Halloween. Having studied poetry in college means that sometimes the crossword clue is “didn’t give forever” and I sigh or say “aw!” out loud (the answer was “lent” which is arguably not so aw-worthy). I recently had a dream where I owned a typewriter and a very good friend of mine requested to use it during work hours, Monday through Friday, and I said yes. We had joint custody of a typewriter. That was the whole dream.
The very sassy conductor won’t stop using the intercom to tell everyone to start gathering their belongings, so I’ll leave you with the proverbial wisdom of five geniuses: Don't be afraid at all...'cause up in outer space, there's no gravity to fall. Put your mind and your body to the test, 'cause up in outer space, it's like the wild, wild west.
Big disjointed sorry-about-this love,
kaylasomething