samantha made sure.

I spend a lot of time thinking about what I want to be when I grow up. I also spend a lot of time thinking about the best version of myself and how I can possibly ever live up the expectations I make for myself. The me that I want to be doesn't have to drink coffee to look forward to her day. And she certainly doesn't spend 19 hours per day doing work that leaves her feeling hollow and looking forward to when she can actually fit Broadway Danny Rose into her schedule. Sammy made me promise her that I would take some time to myself by Wednesday at 6pm. But then I started to plan my Wednesday and found that there was no room for that. It's a literal impossibility. So for now, I will bask in the fact that I am giving myself five short minutes to contemplate who I am and what I want out of my life.

The other day, I was talking to one of my roommates who told me that she was counting on marrying a rich man so she could have whatever job she wanted in life without having to worry about money. I started to think about that. I always just assumed that I would want to know - even if I didn't have to - that I could live on my own. Plus, marrying rich severely limits your options.

Now. Back to work. So I can learn a lot. So I can be get a job I love. So I can be amazing at it. So I am happy.

real talk.

"Next time you get horny, go out and fuck one of your funky ass friends."
-R. Kelly (my personal hero) in his new YouTube music video, "Real Talk"

greenview.

There is smoke hanging all over Los Angeles today. From the tips of tree branches to the red brick buildings, there's a white haze over everything. When I was walking back from class today across the plaza between Royce Hall and Powell Library, I looked up into the sun. Despite all of the Bill Nye the Science Guy warnings, I looked right into it. It burned such a violent red that it resembled an apple or a raspberry suspended from the sky - shrouded in white smoke. I took a photo of it, but it was so red that my dinky little camera phone couldn't even hope to capture it. So it didn't. Notice there is sunlight filtering down onto the buildings, but no sun in sight. The sun was sitting on top of that building's rooftop when I took this shot. It is 90 degrees outside (100 in my apartment) and the sun is red and Southern California is burning.

since feeling is first.

This poem basically embodies my perspective of what love is, not what I think it is, but how it actually resides in me. It's e e cummings and it's beautiful. I think the most beautiful thing about it is that it attempts to explain a love that it describes as indescribable. In the end, I do believe that it fails to capture love. But what it does do is capture that frustration of words, that confusion of verbs and nouns and adjectives, that perfect inexpressibility of actions. Also, the self-conscious use of punctuation- and syntax-related diction further ironizes this gap between the body and mind. For what the mind does not have the means to express, the body must punctuate. Sadly, sometimes, even to a writer, words are not enough.

since feeling is first
who pays any attention
to the syntax of things
will never wholly kiss you;
wholly to be a fool
while Spring is in the world

my blood approves,
and kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry
—the best gesture of my brain is less than
your eyelids' flutter which says

we are for each other: then
laugh, leaning back in my arms
for life's not a paragraph

And death i think is no parenthesis

beelzebub.

Does anyone else find it ironic that Harvard's new president - Harvard's first woman president - has the surname Faust? I certainly do. I feel like Christopher Marlowe is haunting me lately.

i have it all here in red blue green.

I was listening to the new Radiohead and overanalyzing the lyrics like I usually do to songs. The album seems to be digging up the darkness behind love songs. How typically Radiohead to find the light and blot it out in the most painfully beautiful way possible. The following analysis is the product of a 2am listening sesh. I am fairly incoherent right now. Please take that into consideration.

How come I end up where I started?
How come I end up where I went wrong?
Won't take my eyes off the ball again.
First you reel me out and then you cut the string.
You used to be alright
What happened? ...
-15 Step

She stands stark naked and she beckons you to bed.
Don't go. You'll only want to come back again.
So don't get any big ideas.
They're not gonna happen.
You'll go to hell for what your dirty mind is thinking.
And now that you found it, it's gone.
And now that you feel it, you don't.
-Nude

I only stick with you
Because there are no others.
- All I Need (debatably, this could be an ironic statement about soulmates)

But all that really matters is that the album ends with Videotape, in which Thom Yorke declares: "You are my centre when I spin away." He turns it all around, right when we think that idealism is done for. The truth is, I think all of the darkness that he hints at in relationships is there even when someone is your center; these songs are not contradictory but rather continue in the same vein of exploring the polarized dynamics of love. But when you look back at everything through a metaphorical videotape of memories, all of the hurt isn't what matters. It's what anchors you in love that matters, what keeps you with someone despite the arguments and all of the bullshit that one has to learn in order to function normally in a relationship these days. And the Faust references in the album play into this, selling your soul for knowledge only to find out that there is nothing to learn but how wrong you were.

Marlowe's devil states:
"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?"

In the end, Thom Yorke decides that "No matter what happens now, I won't be afraid because I know today has been the most perfect day I've ever seen." Everlasting bliss. An avoidance of the hell that Mephistophales describes, the hell that "reach[es] up to grab" him. Perhaps in death alone or perhaps in taking comfort that you have someone to share your center after all the goodbyes have been said. Or maybe in just admitting that what is perfect is the unknown.

management.

I'm too tired to write anything except that I ended up having a really great birthday in the end, am severely unenthused in all of my classes and have stopped reading altogether for poli sci, and am very happy that Al Gore won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I'm in the kind of mood where all I want to do is either read a modernist novel or watch Woody Allen films, one after the other until I fall asleep. And I'd like to have a cup of iced chai next to me. And a kitty kitty to pet on. And flowers in vases.

make a wish. pick a cheek.

I think birthdays suck because they always fall just short of what you thought they might be. Not only that, but every year, I go through this week-long denial phase where I tell myself that I will never grow up. After all, how exciting is moving on to a job, a nice car, new things, new bills, new responsibilities, more stupid people to deal with? Who doesn't want to stay young forever? Cliches are cliches because they are universally accepted truths. I just want to go back to the English countryside and be. Where there are no expectations for my future and for what I am supposed to conquer on my way to university-driven success. But my own expectations for myself have somehow aligned over the years with what others want from me. So even if I could escape for a year or two, I would never be able to resist the temptation to fall into patterns of stress and self-evaluation.

The other night, I was lying in bed reading my bullshit political science reader, but I somehow lost myself in thought of bedside tables and chai tea lattes. The subject matter isn't really too important. But I can't stop thinking lately. And I know that as I usher in a new year of my life, the thinking will only demand more of my time. So I suppose that I will dedicate this year of my life to self-improvement because it's all I'm going to think about anyway. I will be more assertive, think of better questions to ask my professors, and make everyone think that I am much much older than I actually am. Twenty-one perhaps?

interns wanted.

I am so exhausted that any creativity left in me has been drained by the sheer amount of pages that I am forced to read in the next two days. Two days until my birthday.

I have compiled a list of all of the foods I'd like to try. While most of them necessitate being in the Bay Area in order to have their flavors well represented, I have decided to challenge other people to check these things off of their lists too.

Salvadoran: corn cakes, pupusas con loroco, pastel (a meat-stuffed corn dumpling)
Burmese: fish chowder noodle soup, tea salad.
Turkish: lahmacun (Turkish meat pizza), doner, kebabs
Vietnamese: vermicelli noodle and vegetable salad, Vietnamese sandwiches and spring rolls, pho
Malaysian: curried Singapore noodles with shredded chicken, martabak (pastry-like bread wrapped around spiced beef, egg, and green onion)
Russian: vareniki (stuffed dumplings), piroshki, blinchiki
Eritrean: lentil soup, injera (flatbread)
Korean: kim chee jee gae, oyster pancakes, cold noodle soup,

So that's basically all I have to say.