all that is faithful.

There are some things better left unnoticed. Like a flash of a piece of paper containing poems. Containing poems you read so long ago it hurts to think how innocent you were then. There are some things that you should just let go. When you realize that all of the crumpled pieces of paper filled with broken words - emulating those poets - add up to nothing, nothing, not anything at all, you also know it's hopeless. All the dreams of new apartments in big cities, putting up wallpaper, and laughing and crying while the light from sun-drenched window panes projects your happy faces out into the street.

When these times come, as they often do, you sit and you think of your past. You think of your old L.A. bedroom on a warm, gray night, the wind blowing the curtains and the door rattling against its frame. You wish you had not been so final. You wish you could have avoided the tears and the philosophical conversation altogether. You knew you were falling for him when you had that conversation about James Agee and As I Lay Dying and the meaning of words themselves. You could point to it and smile, looking at your best friend.

It is midnight, the day before the new year, and you think to yourself: it may be a cliche, but 2009 is a new number. You get to turn the page now. Throw away the gifts. Throw away the empty compliments. Throw away how he chose one path and you tried in vain to follow him. Let it go. Let it pass. Let it fall. Let it drown. And once that weight is lifted, you will thrash to the surface, I promise. If that isn't the truth, then life is nothing but an empty mess of experiences.

You walk through the book store. It's three days. Three days until the countdown. A volume of Susan Sontag's journal, plain and nondescript, catches your eye. She says learning has clear and distinct purposes. She says writing is about egotism. She says to you, with the physicality of the pieces of paper in front of you, that it's okay for you to embrace the world of learning and scholarship.

You think of this for days, you think of Susan Sontag. You think of photography and forms and shapes and shadows and you wish everything were a matter of form. For if it were, the new year would mean nothing this year, as it has meant nothing every other year to you. Instead, you understand that this is different. You must embrace it. If you do not, you will become what he thinks of you. You will become a secondary character in your own story. You are better than that. You are better than him.

Please, do not. Please, take a cue from Bronte and all those anti-Romantics.

You flip through the pages. You find it:

Look up into the light of the lantern.
Don't you see? The calm of darkness
is the horror of Heaven.

We've been apart too long, too painfully seperated.
How can you bear to dream,
to give up watching? I think you must be dreaming,
your face is full of mild expectancy.

I need to wake you, to remind you that there isn't a future.
That's why we're free. And now some weakness in me
has been cured forever, so I'm not compelled
to close my eyes, to go back, to rectify--

The beach is still; the sea, cleansed of its superfluous life,
opaque, rocklike. In mounds, in vegetal clusters,
seabirds sleep on the jetty. Terns, assassins--

You're tired; I can see that.
We're both tired, we have acted a great drama.
Even our hands are cold, that were kindling.
Our clothes are shattered on the sand; strangely enough,
they never turned to ashes.

I have to tell you what I've learned, that I know now
what happens to the dreamers.
They don't feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.

Tonight I am not afraid
to feel the revolutions. How can you want sleep
when passion gives you that peace?
You're like me tonight, one of the lucky ones.
You'll get what you want. You'll get your oblivion.

- Louise Gluck, "Night Song."

You put it down. You say what you've been dreaming of. You make your resolutions.

why, sir, it's (almost) christmas day.

Tomorrow is Christmas, and I feel so fortunate to have so many family members and friends around me. I am very lucky, I know that.

Things accomplished so far this break:

• Going to Half Moon Bay
• Visiting people in Berkeley
• Finally visiting Solano Ave.
• Not writing any of my thesis
• Taking lots of photographs
• Catching up with the girls
• Re-evaluating my friendship with the guys
• Santa Cruz
• Parties
• Fewer bars than I'd like
• Almost finishing a book, though not really
• Baking, cooking, stirring, things of that nature
• Feeling oddly broken-hearted again but never able to settle on whether I'm happy or whether this is the most cruel thing anyone has ever done to me
• Making plans
• Free Its-It and Guittard samples
• Thinking the rest of my life will never ever exist-- it's just this. forever. so pinning anything on this is just wishful thinking.
  
• Planning nature hikes that never happen because it will never stop raining
  

comeback.

Feel like I've lost a large part of myself. Going to Berkeley and Albany tonight to make up for it.

branches scattered on the concrete.

Last night, Greg asked me what I'm doing for feminism. What's my part in trying to right the wrongs of gender dichotomies? Well, I'm not exactly sure. Don't you think that other women counteract any progress you make by conforming to everything you fight against?, he presses. Yes. Yes, I couldn't agree more. I also think I have counteracted a lot of my own progress over time, but I have tried very hard to work towards a stronger version of myself:

falling over someone not worthy of my intellect or thoughtfulness, being shallow, subscribing to cosmogirl, reading Us Weekly with my mom, watching MTV every so often (I tell myself it's from a critical perspective, but sometimes I watch for plot points on The Hills), worrying about my future family, making life decisions based on men (we've all done it, but we can promise to never do it again), liking Beyonce, seeing Scarlett Johansson as my early-college idol, laughing a little too hard at that guy's jokes, falling for British guy, falling for co-workers, not writing enough in my diary, and so on.

There is something in me that tells me that all of this is somehow not completely incompatible with feminism, however. How can we reject an entire social setup, an entire cultural foundation and expect to find a suitable place for gender identities in America? Gender upheaval at this point in history is just not going to happen. I try to work hard and make plans that are not based on advertising or the media. I try to make goals that satisfy my own personal ambitions. I write and I write and I write and I hope it makes sense to someone out there. But I think there has to be some line we can create to help us judge when it is okay to conform. Then again, over thinking this whole thing is doomed to be the female condition if we keep looking at it this way. So I will stop here.

And, in closing, I would like to point out that the least feminist thing that any woman can do is to envy and hate other women before knowing them and understanding their circumstances. This does not apply to haters of Angelina Jolie. Does no one remember she is fucking insane? Not a feminist icon, thank you very much.

sunny and cold.

I apologize for the recent disappearance. My life devolved into reading, studying, watching re-runs of Top Chef, and Christmas shopping for a few days.

But now I am home again, sitting beside my kittens, who are currently licking each other's heads.

This break, I plan on escaping to Portland, OR and going up to the city a lot. My best friend, Marie, is home from 6 months in Spain, and it's been so eye-opening hearing all of her stories from abroad.

In other news, riots have broken out all over Athens. I wonder if that will make it a good time or a bad time for me to teach kids English. Apparently, it all stems from economic divisions in Greece, which I suppose I can relate to quite well. But what if the kids rebel one day and beat me up and then the police arrest me and then I go to jail and then my life becomes a story of an innocent American abroad, jailed at the behest of the Greek government, wishing I had just chosen Ireland after all? Oh gosh, what if?

I saw Slumdog Millionaire last night. That movie was just a lot of fun. And the two little boys just broke my heart. And now if someone would sit through Nothing Like the Holidays with me, that would just be very nice.

a short history.

My sleeping schedule is fucked, I can't stop thinking about the British guy in my English class, I have paper upon paper to write, must study at some point, cannot wait until Sunday, cannot wait to move to Europe, dreading going home for Christmas and wishing I had the money to travel, eating an apple, flipping through photographs, thinking about the pizza and the car and the secrets I didn't mean to tell him, glad the quarter is almost at an end, wanting to go to Cambridge for my M.A. but like American lit too much, tired of disliking people who aren't worth my time thinking about, turning around and thinking of last night and feeling my stomach turn sour with good-byes and moving ons and perhaps you'll wish we never said anything at all.

sounds outside the window.

For the first seven or so weeks of school, I was running three times a week. I'd snake through the back side of Brentwood and avoid all the construction sites, get down to the office where my roommate works, run to the recreation center, work out there, and then run home.

Every time I ran, there were men who would whistle, yell stupid shit, or try to talk to me. Why do some men think that this is okay? Do they think I should actually give them the time of day? Do they think this is flattering? Or are they really communicating to me that I should have no freedom from male stares, that my life is defined by men who give me validation?

So instead of letting it bother me, I got into the habit of flipping them off and running faster in the other direction.

Metaphor for my life.

i run a tidy bakery.

30 Rock can be compared to a Thomas Pynchon novel? What?

Why are you so wonderful, New York Times?

Anyway, that's an article about the nuanced narrative techniques in today's sitcom. I'm English major nerding out right now. You can't blame me.

they asked me.

Family: My uncle passed away last week. Still thinking how it will never ever seem real to me. Missing my family terribly.

School: My lack of effort is depressing, even to me.

Boys: Another appointment, another set of wasted words, another hopeless smile. Maybe this time it will go better. I want to be nothing but myself.

Girls: I want to move out of my apartment. So I think I will.

Future: So many plans, so desperately little time. Do I go to grad school? Can I even get good recommendation letters? Maybe if I figured out the school section of my life, I could also figure out this section as well. I just know I want to get out of America and meet new people. This is a pre-requisite to living for me.

Money: nonexistent.

how many.

I'm about the biggest idiot around sometimes, but every so often I don't know what to say, so I just let him walk away, see you on Thursday, oh my god I'll think of you until then. So sometimes, between thinking of Greece, Germany, Ireland, I settle on London. And I know I'm stupid, and I know it has everything to do with his voice and his way of expressing the inexpressible while speaking of old stories once serialized. So I say nothing, wait for his gesture, leave, my ears ringing, my heart beat pounding against my chest so fragile I feel I might break.

And things in my life are so varied, so abstract, so hectic right now all I can do to express them is write incoherently. It's my formal manifestation of my inner insanity.

among pages of books, among thoughts, among intellectual garbage.

And in the blankets and
so deep down in the smoke
and
traveled far for ten days
you.
There are quiet spaces
they whisper and
they scream
and you wake up
in darkness.
Lights out and eyes closed
for you
Lost and feeling
and emptying to the physical
Thoughts and floating
clouds and red sunsets
dry heat sticks to your
fingers where I told
you let me go
screams and then
QUIET!
laugh and smile and hold onto
it all
mistakes and it all goes.
Today, well, today
I thought that you
it's not anyone
at all.
That if I made those
choices so far beyond
so deep the red it bleeds into the
clouds and heats the sky
and dries hands
and lips.
That if I made those
decisions
it is far too late for me.
I have already decided my fate
is to be this
to never be defined
by dry hands cracked lips
one day
well, one day
I may repent.

right here.

In limbo:

My thesis has sat untouched for over two weeks. I e-mailed my adviser to tell him I am "working hard," but I suppose that was actually an excuse for my procrastination. Not a lie, though, I swear.

I found out that Wiley has several offices throughout the UK - even in Edinborough. So I plan on contacting my former colleagues from there and begging for some contacts abroad. If that fails (which, knowing me, it will), I will be signing up for this other internship thing I found out about. Costs money though, which sucks.

I saw Brian last week. It was really really nice, and also really really refreshing to remember that no matter what happens between us, we can always go back to the way we were. That kind of consistency is amazing, and also much-needed in my life right now.

I need a job. I've been unemployed too long, and my money somehow seems to be disappearing. I wonder how that's happening?

And, finally, my parents came and visited last weekend for Veteran's Day (my dad is a Vietnam vet), and we went to the Getty and the Getty Villa and we had designated family nap times at 3 pm. I miss my parents so so so much. Makes me want to go to grad school at Berkeley or Stanford and never leave home again (you know, after the year abroad).

small birdie at the getty.

my own margaret bourke-white photograph.

the getty villa in the morning.

oh my god i love this little guy. he looks like he's riding a turkey, which is all right with me.

my mom and dad at the villa.

ch-ch-ch-changes.

My internet was broken, but now it works again, so I'll update later. A little too much going on to do summary, so we'll see what happens.

you'll just have to wait.

Oh, I am so excited to watch the election coverage tonight, and I voted next to Christopher Walken, and as I walked out, I saw John Voight laughing while he was waiting in line to cast his ballot, and it was just so Los Angeles I could have burst out laughing, but I didn't because I'm not totally insane.

Tonight, before watching a show at UCB and reading Great Expectations, I read one of the most inspiring pieces of feminist non-fiction I have come across in a while.

It's called "To a White Male Radical" and it's from 1970. I feel depressed at how so little has changed in 38 years, but also empowered by the same words. Somehow, the word "feminism" has been contorted to carry with it a terrible stigma. The stigma itself only represents how inherently sexist American culture is. But as I read this piece, I realized it runs even deeper than that, and it may be the reason (not surprisingly) why I have always felt I was meant to live alone. And that is because the men I have loved refuse to give up their positions of power to women, they cling to them, they assume hyper-masculine identities to compensate for the threat to their power. And, in effect, women are left confused, broken, weakened, subordinated. We play this game without even realizing its underlying message of Powerful and Powerless.

"You probably do not even know how you oppress me, or other women. Buy you do. Each time we meet you spell out the business of your schedule while I am supposed to marvel at this important male world to which you belong? I sometimes see very little difference between a conventional bourgeois chauvinist who thinks that his work is his whole life and a radical activist who also escapes the risk of being known by another through his intensive avoidance of free time. ...

Why am I writing this? Because you don't understand yet what it means not to oppress a woman. ... I could love you someday if I stayed near you long enough. But then I would hate you as much. I would rather stay away and let others take your shit. You are the embodiment of male chauvinism and what is so sick about it is that you self-importantly deny it."

halloween and stuff.

Halloween was amazing this year. I spent the night with just Leslie, but, oh, did we meet some characters along the way.

The night began with carving pumpkins and handing out candy at Leslie's house and ended with me yelling at some guy while standing in the drive-thru line at McDonald's, telling him that he would never be happy in life because he was a business economics major and a frat guy in college and couldn't define success outside of economic terms. Sad. But I showed him... Right. In order to get to that stage, a concert, several different parties, and a bar stood in the way. So that explains my random yelling. I get very argumentative sometimes. It's all the bitchy, snarky things I want to say that just come out all at once.

I would post photos, but I didn't take any because my costume consisted of a vintage Bill Blass dress and cat ears. So yeah.

Also got to utter the (in)famous phrase: "You didn't even buy me a drink, why would I go home with you?"

Tonight may be clubs or it may be roommate sesh.

Hopefully my next update will be more interesting.

endless and everlasting.

I feel so stupid for ever falling for him. What an idiot I must have been to think he was worth more than a minute of my time and energy.

The way that I am looking at it, life couldn't get much better than this. Every day, I am running around frantically trying to figure my life out, slowly realizing my infinite potential, feeling more myself than I have ever possibly felt. Every day, I am astonished at how much my undergraduate experience has changed me. I am so grateful for it every single day.

And so, as I said before, I feel so dumb -- like such a dumb little girl -- for ever forgetting my own value. I will never let it happen again, and I will certainly never be with someone intellectually, aspirationally beneath me. Just wanted to clear up that point so everyone knows I can laugh about it now. It didn't take too long to stop hurting, and I never plan on hurting on an unworthy person's behalf again. So there!

Also, today I went to a graduate programs fair and I had a wonderful talk with an admissions adviser at NYU's professional school. More doors open as I close this huge, heavy one behind me.

squint your eyes and look closer.

the height of pretentiousness.

I recently purchased a Nikon D40. Well, it's no D90, but I got what my money (credit card) could pay for. I'm mostly just messing around with it, but it has reminded me how important the camera is in our culture. Photography is hardly an art form in most people's hands, but it brings people together. It captures and conveys, it distorts and crops out the unwanted. A lot can be said about the dangers of photography, and certainly a lot will continue to be argued. But as a personal tool, it makes people smile. And it makes people happy to be where they are. Sometimes it's the only reason people get together in a beautiful place. Sometimes proof is all we need. One morning on a tour bus in Ireland, I was so hung over that I got out at every stop just to be in a picture. Then I stumbled back inside and tried to fit in five minutes' sleep. In a way, I'm okay with that.

Thesis is coming along. Page 20.

We watched Martin Luther King, Jr.'s March on Washington speech in my communications class today, and right in the middle, my eyes filled up with tears. I want to start something. I want to be so completely passionate as to give my life for a cause. I want that equality he dreamed of, that we are still so far from reaching. What can I do? I am hardly eloquent. I am one woman. I want to bang my head against the wall. Thus the tears. Because forty years later, we're still frustrated. We should be frustrated. We should be making change happen. Instead, I'm in class, talking and not acting, thinking and not doing. I'm part of the problem, yes.

I studied for my midterm with a guy from my English class today. It was nicer than studying alone. Especially because of his British accent. He knew how to pronounce all those British-y words in Victorian novels that I always mess up! Quite an accomplishment.

So now you understand.

there's barely time.

A few days ago in my English class, my professor read a passage from "Walden":

"...Not till we are completely lost, or turned round... do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of Nature. Every man has to learn the points of compass again as often as he wakes, whether from sleep or any abstraction. Not till we are lost, in other words, not till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves, and realize where we are and the infinite extent of our relations."

And this, perhaps more than any other reason, is why I am not so scared of my fast-approaching graduation date. When Zora Neale Hurston arrived in New York after having lived all her life in the rural South, she took that big step with the mantra "No job, no friends, and a lot of hope" playing over and over in her head. I plan on not planning anything except maybe a country, a vague understanding of the program I will be going on, and a place to sleep for the first few months. But if I get lost along the way, I will not be lost at all. I will be finding my way back with every move I make.

If there are several accepted modes of femininity, several ways that women are socially allowed to look at their lives in America, I cannot find my place in any of them. I don't feel comfortable taking a job I know I could get in New York and working until I get so stressed out that I have eight ulcers. I don't feel comfortable following in any man's footsteps. I don't feel right going home and being near my family, no matter what that means. I certainly am not ready to settle into eight years of graduate school. I am not a writer. Stop trying to make me a writer. Whatever job I want to assume when I have the experience to assume it has not yet been created. My father is an entrepreneur of sorts. He has his own consulting company, started a record label, created a motorcycle photography website, does whatever he wants.

I realize that those types of things only happen with time, and I am more than prepared to work hard toward an unknown goal for many years. Because I know that all of that work will lead me somewhere - will lead to slow incremental self-discovery.

So I plan on getting hopelessly lost before I find myself again. I am tired of people discouraging me from such ill-planned ideas. I look at the people who critique me, and I feel sorry for them. Because what they have in life makes them live, but it is only a means to an end, they are not truly happy with what they have made of themselves -- especially many of the women who criticize these ideas.

For a woman to stand up and refuse to assume her role as a future mother, future corporate ladder climber is a bit threatening, I think. I refuse to participate in a system that is inherently unequal. When I get back, maybe things will be different, maybe my perspective will have changed. But I am more stubborn than most people realize.

everything i do.

So my computer monitor broke yesterday. And I have a lot that I want to write about that has nothing to do with my day-to-day boring updates, but I can't until I back up all of my thesis research.

and in the morning.

I wish Larry Burrows were still alive. I would have had a major crush on him. Oh well, he can be my Jacques Cousteau. I haven't had a picture in a while, so....



Things are good. Page 13 of my thesis (actually page 16 if I put it into Times New Roman, a font which I hate and can't work with until the final copy). I have written 3 pages today alone. I read in a book somewhere that I'm supposed to congratulate myself on every small victory, so that's what that's about.

I think each step of life is important, and I am happy to be taking the step that I am taking right now. When people ask me how I am, I always say I'm good. And that's because I am. It's a reserved, controlled kind of good that any self-directed woman would be proud of. My roommates and I sat in my bedroom last night, talking about men. I told Nina I would only want to be in a "right now" relationship if it all. The truth is, I'm not even sure I want that. I've never not cared so much. It's nice. Then again, if I really didn't care, would I be writing about it right now, you might ask? I think coming to terms with my apathy is different than the apathy itself. I'm surprising myself, and I think that's a good thing. Do I make any sense? Do I ever? Yeah, no, probably not. Especially since this really cute guy reading a long novel totally caught my eye at Literati the other night.

Can't wait to leave the country for a long long time. Might move to Greece with Leslie in any case. Or might keep to Ireland. Finding out about Japan and the two-year program on Wednesday. In my heart, I know I am a romantic (not in the 'love' sense (I am not that at all), but in the poetic sense), so I will be building this up for a long time to come.

Why can't I stop rambling?

Back to work. I'm at the Charles Young Library. It is dark and dusty and there are spiders everywhere. I'm pressed up against the wall on the fifth floor. Maybe I should just leave. I think I'm going crazy because of the place I am in, not because of my own inner turbulence. Something about ecocriticism.

thursday.

Going to Tennessee?

filled with gray.

I can no longer think in a linear fashion, so instead I am going to throw random things out here onto the Internet.

Ernesto Laclau is coming to UCLA on Friday to discuss post-Marxist theory and I can't go because I work at a magazine on Fridays that promotes the kind of positive social change that ultimately reinforces the socially inscribed class system and the idea of paternalism to its fullest.

My Uncle Tommy passed away this morning and my dad is flying to Tennessee for the funeral. I can't go. He and my dad were very close (he's actually my dad's uncle, my grandpa's brother, but we call him my uncle). I can see his face in my mind, hear his laugh tinged with East Tennessee goodwill. I see his house on the river bend, the porch swing, the old Chevy he restored in their dirt driveway. I think of his patio and the paddleboat and the family reunions and the potato salad. And I can't help but think of how everything is falling away, my connection to my southern identity. My grandpa has passed away, one of my grandmas has dementia and can no longer remember my name, I missed my cousin's wedding (still very upset about this), my Uncle Tommy is gone.

Tennessee is inscribed in me. But what happens when my family no longer owns the land? What happens when I can't afford to fly to see my cousins and aunts and uncles and my grandmas? I guess the most honest answer would be to say that I simply cannot let that happen. No matter how deeply I want to travel the world, I need to come full circle. And not in the single lifetime sense, but in the deeply ingrained family ties and blood connection and hundreds of years old psychological connection to the landscape kind of sense. None of my friends from California seem to understand this. My parents probably know exactly how I feel, not that we ever speak of it. To move away from Tennessee is only to move away bodily. It is always with you: the guitars and the harmonicas and the jokes and the cold chill wind in the winter and the barbecue joints.

There is a homesickness in me deeper than I understand. It's not a homesickness for the Bay Area, but for the place where my family actually really truly belongs. And that place is not San Francisco. It's on that old dirt road leading up to the house my grandpa built or running down the hills or even at Wal-Mart. It's strange. Very strange. Perhaps my thesis on the Southern connection to place, which became dislodged and redefined in the Great Depression through photographic and journalistic representation is my way of exploring this hardly understandable, certainly inexpressible nostalgia.

I was going to keep going, but that really took everything out of me. I will miss you, Uncle Tommy.

on my mind.

I danced for four hours last night, and all the sudden when the DJ picked the beat back up again, I understood the Sherwood Anderson short story "Adventure." I felt more myself than I have felt in years. It was defiance and comprehension and simplicity. I have never been more happy to be nothing but myself. All of my friends were there and the DJ was amazing and everyone was dancing and, oh, I was just so happy to be grown up. Not that any of that had to do with the short story, because that short story is depressing and fatalistic. But I understood what it meant to walk out the door uninhibited and run and dance in the rain. I'm still not so sure that I understand what it means to crawl back inside and hide my sexuality, but I think that's a generational thing.

once a cheetah...

Last night was my birthday, and last night was also wonderful.

In other news:

• My hair is now red. No more blonde for me for now.
  
• I have almost finished the first section of my thesis.
  
• I am a bondage librarian. Apparently.
  
• A Nikon DSLR is in my future. Today.
  
• I know where to find all the guys who are my type now. Kind of ridiculous. I ran into the creative, funny, dark, mysterious boy mecca.
  

just say no to graduate school.

I know I had my heart set on Ireland. I know I wanted green hills and salty air and Norman architecture.

But I think I may teach English in Greece instead. I could learn Greek, learn to like kids, make money, and meet a charming guy distantly related to Alexander the Great... or something.

I'm also applying for a year-long teacher assistant program in Japan, where I could do all of the above except with Japanese and the charming guy would be related to legendary samurai warriors... or something else.

I'd spend my days on islands steeped in history and delicious foods. I'd stop being vegan. Life would be so simple and easy.

Then after all of that is done, I can return to Ireland, where maybe I could even work on those organic farms for a few weeks like I've dreamed of.

Perhaps these plans may never happen. Perhaps they will be compromised and changed and transformed and I will end up in India or London or Puerto Rico. But I do know that the prospect of such things - the availability of such adventures to graduating students - makes this quite definitely the most exciting turning point in my life so far.

the lights are out.

I think of Brian sometimes when my days are long and when I watch too many romantic comedies. Oh, who am I kidding? I think of him at least once a day, probably a hell of a lot more.

I think of other people too, though. I think of Tyler and the mysterious way he made me lose myself for a few weeks. I think of Mark and how that only ever could have happened in a foreign country.

I think of how I could have done without most of the relationships I’ve been in, if I could just erase everything but those three weeks, that one night, and Brian.

Brian won’t speak to me anymore. It doesn’t matter how much I think of him. He’s right not to talk to me. I’ve broken his heart ten times too many, and, apparently, I’m incapable of doing anything else. So until we both find other people to make us happy, our relationship will be a continual torture. A euphoric torture at times. But painful and fucked up nonetheless.

At the end of the day, though, when Wilshire calms down and we have to turn the lights on in the living room and when we start to get ready to go out on Friday and Saturday nights, I think of how much I needed this. How much I needed Tyler to show me – completely unintentionally – that I will never settle for anything again. That I shouldn’t fear being alone. That finding love and feeling wanted, that won’t solve anything.

I think I was in continual relationships for so long because I desperately wanted to lose myself to someone else. Just forget who I was and know that I was in love, so my identity would come second. Then, a few months in, I would realize what I was doing and I would run as fast as I could (which is pretty fast these days), try to discover myself again. But then I would end up back in another blissful beginning, forgetting why I ran away in the first place.

Now, I have thrown all that away - recycled it, actually. This year will be about myself. I will be leaving Los Angeles in 8 months, hopefully never to return. There is no point in losing myself because, after those 8 months are up, my own identity is the only thing I can be sure of. I think that most days this makes me very proud. It makes me happy even. Nine times out of ten, you will see me with a smile on my face. Whether I’m at work at the magazine, with my friends, out at a party, running in the morning before the dry heat comes and swallows up Brentwood, dashing around campus trying to write my thesis, or sitting in class pondering gendered narratives, I’m quite content with my accomplishments.

But every so often, I catch myself thinking that I want those romantic comedies. And that’s when I think of Brian.

But I also think of him because I know no one else in the world who understands me quite so acutely as he does. Then again, Catherine and Heathcliff understood each other as one soul, and they destroyed one another’s lives.

So if I just leave it alone, just leave myself to my thinking, everything is more than fine. And I know that one day I’ll wake up in New York, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Boston, Galway, Knoxville, Chicago…. And I’ll look back and be grateful that I forced myself to exist for no one but me. That is, after all, what a good feminist should have done from the start.

magnetized.

Slain, by your zirconium smile
I was slain by your olivine eyes,
Slain, I was lying in piles, hoping shovels would cast me in.
Furnaces burn everlasting, black tattoos of you on to me.Furnaces burn everlasting, black tattoos.
Burn, brand my memory, black tattoo of you.
Wash me with your mouth, brackish bright water from your eyes.
Homing pigeons fly to hover by your window white and shy.
Homing pigeons fly to hover by.
Spill my ashes to the wind.
Ghosts gather what they found
Now we can struggle in the web.
We can struggle
With white spider stars come down.
And night blowing black from the ground.

Laura Veirs

ground beef smileys.

I am completely overextended, and I didn't even know it until now.

Honors Thesis
Literary Mag Editor
3 Classes
Intern at Magazine
Freelance Editor for Literary Agent
Party Girl by Night

Oh, how do I do it all and still plan for my six months in Ireland and make new friends and start writing for the LA blog again? Not possible, perhaps?

I guess I'll have to make it possible. If I don't update for three months, it's because I've died on my desk or somewhere between Powell and the Arts Library and forgotten to let everyone know.

carbon by carbon.

Shifting the focus, your face or the backdrop. Your eyes or Geary Street. Pressing the silver button, the shutter clicks. So definitive. Etched on film forever. The camera falls from my eye and I feel your hands reach for me. The saving of a memory, the preservation of a moment you may have already forgotten. Your lips thank me in a way your words never could, never did, never even attempted to do.

The photograph didn't print correctly, the whole roll of film disappeared into space. Memories I thought I had forever never even existed without the proof of pictures.

I am a blank sheet of paper. I am not waiting to be colored in, to be scribbled all over. I am simply living, simply meeting people I don't care a thing about, simply smiling because I know everyone else wants me to. I don't want those photographs. I don't want you. I am glad that those photographs never even developed. They have been erased. Now if I could just erase the way you held my hand for the first time, how you laughed when you carried me down the steps of that old mansion falling to pieces, the memory of your breath bouncing off of the cold cold water, shivering, scared, quiet, clumsy.

I think somewhere I have hope that I will have laughter with someone that will filter down the staircase and fill up the living room.

But right now, my advice for myself and anyone that cares about me is not to bother trying. I let myself be vulnerable because he told me to. I refuse to take anyone's advice anymore. I have never felt this way before because I have never found something so uncomplicated and easy and I have never let my guard down so fully. And now I know that I will never do it again. Nothing is uncomplicated. Nothing is easy. Nothing is perfect. Nothing is worth compromising yourself.

Now, I am off to yet another night of shallow parties, filled with people I don't care to get to know, flashes of the past, and then quick attempts to erase it all with the present.

And I am done with the melodrama for today.

shake hands.

I went out to dinner last night at this chic lounge called Dulce. I think it's owned by Ashton Kutcher or some shit. After dinner on Melrose, my friends and I somehow ended up in Westwood at my friend's apartment, then at a party where I ran into two people from my high school, then carrying a chair home from said party, and finally sitting on the curb somewhere talking and laughing.

Things are getting better. And I just know that this year will be the strangest conglomeration of happenings, all rolled into a fantastic, nostalgia-inducing nine months. And my classes sound pretty good. And the magazine interview went really well. I walked into the office and people were playing ping pong. Nonetheless, I think I'm too busy for an unpaid internship right now.

So I'll just forget about Burlingame and unpack all my things and get comfortable.

thoughts from the 5.

Saturday. Back in Los Angeles. Not yet 21. Friends are clubbing. New apartment is wonderful. Looking forward to forgetting the past and getting back on campus. Mostly empty. Okay, completely empty. Fine until I had time to myself to think. Want new people in my life (and to keep the old ones too). Downtown Los Angeles may help. But not until I am 21. 4 weeks until real people.

Decided that my future will not include being sad about the recent past. Execution, however, is the problem.

I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy.

I hate copy-paste.

under the tunnel.

I once knew a girl in the years of my youth
With eyes like the summer, all beauty and truth
But in the morning I fled, left a note and it read
"Someday you will be loved"

I cannot pretend that I felt any regret
Because each broken heart will eventually mend
And as the blood runs red down the needle and thread
Someday you will be loved

You'll be loved, you'll be loved
Like you never have known
And the memories of me
Will seem more like bad dreams
Just a series of blurs
Like I never occurred
Someday you will be loved

You may feel alone when you're falling asleep
And every time tears roll down your cheeks
But I know your heart belongs to someone you've yet to meet
And someday you will be loved

You'll be loved, you'll be loved
Like you never have known
And the memories of me
Will seem more like bad dreams
Just a series of blurs
Like I never occurred
Someday you will be loved

You'll be loved, you'll be loved
Like you never have known
And the memories of me
Will seem more like bad dreams
Just a series of blurs
Like I never occurred
Someday you will be loved
Someday you will be loved



I go back to Los Angeles tomorrow. I am starting new.

stars in a jar.

I am in so much pain that I cannot lead a normal life without the aid of vicodin.

But I am afraid of being addicted to said painkiller, so I have refused to take it all day.

Now I feel like I'm coming down with the flu.

Life is uninteresting, thus my nonattendance here. I can sum it up with the following verbs: shopping, sleeping, drinking (smoothies), reading, writing, outlining, planning, reading, reading, reading, READING.

I don't want to leave home and return to LA, but I also do terribly. My body has kind of made my decision for me to stay a bit longer. I'm going to miss my mommy something awful. My dad has already left for Tennessee so I said my goodbyes to him. Okay, no more boringness. Back to my misery.

tributary.

Fuck this guy. So glad he graduated so I don't have to see his leather-jacket wearing, chain-cigarette-smoking, frat-boy smirking, thirty year-old but still hitting on sorority girls, insecure piece of good-looking man in my classes anymore. Or on my month-long trips to England. Thank you very much, GQ, for reminding me of what I no longer have to deal with. But, no, he is definitely not the next James Dean. Don't insult a legend like that.

waiting in the grass.

I found out today that I may have cervical cancer within the next ten years. Since I woke up, this has been following me. I rode my bike up and down the streets of the town where I grew up. I had meant to go to the park, but I couldn't stop pedaling. I twisted up and down the streets beyond the railroad tracks, saw dogs playing with their owners on their lawns, children in strollers, leaves as they dropped from the trees, readying themselves for autumn.

When I got to the park, I laid my bike down on a big tree that I had once climbed at my friend's birthday party. I sat in the grass and thought of the past, of my lost intimacy with my felicitous space. How my space here, my "nest" as Bachelard would call it, is more than a house. It is the blue sky of Burlingame and the green grass and the families and the swimming pools and the freshly paved streets.

I sat in that park when I was re-united with Brian one summer, the summer of our purest affections. He came up behind me and kissed me while I sat on the grass re-reading Pride and Prejudice and listening to Radiohead on my iPod. I used to ditch class and go to that park and talk to friends. Countless picnics and dog walks took place right there. In the middle of the night, with my first boyfriend, we hid under the kid's jungle gym and stole kisses. Colin did back flips off of the new play structures. I have a photograph of Saleh on the monkey bars.

I return to that park, that extended patch of grass, and I must look again at myself, at who I am becoming. My world will shift in the next year and I will never feel this way again. I may find that I am in the early stages of cancer. My friends and I have drifted apart in the last few weeks. I find that I need purpose in my life, direction, even if that direction may be unconventional (I've been seriously considering agriculture). I find that things are not what they once were, that maybe they never were that way, maybe my nostalgia has transformed everything and made it beautiful, when the real life memories were more dirty, more impatient, more meaningless.

It has to work itself out. I have to find a way to love who I am. Because right now, my feelings are contingent upon the love I receive from others. And right now, that is the last thing I need.

at last.

Got my wisdom teeth pulled today, watched half of the first season of Californication while on vicodin. Now it has worn off and my mouth is dying a little bit. Stronger painkillers please.

It's nice having people bring me smoothies and applesauce and mashed potatoes and make me cream of wheat though. Still, I want to go out tomorrow night and I need my cheeks to de-puff by then, even if the chipmunk look kind of works for me.

I have an interview with a magazine I love love love when I get back to LA. And, no, it isn't a fashion magazine, thank God.

settle for nothing.

Sitting at the library, staring at three books about space and representation in modern and postmodern literature. Can't bear to open the pages of articles such as:

"The Contents and Discontents of Kipling's Imperialism." "Rimbaud and Spatial History." "The Socio-spatial Dialectic." "Spatializations: A Critique of the Giddensian Version." "Politics and Space/Time." "Quantum Philosophy, Impossible Geographies and a Few Small Points About Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Sex (All in the Name of Democracy)."

I just want to walk outside, grab my bike from the bike rack, and ride to get some passion fruit tea and say fuck it. Maybe run into a few people along the way.

I've been running 4 miles a day. It feels good but direction-less. What I am running from only I will ever really understand.

Watching the Republican Convention last night, I rolled my eyes a record number of times in two hours' time.

mere illustrations.

I played tour guide to my L.A. friends all weekend, and now I am exhausted. So after I read this 200-page dissertation on FSA photography and Eudora Welty, I am going to watch Weeds and nap all day.

I don't know which of my two homes I most dread coming home to. Is it here in the Bay Area, beautiful and pristine? With my high school friends and my parents? Smoking outside my elementary school and wasting minutes, hours, days? Or is it in Los Angeles, where I can do anything? Where I have a two-story Brentwood condo? Where I have to constantly reinvent myself and force myself to learn new things and write 20-page (and 40-page) papers?

Which place is home to more of my isolation? Where do I alienate myself more? Where is there more heartbreak and confusion and shallow relationships, all ending in a snap of the fingers, all regrets, all sorries, all I'll never do that agains.

I have realized that I have torn everything down in both places. All of my decisions have added up to nothing again. All I can do is start over. It's terrifying.

taking notes.

place and space the southern story
airplanes and buffets
take me to the garden
where we will spin in endless circles
around a fountain of water
that renews and renews and never lets
us end
using the colon
to imitate speech
the world is much different than that
hey i'm sorry about recently
that was harsh, too much
don't play with my heart like that
he said
he said i needed to open up
i did
aisles in grocery stores and quiet streets and
there in the darkness, i thought it was time
but time and space
space and place
they never aligned in perfect synchrony
until the water
it cradled your shoulders like a blanket from the night
and we hid there under blankets
and now i'm hiding from it all
i opened up
and now i am afraid
you were wrong
we were Modernists.

no lies.

i ran into your photograph. i miss you. you and those crystal clear brown eyes. come to my house and say it was all misunderstanding. take me away for three weeks. or just fall asleep with me on the golf course, until the dew soaks our clothing and the sky turns gray with morning.

hungry for life.

I want to get a tattoo on my inner arm. I've decided that I want it to be of the James Agee quotation: "I'll do what little I can with writing." The only problem is the font is really important, and I have no idea how I want the font to look. Anyway, that will be my 21st birthday present to myself.

Getting rid of the people who don't care about me as much as I thought they did. I told him exactly how I felt in less than 100 words.

Really let Sam down. I am the worst person ever.

But, on a brighter note, I have broken through the cloud of sadness that has been over me since Monday and I even danced around my room last night. Quite an accomplishment.

from an empty cubicle.

Oh, I am so miserable. One more hour left, but I have finished every last thing that I needed to finish, so I am just sitting around ticking on the keyboard, checking my phone obsessively, feeling jittery from a soy latte and ten cookies (I’m having a bad week, okay?!), and hoping the minutes move a just a bit faster. I’m going to miss it here, but this is just kind of a waste of time.

I am so emotional lately, just a huge fucking mess. My co-workers gave me a card, vegan cookies, and a big bouquet of daisies today and I almost started crying. Not good. Not emotionally stable. Get a grip on yourself, Carrie. I’m worried about what is going to happen to me when I make my rounds and say goodbye to my favorite editors. Very concerned.

And I guess I won’t be seeing Radiohead after all. I don’t even care about him anymore, I just want to see Thom Yorke. And now I’m starting to worry that he’s in the hospital and all these crazy things because I haven’t heard from him in 3 days after talking to him non-stop for 3 weeks. It seems a bit odd, doesn’t it? I really don’t give a shit if he’s not into this whole thing anymore, now I just want to know that he’s okay. He’s very skinny, maybe he got anemia or became crazy sick and passed out and is in a coma and I would never ever know at all. He was getting a cold when we last spoke, maybe it was the plague or avian bird flu or SARS or some sort of weird vegan disease that strikes soy products and inhibits you from picking up your phone or answering one simple fucking text message. This is what happens when people matter to me, all I do is worry. And this is why I should stop getting close to people altogether.

So this took up a good chunk of time, which is promising. Just 45 more minutes. Oh please, 45 minutes, take pity on me and sprint to the finish line.

just throw it away.

Maybe I have had my heart broken before. That dark summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school that I spent in my room writing bad poetry and convincing myself I would never find anything worth my while again – that was the first time my heart was broken. The sad thing is, I never did find anything worthwhile after Brian and that summer (and what we had four years later off and on for three years... oh, yeah, that relationship). I still haven’t.

My friends tell me that it will be okay. But I don’t even feel empty yet. I feel like the vacuum where my ever-cold heart is supposed to be is now more than just empty. It is sprinting away, tearing all the little bones and inside bits with it, twisting them, but not breaking away. Just pulling harder and harder, taking a break to rest, and then starting up again with renewed strength and energy.

At work today, I couldn’t even hold conversations. I ate four brownies. I cried on my drive home. Last night, my friends and I hung out, but all I wanted to do was sit in the dark with my eyes wide open, thinking. Except not-thinking. More like a void of thoughts that becomes noise and flashes of light and pictures. I don’t even know why I’m sad. I should just be rational and realize I will be fine and that this meant nothing and that I will be more than okay.

But it is just Brian distilled into four weeks’ time, it is nothing, it is nothing. If I could make it through that, I can make it through this easily. Then again, Brian hadn’t kissed me, hadn’t held me, hadn’t told me secrets and made me promises at three in the morning. Not yet.

The funny thing is, I have decided to do this on my own, have decided to break my own heart in a way. Because I don’t want to be disrespected, taken advantage of, have someone lower my self-worth. So now I have to suffer the consequences for living with pride in myself, for being too smart to be walked all over.

Caroline wrote me a note today. It made me realize that maybe I do have things to look forward to in Los Angeles. And, for that very reason, I may be moving back in a week or two. I don’t want to stay here and be reminded of what I’ve made myself let go of.

and it's all right.

I took the day off today so I could work from home and avoid the company picnic. I am weary of cowboy-themed lunches held in hippie parks. I don't think that is unusual.

Last weekend, which should have been amazing, greeted me with a blowup from my roommates in Los Angeles, all of my friends leaving town, kittens being mean and running away constantly, the boy toy being gone, and so on.

It makes me realize how skewed my life has become. I need to reevaluate what is important to me, stop being so self-centered. The problem is, I am not exactly sure how to initiate that process. This is all I know, but it does not make me happy.

Internship ends in 2 days. Hate to admit how happy that makes me.

And it's a beautiful summer's day. I must be going. I am only rambling anyway.

summer and all.

I am getting two new kittens today and also buying a Schwinn Cruiser bicycle. Life is good.

a mom, a dad, a son, a dog, a white picket fence.

"No, I don't even know your name
It doesn't matter
You're my experimental game
Just human nature
It's not what, good girls do
Not how they should behave
My head gets so confused
Hard to obey"

And there are the lyrics from what seems to be a generation of women's anthem, "I Kissed a Girl." It's interesting because many years ago (oh, let's say, three or four), I probably would have loved the lyrics of this song. On its surface, it speaks to women's liberation from gender constraints and from sexual rigidity. That once would have impressed me. I think most women like the idea that they are fighting against social expectations of their sexuality ("It's not what good girls do," Kate Perry preaches/whines). But, really, are they? This song is simply reinforcing female objectivity. It preaches to the choir of new females who are convinced of their freedom so much so that they cannot see they are simply living by deeply ingrained social rules. Today's woman (at least adolescent and young adult women) truly believe that the women's liberation movement is no longer necessary because they can wear androgynous clothing and make out with girls they don't care about and have promiscuous sex simply because it feels good.

But this is all indoctrination, it always is. Our purchasing of new clothing, our making out with girls, and our sex only benefit the dominant ideology of female subordination. We make out with women for fun because men like it - we may like it too, but men (let me be the first to tell you), like it even more. We have promiscuous sex, become aware of our bodies, simply for the benefit of men. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with becoming aware of your body and your needs and desires. It becomes a problem when women do it because they know it's what their boyfriends want (and, yes, this is exactly what every fucking identical issue of Cosmopolitan magazine makes women believe). That is not awareness. That is a swallowing of media messages that - deep down inside - we can never make ourselves believe until we throw all that trash away and live independently.

For God's sake, can we please sort this out? And please not at the expense of lesbians. Because that's another thing that makes me angry about this song. "You're my experimental game?" Excuse me? What if this woman actually does care about you, actually does want to pursue something with you? No, no, she can't express herself with anything beyond her body because that's not what Kate Perry's "boyfriend" wants to see happening. It's just a disgusting cycle of reinforcing heteronormativity, taking advantage of those of who do not cash in on what straight men prefer.

And as a final addition, I would like to stress that I do not hate men because I think that may be the impression quite a few people get from me (including my father). I fucking love men. But I love me more. We all love ourselves more than anyone else. And I hate to see representations of my body, be they idealized or realistic or real-life examples, being taken advantage of by a hegemonic system of beliefs about sexuality and gender roles (this ideology - in America - is male, white, consumer product-driven and straight. I have not a single doubt about that.) But I will repeat again that I love men, they drive me crazy, and that I couldn't live without them. Even if they do reign supreme on the cultural level, they will always be there on the individual level to worship the women who really matter.

Those women, in turn, will not feel the need to play with other people's emotions in order to vent their sexual frustrations.

out the door.

I took a long lunch with my aunt today, and along with the many important pieces of life advice she offered me, she said:

“More than a mouthful is too much.”

Touché.

photographs and love letters.

Today, I sat by the water in Redwood Shores, blinded by the sun's reflection off the miniature waves. I looked behind me onto a perfectly manicured street, lined with identical houses, a girl passing me on her bicycle, smiling. I thought about my friends spending time in Africa, making changes in the world, dealing with starvation and injustice and murder and political disjunction. I thought of my cousins in Tennessee, roasting in the sticky heat. I thought of Los Angeles, of all the inequality there and all of the racial and class divisions.

How lucky I am that all I do is complain. I sit in the sunlight, in the breezy, dry eighty degrees. I ponder academia, my job, yoga classes, running, sex, books I've been reading, this insanely adorable/funny/sexy/creative/beautifully confusing guy I have been seeing, my best friends here and there. I have everything. I am a lucky bitch. I hate even my own life sometimes it's so picture perfect.

Yesterday afternoon, I walked to Burlingame Avenue with Saleh, who I have realized is one of my closest friends. I love talking to him about everything as we walk down the tree-lined streets. We passed Burlingame's annual Art on the Avenue - all the Cajun food and frozen lemonade and handmade jewelry you could ever want. I turned to Saleh and said "We live in a disgustingly perfect little town. It's not suburbia, it's a fucking village. It's what people dream about. It's what families hope for. It is utopia." He didn't even argue with me like he usually does. He nodded and explained that there couldn't possibly be anything better than this in America. And while this may be true, it's also very easy to rebel from perfection.

That's where I am coming from. All of that perfection and all I want is a little complexity. Because beneath the pristine shine of the lacquer-painted village in which I live, I want there to be so much more. Maybe that's not necessary. Maybe all I need is everything I already have. But maybe I am simply scared, as I whispered to Tyler as I fell asleep Friday night, to have what I want. He doesn't seem to understand that having him, having a good job, living in a place so devoid of flaws would be too overwhelming for me. Where is the meaning in an existence with no dramatic set of events, no build-up, no peak, no intricate and beautiful denouement?

and in the morning.

Pretend I posted this yesterday at 4 PM when Blogger was having an outage that prohibited me from venting my emotional problems:

I am leaving work in a few minutes, but I wanted a chance to update before I become swept up in the weekend.

I am so confused about everything going on in my love life. I am getting all of these mixed signals from eighteen different angles, and I am sick of it. Just sick of it. So I am in this place, trying to decide: Do I keep playing the game? Or do I just surrender and walk away? I don't have the energy to put energy into this, and I am too mature and no longer inexperienced enough to just take someone's shit because they're going through something and not communicating with me about it. It was nice when I only had to think about myself. Lonely, a bit empty, but nice and liberating. Now it's Friday afternoon and I have the gym to look forward to.I would say I only have myself to blame, but I really think it has more to do with the type of men I am attracted to. It's their fault. Not mine. And, with that, I sign out for the weekend. Hopefully I will have some better news upon my return. Don't get your hopes up though. There seems to be some sort of fuku cast on me.

everything is nothing at all.

No. I don’t know what I am doing. I need time to myself, need to be alone. Why do I somehow always get myself into shit like this? It’s an endless, heartless cycle. I so do not need this right now. Woke up feeling off, couldn’t get out of bed. I stumbled to the kitchen, found a note. Just make it all go away. Where has my own life gone? I need to call my friends and go to cafes and be myself. Just myself. For no one else. Even if that means I will die alone. This is a lot like being addicted to drugs or alcohol or anything else. At the end of it all, I am alone and empty and lost. Yes.

who would have known.

One day I woke up and you were there next to me as the sun it hid behind the morning clouds and you, you kissed my forehead and walked away. Many nights, I go to sleep and think of this, how impermanent and fleeting it will all be in three, two, one. When the lights fade in the underground. When I rest against the shoulders that I met so many years ago and suddenly they become so thin they disappear. I walked down Powell and I saw the way they looked at me. And you, you with your lips and your cheekbones, you with a smile I squeeze your hand. There are times when I get so dizzy I forget to eat and sleep and think. I take one turn of my head and my mind goes completely blank, like in the car that night as the road faded from liquor stores to bars to cop cars to fast food restaurant chains. If you let it slip, does it still mean something? Did you let it slip because this will never, can never, we can't ever let this, mean anything at all? I throw away a lot in my life, treat men like they are disposable, and I am sorry. It's third-wave feminism and self-absorption and being too afraid to feel safe in a world that tells me be pretty, be young, be full of life, be spontaneous, make good decisions, kiss him kiss him kiss him underneath the water, shivering, until your teeth chattering becomes a smile painted on both your slick, smooth, chlorine-drenched lips. If I make mistakes, please forgive me. Please let it go when the day is old and the night rains and peels away the layers of years and makes us young again. I walk down the street. I think of you and all of those before. I wonder this time, maybe, ironically, sadistically: Because I know I can never have your heart, because I know that your feelings will be lost somewhere on the misty streets and in the fog that clears away behind tall, shiny building frames, and because your heart will be left here to ripen and then decay slowly, peacefully, beautifully - does that mean I can finally give away my own?

a brand new bouqet of flowers.

I only have three more weeks left of my work until I get to spend a month reading for my thesis and going to Tennessee.

Finally, I am really enjoying my summer. The freedom has finally become liberating instead of suffocating. I feel healthy and relaxed... for once. I am happy and I am smiling and just thinking of certain stolen seconds, of certain glances, of certain nights in cold cities, makes my heart beat wildly.

I discovered today that I love aloe juice.

I also discovered today that I am about to get my heart broken terribly. That's never really happened to me before. But that's okay because I am only living in the here and now.

oh why hello there.

I think I'm going to name my new kittens Butternut and Gomez. Pretty sure we're getting ragdolls, which are ridiculously ridiculously cute and playful.

all of the imperfections.

I fell asleep in the middle of the night, my breath slightly audible on the pillow, my stomach growling, my voice reduced to a whisper.

I woke up smiling.

parting thoughts.

I'm taking a break from doing all of my favorite things. Now that my parents left town, I have time to sit down, make myself some vegan pizza, do some yoga in the living room, read secondary sources for my thesis, listen to Simon & Garfunkel, and maybe catch some Weeds later.

Ever since Saturday night, I have been incredibly pensive. I am finding it really easy to get lost in a second and have that second turn into 30 minutes (which is why work felt like it only lasted about 3 hours today). I sat on my back porch earlier this evening after running 2 miles, and I lit up a cigarette. I thought of how ironic that was. Especially since I rarely smoke. I let the tip burn for a second, just watched as the wind turned it red, then died down, and a few pieces turned to ash. Then I just sat and thought about all of the associations I make with cigarettes: the parties and the mistakes and my voice disappearing in Ireland and nights full of too-soon-to-be-mature laughter. Maybe a quiet front porch with a few semi-close friends. Or maybe a rooftop in Berkeley with Saleh, quiet and serene as the sun sets.

What I don't understand is how someone intelligent can begin to associate something that is slowly killing her with all of these fond college-cliche memories.

I didn't kill the cigarette. I smoked the whole thing. But I watched most of it disappear to ash. I watched most of it float away into nothing.

That's how memory is sometimes. There is no space for it after a while, or you make new space for it. You begin to do things you know are not right and you don't even know why you're doing them anymore. You go from one second to the next, not remembering his face or hers. Forgetting about someone who means the world to you in an instant for someone else more exciting.

I am not addicted to cigarettes. I know, because I realized in watching it drift away that I can't remember what it feels like to kiss his lips, to hold his hand.

let's go outside.

This has been a wonderful weekend, completely liberating from all of the stresses of work.

But now the week begins again, and I'd like to close out this fabulous weekend with a self-indulgent, confused, personal saga of all the ways I need to figure my life out:

I don't know what else I can say here except that I am sure I've made a lot of trouble for myself in my life. I'm still debating whether or not I should forget about relationships and become asexual for a while. I was literally weighing the pros and cons of becoming a nun today. One of the plusses was a lifetime devotion to one individual who will always be faithful and loving and help you discover a higher purpose. One of the minuses was that black washes me out.

And I still go back and forth on my job, on publishing, on Ireland, on my future. I need a reason to wake up on Monday morning other than the fact that I just bought a new box of cereal I'm excited to try. What job can ever do that for me? When will I find my niche?

The other day at work, I realized that I would like everything a lot more if I were just closer with the people that I work with. I've had a hard time bonding with people for some reason. I think it's because our personalities just don't mesh as well as they should. I've only found two people I truly enjoy being around, and one of them is out of the office every other day and runs an entire division, and I never get to see him. The other is on a two-week vacation. But even despite these two people, what's the point in getting to know me? I'm leaving in four weeks, so why should anyone care? Or at least that's the vibe that I get. It's probably a defense mechanism.

I'm not the kind of person who gets along with everyone. I'm actually very hard to please. When I'm feeling lonely, I'm really good at being something I'm not and pretending that I enjoy the people I'm around. The problem with this is that I am about 98% sure this version of me is insanely boring. And it's what a lot of people around me seem like, and I hate that. But when I meet the right person, who understands and shares my eccentricities, who will laugh with me about stupid stuff, who won't stick to one-subject conversations, who will go shopping with me, and try new things with me, and not be afraid of having a three-martini lunch and eating vegan, well then I'll know I'm in the right place. And when I meet the right person, I too become the right version of myself, and then I'm much more fun to be around.

For now, I think the money makes this internship worth it. In the future, it is much more about the type of books the company publishes, the senses of humor of my colleagues, the size of the company, the free time I am given, the creativity.

I'm not happy with this job. I won't lie. And that really upsets me because I had such high expectations, and I still pretend to have them with everyone I work with. I'm not going to blame it on publishing. I'm going to blame it on the academic audience and the city of San Francisco. I've always thought I belonged more in New York. I hate how relaxed and laid back everything is here. It makes my work feel unimportant.

So here I am. I'd ask for help, but this one I have to figure out all on my own.

interview with a senior acquisitions editor.

Today, I interviewed the senior acquisitions editor for higher education. We walked through the breezy, gray San Francisco morning through an abandoned parking lot. At the end, the parking lot turns into a littered alleyway off of Fifth Street. At the end of the alleyway stands this chichi international-style cafe. Even though the outside was dirty, the inside was abuzz with professionals and hipsters and coffee enthusiasts, sharing a cappuccino-flavored morning over a free issue of the New York Times. I ordered the "New Orleans Style Iced Coffee," but it was a tough decision between that and the "Kyoto Style." The editor (who will be unnamed because I didn't ask for his permission to publish this) ordered a mini brioche that came wrapped in a post-consumer product coffee filter and a hot chocolate topped with whip cream floating in the shape of a flower. The place was the essence of San Francisco foodie culture, and the perfect place to get to know someone who embodied so much of that easy going, mellow, but slightly neurotic San Francisco charm.

I have typed up my thoughts after the interview for anyone interested. These are not direct quotations, but rather what I gathered during our hour-long conversation. I had the questions pre-written and then I filled them out from memory.

Here you go, for anyone lost on what area of publishing may suit them best.

Enjoy:

What is a typical work day like?

Frantic, busy, doing many different types of work

What do you spend most of your time doing?

He spends more time on business stuff than he thought he would – budgets and the like, but he also spends a lot of time on the phone with authors and delegating developmental tasks.

Why do you like your job? What is the best part of your job?

Chatting, being able to hear ideas from intelligent people and shaping those ideas. Seeing the big picture.

What are your yearly, weekly, monthly goals? What skills do you need to meet them?

He has business goals, but these are part of the smaller picture that he arrives at easily when he embraces the larger goal of publishing brilliant books.

What do you wish you could change about your job? What are your least favorite things you have to do?

Business stuff can be exhausting so you forget sometimes whether you’ve worked on anything developmental, which can be disappointing because you forget about your creativity and start to think of everything as items to be checked off your “to do” list. You usually have to delegate the more creative tasks when you are at the top of the ladder. One of the biggest disappoints he faces is when an intelligent, culture changing book that receives great reviews never sells, and then when a terrible book “sells like hotcakes” because it fills some kind of gap in the market. This can be frustrating.

Do you find your job stressful? Relaxing? Exciting? Fun? Why?

It can be all of the above. Publishing is “crazy making.” Sometimes the prospect of all of the work can be so overwhelming (where do you start!? – edit a 500-page manuscript, 10 calls to make…) and other times it can be so freeing and flexible because you can do so many different types of work at once, which is satisfying in its diversity.

What kind of education did you get? Is it beneficial to get an MA, MS in Publishing, PhD, MBA? What sort of courses would you recommend (which are desirable and which are necessary)?

He has taken the publishing course, but you should wait until your employer pays for it. It is mostly for the networking, if you want to break into publishing, or if you want to switch employers. It can be a great door-opener. Some of the classes are interesting and can give you a taste for all of the different kinds of publishing and jobs within publishing, which is useful. He doesn’t know how helpful the degree would be though, and advanced degrees are not necessary because you learn by doing in publishing.

Academic publishing

It has become much more of a business, more about the bottom line rather than publishing great ideas (though it is about that too). This is because budgets are being cut. These publishers used to be subsidized by the universities, but more and more they have to support themselves. Nonetheless, there is still some wonderful scholarship coming from academic presses. Like fiction, this type of publishing can involve a lot of “ego” from authors who may be hard to work with.

What was your previous work experience? Have you always been in publishing?

He has spent his entire publishing career at this one publishing house and loved it (“10 years that have felt like 15 though,” he says). He left publishing for a few years to work as an editor for a company and received a pay increase of 50%, but he says he missed publishing so much that he took a huge pay cut and came back to where he started with a higher position (associate editor). He needs that interaction between author and editor, that interchange of ideas. Otherwise, an editorial job can be stifling and lonely.

What are your long-range goals? Do you think you will always be here?

Yes. He has been here for 10 years, and it is the perfect job for him.

Are there any other types of book publishing you would be interested in shifting into?

No, he wouldn’t personally. But for me, academic presses and fiction publishers would be an interesting shift in careers. You can transfer between publishers once you become more well established. He suggested working for this house here and then transferring to the office outside of New York, and from there working my way up and shifting to an office in Manhattan and being able to support myself there.

Why are your skills well-suited for the type of editorial work you do? What sort of traits does a person need to be a good acquisitions editor?

As an acquisitions editor, he gets to chit chat all day long, which he loves to do. He has also been called a “cheerleader” and he says that being a good cheerleader is really what a good acquisitions editor needs to be. You need to be able to tell authors to “keep going!” “you’re doing great!” or “don’t do this so much.”

Do you feel that you are able to exercise your creativity in your job?

Not as much as you may think. Publishing (at least at a more academic-type press) is an ego-less profession. You may slave away at a manuscript developing it and never see royalties or even get recognition on the acknowledgements page. Only the publisher then would ever know that you developed the manuscript and made it what it was. But there is a flip side to this, the best editors (or at least the most famous) are those that have interjected their own theories, thoughts, and ideas into an author’s manuscript and given it the punch it needed. These editors often are recognized for their skill and precision (ie Clay Felker)

Are you optimistic about the future of publishing? About this company’s future?

This company will be safe from any changes in publishing because it supports academia, and academics are always looking for new information. Even if the form changes (ie digital books, e-books, Kindle-like hardware), the idea of the book will never be erased in this arena. The same is true of academic presses. However, he thinks that in academia, most customers (like him) prefer the paper format and they realize that there is a difference between something that goes up online and can be edited quickly and something that has been committed to paper. As for fiction, things are a little more up in the air, but even with reports of people no longer reading, this is simply not true. Many people continue to read and authors continue to sell books. These books may often be trash, but there is still hope. So the narrative is what is important, the format is a little more flexible, especially in fiction. Book publishing, at least, will not die anytime in the near future.

Do you think this is a flexible industry? Is it a good industry if you want to see a lot of the world?

Publishing is great because you can pretty much take any entry-level job and later train to be anything you want. For example, you can go into marketing or sales and still become a developmental editor. Or you can go from associate editor to acquisitions, though sales to acquisitions is usually more common. He does travel a lot for conferences, where he is able to interact with customers, authors, and fellow editors and publishing houses.

Is there any other area of publishing you are interested in? Who else would you suggest I talk to?

For me, developmental editing (esp. freelance) sounds like a good niche. Also, production. Probably not acquisitions because I can move back and forth from feeling super social to feeling like I want to be left alone. In general, though, this balance is hard to strike in publishing, and everyone has to find it for themselves. He often works from home, but he also often spends time in the office, trying to figure out in which environment he is most productive.

Is there anything you wish you had known when you were starting out that you found out on the job?

There can certainly be some frustrating times. You will work on a dozen manuscripts that you don’t care anything about, but you do it to get experience and to work up to the one manuscript that truly makes a difference. Stick with it and you will make it where you want to be.

Are finances an issue for entry-level jobs?

Yes, they certainly can be. Publishing is able to pay so little because publishers know that this is what English majors want to do, and they will do it for nothing if they are just given the opportunity [as a side note, I really think there should be an editorial union that demands higher wages for entry-level workers. You can’t live in New York on a $27K/year salary unless you live in Brooklyn and are willing to take your life into your own hands and risk being mugged every night that you go home—this is especially frightening because many editorial assistants are women]. Many editorial assistants live with 4 or more roommates and struggle with finances, but eventually they work themselves up to better wages. If you were to stay in San Francisco, it may be easier to afford living, but New York is where everything is. It is a conundrum and explains why many entry-level publishing people are still supported by their parents. Really, only the most notorious editors ever make a lot of money, but it is not impossible to make a lot, just an incredible challenge.

And I like challenges. :)

taking the 405.

And now for a photo-heavy post. Everybody loves those.

I'm taking care of Sammy's house for her while she is in Guatemala the next two weeks. She asked me to upload some of her London photos from last summer. Among them, I found this gem. It was taken with a disposable camera, quite impressive.

I am also looking into buying vintage glasses frames. Most people know I'm a glasses freak. I keep my glasses pristine and obsess about them a lot. Getting a new pair of glasses is like assuming a new, fresh, growing version of myself. I'm not ready for a new prescription yet, but I really want clearish whitish frames, so that I don't have such a striking contrast between my white white skin and black frames anymore. Here's what I'm lookin' at. I'm so in love with so many, but what I really need is a monogamous relationship.

In order of preference, unless you think otherwise:


These are YSL and I can't afford them.


I love the detail on the top. I'm just not sure if it would cover my eyebrows, which would just look weird.

These COULD be cute, but I've never tried anything like them. I also like tortoiseshell because It would still add color, but not be stark.


The same goes for these.

beauty in everything.

I somehow got roped into writing a column for the paper this week even though there is nothing I'd rather do than watch Flight of the Conchords on DVD and stare at Bret's beautiful lips for three hours. But that's not the point of this post.

On a long car trip, I was listening to the audio version of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs (a GENIUS title for a book by the way). Chuck Klosterman is a pop culture analyst, looking sardonically at the ways our unconscious desires are shaped by the media. He identified the Woody Allen complex, which many women have struggled with in their relationships (including myself).

"He [Woody] makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn’t. It’s just another gimmick, and it’s no different than wanting to be with someone because they’re thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown. And, it actually might be worse, because an intellectual relationship isn’t real at all. My witty banter and cerebral discourse is always completely contrived."

But what I really wanted to argue here is that men do the exact same fucking thing that women do when it comes to this stuff. If women don't preserve their beauty (or increase it), if they start to feel like their partner is not fitting their mold of an independent, pristine, well balanced, third wave feminist woman, they aren't satisfied. They see women in movies (Kristen Bell, Jennifer Aniston, Angelina Jolie), and if women aren't like these role models, they're just as unsatisfied as women are when they realize their partner isn't John Cusak, Jason Lee from Mallrats, Bret McKenzie, George Clooney, Ferris Bueller. So the media has completely ruined love. I think at the end of the day, either the media needs to portray more realistic relationships, or we need to finally decide that it's nature, not nurture, and just go with our biological instincts. Otherwise, we will never be happy in our relationships. It just angers me when men think they are an exception to this and play that "women are evil and only like bad guys" bullshit. It's a sad excuse for a lack of self confidence. If these men ever actually entered into a serious relationship, they'd realize that they wanted the exact same ridiculous and impossible things women want. And it's not our faults. I blame Disney, but I think Woody Allen and Kevin Smith and You've Got Mail can all be blamed just as easily.

piano keys in the mirror.

Beginning to feel a bit deserted. Maybe things will change when the city gets smaller. If you're not dependent, who are you? If you're not in love, what is your name? Days so long they get colder. Nights loud with crickets scratching and children sleeping and stars bursting open and letting their white vanilla soy milk fill the black sky. Stripes on stripes. I regret the day I met him. I regret losing my self confidence. And in those days long closed, we'd fly down hills on skateboards and laugh when we fell. Let's laugh when we fall down. Let's fly so fast we forget where we are. Those whispers in the back of the car, those awkward fumbling movements when you said "never change." Never change, he said. Listen to you. Why, is it because? Close the door, it's cold outside. Close it and lock it and leave. He'll never come back anyway. Torn in pieces, I lied to the other one. That's how I see it. This one cost me money, cost me my job and my conscience. I never really felt much, just a substitute for a heart where my first and third had been. Well, my fourth and second. Market and sixth. A long road I walk around the block. I just want a glass without a label. I just want a house with a home. I just want you to change everything and be who I want you to be. I just want everyone else to close the door and lock it and wave good-bye and be who they're not. Silver, gold. I'm mixing them all up now. It's all gone, and while I miss it, I also realize how unnecessary it may be. My body is mine alone. My America, my Newfoundland. Even John Donne couldn't change my mind. I'm filling the space with poetry and theory. I'm filling the space with secondhand experience. If it separates, just let it go.

introduction.

I like to take my media with a grain of salt, but I've seen just 30 million more commercials and advertisements flaunting tall, stick-thin, bright-eyed, tan-skinned models than is good for my health.

To be a woman in America is to never be satisfied. There is always a subconscious checklist of what you'd like to change if only you had the money, if only you could be born again. It doesn't matter if someone loves you. It doesn't even matter if you love yourself. There are all of these contradicting messages: love who you are, but buy this moisturizer. be whoever you want to be, but get these new Balenciaga heels.

Do men go to bed at night hoping that it will get better in the morning?

And so maybe if I just go away for a while, escape the country, all of it will just go away. Because even if I believed completely in myself and who I was (which I think I do a pretty good job of), there would be men and women who could pick out flaws and reasons for me not to succeed. Look at Hillary Clinton.

So my solution is not to escape, but for women to stop antagonizing each other and pushing each other to the edge of insanity, expecting perfection and balance. I think that, together, we could probably shield ourselves from all the media's poking and prodding.