modern literature.

List of Terrible Things That Have Happened to Me Today:

• I woke up late and had to move a bunch of cars and trash cans in order to get to work on time.
• Said good-bye to Brian for the last time in a long while.
  
• John Edwards decided today of alllllll days to drop out of the presidential race. Right after I spent 2 hours last night writing an endorsement of him for tomorrow's Super Tuesday issue. Fuck that guy.
• For some reason (my guess is a bomb threat), the 405 was backed up for 20 minutes at the Sunset exit. Sunset was closed off for as far as I could see. Police were surrounding all of the ramps connecting Sunset to Westwood, so I got lost and almost had a mental breakdown.
  
• They were cutting down a tree on Gayley for no apparent reason and took up the whole street so that Veteran was totally blocked and it took me forever to get back to my apartment even though I was about 30 seconds away on a normal day.
  
• My 3-hour seminar was today. I fucking hate that class. I was totally wrong in thinking Old English would be cool.
• I am currently working on an 8-page paper that I thought was a 6-page paper up until an hour ago.
  
• I ate a Sourdough Jack.
• Time keeps moving.
  
• I am listening to a terrible Britney Spears song.
  

I really think that the world is against me. I mean, I guess I really haven't been a good person lately. Ugh. Whatever. I just want this week to be over.

radar.

Anybody want to see Ron Jeremy sign his book The Hardest (Working) Man in Showbiz with me on Friday at Book Soup? Oh, come on.

And now for a completely different turn of events: I made a reconnection tonight and everything was so clear. It's just that while I understand what I'm doing now, I don't know why I am the type of person that forces myself to do these kinds of things. It's like I'm on a constant quest for happiness (in case you haven't noticed the theme of my last 20-something entries), but when I finally reach a state where I am satisfied, I develop a tolerance for it, get restless, and move on. So basically I am a failure as a human being, a product of my cultural zeitgeist, and will never ever know what it is I am looking for. Yayyyyy. Okay, on to Tuesday now.

Also, I've had enough with the self-absorption as of late. I'm thinking of getting back into poetry instead.

reckless abandon.

Jazz floating, tinkering
I have to strain to hear.

Am I ready to set up a whole new set of memories? When is it okay? When will I be able to open myself up again? I feel raw. There is no other word. Just broken and in pieces and in need of a new layer to protect myself. The cynicism and the photographs are piling up against me. I don't want to be this way. I am so sick of hurting the people who care about me. So why can't I just say, "Let me not be this person anymore" to whoever will listen, to myself.

Olive oil, quiet lights
Dark night, footsteps
Art art art
And writing

I have never known someone so collaborative. It is fresh and new and beautiful and I feel like a part of something in the philosophical perception of time. I want to reach outside of the span of one human life and enter the long dure. Where is the line between me and humanity? It is slowly opening up to me.

Strange, so strange it is to make decisions like this. Decisions that you feel, that you can't think about because they hurt too much. If you think about it, you know you'll say no. So you enter the second person and talk about yourself like you're not really there, to make it easier, to remove the situation, to make it part of someone else's problem. It can't possibly be your own. The consequences can't possibly have any affect on you and everyone you are involved with.

Ideas flowing down the rainy streets
Dance music and dirty theaters and confused smiles
Words
There is nothing sexier than words.

And it's so strange to feel something touching me from so far way. It is so odd to feel my hands shaking and to know that it has nothing to do with what I thought it did. I never wanted to let go, never wanted to face the day when those feelings faded.

I read somewhere, somewhere near me, that falling out of love must be one of the saddest things that humans experience. Falling into it is hard enough. So how do you even know if you fall out of it if you're never never absolutely sure what it even is.

You're so small you say
as I twist on the hardwood floors and
feel my heart twist back and forth
Yes and no and yes and no

And I can't think anymore. It's like I'm outside myself, watching myself do things I never imagined. I cried for the girl I was seven years ago last night. I cried for her. Because I know that she never would have wanted this for me. She was so naive. She never could have possibly known how hard it is. In her mind, everything was right and wrong and love and hate and clear clear clear as the water that floats down the Appalachians during all of those summers in Tennessee. But, just as I thought, love is a growing up. I just didn't really know what growing up was. Growing up is realizing that you must make decisions that will never make sense. Growing up is realizing that you can't have that perfect life with a cat and three kids and a healthy sex life and be skinny and perfect and smart and rich and know, at all times, that this is all there is, that this is all you will ever need. I will never know those things. Maybe if I stayed in the South, maybe if I never went to college, maybe if I never read a single book, then I'd know.

Cold winter night
Smell of chlorine and cannabis
Lost
I veered off the path
And now my perfect little life
with a perfect little map
and a tiny pristine plan
with a boy who'd die for me
is gone.

So now I must take the long way.

can't get away.

I attended a Daily Bruin party last night, and it was weird seeing everyone from the office again. At those parties, everyone always asks "What section do you work in?" I found myself hesitating each time someone asked me. It's not that I don't work there anymore, it's that it feels like everything I worked for just drifted away with the change in leadership. The paper itself is ever-evolving by necessity. Unlike the real world, it's just a checkmark on an application or a line on a resume more than it is a lifetime commitment. Which is sad. Because seeing everyone last night made me so happy. I met so many amazing new interns and talked to people I have seen in ages. It felt a little bit like a family reunion, only everyone else there spends hours and hours together during the week. I was there for three hours and in between the handshakes and dancing like crazy and high fives and inside jokes, I found myself very happy - nostalgic even - and wishing I could return to the paper once again full-time.

filling the gaps in my memory.

I came to a devastating realization last night: whatever I thought I felt before, people feel it again. And again and again and again. I want to be naive. I want to feel it once. For one person. Maybe the fact that I am so fiercely determined means that it is unique. It's all one huge paradox. All the sudden, I feel like I have grown up. I don't want to. But is it possible to ever feel the exact same thing about a person that they feel about you? I really don't think it is. This is what James Agee spoke of: the inevitable and intrinsic block between individuals. No matter how close we may be, nature still limits us. No matter how well you may know someone, you still never know everything that goes on in their heads. It becomes easier to guess with time, but you never really know a person. All you have is yourself. This philosophy is devastating. It's depressing and pessimistic. But I have forgotten how to be optimistic. Somehow.

more than gossip.

Last night, I ate dinner at a fancy restaurant named Ketchup on Sunset Boulevard. I ordered a soy-tofu burger ($17, cha-ching) and took in the ambience of the red lamps, the red carpets, the white tables, the unbelievably good-looking waiters. As I was looking around, I noticed I was sitting across the room from Marlon Wayans. I almost had a White Chicks moment-induced heart attack. Then, when he stood up to leave, I noticed he was sitting beside Omar Epps. Heart attack number two.

Later, as my friend and I stepped outside, we saw a bunch of paparazzi running toward a white Mercedes. We asked them what was going on. "It's Britney Spears' car!" they shouted. Inside (as I learned this morning), was her paparazzi boyfriend. I feel bad for the girl, really. He had just dropped her off inside and went around the back to park. But, seriously, I can't imagine living a life like that - hordes of men with cameras flashing as you attempt to grab dinner at a small cafe. According to Portfolio magazine, the girl is worth $120 million to the U.S. economy. I guess there's some security in that as stock prices plummet and the real estate market crashes.

In conclusion, I hate L.A.

from paul madonna.

please be true.

love me all over again.

Your voice brings me back to everything I once knew. Those desperately cold nights in your room under the windowsill. How you used to always push me onto your futon mattresses and watch me drop, then jump in after me. All of the smiles and the embraces. I miss it so much. Now that I am free and so far away, I wonder if there is anything more pure than that. Because your voice releases a biological response in me. I shake, I perspire even, I open myself so completely. I mean those words. Even if I clouded all of our memories with bad decisions, I meant it all. I want to start over new somewhere. Take a flight to London and stay there. With you. Maybe that's all the perspective I need. I can't break any more hearts.

So one question is left. One small, unanswerable question: Is the happiest that you have ever been the happiest that you will ever be?

I think I'm greedy like Faust, hungering for love and happiness. In the end, only I will be left hurting.

lovely.

omg i just went to one of the best parties ive been to in a longggggg time. and leslie and i set a record. am also in love with these extemporaneous updates.

first class.

I saw the new Woody Allen last night. Cassandra's Dream was kind of like Match Point, only with even more in-your-face irony. The literary allusions and the "life is a tragedy" theme were also a bit heavy-handed. Colin Farrell amazed me though. Who knew that he could seriously convince me to like him as a character? Still, I miss the simple days of Annie Hall and Love and Death. No other movie couple makes me smile more than Woody Allen and Diane Keaton.

I went shopping for the first time in months today with Leslie. It felt liberating and carefree and fun. And so we're going again tomorrow. I've had high high's and low low's this week, so I've convinced myself that I deserve it.

And finally, the Associated Press put together a list of nine bookstores "worth a visit" in America. I've only visited one of them, so I look forward to visiting each of these cities just to buy books:
1. Books & Books in Coral Gables, Florida
2. City Lights in San Francisco
3. Eliot Bay Book Co. in Seattle
4. Politics and Prose in Washington D.C.
5. Powell's in Portland
6. Prairie Lights in Iowa City
7. Tattered Cover in Denver
8. The Strand in New York
9. That Bookstore in Blytheville, Arkansas

I would also suggest they add A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books, except it went out of business a while back. So sad.

the professor's house.

While I was staying at home over winter break, my dad purchased an old record player. He went down to the basement and dusted off some old records. Some were marked "Joan Jett," (my mom's name), others were unmarked. Many contained deep scratches and signs of carelessness (all those were my mom's, my dad told me). During the cold afternoons, my family and I would stay inside and listen to Simon and Garfunkel sing about home and love and New York.

We ate dinner listening to The Sounds of Silence one night. My parents were talking about Tennessee, about college, about growing up and realizing how far you get from yourself when you throw your thoughts into school and work and your children.

My dad was complaining about one thing or another, about how much he didn't like school when he first gave it a try. Then when he returned from the Navy, how it all turned around and he enjoyed his classes and learning. He was going on about how much fun college was at that time. My mom chimed in, "Yeah, and you had a really hot girlfriend." I laughed and smiled.

"Kathy's Song" played over my laughter.

My mind's distracted and diffused
My thoughts are many miles away
They lie with you when you're asleep
And kiss you when you start your day.

And a song I was writing is left undone
I don't know why I spend my time
Writing songs I can't believe
With words that tear and strain to rhyme.

And so you see I have come to doubt
All that I once held as true
I stand alone without beliefs
The only truth I know is you.

I thought, that's what love is. My parents have never been openly affectionate, not during my lifetime anyway. It has certainly affected my own standards for behavior in relationships. But I think that is what makes me enjoy the small things so much. A comment that takes you back thirty years to a time when you had it all, that makes you realize that you still have it all. A smile of recognition. Laughter that has lasted so long and a memory of unwavering faith in between the hard times. Listening to the music that brought you together. Passing that on.

I am so thankful that I have parents who have been so good to me and so good to each other. I know that I am lucky to have parents who support each other and who never gave up. I have considered the alternatives, have watched my friends go through unbearably painful experiences, and I am certain that nothing else could ever feel as good as my family does to me.

I only hope that I am able to pass on all of that love one day. I know I will though. Even if right now, as Paul Simon puts it, "I have come to doubt all that I once held as true." My parents will help me put my feet back on the ground. They will always remind me of what is truly important, even after I have learned that someone you love can cloud that deep connection with his own ridiculous pride. I can get past that, move on, and still find what they found.

comics and film and art and the mentor.

I was watching A Wedding Story on TLC this morning, and I almost started crying. That is how I know that I am unstable.

My many fates are crashing down on me. I don't believe in God, but I do believe that there are symbols in our lives - certain people and places, certain topics of conversation and life paths, if that makes sense - that are somehow mapped out for us. And I don't mean by a higher power even. Just by a random mathematical equation of compatibility and luck. I believe that we are fated to be with certain people, fated to hold a certain position in our lives. But it's also true that we make our own independent decisions and that we can choose to ignore these odds that build up against us. The only problem with this philosophy is that I can only see whether or not I have followed my fate if it turns out good in the end. And it's hard to see that when you're sitting right there in the middle.

everybody.

everyone likes meeting new people. and fireworks. and awkward goodbyes. and even awkwarder (a word now) text messages. swear to god.

far too far.

I've only written one column, but I already want to stop. Under different circumstances, it's possible that I could really enjoy it. But no. Just no.

Leslie's parents come down and visit her a lot and it makes me sad. I wish my parents could just drive down and spend time with me.

I have nothing to say. Just wasting some time. Self-indulgent crap.

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regina again.

You can hear this song and think of me. the "I" is you.

Somedays aren't yours at all
They come and go as if they're someone else's days
They come and leave you behind someone else's face
And it's harsher than yours
And colder than yours.
They come in all quiet, sweep up, and then they leave
And you don't hear a single floor board creak.
They're so much stronger than the friends you try to keep by your side.
Downtown, downtown.
I'm not here, not anymore.
I've gone away.
Don't call me, don't write.

I'm watching old videos, peering back at what I made, wondering when it will be okay to say hello again. Please say hello again soon. I have secrets I need to tell. And listening to you say those wonderful things you said makes me want to be for you again. But I know I can't be yet. It's frustrating and stupid. And I want all of your friends to know that you're all that matters and that no one has ever been better than us. I want my friends to know it too. And the fact that I'm still referring to you as "you" is also frustrating. But it's all I know.

On the not depressing side of my life, my boss is setting up a meeting for me with the head of the publicity department of HarperOne in San Francisco. She also knows someone at Jossey-Bass in San Francisco. And, because of her, I feel like my life may actually begin soon. It's somehow liberating at the same time that it is suffocating. My dream is to work for Chronicle Books though. Not because I think I'd make more money there. I actually think I'd make less. But I just love the books they make. They're beautiful, and I feel like reading them at coffee tables and in small bookstores that play Mozart. Also, my first column for the Daily Bruin comes out Wednesday. And I have a Westwind meeting tomorrow which should be really interesting (discussions of J.F.). And I've made some new friends and rekindled old friendships. Of course, there's always going to be that hole, but I'm starting to think that since I'm not the only one suffering from it, it's a little better.

unedited and nonsensical.

Some things just happen so quickly. You don't even know how far you've come from where you started until you are halfway through your next leap. I generally find it impossible to figure out what I'm doing until I am able to step back and take a look at things in a larger sense. I certainly know that I have made some mistakes in my time - mostly small, some larger.

But right now, I'm looking at myself from afar and I don't know what the hell it is that I am doing. Is it wrong? Is it right? I already know that, if I am doing something wrong, I have done it very wrong. But if I am doing something right, I certainly have a roundabout way of doing it. I just wish I had some sort of concrete definition of all the things I feel.

I just don't want to be ashamed of the truth anymore. I don't want to carry around two versions of myself. I want to reconcile the two amazing people that I am so that I can finally make someone else truly happy. Because as things are right now, all I am able to do is superficial. I have the ability to be happy - even to make someone else happy - but I am not happy. Not in the more general sense. And that's all I want to be. Completely, undebatably, pristinely happy. Maybe I need a new slate for that, maybe I just need some new self-awareness. All I know is that I can't stop where I am. I have to keep going. And it hurts. And it may seem pointless. In the end, though, I just want to come full circle and find that I can confidently determine my own happiness. I suppose, however, that that all depends on the forgiveness of others who I've left behind.

back back back back back.

"Where we're going, we don't need roads."

forever my --.

I lost my fairy tale. And I lost my best friend and the only thing that has ever really truly meant anything to me.

I feel uninspired and lifeless. So I have to leave things at that.

no way.

While it may not make sense to anyone but me, I'm thinking of sonnet 129 and wishing I were French.

I think this quarter is actually going to be fulfilling for me. Although I spent all of my English class wishing Prof. Dimuro were Prof. Post, the reading list is wonderful. Great Gatsby, The Sound and the Fury, Willa Cather, and so on.

And now that I am back to L.A., I am just confused. I'm happy, but something is missing. I couldn't tell you what it is

In good news, Hillary won in New Hampshire. I was actually able to say the phrase "You Go, Girl!" in all seriousness. Knowing our country, we'll end up electing McCain anyway though. You know, the old white guy. We seem to just love them.

sounds and noises.

While I simply cannot believe that winter break ends tomorrow, it did feel unbelievably lengthy. No complaints here, though I wouldn't have minded another week with all of my friends here.

Tonight I had a realization. Sitting at a bar with my best friend Sam and I couldn't believe all of the bullshit going on around me. Thinking of the last three weeks, of the running, of the pounding hearts, of the laughter and board games, I realized that there is nothing more to life than that. I have always been partial to existentialism, but I love how concrete my belief becomes when I actually find distilled happiness in my life. Here I am, one woman, standing strong and looking out over all of the possibilites I have yet to handle, and I know - I know - that as long as I can find happiness like this, everything else will just jog along to catch up with me.

Back to L.A. tomorrow. Each time I return, I wonder how it will look different to me. I will let you know.

running away from yesterday.

Been listening to New Year's-themed songs all day. Maybe to make myself realize that I can now put all of last year behind me and move forward.

This song by Regina Spektor (though I think it may be a re-make of an earlier song) is chillingly beautiful -- my favorite type of beautiful, mind you.

Here's to starting fresh and clean and new and all of the wonderful things I can't predict.

My dear acquaintance, it's so good to know you
For strength of your hand
That is loving and giving
And a happy new year
With love overflowing
With joy in our hearts
For the blessed new year

Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
For us all who are gathered here
And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, kind, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year

All of those who are hither and yonder
With love in our hearts
We grow fonder and fonder
Hail to those who we hold so dear
And hail to those who are gathered here

And a happy new year to all that is living
To all that is gentle, young, and forgiving
Raise your glass and we'll have a cheer
My dear acquaintance, a happy new year

tractor pulls.

So the Iowa caucus is upon us. The day we small citizens finally get a closer glimpse at the angle journalists will take in the next 11 months of news coverage. But isn't it just a bit absurd that this event is treated with such importance? I mean, we have 50 states, but one tiny little one has the ability to sway the outlook on the rest of the election? Is that really democracy? Or just a way to streamline an otherwise too-democratic process? And all of this brought to you by a small state in the midwest I have never visited and know very little about. That is not to say I don't respect Iowa. Au contraire, I used to be friends with a few Iowans who I loved. I just think it's a bit absurd that my friends over there have louder voices than I do just because of the date of their primary.

december into january.

So Portland, ice skating, rest of the break is scratched. New Year's was fun, though I can barely remember the hours between 12am and 3am.

And I was thinking that I never really thought of resolutions for this year. It's not that I don't have anything to improve on, it's just that I need to resolve to free up some time to think about what to resolve about my life.

I really don't know what I'm saying right now. I'm incredibly tired despite 10 hours of sleep.