to embrace, to appreciate

the colors are much brighter now, it's like they really want to tell the truth

Thu, 26 Aug 2004 14:17:25 GMT

it's just that time of year when we push ourselves ahead...

you're invited to join me in the search for better things.
xoxo.

dichotomy;

Wed, 25 Aug 2004 21:54:18 GMT

the girl has pale blue eyes and forty seven different shades in her dirty blonde hair. she is walking a triangle of city blocks in pink heels, pink like the stripes in the skirt she wears - trimmed with lace - and the blazer she bought on a whim. pink like her lips that ache - can lips ache? hers do, the way her legs moan softly after seven miles in the summer sun - and pink like the trim of her bag overflowing with pages, to be read, to be written upon, and prescription drugs.
the men stare longer than the boys her age, but they stare at her face, her grace. she is taking long strides on uncertain legs, she is smiling because the chemicals in her brain have sorted themselves out - today she feels playful, full of whimsy. she is creating her own aura of mystery - let them wonder what i'm thinking. i am young and possess the illusion of beauty. let my eyes glint with the hint of a thousand secrets i may or may not be able to keep. let them wonder why i'm here, let my lips pronounce purpose, let determination drip from my fingertips - she can't stop inflating her sense of self. her veins overflow with a venti soy chai tea latte. she lengthens her stride. another man, roughly forty five and aging much like fine wine, catches her eye. his lips part. a smile (hi). she doesn't look away (hey) but walks straight and turns on to 6th avenue off of 48th.
between fifth and sixth the people change. she begins to feel out of place amungst tourists and t-shirts proclaiming i heart new york, amungst chinese slippers for a dollar and 'authentic' lacoste polo shirts spread out on card tables. the men that stare no longer wear suits, their skin darker, they sit in groups outside souviners shops and leer at her, they lower their faces. she folds her arms across her chest, feels smaller and raises her gaze to prevent them from stealing her self worth in a split second of acknowlegement. she likes to pretend there is nothing indecent about the attention she gets from men. her own lies are easier to digest when they dress like gentleman. oh how a suit jacket can excuse crude gestures, how a tie and a briefcase can double as an alibi for wandering eyes. it's the tight white t-shirts that make her shudder, their shameless scent of sex. on park avenue she replies, but on the west side she just walks on by.
still she is magnetic today, a high wattage light bulb. she glances at the reflection of her calves in the dirty store window full of neon lights blinking 'xxx' and 'cheap peep show'. her legs are long and lean. the world is dirty but she is clean. she is young, talented, and on most days modest, but today even she knows she is beautiful.

the girl has pale blue eyes and forty seven different shades in her dirty blonde hair. her eyes are rimmed in red - allergy season, slightly puffy from crying and he hair is back, braided, off her neck, but greasy little pieces stick to her forehead. she is curled up in a baby blue blanket, blue like the bright tight tanktop she that clings to her flesh revealing every dimple, both her nipples, the convex curve of her belly button, blue like the boy short underwear - trimmed with lace - that barely covers her bottom, and blue like her mood, a cheerless disposition, the nocturnal exhaustion that follows a day of complacent vigor.
nobody would love her when she's curled up like this. all the curls in her hair are unwinding, there are hints of mascara deposited in the corners of her eyes. she is rejected by imaginary friends and neglected by imaginary lovers. and when the phone rings she is determined not to answer - let them wonder where i am and what i'm doing, let them feel guilty that they didn't call me back sooner, earlier, when i was still so prepared to play pretty, let them miss me, oh but they won't miss me - she can't stop drowning in her own self pity.
three cupcakes later and her focus changes. she examines her waist, pinches skin between her thumb and index finger and sighs. she isn't fat, no, she's much too healthy for that, but her stomach is pouting, aching slightly from her own weakness. she is folding up like origami, tucking into a tight little ball on her bed. she is halfway under covers, her head buried in throw pillows, curling her calves around egyptian cotton sheets.
tonight she is lonely for no reason, her edges are frayed and her spirit is tainted with unsolicited desires. her lips quiver and she stares into the shiny button eyes of plush dogs and stuffed stallions. she is vulnerable, a child, and the world is much too large when she feels this small. she is falling, fading, forgetting that tomorrow she will rise up all over again.

chiaroscuro (literally lightdark in italiano)

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 01:43:43 GMT

my day feels like the color gradients we had to draw with ebony pencil in art 1 freshman year of high school, starting with the white of the paper and fading to total black. i woke up late and actually felt awake, which is reason enough to celebrate when your sleep patterns are as spastic as mine. there were good countdown shows on vh1 while i did my hour of cardio at the gym. i found every item on my mom's disoriented grocery list. i ate leftover salmon for lunch. i read and wrote emails with a giddy smile on my face. i read more short stories by lorrie moore and commented on my classmates fiction while watching a bad movie. then my dad came home and yelled at me. i didn't wash all the conditioner out of my hair in the shower and my head decided to start pounding in succession with the raindrops falling on my windowpanes. i'm volatile. the littlest things have the potential to make me delirious or dejected. i wonder all the time if everyone, or even anyone, else lives like this.

this weekend was hilarious. three generations of belligerance secluded in my grandparents log cabin in rustic londonderry vermont. i drank seven strawberry dacquiris on friday night, a product of the casual bartender's tendency to mix themselves a drink whenever they are asked to mix one for someone else. woke up with a stiff back from the air mattress i shared with my two cousins on the floor of the greenhouse and a slight hangover that only intensified as we sunbathed and watched our parents get wasted and play croquet. my mother was wrestling everyone in sight. my dad picked up my aunt and pretend to throw her into the pond several times. my great aunt's voice literally boomed off the mountains that surrounded us. my uncle told me stories of his recreational drug use. i fell asleep early even after a mid-day nap and woke up to a la carte breakfast and crying babies at 6:45 in the morning. there were close to thirty people there all together. we only left the property once when i had to escort my uncle on a mid-day alcohol run after they had finished three 1.75 liter bottles of vodka. my cousins and i did our annual photo shoot amungst the folliage and strategically placed rocks. i was in the car driving two car lengths behind my father before i could believe it was already sunday. time has been screwing with my head.

i can't grasp that it's almost the end of august, that my baby brother leaves for college wednesday morning, that soon i'll go back and have to say i'm a junior, that this summer won't last forever. wasn't it supposed to feel longer, since i stripped it of the obligations we create to give life momentum, weren't the idle days supposed to be composed of a million moments that gathered instead of slipped by right before my eyes? even without routine life passes much too quickly. i set up an appointment today to meet a woman who my father hopes will inspire me to become practically career minded, to reconcile myself with the idea of a 9-5 that may require me to purchase some suits and pointy shoes and wake up early to blow dry my hair each morning. i know i could do absolutely anything if i wanted to, even if i just knew i must. but what's the point in earning a living if you wind up procrastinating your life? happiness will always be in the little things, and at best unpredicatable and entirely out of your control. but could i find contentment in a job simply facillitating things i hardly believe in, in the buisness of anything other than human relations and reactions and feelings? i feel old when i'm forced to swallow these unbalanced mixtures of childish desire and adult common sense. i don't want to grow up. i dream of pixie dust.

tomorrow i'm in the city. wednesday one of my best friends is getting hand surgery. just seeing his swollen skin underneath his cast brought back all kinds of vivid bad memories. thursday i am getting four wisdom teeth out while my parents drive back from ohio. i wish they didn't have to put me out. i hope i get little more than chipmunk cheeks and an excuse to watch movies all day. i've had enough recovery this year, enough stitches and ivs and painkillers. so my fingers are crossed for an uncomplication extraction of an evolutionary malfunction. this entry is indulgent and inarticulate. i blame it on my headache. cross your fingers for me too? xoxo.

early morning optimism;

Fri, 13 Aug 2004 14:53:55 GMT

way too long acryllic nails, hemp braclets that soften to the shape of your wrist, late night trysts, friends i know so well that we've developed a language all to ourselves, reading six books simultaneously, days in new york city, discovering us in different contexts, learning a bad decision doesn't always have to turn into a regret, the anticipation that preceeds a kiss, the tenderness contained in it, marvels on modern technology that let you share life as it happens five states away, photographs from the past, old diaries when i wrote with a biting honesty and a sense of urgency, late night summer showers giving into beautiful days.

live what makes you happy. love whoever you can.

warped tour 2k4

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 22:33:28 GMT

her flip-flops are fastened out of an excess of navy ribbon, converging in the center of an orange foam flower. her jeans ride low on her underdeveloped frame with a white belt designed to fit someone with a waist the size of her hips. tucked in the top of her jeans is a pair of orange plastic sunglasses, the frames shaped like stars. her hair is straight against its will and streaked with sunshine hues. her lips pout ever so slightly and make all the older boys look at her the wrong way. her features are fragile, minimalist, as if she was sculpted by an artist desperate to conserve clay, wide-set eyes with darkened lashes blinking to the beat. her friend has less mass-produced originality and a blander kind of beauty. they are thirteen and feel everything, even the words they are too lazy to look up in the dictionary that the unconventionally beautiful lead singer screams at the top of his lungs. everyone older envies their innocence and intensity. there's a simplicity in that time when you saw millions of breath-taking colors in things that you'll later discover to be nothing more than black and white.

their hands are deep in each others back pockets in an unembarrassed display of need. he is older, uglier, but she needs him just the same. her hair is pulled back with a thin black elastic, bunching at the back of her neck before exploding into a sea of auburn curls. her limbs are slender, skin taught against the faintest hints of curves. two black bra straps run up the portion of her back uncovered by her understated white wife beater. her pants are heavy with pockets and buttons sewn on with no intention of ever being fastened. he is taller and dressed in opposite colors. his clothing is tighter than hers, his black t-shirt clings to his ribs that you see expand with each inhale. they feign love like old pros, her head resting on his chest, face upturned to take in the scent of the sweat on the back of his neck. he tickles her forehead with his short black stubble. the band sings of bittersweet heartbreak and lonliness but all they hear is love.

he pretends to know the name of the song the band is playing. he is staring at the sea of vulnerable girls in front of him. he wears a home-made t-shirt begging for phone numbers (hot girls only) and enjoys the irony. he is pale with blonde fuzz on top of a head that resembles a peach, stocky and unappealing. he would be lucky to get the number of the awkward girl to the left of him, the one with mild acne and stringy hair. but he fits in here. everyone with a desire to be different fits in here. he took a black sharpie to cotton to prove his originality. how will you prove yours?

the hair and t-shirts come in every color. the youngest bring their parents, also young enough to think they can still share in their children's interest. his mother holds his hand and still sees her litte boy underneath overgrown hair and sterling silver gauged through his left ear. the oldest hide in the shadows, feeling old in comparison, almost jaded. they realize the lyrics to a song they once loved are perhaps a little overstated, trite even, and begin to think of how many beers they could have bought for the price of the entrance fee. there are groups of girls wearing abercrombie that sing together in a desperate attempt to catch a angst filled look from the lead singer. couples swap spit under the bleachers. the air is a muddled mixture of pot, whiskey, and sweat. the brave let their weight fall entirely on the out-stretched palms of strangers. the masses run into each other in perfectly choreographed disorder, their limbs are damp with the perspiration of others. a girl with a keen eye stands to the side and engraves imagry of adolescence in her mind. she scribbles down phrases and thinks to herself; this is youth and i am on the outside.

Mon, 09 Aug 2004 15:39:06 GMT

a month ago i was so happy that i couldn't fathom what life would be like if it lasted. since then i plummeted several times but one month later i'm more content that i can ever remember being. there's something beautiful in spending your idle moments smiling, in waking each morning ready to embrace everything the day could bring. it's not that there's no lonliness, it's that i suddenly don't feel it the instant i'm by myself. there's less craving, almost no desperation, shrugged shoulders instead of frusteration, acceptance above disappointment.
i could dismiss this as summer but i'm beginning to doubt that's really what i want. i go back to school in a month. the weeks others claimed would drag by have seemed to swirl instead. even without a job i'm not bored, i'm not idle, i no longer feel the self destructive need to always be doing several things. perhaps what i needed was more practice in the art of doing nothing, or even just one thing at a time without feeling lazy. i'll always secretly believe that it is better to burn out than fade away, but if you're still vibrant in your relaxation. vivid in your contemplation, perhaps there's nothing wrong with nothing for a change.

run, run, you fool, before the waves of hurt start breaking

Thu, 05 Aug 2004 03:26:29 GMT

she writes down all her favorite lines from novels, attempting to recreate the epiphanies she has while reading, to summarize the significance of four hundred and sixty three pages on one eight and a half by eleven sheet. she strokes her orange and white fluffball of a cat with acryllic nails glazed in french permanent and giggles when she strikes back with her sandpaper tongue against her outer thigh. she stumbles on stiff legs and stretches tight hamstrings on the banister leading upstairs wondering if it's strange that's she's classified seven distinctly different kinds of aching. she remembers evenings earlier last weekend and crying for no reason and trying to distinguish feeling neglected from being used.
her needs reflect her lack of equilibrium, the fact that for nine months all she wanted was a room to call her own and a night with a book she plucked off the shelf and now she almost misses feeling busy and overwhelmed by activity and has a craving for a friday in may that began at nine thirty and ended at five saturday morning. she thinks of school, a place of priorities and obligations and rebellion when necessary. she remembers red wine nights and silent fights and collapsing at midnight with the alarm set for five so she could wake up to study. she recalls the sweaty taste of stress tears that would briefly settle in the bags under her eyes before streaming down her cheeks. she remembers thinking she didn't have time for certain feelings, for wanting anything more, especially a boy, and proving herself right when she had to schedule in heartbreak between coaching lacrosse practice and eating baked lays for dinner. and she thinks of summer, a time of idleness unmatched since childhood. she thinks of days made up of hours than flow freely from the moment she opens her eyes. she dissects lonliness, public enemy number one prone to sneak in between the hours of eight and nine at night no matter how wonderful the day was. she can still taste the dilluted streams of self pity sobs for no reason greater than just getting the solitude she once desired with such fervor.
her emotions cascade in any time and place, proof that there is no set of circumstance that could prevent her cup from running over. precautions are fruitless, eliminating obligations only makes stress a natural reaction to any hint of necessity, filling days with friends only glorifies solitude and nights spent talking to her cat only glorify the empty company of any convienent companion. love is a disappointment, highlighting any prior lack there of, and proving that discontent is never as simple as what you do or do not have. a kiss is bait and your heart needs to bite, the circumstances must be right, and even then you eventually feel despair and desperation and longing just the same as you did without that set of lips to touch on any whim.
yet there's comfort in accepting the futility of happiness as an absolute, in understanding that we are motivated creatures and that motivation itself is a jaded manifestation of our insatiable way of living. yes we're greedy and inconsistent and volatile, but isn't that a wonderful thing?
she decides that happiness must exist only in an instant. in the first sip of a raspberry lemonade smoothie, in the second that she hears his car pull down the driveway, in that breath of space between their faces, in the way her eyes slow down to savor every word on the last page of a book. and it's not exactly fair that sadness is more transient and pervasive and can tint even objectively pleasant experiences but that's the lack of balance even a cheerful disposition can't offset and you have to just accept.
these pep talks do little in the advent of another bad day but on a night like tonight when her muscles ache with growth and her stomach is stuffed with blueberries and peanut butter toast and her thoughts run rampant echoing in several dialects borrowed from paperback heroines, it might just be enough to make tomorrow come without contempt sprinkled like dust over even the most dazzling unforseen possibilities. ♥

worse than daytime television

Mon, 02 Aug 2004 16:43:15 GMT

i've relocated for a few days, to the only other house i've ever felt comfortable just showing up unannounced at, to the house that is home to a million memories no amount of fresh paint could cover. nights after work when work was fun, days after drinking spent watching daytime television, idle hours passed in my favorite company until we both couldn't handle the empty days and actually did something for a change.
i miss him the most this summer. i know why he didn't come back because i'm still not entirely sure why i did. last summer was a disaster for us both, two jobs that could add up to fourteen hours on any given weekday, two jobs we both secretly hated. but i miss him for more than the commiseration. i miss him because he was always willing to do something. small town new jersey is only as boring as you want it to be. the beach is a day trip and so is the city. meals can be made into affairs and destinations can be arbitrary as long as you have someone enjoyable to share the ride there. i miss laughing the way only his sarcasam could let me, i miss driving aimlessly just because stagnance is a feeling we must fight at any cost. i miss an ally in the scattered yet dilligent way i live my life.
already i'm tossing around ideas for next summer. do i stay at school when i can't even say i enjoy myself there for the other three seasons? do i return home this time with a job and accept redundant weekdays and at best weekends spent in backyards drinking? maybe next summer i wouldn't have to fight these feelings, the insecurity and frustration that comes from only being remembered when you're convienent. it's not even a criticism of the people, more of the difference between myself and almost every other i meet. is it possible for them just not to think of me and how easily i break? i wish i knew not how to consider others, this summer itself would have been better if i hadn't had to think of how anyone else felt. and even when i pretend to neglect the feelings of others it's only after careful deliberation and weighing of subsequent options. so i can't accept inconsiderate. i can't accept i just didn't think to call. i can't accept the way life gets handed to you as justification for the fact that you don't reach out your hand to help anyone else. for me, it would be even more reason to extend and share your blessings. i guess sincerety is a flaw in modern society. i guess it's fashionable to say you can call me any time and then screen your calls as needed. i guess friends can be as little as the people that keep you company, the people that show up daily, because nobody likes to be lonely. but what about empathy, generosity, consistency? just because it comes naturally doesn't mean it's acceptable to not press for a higher standard. maybe i'm just run by a different set of defaults. but aren't i enough for you to readjust yours, for you to conceed a few idle moments into considering what i would do for you if the situation was reversed?
it's true what they say about quality versus quantity, but the extraneous variable is always lonliness. having the best friends in the world is only so much help when you can't see any of them on one of those nights where being alone is a bigger burden than you know how to carry. and you can be at a party where you share a kind word with everyone but still feel unloved. and you can feel sad for no expressable reason, which really means muted disappointment, and crave companionship so acutely that you don't know how people even breathe on their own, the whole notion of having your own spine to support you and your own pair of lungs just seems cruel when everything else only feels functional with two.
maybe i'm just needy. i've wasted so much energy the past few years trying to come to terms with being alone and not lonely. wasted only because it's still the one thing that can make me go crazy and summers here can feel like a masochistic tendency. i've got my diversions, i'm got plent of hobbies, but in the end it's just ways to pass the time between the moments when i actually feel alive, albeit endorphins and engaging distractions, because of others that reflect the all the things i fail to articulate yet can't quite ignore.
so i don't want to settle for daytime television and nights of monotony. i don't want my days to blur together and i don't want my nights to feel like repeats of the same jaded scene. i want no frills friendship, i want companions that know how to make doing nothing fun. not just amusing so i don't notice the clock ticking but entertainig, different. i want personality that prefaces activity and i can't help but wonder if there's some turbulance innate to the way that i reel people in yet keep them at bay that discourages people from ever getting that comfortable with me.
sometimes you just wish bodies were costumes and you could swap yours for a few hours to examine yourself from another truthful perspective. this craving is the root of all my fruitless introspection. i'm redundant and lonely, how are you today?

my exploration of middlesex in a strictly philisophical vein

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 23:34:07 GMT

when you're young they make it seem like being a tomboy is a matter of baseball hats and ponytails. gender stereotypes slip into elementary school curriculums. the boys can do pull-ups but the girls can only do the flexed arm hang. even in fourth grade girls are expected to not have enough upper body strength to pull all sixty pounds of their boyish frames. an old fashioned teacher warns you that it's not polite to sit like that, reminds you daily to cross your ankles and speak at a more appropriate volume for a lady. she doesn't care what scathing comments about the awkward girl sitting two desks to your left you whisper as long as you refrain from laughing so loud when the boys behave badly. girls are supposed to be above that crude sense of humor. girls are supposed to be more mature for their age.
i've lived most of my life with this blind trust that i would figure it out some day, but time only removes me futher from the arbitrary moment of dissension with my gender and i can't help but wonder how different i would be if i had reacted differently.
from 1984 till 2000 i was a relatively normal girl. i wore skirts with frills and had a one and only best friend that lived down the street until i was eight. i moved an hour away and in third grade began what i refer to now was my wandering years where i was to never settle for more than a marking period with the same best friend forever, where i was to fluctuate between the girls mean enough to make themselves cool and those uncertain enough to comply to anything i wanted to do. i had shy best friends that let my bossy streak run free and bossy best friends that turned me into the most willing to please sidekick you could get. i had best friends that made me boy crazy (tearing out pages from teen beat to stick on my walls and making up coded nicknames for the crushes i discovered in black river middle schools halls), best friends that made me exclusive (slam books and secret note boxes), best friends that made me judgmental (how could she wear that with that) and petty (who does she think she is talking to him when she knows you like him). they were tall, short, blonde, brunette, quiet, loud, bookish, flirty, manipulative, bratty, spoiled, backstabbing and ultimately the only thing they had in common was that they wouldn't last longer than a twelve month calender, rarely would one survive a summer, the gap between grades was too big to breech with a single comrade and i always had the notion that there was something, or perhaps just someone, better waiting for me.
i still remember a note written to me sophomore year in high school that proclaimed i had turned into "one of those girls that would do anything for a boy", a label i wasn't too frantic to fix because i examined it and found that in my current context it was quite right. i guess it began on that spring break cruise as a freshman when i met my match, the one who would convince me that i'd rather quit the game than play by the rules. i had other girl friends after that, ones that made me laugh, that i could have sleepovers with and trust just enough to reveal the name of my latest crush but there was a central detach and be merry theory that i applied to all girls and all it took was finding boys i could call my own until i found myself in an ambigious gray region where i had no choice but to become allies with what had been the other side ever since i first opened my eyes.
the boyfriend best friend aided the transition. guys treat you differently when they know you're taken. you fall in the safe place of "she's my friend's girlfriend" that allows your presence to be tolerated if not entirely accepted. at a time when females first seem enigmatic to all boys i was a convienent spy. i knew why girls said this and did that and i had years of practice at being phony and fake that let me weasle my way back in if it would help out a guy friend. of course such activity eventually leads to a reputation, a different kind of classification where your gender can begin to feel like an afterthought. and there's a danger in that.

there are so many stories in being a girl on the fringe of feminity, so many unique landmarks of growing up when you don't do it the typical way. they mislead you in elementary school, it doesn't come down to grass stains and ponytails and starting positions on the sports team. there is even a camaraderie in that, but for me life has always been a solitary march through gray matter. i wear pink. i like chick flicks. i even joined a sorority. but nothing will ever change the way i spent my adolescence inbetween and i can't ever get rid of the lonliness that comes from feeling entirely unique.

i am lucky to have found a best friend who lived a life that mirrored mine until college. i am lucky to have a cousin that is able to permeate the boundaries i erected as self preservation four years ago, boundaries reinforced by being one of the guys for so much of my life. i don't regret the way i spent my time, i love not instinctively seperating myself from boys, i love that i can see them as more than a potential boyfriend, that i am comfortable with them to perhaps a fault. i wouldn't trade that for anything. but sometimes i wonder what it would be like to have a group of good friends void of sexual relevance and gender differences. sometimes i wonder how different my life would be. but then i berate myself for ever thinking that this can be broken down into a series of deliberate decisions and try to accept that it's just something about me, perhaps part nature, part nuture, that pursues these ambiguities if for no reason greater than a fear of leading a typical life or any life that feels inconsistent to the direction in which my heart beats.

recommendations please

Thu, 29 Jul 2004 20:42:43 GMT

tell me, what's your favorite movie?

or recommend anything that you would be shocked to hear somebody hasn't seen.

♥

Wed, 28 Jul 2004 19:05:34 GMT

i. (to me) i spend my days with paperback heroines amungst blinking green lights that count down the hour on treadmill pannels while vh1 countdowns filter through a free pair of headphones. i make messes from pictures and plastic scissors, from clothing flung into corners during dress up sessions, from books that i read, sometimes three in a day, and discard to the left side of my bed where another would sleep if there ever was another but i'm thankful for the books to fill the idle hours, those recommended repeatedly that i finally get a chance to read and those picked up in ten spare minutes before the train takes me back to new jersey because the composition on the cover really is lovely and how fortunate that the pages inside drip with beauty. i want to write a million stories, but life with its random spirals and routine surprises always tempts me into the genre of memoir because it isn't fiction if it happened but fiction can make it feel like it happened when it never did and i guess i just wish that i could spin a plot to mirror life with all it's ups and downs and sudden turn arounds and write the kind of book that makes you sad to read the last page.

ii. (to him)
i think we grew up
past the hang-ups
and the evil stares
the fuck you toos
and i dont cares

iii. (to you)
we must love one another or die. auden said it, but i can't forget it.
it's just i don't see the sense is not making you happy when it makes me happy too. it's just i'll love you because my heart never learned how to whisper and i'll forgive you a million times over but it would mean a lot to me if you didn't ask me to.
life is in the laughing, in the conversations that have no clear beginning or end, in the friends that are excused for waking you at any hour and asking you for any thing just because it would make you happier to make their life easier any way you can.
i'll never call myself a martyr. i'm selfish, it's self-interest i just want to be remembered for love or nothing. and the one thing i fear more than forgetting is being forgotten. ♥

Sun, 25 Jul 2004 16:09:53 GMT

last night reminded me why i came home this summer. my stomach hurts from laughing.

even though we dated for years i couldn't remember a time we saw a movie together. it was nice. the whole day made me realize that i would have grown to regret not being his friend. we may fight and it may not be conventional, but i want him in my life and it's as simple as that. the bourne supremacy was better than the first one. i'm not quite sure how to handle these sequels that don't suck.
i had fun with everything, a ride to the airport to pick up grant, devouring cluck-u after too many hours of no food, carrying excessive thirties in to mike wright's backyard and watching as we filled up "garbage and a half can" with empties. i had fun losing one game of beer pong and trying to find ways to mask the taste of kettle one. i had fun with girl talk and seeing randoms from high school i never thought i'd see again. i had fun talking high school crushes and art class and late bus routes. i had fun winning two chugging contests then losing one. i had fun dancing the tango on a patio and whispering chatter at a mile a minute. i had fun venturing into the hot tub in my underwear and dragging the cooler over so we could throw it in the pool and the boys could attempt to ride it by jumping off the ledge of the hot tub. i had fun picking up empties that were littered in the strangest places, raiding mike's siblings closet for clothing and finding places to sleep for all my very drunk friends. i had fun not just dismissing what i was feeling. i had fun waking up in sync with the rest of the room and over bacon for breakfast and squealing like a fun wrecker during unecessary car chases down windy backroads.
these little glimpses at how good it can get are the most refreshing burst of life into an otherwise monotonous existence. i just want everything and i guess right now i don't really feel like it's too much to ask.
♥

drunk off the sun and bitter little nothings

Fri, 23 Jul 2004 03:59:44 GMT

sunkissed & single. that's what i wrote on the back window of her car as we drove north on the garden state parkway blasting off-broadway musicals. middle aged woman would honk at us in agreement & we doubled over in laughter the same way we did when we collected ourselves after a wave that barely came up to our chests knocked us both out & took us under & after we memorized the latin names of muscles so we had a super dorky way to comment on guys bodies. that one has a sexy trapezius, check out his latissimus dorsi. we blasted taking back sunday and counting crows and bonded over the lyrics you always want to quote but just sound silly without the emotion of adam durtiz over piano forte and the fact that an apple eaten midday can make your stomach feel all swirly and all the mirror food dislikes and compulsive exercise tendencies. we read cosmo for the sex tips and talked about the boys we've made out with and how amazing it is when they've got you just a little bit and there's no such thing as a secret with a cousin that's seen you through barbie doll families and camp wonderful fights and every little ounce of heartbreak. we read women's weight lifting and pointed out the exercises we've tried. we drank boiling water and ate carrot sticks that tasted cooked and laughed as stones the size of thumbnails fell from our tops because they must have gotten in there when the waves had their way with us. we followed boys for several hundred feet just to see if they were anywhere close to our age. we decided that even though there's little worse than settling that tonight it might be alright since today made you ache in that way that almost anyone with soft lips could soothe with a kiss, and yea well it's the ones you want the most that find the most heartbreaking ways to get away.

i can't think of it without thinking of you and how even though i can't stand him right now he was right. the only strength you have is the strength it takes to silence your heart and settle for security. have you felt it yet, the regret that's bound to come some day when i give up on you and flit away to some new lost cause disguised as a nice guy who will slowly being to justify being mean and breaking me and placing pieces inbetween my throat so i can't even speak of all the new ways i've learned lately of how to be frusterated and how to regret people and years of your life and single nights at the same time. i committed social suicide but even that matters secondary to the fact that i feel like you don't even want to be around me and the worry that sounds like your mother whispering i know you did something to drive him away, you're too picky, you'll never marry and i laugh because marriage was always an obligation and it's just affection and honesty that you want some day and children but you could raise them in a few years when you stop being so selfish and perhaps learn to sacrafice a fraction of what you donate to those whose affections you wish to win over for those who are obligated to love you imperfections and all you ever really wanted was to not feel punished for caring because you can't stop it even when you try and to say i hate you would be a lie but i didn't want it to mean this much to me precisely for this reason and hatred would be a release, simple even compared to this hybrid of hating you for what you were and wanting that same person back again. i'm sorry, i always get crazy seven to ten days after claiming that this time i can handle it, that this time its different, i'm more well versed, there was less at stake, i never even felt half of what i felt for the others in the first place, but kristen it's time to learn that you only know how to love one way, with every ounce of yourself much too soon and wishful thinking hearts should be shatter proof but they're not and every piece can be broken down indefinitely until they are too small to even sparkle and that i fear is a fate worse than death, to live without wanting to make others days better and taking chances on strangers and loving with reckless abandon.

i ramble because frustration forces fragments to flow and exhaustion is the laziest editor on the planet.

and i hate this, because today was perfect and i'm still falling asleep with anything but a smile on my face. and i blame you for making me smile so much that this still isn't enough to make me give up and i blame me for honestly believing that you would never let me feel this way in the first place.

finding happiness somewhere between west 32nd street and west 59th

Tue, 20 Jul 2004 23:58:17 GMT

my legs never get tired in new york city. avenues past and intersect and after miles the only thing that gets to me is the stagnant heat between the brownstone buildings. there's so much dirt, so many dinners you wouldn't dare enter and cheap souvineers shops, stretches of peep shows and people thrusting paper flyers in your face, yet it's somehow both beautiful and peaceful, even when bodies cluster in traffic jams around time square at three in the afternoon.
i love having a destination, 405 west 59th, this little catholic building named after the patron saint of writing where i take fiction classes with people twice my age. the middle aged divorcee laughs at my jordi labanda notebook with the people kissing and my folder collaged with phrases and glitter. the aspiring actress glows when i enter the room because i laugh at her jokes and feed her the compassion she needs to feel important. my teacher went to northwestern, she ended the first class by saying "go cats," the all too ironic cheer of the team that never wins anything but a marathon study session. but even she listens when i speak and critcize delicately the words of others much older than i. i love listening to them introduce themselves and hear how love and labor have taken them so many places in decades that they claim have just flown by. it almost makes you excited to age, to commit yourself to an occupation and another person and settle down so someday you can look back at the wealth of material all those days have amounted to and write about life i have yet to experience.
lately things haven't exactly gone my way. i yet again have to redefine the ways in which i care, but i'm getting better at catering my affection to the requests of others. i suppose embracing so recklessly is a liability. but i've always had a penchant for impulsive emotional attachments and glorifying the smallest gestures of kindness. even now i wonder why the fact that you lied and chose something i can't say i understand doesn't make me resent you at all. i mean, it was life, that's all.
but i can actually say that i'm not taking in personally, that i am able to find joy in its truest sense just striking up a conversation with a middle aged man on the train ride back about commuting and retirement and his children, in listening instead of always speaking, in watching people pass by on their way to places that have personal significance with their own completely captivating narrative running through their head.
there's hope in learning that even without that distraction this summer can still be a beautiful thing.

Fri, 16 Jul 2004 17:27:27 GMT

it's a recipe for disaster so blantent i could never claim to not have seen it. when you spend all of high school with one person their friends continue to be off limits forever, even when they are your friends too and being around them feels like sleeping under sheets on a cool summer evening wearing a tshirt from your second grade softball team. even when one of them begins to become to you more of a friend than they've ever been, someone you discover in pieces to be far more compatible with you than you ever saw in all the fridays and saturdays and weekday afternoons you spent sitting around a game cube and eating at cluck-u. someone that you never looked at that way when you both had relationships that spanned an eighteen year olds perception of forever, back when you were both known as an unquestionable part of another. even when they help you in ways you still fail to articulate proper gratitude, simple encouraging ways that got you through this or that and alleviated just enough of the frusteration of navigating your way through a year of bad days. even when you come home to chemistry that makes you feel guilty and you both give in stupidly, shutting down the parts of your brain that can clearly predict that it won't get to be like this, simple as a secret, easy as a lie, the second other people begin to open their eyes.
i had ten days when a smile was my default expression, where days were made by a mere presence. i had a weekend where my life felt absolutely limitless, where joy felt endless, where all the best things in life seemed to be drawn to me. i was naive, i didn't want to forsee this and as a result i've spent the past four days picking up pieces and resuming my life-long affinity with misery.
we should have told him, but i'm not that brave and i still doubt that it would have solved half as much as he claims. and i wonder what it would be like to be him for a day, to have people care about you so much that they hurt themselves and others to merely accomodate your comfort. i'd never expect him to react happily, to bless us like a martyr and step aside. i know that being him has to have its frusterations, but honestly does he not know me well enough to know i wouldn't do this unless i couldn't help it? unless the risks and benefits weighed themselves out in my head and i still decided that it was worth it? i don't settle. i don't do things out of spite. i break for animals. hurting him would never be something i want to do. but i did it. and that alone says something. i'm not usually this selfish. i can't regret it. if nothing else i had a break from being me and dear lord did i need it. i had a break from feeling unlucky and expendable and lonely and all the things that contradict with my cheerful disposition and i was able to just glow for a change. at this point i can't even say i'm sorry. i can't help but feel like someone owes me an apology.
because there's something discouraging about being told how great you are every time someone lays the foundation to break your heart, in circumstances triumphing over emotion yet again to leave you wistful and empty with your trusty paperback books and compulsive exercise, the staples of an ordinary reculsive life.
hindsight feels like a perpetual fingerprick, especially when it was once foresight you fought off, quite stubbornly, because at heart you are still a naive little girl with romantic delusions and too many unrealistic dreams.

all right, it's over, it's done (no one will understand)

Thu, 15 Jul 2004 00:35:46 GMT

today i cried
twice
before nine
in the morning

sat on a swing &
beckoned the rain
to compare its taste
to saline

this town was cool for one night, early july

Sun, 11 Jul 2004 14:42:34 GMT

i need to write if for no reason greater than remembering this happiness, this carefree euphoric existence. this weekend has been perfect. i imported my best friend. my bed's gonna feel lonely tonight. since thursday every time i've woken up it's been with one if not two people i couldn't be happier to see lying next to me. sunday never sounded so final. i want to make a permanent sort of present out of friday night, out of my backyard circa 9pm when everyone started filtering in, out of the grasshoppers made sloppily in mixing tins, out of the blantent signals that drunken secrecy can't help but send, out of the smiles captured on kodak film, the glowing expressions of almost all my best friends.
you don't throw a party to celebrate a birthday. birthdays are celebrations of life and parties are gatherings, excuses to bring together the best company and relish the moments you'll cherish forever. twenty sounds so much older than nineteen but only a day seperates and i needed a fresh start to break free of all that's been holding me back the past seven months. driving down route 24 last night i felt like i might cry because i was showing my home to the one person who makes college bearable at its worst and i was thinking how if i could have all this just like this forever every day would find some way to be beautiful.
the gifts i got all showed me just how well even people i may not have spoken to nearly as much as i should since leaving for school still know me, and how much the people i care about may even care about me just right back. my heart relaxes around the old time friends and the abundance of comfort found in the memories. new places and faces just can't compare to the ones that have proven themselves over time to be all i could ever need.
wednesday was a beautiful beach day at spring lake followed by a daring, for me, dinner selection amungst two of my favorite people. thursday was flawless, a long lazy morning followed by a trip to newark to pick up my best friend at terminal a. friday was preparations and kiss lists, shop rite liquors and non stop excitement followed by a party i'm proud to have thrown, a party that toasted away the worst year i've faced in the grandest of possible fashions. saturday was selective clean-up and lounging on blankets in my backyard, sunshine and swimming while recapturing the evening, a three hour nap and chai tea to rejuvenate before bartending a goodbye party. this morning is clear and blue and this day full of promise. i'd rather not have to take jess & jeff to the airport in the early evening, but if i must accept the departures for the sake of having the arrival and the precious time between, there's no question what my choice would be.
i'm giddy, fall to the ground in a fit of giggles happy, and i can't fathom why i would ever accept life as any less than pure bliss.

giddy preparty mathematics

Fri, 09 Jul 2004 19:47:23 GMT

30 friends (one best friend flown in from chicago, several i haven't seen in months, one crazy relative, two flights, several long car rides) + 1 big backyard with large party room style barn + a beautiful day + two hundred dollars worth of food + one keg + one hundred dollars worth of hard liquor + a blender + hawaian pineapple, blue raspberry, and sour watermelon jello shots + 2 beer pong tables + 9 ping pong balls + two angel food cakes = the perfect equation for my twentieth birthday celebration.

let kjfest 2004 begin. :)

and it can take two decades to understand exactly who you should appreciate

Wed, 07 Jul 2004 03:32:33 GMT

i love my mother. i love her because she shrieks at passing trucks when i'm driving down the highways, because she offers to make me chicken at ten pm when she knows i haven't eaten since noon, because she mails me boxes of cheese-its even though she must know they make me sick because she thinks i like them enough to sneak a few every now and then. i love her because she's embarrassing to be out in public with, because she strikes up conversation with strangers and almost always gets them laughing, because she bakes cakes at midnight and when they split down the middle she gives them to the ladies at the bank who then share it with the guys doing construction outside and now they smile at me every time i drive by. i love her because she forgets her pin number when she tells me to use her debit card and leaves me stranded at a&p without anyway to pay for her groceries. i love her because she will go to see a movie like "the notebook" with me and call alzheimer's old timer's and we'll laugh while we both whisper to each other halfway through that we're not quite sure we actually did read this book even though we did. i just read too much and she just falls asleep before she can get more than a few pages in. i love her because she dressed me in ridiculous matching outfits until high school. i love her because she sautees vegetables in olive oil every day because it makes me happy, because she still makes promises with french fries. i love her because she'll drink with me and go to pick up our neighbor who has leftover fireworks on the eve of my twentieth birthday so i don't have to feel lonely because according to her all my friends are "dead beats" anyway. i love her because she says things that make me roll my eyes when i'm in a bad mood but laugh until i cry when i'm happy, laugh until i collapse on the stairs remembering the time we watched forty minutes of a dvd without the surround sound on thinking it was just an artistic effect or perhaps we had mistakenly picked up the version for the deaf. i love her because she still remembers the exact time i was born and warns me that my breasts will most likely inflate to an extraordinary size when its my time to have kids, but it's okay because she'll drive the hour to the bra factory where they have bras in sizes f and g. i love her because she's young and always will be, because she teaches kickboxing and drinks mike's hard lemonade light with lunch, because she got a tattoo during my freshman year of college, because her best friends are essentially alcholics and because she is one of two members of the chester garden club that are decades removed from gray hair. i love her because she accomodates everyone and makes me understand the way that i get up to get a beer for even someone i don't like all that much since that was how she raised me. i love her because she gets lost in gardens, in tomatoes i will never eat, pumpkins too big to carry, and snow peas that she calls peapods consistently. i love her because she makes up words on a daily basis and misfinishes her own sentences. i love her because we laughed as we spent the past two days pawning through my grandmothers gold and excessive amount of costume jewelry, because we both know all the words to every song on jewel's spirit cd, because she begs me to share her bed when my dad goes away and then comments how i still sleep exactly the same way as i did when i was a baby. i love her because she dies her hair blonde and it took me years to catch on, because she wears clothes meant for teenagers and somehow pulls it off, because she goes to the supermarket in her bright yellow garden clogs. i love her because she doesn't shower until she's covered in either sweat or mud, because she knows the name of every perenial and exactly how to make them grow, because she's a ditz even at the age of fourty three, because she got married when she was nineteen, because when i was a little girl she walked me in a stroller down to the duck pond since we didn't have a car, because she read to me enough for me to become who i am, because i was spoiled with love if not with money, because she admits she actually prayed for blonde haired blue eyed beautiful babies. i love my mom for the way we both scream when we fight and laugh much to loud and and make this strange noise when we scratch our ears. i love her for getting ready to go to the hospital exactly twenty years ago and give birth to me in under two hours. i love her unconditionally, the way you can only love a mommy when you get past the eighteen precursory years of growing and bickering and claiming other feelings. i love her for giving me life and love consistently, for sacraficing herself to raise and care for me, for being who she is honestly, without embarrassment or regret and somehow seducing the entire world with it.
happy twentieth birthday to me and evermore thanks to the woman that gave birth to me. i love you mommy.

america the beautiful played on a xylophone

Mon, 05 Jul 2004 02:31:49 GMT

from a far enough distance fireworks just look like fire and how strange to be able to sit quietly on my backporch and find beauty in the way orange and red splash up against the shadows of trees, to be able to marvel at the way silence itself is so loud after so much noise, to be able to savor the way darkness swallows the night and watch lightning bugs glitter in trails through the air.
i didn't really have much celebration this year, no customary family party or flag cake with whipped cream icing. i did too short shifts of the party yesterday before and after a babysitting job and drank enough in under an hour to be still wishing i knew where the bottle of advil is twenty hours later. i'm happy though. i got what i wanted and just watched the fireworks from my back porch with the privacy of my own thoughts.

and i can't help but feel that all holidays are quickly catching up with christmas, that they are palimpsest, overwritten by commercialization, reduced to little more than expected drinking occasions. yet our representations bring us more joy, more simple pleasure than attempting to recreate meaning and capture a significance that's dated.
in high school i honestly thought america could do no wrong. i was as enthused by the calamities of our country as i was by the boston tea party. history textbooks are extremely successful propaganda. with the proper phrasing uncertainties become destiny and all risks are reduced by retrospect. i'm not a political person and i shy away from the news every day of my life, but even i can't help but wonder what they'll say about september eleventh in the textbooks, about george bush and the decisions he's made. the issues debated now will someday be reduced to a multiple choice question on an advanced placement test for a future generation. time is relentless, all things present become anecdotes when they expire. and anecdotes rarely maintain their moral flavor. they decay into cliches. and maybe this alone is responsible for the acceptance of continual failure. living is discovering lessons for yourself, picking what mistakes will make your fate and claiming circumstance that seperate any present problem from obstacles that others or even you yourself have stumbled through in the past. as someone famous and dead once said, the past is a foreign country. they do things differently there. the arrogance of being conscious, the blind faith that living can be reduced to a steady succession of inhale exhale, the permisive nature of time. we practically proclaim it our right to eternally blunder. it's almost as if pride can be taken in making mistakes, in the fact that we haven't got it figured out quite yet because what would be the fun in that? but i can't help but feel that reducing past to simply facts may be more detrimental than we'll ever fully grasp. even when we color interpretations with conflicting opinions we can at best discuss, debate. nothing can be changed. change belongs to the present, hope to the future, and regret to the past. there may be some wisdom mixed in there but it's like having someone describe a beautiful picture that you'll never be able to see. as if relevance can be lost in the conversion of tense. perhaps it can. there's much i haven't figured out yet.

happy fourth of july & much love.

contra diction

Sat, 03 Jul 2004 17:27:04 GMT

i. her life is like reality television. she wakes up in the morning wondering who's watching, peering between the sepia shutters to see through her glass windowpane, who can see her stretch her legs underneath the sheets and greet the early morning. smiling as she walks to the kitchen barefoot in a matching camisole and lacy underwear. she's been dressing up at night for as long as she can remember. a guilty pleasure. like wearing underwear you have to tie together underneath a pair of basic faded blue jeans. it's information that's available to any who venture closer, closer than any have ever dared to venture. a secret that she'll gladly keep if life continues to drip away in a haze of mazy days. the morning hours lost between paperback pages. she runs at lunchtime when the gym is empty and there's always some mindless countdown on tv. she runs until she knows she'll fall asleep with ease, until her legs scream and her heart races with the pace of self medicated euphoria. she keeps logs of the books she reads, plotting out the main characters and memorable quotations, like a cheat sheet for the memory she knows will falter someday. so many character, so many places, so many conflicts of life all swirled together and there is little worse than picking up a broken book to only be able to say, i know i read it once upon a yesterday. she dreams up people she hopes to meet someday. people like her that examine the details from a distance and read literature like a compulsive bad habit. people who can't sleep past eight even if they stay up till three talking with the kalidiscope of stars in last evenings sky, people who race and burn and have no regret beyond the fact that so little of your life is spent in youth, fully aware of how illogical it is to regret things that are measured and constant and eternal as far as we can see. she wonders if she'd still fill lonely then, in a cozy coffee shop with her picture perfect companions. comfort can't always be lending your hand to another. she worries, regrets prematurely the way she's hated herself in these recent years. she wonders if there are others who drain their person fountains of eternal youth away in the spirit of self doubt and anxiety. she can't twirl her hair without wondering what the precise motion reveals about her, what do all her desires mean? (how disappointed she'd be to know that even her lover never pays attention to those little things.) her life is like reality tv; the drama largely created by her desire to be seen.

ii. her mama always tells her that marriage is for better or for worse. she sits down at the end of the day with freckles of dirt on her cheeks and her hair in a mess of unwashed sun and sweat and sips her iced tea and says "remember that, sweet pea, someday when you get married."
she stares back with her big blue eyes, unchanged since birth, and thinks about how for years she's been trying to gather the courage to ask her mama what that means. is she still happy she married daddy decades later? does slipping under the sheets at night careful not to wake him feel more like a promise or an obligation, or is she suggesting that they are the same thing? that there is no chance of romance and in the long term you must settle for something practical and dependable with quirks and scratches from detours taken before than something whimsy and magical and full of high hopes of ever after? she is coming to terms with her own romanticism, and how desperately she needs the answer to the unphrased question, how important it is to learn from her preceeding generations. is there no man out there that will lead her on a path simply labeled for better, and even if there were would her mind not manifest the contradictory trail, would the skies not suddenly rise higher and make her current joy look smaller until he got discouraged and they stumbled together, and does mama mean its better to crawl under the weight of a commitment made when you were an entirely different person than to soar free of burdens towards that endlessly receeding horizon?
there's this boy at school and in his eyes she catches glimpses of the most perfect sunset she sees always in her dreams. she wonders if daddy's eyes ever contained such things.

iii. she eats blueberries and cherries in the spirt of her nation's birthday. just days before her own, she's always felt this affinty, reinforced by way her mama complains about having to carry her, two weeks late, still in her belly that summer of ninteen eighty four to watch the parade. she spits the seeds in a bowl painted with stars and stripes and pushes a blueberry she dropped on the floor under the ledge of the cabinet where her mama won't see it until she washes the floor, if she ever washes the floor anymore.
she thinks about how you can move all the time, run even as quick as you can, and still expire before the horizon, and still not experience enough. she sees life as a list of chores you've accepted must get done that continually unravels every time you cross an item off. she remembers something she once read, about a life of leisure and how it simply fades into death, the ultimate leisure activity after all. she remembers those days when she craved that kind of lacking, that void of promise and experience and shakes her head at herself. she has learned to cling to action, to movement, to progress the way the best of humanity always has. she has learned to believe in simple things, in blueberries and cherries as colors you can taste, and colors as symbols of things that would have been forgotten any other way. red for love. she loves better than she knows. white for shadowless light. blue for her favorite color, a backdrop for stars, her favorite shape. she couldn't have made the flag any better, something she admits with surprise since she secretly finds few things that wouldn't be improved by her creative contribution, her unique patterns of thinking. she spits the cherry seeds in a bowl painted with stars and stripes and softly sings happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy birthday to america, happy birthday to me.

booklust (those who read)

Fri, 02 Jul 2004 21:27:14 GMT

the time has come yet again for me to beg for book recommendations from others that read, perhaps too much, like me.
the links are to booklists from the past, and below are those i've read since summer started.
i suppose this is just a little attempt to impose order on my unquenchable thirst for paperback bliss.

booklist from sophomore year
booklist from last summer

1. olivia joules and the overactive imagination. helen fielding.
typical enjoyable british chick lit, a perfect fit for right after finals ended.
2. the unbearable lightness of being. milan kundera.
philisophical and rich, beautifully written to the extent that i'm determined to read much more of him.
3. beloved. toni morrison.
pulitzer number one, a difficult book, but deserving of its accolates
4. a clockwork orange. anthony burgess.
hilarious in the way of vonnegut or huxley, the kind of satire that makes you afraid to be alive.
5. middlesex. jeffrey eugenides.
dense and different, surprisingly engaging though clearly wonderfully written
6. the hours. michael cunningham.
perfect. i can't believe i waited this long to read it. wish i had waited to see the movie afterwards of course.
7. the stone diaries. carol sheilds.
extremely distressing, merely because it captures the inconsequential existence so poignantly. don't read if you hate to be reminded of your own mortality.
8. a farewell to arms. ernest hemmingway.
very romantic for dear ernest, enjoyable and historical with the very dialogue that made him so famous.
9. can you keep a secret? sophie kinsella.
more british chick lit to break up the serious stuff. hilarious, like laugh out loud funny. the perfect beach read.
10. hard love. ellen wittlinger.
surprisingly insightful for something i had to dig up in the young adult section. great protagonist that just simply resonates.
11. bird by bird, anne lamott
instructions on writing and life, what more could i seek. very true and clever.
12. the best american non-required reading. editor dave eggers.
dense, diverse, and inspiring.
13. seperation anxiety. karen b.
mindless, a little trite, but thoughtful at times.
14. pledged. the secret life of sororities. alexandra robbins.
informative, though redudant for me. definitely worth reading.
15. shopgirl. steve martin.
bellisima novella. well paced and articulated, satisfying.
16. the da vinci code. dan brown.
finally submitted. worth reading for its suspense component, but not for anything literary or lifelike
17. the shipping news. e. annie prolux.
slow to engage but insightful to the mundane and pillars of life
18. inventing the truth. the art & craft of memoir.
interesting for someone who's accidentally written memoirs her entire life.
19. lucky us.
very readable and honest.
20. tuesday's with morie.
no words. if there's only one way to die with grace this man did it.
21. the center of everything.
endearing. the kind of book that you don't want to end, and when it does you feel like you've just said goodbye to a friend.
22. a tree grows in brooklyn. betty smith.
read this. worth every page, delicious and true and sad as life.
23. girl with a pearl earing. tracy chevalier.
artistic and clear. now i get to watch to movie. hah.
24. angels & demons. dan brown.
entertaining, i found the end ultimately unsatisfying. dan brown is clearly intelligent with his knowleged and clever with his twists and turns but he needs a new editor and a more complex understanding of human emotions other than curiosity
25. the fuck up. arthur nessian.
very new york city. i was proud of how many of the places described i could visualize.
26. birds of america. lorrie moore.
great collection of short stories, very readable and vivid and replicates life without ever being too sentimental or overdone.
27. 1984. george orwell.
terrifying. much better than animal farm, which almost convinced me to stop reading forever in seventh grade
28. the best american poetry of 2004.
modern poetry is a strange thing. just when i thought it wasn't okay to write about life and love there'd be one real gem of a poem.
29. nine stories. j.d. salinger.
he's a genius. bananafish. uncle wiggly. and dear esme. i could fall in love with his characters, and oh the dialogue. thank you mr. salinger.

exposition on a conflict

Thu, 01 Jul 2004 13:32:02 GMT

last night was the first time in a couple years i got into a fight. i raised my voice and felt that panic that can come only with a conflict of interest and lacking understanding. i cried, cause i never learned how not to.
have you ever been in a fight that you had no idea how to win, because the very things that began the fighting are the things you wish you could erase from happening? because while you can understand the position of the other person you still see no way to accomodate them without imposing upon yourself. and that's the easy way out, the route you gladly take most other days, but everyone has to have a backbone if you push them hard enough.
i feel bad because if anyone knows me to be stubborn and slightly crazy its him. and i do feel empty having gotten my way. there's no satisfaction in it, largely there's just guilt sprinkled over my feeling, like a sticky drippy topping that almost makes the entire thing unappetizing. but i can't throw it away. there's something of importance in the core or i wouldn't have cared in the first place. extreme as i may be, i'm actually quite rational. there's a premise i oppose layered with conflicting circumstances and i offered the only compromise i could find fully expecting him to take it.
there's just something lacking in the way that you can never understand why others make their ultimate decisions, which factors motivate and which seem irrelevant. there's just such a difference between being understood and being appeased.
i know i'm foolish to want my little birthday party without any frivolous things, without any reminders of bad sorts of feelings, the kind that have plagued me for much of being nineteen. i'd worry that i'm setting myself up for disappointment, but i know how simply happy i can be surrounded by friends all to my liking and that's something i so rarely get the chance to orchestrate. i've had a craving since february when i lied down on a hospital bed honestly wondering if i'd ever open my eyes again, a craving reinforced by the rejections of my sophomore year and the first loss of a dear family member that i've ever encountered. a craving for the comfort of the past, a safe time and a safe place, and i guess really it's that comfort i want to recreate. i just want a night where i can forget the different directions the present has pulled all of us, where i can lose sight of the gradual decline that has felt like my life, and just be around people that i look upon so fondly, the people that have known the better person i know i can be.
sometimes the mind is such a lonely place and articulations seem fruitless, a risk, because who could ever understand all this i attempt to express other than me in the first place?

covered with scars i did nothing to earn

Wed, 30 Jun 2004 00:09:23 GMT

how fundamentally lonely it is to live inside a body, year after year, and carry it always in a foward direction, an how there is never any relief from the weight of it, even when sleeping, even when joined, briefly, to the body of another.
-carol sheilds, the stone diaries

on my right shin there's a bone chip from gym floor hockey when a crazy girl wacked me with her stick. you can feel it if you run your fingers slowly up my shin. to it's right there's a still fading scar from a drunken night this spring when i apparently walked into a liscence plate. my recollections of that entire evening are blurry and transient. there's a scar on my left knee from when i fell on gravel at the playground back in oradell and should have gotten stiches, but didn't because a butterfly bandage and a permanent reminder were much less horrifying to me at age six. there's a birthmark on the back of my right thigh roughly the size of a quarter and shapped ambigiously like a cloud in the sky that i could never classify. i have few freckles, but they cluster and continually surprise me when i look into mirrors. (it still strikes me as strange to see myself reflected, to get out of the shower and make sense of the subtle curves and lean muscle in my legs that moves as i step over the rim of the bathtub.) my right wrist is seperated in halves between two long stubborn scars from surgery this february. the longer one runs on the inside of my arm, the shorter one is darker, and right by the spot where my bone, aided by titanium reinforcements, protrudes. there's a scar i can't remember on my right index finger, right above the cluster of freckles that emerged when i exposed my skin to sunshine after six weeks in a plaster cave. my smile is dimpled, yet lopsided. if you look close enough you can see a faint scar on more forehead from when i was hit with a ninja turtle blimp in julie chaffiottes backyard. i learned that my torso is disproportionate to my long legs in a ninth grade biology lab. i can't wear even extra small underwear from victoria's secret because it sags off my nonexistant ass. my hips are about two inches more broad than my ribcage, oversized as far back as i can trace in the family line, and burdened with an extra bone for no reason at all. since the eight grade i've always been a little bit topheavy.
my hair was jet black when i was born. my parents were going to name me allison if i was blonde. the hair fell out rather quickly after the birth certificate was finalized and i became a blonde kristen when it grew back in. stick straight till puberty, now curly to the brink of unruly and a kalidiscope of color from white blonde to light brown. my eyes aren't artifical, though i'm often asked if i wear color contacts. i am almost legally blind, the result of nights spent reading by a cheap flashlight under my comforter when my father imposed a ridiculously early bedtime. i'm prone to sinus infections after traveling and highly allergic to unavoidable things like dust. although i can breathe easier in the midwest i still prefer my dear east coast.
my wisdom teeth are still growing in and will probably be removed before july turns into august. i've never had a cavity and my teeth stick up straight without ever having to have been aided by braces so i guess it's about time i went to a dentist for something more than a routine cleaning. my lips can't handle the sun i love so much and i have to remember to apply zinc multiple times when i'm at the beach.
my hips are double jointed and last summer one popped out of place. i've strained a nerve in my shoulder and pulled my hamstring several times during successive lacrosse seasons. for what feels like forever i'll have to shy away from athletic things demanding even adequate strength from my right wrist. while i have endurance, i'll never be a sprinter. my coordination is sporatic. i can be a total ditz and send volleyballs flying in the opposite of the intended direction or catch a football with my face, but most of the time i do just fine and don't interrupt the flow of any game.
i have five piercings, all on my ears and have never figured out an answer for why i decided to stop there. i've pondered permanently placing a star just about my hipbone, but my fear out motivates any appeal of unerasable branding. i used to give myself tattoos from pen ink in class and at dinner my father would yell at me. i pick scabs and pick apart split ends when i'm bored during class. when stressed i can excessively pluck away at my eyebrows. these are the closest things to how i understand compulsions. i've never been able to control it.
when drunk i admit that i'd like to get liposuction on the sides of my stomach to see if maybe a waist does hide there somewhere between the rather unfeminine measurements of my frame.
i can put both my legs behind my head and years of ballet allow me to lie completely horizontal in a buttefly stretch. when drunk and provoked i often force my fist entirely inside my mouth. i have tied a cherry string in a knot with my tongue twice. often i make this noise while scratching the inside of my ear without even realizing i'm doing it in the first place. my mother's the only other person who understands exactly what and how and why i am doing. i can make an impressive fish face and turnout until my feet face backwards. i've been told by several doctors that it's not good for my knees.
i worry about my bones since lactose intolerance keeps me from getting as much calcium as i probably need. i exercise to excess and hate cigarettes, yet often wonder rather morbidly what kind of cancer will sneak up and get me.
after nearly twenty years i still regard by body and its flesh and limbs and nostalgic imperfections with the same sense of confusion and intrigue that i had when i first realized its implications and capabilities.
i wonder if i ever will stop being amazed by the way breathing continues without being commanded and reflexes respond without your permission. i doubt any scientific explanation could eradicate the awe i feel towards a heartbeat. i like life coated in an air of mystery, existence cloacked in naive intrigue. there's a beauty in not knowing how my legs extend to support my body as a run quickly down paved hills in personalized nikes.
i like seeing the tears i cried as i finished the stone diaries this morning as nothing more than poetic, a pure reaction to combinations of created articulations that capture the central premise of living inside a body, however fundamentally lonely it may be.

snapshots for we do not remember days, we remember moments

Mon, 28 Jun 2004 14:51:10 GMT

large laps on chestermendham country backroads at two am. being driven down route 78 in the back of my brother's jeep wrangler grasping the stone diaries in pure fear that the pages will blow away from me. strawberry dacquiris made by second cousins at my great aunt's birthday. my grandmother saying she couldn't be more proud of the way i hugged my brother as he stepped down from the podium at the service last tuesday. my great aunt claiming i have a personality to rival the one and only arthur aschoff and him just laughing like perhaps he agrees. being wasted by five pm. driving to hillsdale with tara and michael talking about settling and how it's never been our style while the soundtrack from the last five years blares in the background. rating all the girls in her senior yearbook. random games of beerpong at parties walking distance down the street. how many guys in this backyard have you hooked up with? an attempted private guitar concert of pete gabriel's in your eyes. talking outside a rather sexy gmc pickup truck. driving down route 80 with "honk if you're hott" written on the back window in paint. both sides of extended family in my backyard. seeing the woman who helped raise me when i was three after fifteen years and having her gush about how my most beautiful blue eyes haven't changed and the early age at which i first learned to read. small children everywhere. my little cousin abby responding with "you look lovely my dear." attempted expeditions to gas stations. a wonderful early birthday present from my aunt. giving my grandfather a hug every single time i saw him because it must be hard to do these things as half of a pair that had been together for many years. blending margaritas with grand marnier and my dear friend jose. my wasted mother grabbing her friends breasts in the kitchen. having "remember when..." conversations with kids i babysat for when they were five and four that are somehow about to enter eighth grade. having my mother's friend from high school say i look like my father but have my mother's "light". an eighty year old woman who drinks scotch with water and dances like there is no tomorrow. seeing lifelines drawn in every direction in my backyard; through the gazebo, past the garden, around the barn, through the horseshoe pit. the lonely you can only feel after being in the best company for two straight days. driving those laps again, slightly altered, to watch my boys bowl just because i like to be surrounded by friends.

life is what life is. any love that is love is right. family and friends wash all doubts of insignificance in life. it's so important to have a home to go back to and a past that you are overjoyed to see manifest itself in the perpetual present. it's so important to have people that make you feel like you are about to cry simply because you love them that much. it's so important to trascend typicalities and redefine standards to accomodate an experience that is nothing if not subjective and individual. what more can i say that what may make some feel used makes me feel useful? it's just i do what i do because i want to. i have that great fortune. obligation is a fancy word for conflict of interest but mine rarely do. i just live, in the pursuit of endless experience. i just love, because i don't know how not to. ♥