maybe another time.

The reality of unemployment and the recession is only now really making itself overtly apparent in my life. I'm back to hyperventilating because I have no paid work and no prospects. I am actually frightened, but more frustrated. I worked so hard the last four years, and for what? The jobs that I am good enough for are being eliminated, and the jobs that I could actually get, I am overqualified for and they won't hire me.

I'm sure I am not the only person experiencing this right now, and it makes me simply want to pack up my things and disappear. I should have been like all of the other scared, insecure UCLA students and applied to graduate school right away. That would have been the logical thing to do in the middle of a deep recession.

Feeling hopeless, haven't felt so hopeless in months. It's like I'm back to January, despondent, in my bedroom, alone, and anytime I try to speak, the words turn into frustrated whispers that never communicate the actual direction my stomach is twisting.

I am thinking of making a mistake and going to the show on Saturday night. At least it would keep me busy, at least I could get a free drink and finish what I started.

again and again.

Today: job interview, commute, breakfast with sammy, smog check with mom, boba run, reading, washed car, went for a six-mile bike ride around the bay, reading some more, got the internship and can start tomorrow if I so wish, back to Greg's this evening for a night of bonding.

It's been a good one so far. Still unsatisfied. Perhaps I need to give back to the community. Or have a lot of sex. Sadly, I don't plan on doing either of those things for a while.

letting it go and stepping into nothing.

At home now, with my belongings strewn about my childhood bedroom. My head is filled with a mess of emotions, and I think that I wish the way I missed him was tangible so I could feel it in some real way and understand what it means and if it means anything at all. I have an interview looming over me, and my heart is beating slowly and deliberately.

I feel my words add up to nothing if I don't take some action.

I want every day to be like the night I got my tattoo. I want to make things happen, propel my life in new directions, understand why I keep being pulled backwards. I am tired of talking about all of my plans. Maybe I should talk about how I'm scared to make any of them real. Maybe I should acknowledge that I see my own capabilities and they scare me. All I really want is to lie in bed and think, imagine all of what I could be without ever having to realize these possibilities.

The exhaustion has become a bit too much. I am going to keep moving, but I worry that I will fall soon, very soon.

whispers unwhispered.

Only with a Weston photograph could I ever explain the flawless slope of your neck upon a warm pillow. The curvature is sculpted, unreal. There is something in the way that your skin meets at your spine, in the way it crinkles and stretches with your breathing. I want to remember how the sun hits these spots at dawn. I want to keep this with me always.

never seeing in front of me.

Now that all of the excitement has died down, I'm sitting alone in my apartment with no bed and very little furniture of my own. Two of my roommates have gone on a retreat to Las Vegas, another is working full-time in Simi Valley, and Rebecca will be home later this evening. I feel strangely at peace here in my now-empty room, filled with light and the sounds of birds outside the window.

On Friday, we had a big graduation party at my apartment. Alex and I smoked and fell asleep on the couch. Saturday, I went to Caroline's graduation and then to Leslie's party in Simi. Alex, Caroline, and I went to a party at Zach's that night as well. I fell asleep in Leslie's room and woke up to my alarm telling me I had to graduate again on Sunday. Sunday's graduation was emotional: all of us cried at different points and we held hands before reaching the stage. It is in moments like those that I wonder how I will ever split my love down the middle, how I will ever negotiate my two separate lives: one in Northern California, one in Southern. My favorite professor flew back to Los Angeles from D.C. to attend graduation, and I was incredibly excited to talk with him again.

That evening, I came home with my parents, packed away all of my things, and mopped beer and food off of the sticky kitchen floor. Then I fell asleep on the couch and woke up with the television on, alone, wondering where I was. My apartment no longer felt like a home to me in the darkness, in the huge living room filled with nothing but large pieces of furniture. I drove to Agoura to be with Alex that night. We went swimming until midnight. I haven't felt badly since then. I'm only reminded of all of the love I have in my life and all of the joy I want to spread and be a part of.

Last night, after dinner with Nina and Caroline, I started to feel sick and I've been battling that back ever since then. I'm feeling better now, but I just want to sit in bed and read 2666 all day. I think I may just do that between finally showering and then getting ready to go out to a wine bar with Ambs tonight.

Only four days left in Los Angeles. Nothing is clear. Nothing is clean. I wonder what will become of me.

in the same space.

The setting of houses, cafes, the neighborhood
that I've seen and walked through years on end:

I created you while I was happy, while I was sad,
with so many incidents, so many details.

And, for me, the whole of you has been transformed into feeling.

- C.P. Cavafy

sooner or later.

I feel blissful, indescribable, awake, colors clearer.

Last night and this afternoon with Alex:
the hangover (so good my whole body ached from laughing after), smoking, not studying, swimming, lying in bed all day and night, cinnamon buns, frozen yogurt with brownies on top, breakthroughs, I'm learning, I'm learning. I'm learning I'll never know why or how, only that I can teach others.

six and seven, eight and nine.

Imagining you standing there on the water's edge, I begin to understand what it is about you. The wind the way it would pick up all the pieces of your hair and the sun it would reflect in your eyes. They'd be cast in a light brown, tree trunks, Greek pottery, chai tea. And you'd have that smile painted across your lips like that smile I saw drawn out carefully in the darkness of dawn under layers of blankets. Laughing, laughing like you tend to do: at me, with me, for me, beside me, under me, above me, into me, breathing me awake. Your hands are words in French. I'm trying to translate, I'm trying to comprehend. I'm trying when you tell me my ears are tiny. I'm trying when you point to my heart, when you point to me. Moi-même. If I could only read you like I read my novels, if I could only write you like I write the quotidian. I try: it is so little, so tiny, so inconsequentially, so insubstantially you. You are so many pieces. Perhaps I cannot hold even one of them. I like to imagine I can. I like to imagine you standing there, your hair turning to salty strings, your eyes lit up, your hand reaching out to grab me and tickle the spot between my ribcage and hip, until I fall into the sand laughing.

maybe if you remind yourself.

Tomorrow is my last day of classes as an undergraduate. It feels like a hurdle I just need to step over so that I can inaugurate myself into the ways of the adult world.

After spending the last several weeks going through panic attacks and trying to sort out the order of my life goals, I have firmly decided that I cannot wait. I cannot wait to fuck everything up. As Conan O'Brien once said, my biggest liability is my need to succeed. I need to let go of that and embrace the negative, the demeaning, the wonderful and terrible stories I am about to tell.

At this point, I must say that my life is close to flawless. I am graduating, as I aimed to do, magna cum laude with college honors and highest departmental honors. I will be initiated into Phi Beta Kappa next Thursday evening. I am up for a departmental prize for my thesis (which no one will ever care I wrote five years from now or even... tomorrow). I have completed a double-major and I have been involved in the school newspaper, the school's literary magazine, Undie Runs, volunteer work, and have worked several important internships. I have no debt for the next six months. My friends have been supportive and helpful and fun these last few weeks. I have been dating an amazing someone, who every so often reminds me that I am ridiculous, and that I am young and alive. I eat amazing food because I ignore my mounting credit card debt and place it on the table at the restaurant anyway. I spent the afternoon with a puppy.

And I wonder how I will feel to let go of all of my plans and the world I have built up for myself here in West Los Angeles. But I have also decided to stop wondering and let it be. I only have so long to live my life like I don't care what happens tomorrow, and it is my hope that I will not regret that I never made mistakes.

when i woke up alone and warm.

Remember the hedges—lilac, honeysuckle—

along the way, as we walked toward

we didn’t know where?

We kissed a little

under one, tasting salt and 7UP

on each other, not sure what next

or where, then peered at

the shadows on lawn after lawn, the dim

bulk of chimneys, shapes of shutters,

here a tirke, there a plastic pool,

and couples snoring, mysterious,

behind those tall white walls...

- Sandra M. Gilbert