absalom.

Christmas was pretty good this year.

Strangely, I am looking forward to Tennessee and our cabin in the Smokey Mountains.

Every time I tell anyone I'm going there, they ask "...but, why?" Would they ask that same question if I said I was going to Paris? No. To Hollywood? No.

Really, people, you could all stand to get out of what you see as "civilization" for a while. Big things do exist in little places. Open land still breathes in Tennessee. And being cold there isn't like being cold in Los Angeles. Being cold in Tennessee is like knowing that Spring is there to rescue you when it's all over. It's Ode to the West Wind reincarnated.

When I was little, we used to go visit my grandparents in the house that my grandfather built. On Christmas Eve, my dad and I would shoot down holly or mistletoe or whatever it was from the trees that populated my grandparents' farmland. Being about four feet tall at the time, those trees were infinite. They housed the unknown, the ethereal, all of my too-tall dreams and ambitions. I've let myself grow up too much it seems.

My dad used to say, in such a backwoods Faulknerian character way, "Just 'cause you live in California now, that don't mean you should ever git above yur raisin'." He would always intensify his accent during those times, for whatever reason. More impact, I guess. But the truth is, I don't think I could ever get above my raising even if I tried. At the end of it all, my family is Southern. And the Jones Graveyard and the Jones River Bend are intense reminders of that. And even though the airport bought out my grandparents' farmhouse and paved a runway over it, just thinking about that place reminds me that I am too far away from where I was meant to be.

sun kil moon.

sorry that
i could never love you back
i could never care enough
in these last days...

green green green
what about the sweetness we knew
what about what's good, what's true
from those days

graven dreams
a million miles ago you seem
the star that i just don't see
anymore

words long gone
lost on journeys we walked on
lost her voice is heard along
the way

sorry for
never going by your door
never feeling love like that
anymore

i just can't stop.

Other things that are interesting: how you can be in love with the idea of a person, but hate who they really are. Like every time you are with them, you try your best to mask your disappointment that they aren't doing exactly what you imagined they'd be doing (which is turning that car around and changing plans). You are angry because they turn your dreams around and skew your perception of perfection.

I am starting to come around to another interesting realization: I have never known love. I have known idealizations and fabricated Disney Channel nightmares, but I have never known love. I think it is interesting how so many people I know have only experienced the same exact thing, but they try to pass it off as something more deep and meaningful. Truthfully, I don't feel as though I'm missing out on much. I'm not ready to compromise my own wants for anyone else at this point, and I know that when I really do fall in love, I will have no choices to make-- everything will be clear. I won't weigh the options. I won't cringe. I can feel the ability in me, I just have not found anyone worth sharing it with.

In fact, I am grateful that I've never been in love. If I had been in love before, it would have ruined the surprise of what is to come. Not only that, if what I had before was love, love would suck.

But, really, at 19, who the fuck cares? Let's go out and go crazy!

sugar cane nightmares.

Being away from home for so long, you find out who your real friends really are. It's interesting, really. I've also decided that I am a terrible writer.

What am I going to do with my life?

one more thing.

I decided that if love does exist, it resides in spontaneity.

Dropping by for a surprise date. Now that is love.
Calling me two hours beforehand to see if I'm free. Now that is faking it.

But, in the real world, you have to call ahead it seems. Well I'm not for that. I think of all of the romantic notions that I alone have fostered, that have not been affected by the media's influence, and they all include an element of surprise. So when I say that I am looking for someone adventurous, I don't mean mountain climbing. I mean, call me just to ask what time it is. Or, better yet, call me at 2:46 am to talk about the eternal forms (yes, I've written about this one before) or ask if I want to share a bottle of wine (or a can of coke and a sandwich) with you on a lonely patch of Los Angeles grass.

bouncy bouncy.

a ridiculous ball of cute.

otter love.

i want one.

una noche despacia.

my checklist for the perfect night:
San Francisco
A bottle of cheap wine
Peanut butter & banana sandwiches

i can barely breathe.

I keep having these strange epiphanies. Like, all the sudden, I'll feel like I can start over. But starting over is so difficult. I just don't know if I have the strength to do it right now.

Do I really have to? All the happiness mixed with all the pain? Wouldn't it just be much easier to resign myself to apathy?

Wouldn't it?

there it is.

a: positively... magical.

Maybe it's the British in me, but whenever I hear about Prince William and this new girl of his (Kate Middleton), I get oddly jealous. She seems so normal, so regular. When you enter the royal family, it's not like meeting a man's evil mother, it's like you have to put on Givenchy and be P-E-R-F-E-C-T. Yet it's so odd how this girl is so normal. A whirlwind of change must be coming about her. She's in love with a prince for god's sake. I think somewhere deep inside me, I feel like I could do what she's doing. And it makes me sad. Because there she is, kissing this beautiful future King of England (I don't care if it IS only symbolic), and here I am, sitting on my butt thinking of what errands I need to run tomorrow. Hmmmm...

speculation.

q: what would it be like to date a prince?

i hate to see you cry.

During nights like this, I think of Travis' house in Half Moon Bay and that night when Marie, Trav, Charles, Jen and I went to his place, drank e, went in the hot tub, and had a grand ol' time laughing at everything. I think of prom night and all that happened and all that didn't. I think of how light and loose my arms feel.

In honor of UCLA's win against USC (that's right, Marie! We beat you!), I am a little trashed. But the parties are all over. And Rebecca, who I used to think was my friend, is hardly ever here at all. So here I am.

Thinking of having to work tomorrow and having to study for finals and having to read Keats' poems. And my head is spinning. And my emotions are unstable. And I feel like, although this night is just about over, my body will never let me sleep.

stop this train.

Installment 1, to be continued:

She loved to take risks. Silver pumps with brown knee-highs; drinking just one more shot of vodka, sans chaser; flying standby to Las Vegas, Nevada one Friday night.

There she was. Middle of the hotel lobby with that combination of clothing that seemed so unlikely, so effortless, so her. Her lipstick was a bit smudged from kissing that guy Joey at the nightclub. One of her fake nails had fallen off and lay beside her foot on the red carpet of the Day's Inn Las Vegas. Her hair, stiff with hairspray, sat in a contented blonde mess on her shoulders.

Her eyelashes were gracefully situated on those big blue eyes - half-open, half-closed - and seemed to blow in the momentary breeze that came through the sliding doors as Jewel entered.

She had come to visit Jewel, but as the tall girl entered the lobby to meet her friend, her mouth dropped open and let out a shrill scream of horror.

The police were already there, too afraid to move the lovely girl. Such a lovely, young girl. Only now that young body rested cold on the floor. No more breath slept in those lungs. The last bits of life seeped out of her skin.

Earlier that night, she sat in the back of a taxi, silent, tapping her fake nails on the door handle beside her. She had phoned Jewel three times already, to no avail. But she tried again. This time she decided to leave a message:

"Hey Jewels, it's me. So I was thinking, what if I met you in Vegas tonight and we party a little too hard like last time? Good idea? Good. Because I'm about to check into my hotel. I'll be out at that place we went to last time, Angelo's, so call me. Peace, baby."

Jewel didn't check her voicemail until midnight.

By that time, it was too late. The whole mess had already started.

silly love songs.

I'm always reading something, always escaping. Right now, I'm in the middle of the North Pole with Frankenstein and his creature. Last night, I was in Paris with Giovanni and David. The night before that, I was driving across America with Carol and Therese.

I'm reading about two books a week right now. And despite the fact that I am escaping my real problems, I have an excuse because it's all in the name of schoolwork.

There's something to be said for escaping in the pages of books.

In a way, you want so bad to be a part of the little self-contained worlds that you make the worlds a part of your own. I feel like every character I've ever loved is some part of me, yet, despite all of the morals and lessons these characters have learned, I'm still so lost.

I just want my own personal James Baldwin, who can make things right again.

tha's it and tha's all.

TERROR

love is a growing up.

I am filled with this vast empty pit of loneliness. It's something I am not used to, having believed all my life that I am independent and having been told just last night that I've never been good tied down. But it's about time I stop lying to myself.

I am alone.

And I have never felt more like it before. I'm so used to having someone's arm to squeeze, or having someone who I can call when someone says something stupid that I can't stop laughing at, or even having someone whose hair I can play with as we drive down the highway.

Yet I think of all these things, and I can't stop thinking me, me, me. What am I missing? What do I need to make me happy? Not, what can I do to make sure that whoever I'm with is just as happy? How can I make that person smile?

Which is exactly why I need to feel alone, I suppose. While I do think it is reasonable to wonder what makes me happy, I don't think it's reasonable to always be thinking what others can do to get me there. I think the questions I need to ask myself are more like, why do I hate myself so much that I can't spend a night alone in my dorm room without feeling the need to beg someone to hang out with me? Why do I get so angry with Rebecca when she ditches me? Shouldn't I be able to be by myself for one, maybe two nights without having a breakdown?

I have a lot of things to figure out. I have a long way to go before I can feel what I see others feeling constantly-- that they belong to someone, and they don't care. Because they'll do whatever it takes to make sure they smile.

More questions flood over me: am I even capable of that emotion? Have I been so spoiled that I may never be happy with anyone? Or is it just what Nika said, that it's not true that no one will put up with me like he did? That I just need some time to figure out why I'm even worth anyone spending any time on me at all?

I just wish I could feel like I was the same girl I was two years ago, when life was perfect and simple. So perfect and simple that I was able to acknowledge it, even at the time.

No joyless forms shall regulate our living calendar.

In some other life, I must have been a Romantic poet.

Last Wednesday during English, my professor started talking about Wordsworth and his cottage in Northern England (the Lake District, to be exact). I began to imagine the green hills topped in dew and the rainbows peaking out between white clouds. I felt my heart begin to pound as I recalled the quiet country villages that I stayed in seven years ago. Seven years? Has it been seven years already?

And while I'm pretty sure about going to Stratford this summer, I feel the country pulling on my heartstrings, begging me to wander over the green hilltops and ponder my place in the world among nature and God (if he exists, along with other supernatural powers) and my fellow human beings.

While I came back to reality and began reading along with my professor, I realized that I write in much the same way as Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy. It sort of scared me. How can you be so far away from something and have it still be such a part of you? Like my Southern childhood or the two weeks I spent in Northern England, not realizing how complete I felt at so young an age. I'm thinking about that tiny town in England, I'm thinking about that grocery store, I'm thinking about tea time, I'm thinking of how out of place I really must be here.

Perhaps I've gone on too long. It's just that I am torn by nostalgia for a place I hardly remember. And I'm realizing I may never feel quite right until I can recreate that time and place.

have you forgotten?

I really need new friends.

Either that, or I want my old ones back.

at second glance.

Los Angeles gets better with time. And yet it isn't like a fine wine. It's not age that makes it better. Aging in Los Angeles is quickly smothered in Botox and bottled hair dye. But as you get to know the difference between east and west and you incorporate Pico into your mental geography, things start to look a little brighter.

There's the Upright Citizens' Brigade, Canter's, Santa Monica, Wildflour pizza, the cheap end of Melrose, shopping in Pasadena, little cafes sprinkled between dirty office towers, world-class art museums, the La Brea tarpits, restaurants that serve s'mores, the Venice canals, drum circles, movie premieres, and, apparently, disco skating rinks.

I don't think I will ever say that I feel more at home in Los Angeles than in San Francisco, but something tells me that everything is going to be all right.

pensive.

Should I go to NYU for a semester next Spring?

The possibility is strongly in New York's favor.

Then again, $15,000 is hard to come by.

I don't know. John says I can write a column for the newspaper from The Big Apple, which would be interesting. We will see.

a box full of paper hearts.

When I look out my window from here, I see a mansion through a heavy mist of Autumn fog.

I wonder who the people are inside. What their lives are like. If they are lonely.

I wonder if they are home. If they have kids. Whether it is a husband and wife. And if they are in love with each other. Or if they are just lying to make life easier.

You say I was never in love with you, but you don't know what you mean. You fall in love too easily until it isn't love at all. You lied to make life easier. I lied to make you think it was working.

Now I know love is a feeling that isn't convenient to feel until you are old enough to be miserable.

here giddy giddy giddy.

I just remembered this commercial and how much I lurve it. Plus, the Samuel L. Jackson-like guy. Period.

KITTIES EVERYWHERE!

locked up tight.

It's hard not to wonder what would have happened if I had chosen New York over you.

Would I have saved myself the pain? Or would I wake up every morning to the dark grey sky, wondering what would have become of us?

Well I know now. And it is more painful than any unanswered question or nostalgia-ridden dream.

Now every day I wake up to headache-inducing sunlight, wondering what emotion will run through me when my eyes meet yours again. Will it be regret that I have made this decision? Will it be relief that you are still in my life? Will it be a feeling of comfortable abandon? Will I feel sick to my stomache for hurting you like I have? Or will I have to continue forcefully swallowing the three words that got me where I am, so I don't end up where I was?

Lately, it has been all of the above.

When you told me that story over breakfast, I don't know what happened between us. Something in me went blank, whether from jealousy or insecurity or frustration, I will never know. I don't know what to make of the anger I felt or how little I felt I knew you in those ten minutes.

And then when I trudged up Rieber steps after newspaper training, I almost expected you to still be sitting there alone like you were as I looked back over my shoulder this morning, still so angry you were willing to throw all those little seeds onto my favorite sweater (the one you bought me last Christmas) like a little boy angry at his big sister for tattling.

And I was just thinking, maybe in New York, this would have all disappeared. Maybe I could replace the hole you leave when you're away with expensive shoes and snow and skyscrapers.

Then, just as I think of the alternatives, the question comes back again: Do you feel better now, you heartless bitch?

and i get paid for this.

Four great news stories that happened today. Oh, how I love journalists with a strong grasp on irony:

A) Steve Wynn sells Picasso's "Le Reve" for $139 million, making it the most expensive painting in the world.
Then he elbows it and gives it a 2-inch tear. Oh, the plight of the rich.

• http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-2409693,00.html

B) Scarlett Johansson has signed on to record an album called Scarlett Sings Tom Waits.
Ummmm, what?

• http://www.hecklerspray.com/scarlett-johansson-to-wrap-mighty-lungs-around-tom-waits/20065371.php

C) Mailman found dead in his apartment with thousands of letters stolen from people along his mail route.
OK, this is kind of sad, but the irony kicks my butt.

• http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/18/us/18mail.html?hp&ex=1161230400&en=8ae1fa1df5c6b415&ei=5094&partner=homepage

D) I'm not going to post a link to this one, but it is equally smirk-worthy. In London, they have banned junk food in elementary schools. So what's a concerned mum to do now that her kid can't chow down on Lion bars at lunchtime? Why, sell contraband hamburgers, french fries, and sandwiches, of course! Kids just aren't kids without that extra five pounds.

rant.

Here is a question I pose not only to the English department at UCLA, but to all English departments everywhere and to Norton Abrams and his Norton Anthology:

Why do we focus more time on mentally retarded men than we do talented women in our English classes? Unless you take a Women's Lit class, English teachers glaze over amazing women authors like Aphra Behn and spend four sections discussing Alexander Pope and his humpback.

And I have a female teacher. Yet she focuses on quotations from Behn that include diction like "weak" and "indebted" when talking about female writing.

Fuck that.

so there.

Today at Rendezvous, a campus restaurant, I spotted a girl with hair like mine waiting for her Mexican food at the counter. Next to her stood a boy about her height with light brown hair that covered the tops of his ears. The man behind the counter called the girl's number and the boy reached out to grab her box of food for her. She took it from him and smiled. She handed him some napkins and a fork from the baskets on her left.

I couldn't help smiling at the simple reciprocity. I couldn't help going numb from feeling so far away.

bored.

I am...
an easy laugher
jokingly racist
creative
beautiful on my good days
fashion conscious
overly critical
way too analytical
half confident and half shy
well-informed
a little ditzy
in love with San Francisco
a great friend
a bit of a gossip
afraid of sandpaper
a closet romantic (the door has been closed a long time)
a daydreamer
good in bed (although I forget this sometimes)
open to any topics
terrified of pornographic images
growing
a party girl
not able to read a watch without careful deliberation
determined
careful
calculating
always willing to smile at a clever pun
jealous of ex-girlfriends
partial to pearls
wild about Ewan McGregor
annoyed with bad grammar
in need of constant attention
powerful
shoe-crazy
adventurous
lost.

and and and.

On another note, I am going to stop censoring myself for you now.

So be prepared for it. You might not like what I have to say.

Deal with it.

lots of trash and a little treasure.

I like the idea of having a daily column. I just don't think that I have the ability to write one week after week.

It makes me sad because I am beginning to believe that I will never write anything worth reading. Editing is great. It's just very hollow. If I didn't work with the amazing people I work (play) with, I might not be so crazy about it.

Who am I kidding? I love it.

But still. The column. I would really like to be writing one this time next year. I just need practice because, as of now, my creativity has dried up.

gold keys jingling in a tattered pocket.

I was thinking yesterday about how important the past becomes as you grow older. Photo albums and picture frames and old pieces of paper and ticket stubs seem like parts of yourself. As the days drift off into nothing, I can't help but cling onto these symbols harder than before.

It's strange, however, how these things no longer make me sad or angry at how quickly the good times faded. I look at my little souvenirs and I can appreciate that I still have pieces of how things once were.

I'm not about to say that I am happier now than I ever have been, but I am happy in general right now. And just having these pieces of my old life here to remind me of what happiness even is keeps me believing that I am capable of feeling that distilled joy once again. Maybe in a different place. Maybe at a different time. Maybe with different people. But at least I am starting to see that it's possible.

the lovely april of her prime.

Somewhere along the 5 with its dry air and endless pavement, you reach a small vineyard. Planted in a rectangle of several hundred rows by several hundred columns, the trees grow and change slowly throughout the year. In the winter, you find their branches empty, all of their grapes stolen by the cold breeze. The ground in which the roots extend and multiply is muddy and uneven. In the spring, the leaves are bright green and small grapes are just barely visible as your car rushes past. By summertime, the leaves have decided to take on a rich evergreen that seems like it would taste bitter and invigorating. The grapes that cling to the smaller branches long to yield to gravity's force. Every few rows, you see grapes scattered across the dry, tilled earth. As I pass this field of wine grapes, I think of all of the times I have watched row lead into row and disappear into nothing at the end. It is a dream of mine to one day sprint through the long lines of trees and perhaps get lost somewhere near the middle. I will call out to whoever I am with, "Where are you?" And they will only respond with, "Right here!" I will say it again and they will repeat the same, vague words. Breathless and full of joy, I will collapse with laughter. My flowing skirt will spread out over the dirt where I have fallen, and I will wait. Perhaps in a matter of minutes, my adventurous and lively companion will come dashing through the columns and catch a glimpse of my red cheeks and windblown hair. Panting, my friend will settle next to me. The infinite trees will shade us from the sun's white light as we both lie back in the dirt. It will be silent except for the sound of our heartbeats in our ears. Even the cars that whiz past us in flashes of black metal will be perfectly quiet. I will sigh as I begin to regain my breath, and my friend will smile back with a quickly rising and falling chest. "We'll have to do this again sometime," I whisper. But I know we never will. Sometimes once is just enough.