don't keep your eyes open.

Someone once told me - or was it in a book? or was it in an article? - that place defines our status as human beings relative to other human beings.

Today, I picture a lake. I see it span before me, stretched beyond my peripheral vision. I see reflections of birds (not the birds themselves) and small rippling waves of water graze the rocks of the shore before collapsing backward. I am lost, but not lost. I have found the ability to breathe freely. Today, I picture a crowd of people in a bar. I push past them, and a bouncer chases after me, asking for my ID. I show him and he touches my arm, says sorry in an accent so thick I ignore the words, accept the gesture. I catch up to my friends, who chain smoke cigarettes in the center of a small group. They talk about day trips to other cities, they laugh about bad literature. At work, I stare at a computer screen, I write stories, I take long breaks for coffee with acquaintances and talk about the beach in Los Angeles. I ask questions, beg for answers. It seems the questions just keep piling up. There are so many I do not remember them all.

Have you ever felt a love so strong it crushed you in its absence? Does feeling exist after this crushing lifts from your chest? Will you be there for me to sip coffee on Sunday mornings? Will we talk about the TLS on Wednesday, amicably discuss the merits of this and that? What exists for you outside of this city? Are you not curious about New York, San Francisco, Portland?

Today, I picture a classroom in a country far away. I raise my hand to speak about a painting. I feel his eyes meet mine, a tangible feeling like he is touching my hand, brushing my cheek with the edges of his lips as he turns to whisper something in my ear. It is evening, the stars have come out, I feel warm. It is August, I wear three layers and take the train home to the countryside. As the train rushes through towns unknown, I see one light, two. They blur into each other. I wonder how many lives I will never know exist. I try to count by tens.

Today, I rest easily. In my dreams, I see a boy whose face is oddly familiar. We seem to be in a long-term relationship. I leave him in bed one morning in order to edit a paper to present at the Sorbonne. I choose my words wisely, and everything makes sense. I ignore his calls so that I can write continuously, only stopping every few hours to listen to lectures in French. I haven't slept so well in weeks.

te lo prometo.

I sent my payment and app to the Irish paid internship program, so I'm one step closer to Dublin next year.

In case no one noticed, I added new links in the art + fashion section, namely the Dublin Streets Blog and the London FaceHunter Blog. I think it's important to fit in with the locals when you travel. Now that there is a Sartorialist-like blog for every major city (sometimes many many more than one), it's quite simple. Aesthetically, it's also just interesting to see how different cities look at creativity and beauty as it relates to the physicality of the human body.

Also am obsessed with French pop music and pretty much every language that is not English:

Quand tu es près de moi,
Cette chambre n'a plus de parois,
Mais des arbres oui, des arbres infinis.

red red lights.

I spent all weekend at Dance Marathon (a 26-hour dance-a-thon for pediatric AIDS) and now I can't feel my legs and I'm so tired I'm not sure how I'll ever get through my tests and papers. But things are good, things are well. Actually, things are fabulous, who am I kidding? Pictures will be posted later. By whom? I don't know.

Today is Caroline's birthday (happy birthday, Caroline!), and I can't believe how old we are all the sudden.

i am leaving.

I realize it is one in the morning, that I have a test tomorrow, and that Dance Marathon is this weekend. I don't care.

I'm standing at a party, I am staring at the sky, I am by myself. I see familiar faces, I see a girl kiss a boy's forearm. I think I don't want that. I think I want to be with someone who will tell me all the ways I am wrong. I think I want to be with someone who can finally clarify the concept of différance and who corrects me when I mispronounce "Jacques Derrida."

I remember someone. He is close in proximity but too far away to speak to anymore. He used to smell like soap. When he would hug me and my face was pressed to his chest, I would inhale deeply. It smelled like grocery store and living life simply. He was so tall I had to stand on my tip-toes when we kissed. I liked that, the imbalance, the uncertainty. In the mornings, he used to invite me over before work. Come by, lie next to me, he said. We did this once, talking about how we should do it every day. You look beautiful, he said. I swallowed these words. They were true. Our relationship, when I think of it now, reminds me of spring. I used to walk the four blocks to his apartment where he would be writing and Beck or the Flaming Lips or the Talking Heads would be playing so loud I could hear it from beyond the sidewalk. We would whisper thoughts on his back porch and wash his car in the heat of April in Los Angeles. I wonder how I came to be so cruel after how regenerative our time together was. I wonder how I came to give a shit about Brian after that, after how healthy I had been. Come over in the morning, he said. I did. I fell asleep on his chest before work, with my makeup done and my hair up. I fell asleep, inhaling that smell of soap, wiping my slate clean.

mumbling.

I disappeared for a while. All the sudden, my mind stopped working at a million miles per hour. I went home last weekend, and I relaxed and let go of everything for a while. It was completely liberating. I plan to live like that from now on. I spent time in Berkeley, getting coffee, eating Indian food, at the beach, in the rain, meeting a random array of people.

I am travelling to Seattle for Spring Break now. My former boss invited me to stay with her on Bainbridge Island (in my own guest house!), and I'm really looking forward to it. Still planning to go to wine country though as well. I'll also be spending some time in the City with former co-workers and old friends.

I registered for the Wisconsin conference, so there is no turning back. I am missing a camping trip with the lit mag, but I figure this has more bearing on my future. I am sending out the official application for Ireland. I am going to get a byline in an encyclopedia, getting an internship next quarter, almost done with my thesis, reading lots of poetry, taking French II, taking the GRE, do I need to go on? I'm stressed out to the point of completely collapsing.

And in the middle of all of this, I think of next year. I think of the "rest of my life." It is all too much, too much to even imagine. Here I am, four years later, making life-altering decisions again.

Yesterday, as I stood at the top of Hilgard, I tried to rationalize why I have this need to escape the country. Why couldn't I just settle for New York? It would be a whole lot more simple. But when I think of who I have been in this country, the person who has evolved, I want something else, something more. I want nothing of what I know.

mark strand.

MY NAME

One night when the lawn was a golden green
and the marbled moonlit trees rose like fresh memorials
in the scented air, and the whole countryside pulsed
with the chirr and murmur of insects, I lay in the grass
feeling the great distances open above me, and wondered
what I would become—and where I would find myself—
and though I barely existed, I felt for an instant
that the vast star-clustered sky was mine, and I heard
my name as if for the first time, heard it the way
one hears the wind or the rain, but faint and far off
as though it belonged not to me but to the silence
from which it had come and to which it would go.

on the fifth floor.

Rebecca told me a secret last night, and my stomach has been all in knots since then. Last night, as I was trying to finish up some last-minute assignment, I suddenly felt it had no purpose at all. It certainly had no bearing on my future.

I am most happy when I see new things. She took me to Bergamot Station, and I spent some time staring at a photograph by Alfred Stieglitz at the Getty. I spent even more time staring at the Dorothea Lange photograph "A Young Girl in Ennis, Ireland" and it made tears well up in my eyes. The honesty of it, the simplicity. Even now, I feel alone looking at it.

Things have been terribly simple lately. Terribly simple in the way that I have no choice but to take everyday actions at face-value and move, keep stepping forward, keep walking. I stop and I look at her and I feel little again. I don't know what I am trying to say. Only I feel so full of simple actions, easy words, clear sentences, I worry I might forget them all. So I'm just trying to let go of them and hope they fit together in some way.

Anyway, I started writing here with the intention of sharing the handful of good things that I have encountered or accomplished these last few days, but I'd rather just leave with the photograph. I think the rain makes me pensive.

walker evans and dorothea lange.

Among other things, I went to the Getty yesterday. Leslie and I got stuck inside of a raincloud.

every minute, i wish for this.

OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG i just rolled around the floor with my roommates because I found out I may be able to work with Wiley in England and OMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMGOMG

es por eso.

Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath.

- "The Coming of Light," Mark Strand

Est-ce que tu as mon coeur?

My dad called me earlier this evening and asked me when I am graduating. Putting a date on it, pinning it down is making my stomach churn. With excitement, yes. With terror, also yes. I'm shaking as I type this and my stomach is in knots.

We also spoke about my future. I hear myself mutter the words "Ireland," "Abroad," "Work," "Independent," and my dad doesn't say a word. I keep talking to avoid the silence. He is scared, too. I can hear it in the white noise, in the space between speaking and not-speaking. But we speak about my mother also, about how she has passed her fear of life along to her children just as she has passed along the genetic traits for my toes and legs and ears. He told me as we said good-bye, "You can't pass that fear along to future generations, Carrie. You need to end it here."

I believe in my father, I believe in his words. I believe when he tells me that someone like me will figure out what to do about the demise of print journalism and books and quality magazines. I believe when he tells me not to be afraid. And so I won't. I will pack up my broken heart (so torn it feels like pieces pricked out one by one and stuffed into my throat where I hold the tears back, parts of a whole that only one person I have ever known can stitch back together) and my shaking hands and my words, and I will get on an airplane.

But then wait. I'm through pretending I'm not afraid. I am going to be afraid; I am going to be like my mother. But my fear is simply a possession I will pack away into a suitcase. And I am sure, with time, it will fall to the bottom and I will forget I even brought it. Kind of like that extra pair of high heels I never should have brought to Spain in the first place.

"mo' nique KNOW she look good."

Does anyone else remember that quote? Because it is ingenious. It occurred to me last night while I was getting ready, and I haven't stopped laughing about it since.

alphabet weekend.

my weekend, dictated by what the English alphabet will allow me to express in single words:

a. amber, art, awkward, applications
b. bars, boba, brett!, bikes, breathing, british
c. cars, cats, coke, cranberry juice, cancer, coffee, chris, confessions
d. dinner, dublin
e. embarassment, ecstatic
f. free (samples), french, forgetful, fuck (him)
g. grilled cheese, gossip, gay
h. hot, hours, hair, hugs, heels
i. in-n-out, ice cream
j. joking, journal
k. knotted, kim chi
l. laundry, laughs, looks, lesbians
m. men, moses, mom
n. napa, newspapers
o. opera, out-going
p. paradise (lost), photographs, pinot (grigio), paints, pencils, portland (plans!), pillows, peanuts, phones
q. quitting, quiz
r. rum, running
s. sawtelle, sunshine, stories, spring, spanish, sushi, shorts, sweaters
t. tofu, tattoo (plans!), talking, tequila, tea, tears
u. under
v. vision, vitality, vanity
w. wine, wanting, whining, warm
x. uhhhh... fuck this letter.
y. yells, yet (in the future things will be different)
z. zinfandel