i didn't hear it when you said i'm sorry.

I like
Where you sleep
When you sleep
Next to me
Oh I like
Where you sleep
Here

Our lips
Can touch
And our cheeks
Can brush
Cause our lips
Can touch
Here

yesterday i.

I just got back from a three and a half hour-long motorcycle ride to Saratoga with my papa. Can I just say, for the record, how beautiful and green Northern California is compared to Los Angeles? And yet, somehow, I kind of miss L.A..

Okay, that and a sunburn is all that is new with me.

pews in a church.

There was this boy in my sixth-grade classes who I had a crush on. I was twelve maybe, eleven. We would talk about the comics in the newspaper and we'd laugh together during art. One day, he stopped me and asked me for my number. My friend at the time, Alexandra, giggled and ran away, leaving me alone with him. I gave him my number. He called me several days later. I don't remember what we talked about: ice skating, cats, siblings, things of that nature.

My friends didn't think he was right for me: he didn't wear Abercrombie, I guess. I pushed him away. Even though I really did have a crush on him, innocent as it was.

That boy, Casey Raffaelli, died last week.

And I can't help but think of how temporary our connections to other people are. It makes me very sad and angry.

Rest in peace, Casey, I wish I had known you better.

tentative steps.

I am currently in the process of applying for another scholarship because I am broke and would like to not be thousands in debt in two years. So I was filling out the application and it asks you to give a short bio in less than 100 words, including your career goals and activities and other mindless things.

Some examples I have floating around in my head:
"Mary Johnson is a third-year Political Science major and is pursuing College and Departmental Honors. She was recently nominated to be on the Board of Regents. She also participates in Mock Trial, Amnesty International, and Project Literacy. After graduation, she plans to go to Harvard Law School and become a professional whose life is consumed with case law and nice shoes."

"Nancy Ho is a first-year Biology major, currently studying nanotechnology with her mentor, Professor Norris. After graduation, she plans to go to UCLA Medical School and become a plastic surgeon. She enjoys studying with all of her free time and never goes out on Friday nights."

And then there's me:
"Carrie is a second-year English and Communication Studies student. She spends most of her time in the Daily Bruin office, pretending that the real world can be contained in 18 pages which are printed daily. After graduation, she plans to avoid going to grad school and taking tests for a while. Instead, she will probably end up staying in L.A. where she can spend the next five years deciding whether or not she should have gone to grad school and what subject she might have studied there. She will probably hold about 3 different jobs, which will be fun at first, but then her interest will wane with time. In time, though, she will finally get the guts to move to New York for graduate school, end up hating that, and move back to San Francisco, where she will work for a sleek, specialty magazine in the city."

Mostly, though, I just think summing up your life plans in 100 words is stupid. Also stupid: having a life plan. It's good to have a vague idea of where you want to go, but I get so sick of overachievers.

Nonetheless, I should probably pretend to have one for this scholarship. I could really use the money.

cocoa what.

I am home and perfectly perfectly content doing nothing but the following: petting my cat, watching TV, reading magazines, going places with my parents, and thrift shopping.

Speaking of thrift shopping, call me if you want to go at any point. I can do it by myself, but it's never as fun. Patience is a pre-requisite.

I went to a garden show with my parents this afternoon (I know, right?), and all I could think about was what my garden will look like one day. Okay, eff that. I don't even want a garden. I hate it when I start thinking all suburban-domestic like that. Although, sometimes, it's just a very comfortable feeling.

In other news, I am getting my hair cut tomorrow with my new gay hairstylist. Maybe I'll post pics if it's good? I don't know, it really depends. I'm going to do something drastic; that's all I know.

spelling bee.

It's funny; I just got out of a 3-hour final discussion in my honors seminar where we examined the past and its effect on the present, and all I can think about is how I would like to know the future.

Last night, I had an epiphany. I need time to get over all of my insecurities, to learn about new places and things, and to learn what, essentially, drives me. I want to know my true potential, not the potential taught in television shows and bad romance novels.

So now I ask myself the same thing my professor asked the class at the end of the final today: Does a departure from what you once knew entail a return?

I hope it does.

Because there are some things you can't pin down. And those things-- those inexpressible things, those things that words will never describe, those things that words can only reach out to and pull back with hands full of empty air -- are the things that lie at the very base of life: things that I will not label with a single word. There is no combination of letters that would describe such notions (especially not e, o, v, or l). But knowing that you can feel them offers a sense of hope in an otherwise unattainable mess of communication.

hospital.

Maybe it was/is/has been love after all.

It's hard to say; I'm so stubborn.

n: procrastination.

I cannot wait for spring quarter (and I love the composition of this photo).

All day, I've just been thinking about how much I want and need a fresh start. If I could just cut out certain parts of my memory and consciousness, I would be perfectly happy. So why is it that we can't select what we remember? It's not even that I only want to remember the good stuff. I only want to remember certain good stuff in bright vivid detail. And I guess it's sort of selfish to want to edit out certain people from your memory, but when you feel that they have the ability to do it to you, it sort of feels necessary. And then when you realize that you can't do that, you feel sort of defeated. O, vagueness, how many apostrophes I could write to thee.

sunshine all around.

So my Spring Break plans are coming together. My friends back home and I are going to be hanging out a lot (we're going to this place filled with trampolines in Santa Clara, pretty sweet). Also, some of my friends from L.A. (Nina, Caroline, John, and Rebecca) are coming to stay with me in B-Game/San Francisco. So it'll be like two worlds colliding with a lot of alcohol, some cigarettes, non-stop laughter and Golden Gate Park.

Greg promised that we'd do lots of fun stuff too, so I'm hoping that my going home is worth it. I've been dreading it for a few weeks, but I'm not anymore. So that is comforting.

Also, I just got out of my honors class, where we had a class party and our professor bought us all little gifts. I love that class so much. Of course, I now have to write a 20-page short story for it. Ugh, I hate bitching about schoolwork. Alas, I will not.

there's only so much time.

I just finished Absalom, Absalom!, a book I have been trying to read for the last year and a half. Interestingly enough, I decided to re-start it and finish all 300 dense, 100+-word sentence-filled, stream-of-consciousness style, 20-page paranthetical statement-y pages in 4 days. And as this is also the last book I have to read for the quarter, I thought it important to look back at why I never sleep anymore.

I have read:
11 novels
19 short stories
26 poems
5 plays

...in 10 weeks.

And yet I still seem to be moving along, trying to keep my eyes open 18 hours a day.

87 predicted.

it really feels like summertime.

they're singing.

And finally he opens his mouth so full with words, so full it overruns like sweet milk in the pale dawn when Dewey Dell she squeezes the cows and makes freshness, so full it was like the train that it had lost its track and its wheels quit turning like a fish it quits flipping back and forth in the dust, so full he emptied it out into the wetness in the house where the wood it cracks under his now-dirty clothing and his white hands they get more white as he opens his mouth and lets out its blackness.

He says, “God’s grace upon this house.”

Then he closes his mouth, all turned to white, and the rest of him, they dont see it, but it is turned to red.

a little pensiveness only gets you so far.

In case you haven't noticed (you probably haven't), I have erased most of my blog entries. I did this in an attempt not to forget the past, but rather to reflect on it in a way not affected by nostalgia and lost memories.

However, for my own personal growth and self-exploration, I just wanted to bring this back:

"What have I done?

I just keep looking out the window, hoping for a second chance. But to do what? To mess up again? To fool everyone? To feel like I don’t deserve to be alive?

Is it worth it to not know who I am any longer? Maybe I need this. Maybe it’s time I stop filling my heart with the same lies and start filling it with things I haven’t discovered yet. But I don’t deserve to. I don’t deserve anything. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to be with people.

Fuck this."

Even though I never explained this at the time, this post came out of an enormous fight with Brian which really should have signalled our break up. Instead, we dragged it out for 4 months and then 4 more on top of that. And that's not to say we didn't still have some amazing times that made those 8 months worthwhile. I think my reserved care for him will always be present and I'll always be grateful to him. It's just that I am realizing now how I tried to be so much like him: I tried to deny what was going on and idealize the situation. When I couldn't, I would chalk it up to the weather, to my period, to my schoolwork.

But looking at this now, I realize that I really do need to be alone. In the short while that I have felt completely unattached, I feel more confident than I have in months. I even feel more like the me I used to be. So that proves that us women don't need a man to tell us we're beautiful. In fact, it usually only proves to make you question yourself. Anyhow, being an emotionally stable person, I can see how terrible all of this was. I guess I've just always been good at rationalizing, at denying the truth. Maybe I should be a lawyer after all.

And I've already decided that my next entry will be about women's issues, something I've been getting back into in a big way recently. Let me just get around to it. For now, I am still working on this huge essay and finishing two 300-page novels. And, oh yes, work tomorrow. When do I stop being this busy and start being annoyed that I am no longer this busy?

yeoh.

There is nothing else I want in the world less than a boyfriend. Ugh. Way too much work and time. I just feel really bad is all. It's hard to say that to someone else and to have them understand. Of course, I'm also the girl who let it go this far. It's really too bad I have such a bad experience, something really great could have come of this new thang. Woe is me.

And, now, in an attempt to forget it all and say "fuck it, let's dance," I am going to a party.

la la la.

I feel liberated.

fact or fiction.

It's interesting that liars always get caught in the end.

Libby Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case

That's a lesson you learn before you even get to elementary school, and, yet, we all continue to lie. And not just to other people, either.

Because sometimes a little lie here and there makes the world easier to live in. And it makes it easier for you to justify the way you have acted if you convince yourself that there are deeper significances to your faults.

In the end, though, we will be exposed as we really are.

closing the curtains.

One day, I will look back on those mornings with a sort of resignation, a sort of dull and second-hand fulfillment.

The sun would come bursting through his window frames and we would just lie there, brushing each other's bodies and smiling. Of course, I don't ever kid myself that these mornings were always perfect. I would wake up grumpy. Sometimes, it would be far too cold. But thinking about his room fills me with a sense of child-like curiosity, of misadventure, of peace.

And I know that these feelings inside of that room do not translate to the ones I felt when I entered the outside world, when I was confronted with the dirt and stench of Los Angeles. That's how I know that our relationship sheltered me from the real world, from feeling anything real. While it was nice to pretend for a while that I was living in some sort of paradoxical bucolic urban landscape, I have to come to terms with the fact that a paradox is all that we could ever be: impossible, unattainable, shifting back and forth between two irreconcilable extremes.

So the sun needs to make its way back out of those windows for me. Night needs to fall for a little while (a time of rest, of renewal, of new beginnings). Though it might be dark, lonely and uncharted, I will live with the knowledge that there's got to be some kind of tomorrow.

So for now, I am trying to forget those mornings like they were pleasant dreams, the type that will never be realized. And even though I know that what we shared was raw and free and beautiful, I need to make a tomorrow for myself-- I need to let him go.

my roots are strong and deep.

Things I would like to have right now:

• A massage
• No, really, please.
  
• A television with:
  
• Curb
  
• Woody Allen movies, so that:
• I don't have to move to change the channel at all.
  
• Sex
• To be perfectly honest, because who doesn't want sex?
  
• Really, really good sex.
• A kitchen with:
• Pop-tarts
• Lettuce
• Freshly baked cookies in the oven.
• The capacity to fall in love
• The feeling that I don't need to race to fall in love again.
• Because that sucks.
  
• Please stop it.
  
• Someone to fall in love with who:
• Is unbelievably intelligent about literature.
  
• Wears glasses.
• Is so cute I can barely breathe.
  
• Will respect my independence and femininity.
  
• Is not stingy.
• Will sing me to sleep.
• Writes.
  
• Will call me randomly to make plans in five minutes' time.
  
• But mostly the feeling that I don't need someone in my life to make me feel like I have purpose.
  
• Because I am better than that.
  
• I know I am.
• Do you like how I am full of contradictions?
• I want love.
• But only because I feel like I should.
  
• Or do I really want it?
• I guess... who doesn't?
  
• To no longer feel like such a bad person.
  

wasting time and space.

I don't want to write anything particularly dramatic or heart breaking right now (as I have just come to terms with the fact that my life as a child is over), so I will defy my state of mind and write something else.













I got nothin'.