oh my god, lady.

I'd like to write this entry in all caps because that's how I feel. And I hate writing summaries because who the fuck cares about another human beings day-to-day life, but this is no ordinary day. So I will share.

I got the internship with a wonderful publishing house! Which means my mind has been made up for me, and I'm going to be working my butt off and I'm going to be getting real paid this summer. And all in San Francisco, a few steps from Powell, in a beautiful building with unbelievably talented people.

I checked my e-mail five minutes ago and my midterm was cancelled.

A UCLA cheerleader is coming to our apartment to see about renting my room. She's totally cute.

All of these mind-blowing, de-stressing, perfect things happening all at once. Has someone close to me been hurt? It's not possible at all that things could be this good. Oh, shut up, Carrie. Be happy and immodest for once.

the mission.

to believe.

I had a wonderful weekend getaway. It included koalas, falafel, cake, lotsa sunshine, lemonade, a perfect bed, chimpanzees, chris brown, brioche, a giraffe or two or six, no homework whatsoever... I don't really need to say anything else. You get the picture. Sadly, I have no pictures.

i will.

I saw No Age at the Ukrainian Center with Joe tonight. Lots of UCLA people were there, kind of creepy. I had a good time though. And I also had a vegan hot dog that made me redefine what a good hot dog should taste like.

I am going to San Diego the rest of the weekend. I think I've pretty much planned the perfect relaxing vacation:
Saturday: Go to San Juan, eat lunch with Joe's friend Rogerio, check into our fabulous hotel, sit by the pool, relax, read, take our sweet ass time doing whatever we want, good food.
Sunday: breakfast, San Diego Zoo, lunch, drive home/to San Juan to eat with Joe's family

studio city pressure.

Normally, I'd feel like a bit of a freak posting about these guys two days in a row, but I just found a set of pictures from last night on someone else's blog. And since these photos are way better than mine, I just had to share a few. Yes.

flight of MY HEART.

I just saw the loves of my life perform. In person. From a few feet away. Sigh. Oh, Bret McKenzie. My love for thee shall never falter.

space.

"This is a laughter I have experienced only rarely: listening to the genius of Mozart at its angriest and cleanest, most masculine fire; the sudden memory of some line of Shakespeare, 'Nymph, in thy orisons be all my sins remembered''; walking in streets or driving in country; or in that delicate stage of love when a girl, serious and scarcely tinged with smiling, her eyes muted and her head poised most immaculately, first begins, not in pleasure alone, but in a kind of fear and deep gentleness, to use her light, slow, frank hands upon your head and body: a phase so unassailably beyond any meaning of tenderness and of trust, so like the opening of first living upon the shining of the young earth in its first morning, that an overwhelming knowledge of God and of his non-existence fight you and, all in the same quietness, you feel it impossible that you can look into her eyes one more moment and no be so distended by incredulous joy that you are of one size and ignorance and fleshlessness with space itself.*

And this phase of love, to anyone who holds love in the utmost esteem that it is due, must be beyond all comparison the cruelest and bitterest thing in human experience. Even within its own moments it draws you both irresistibly into those desperate battlings of the body which only in their first few seconds seem the greater joy they are not, and which so soon blunt and blind the delicate munificence of your exchange into their own beautiful but violent, charcoal-drawn terms. Out of this violence of flesh and of total mutual confidence it is not possible many times to withdraw into that quieter sphere of apposition in which the body, brain and spirit of each of you is all one perfectly focused lens and in which these two lenses devour, feed, enrich and honor each other; it is not possible because the violence blurs, feathers and distorts the essential constituency of the lens.

*The essence of anguish and of joy are thus identical: they are the explosion or incandescence resulting from the incontrovertible perception of the incredible."

James Agee

dizziness.

Points of Confusion (a.k.a. Why I Think I Am Neurotic):

I went to see a professor today to talk about my thesis proposal. Actually giving voice to my ideas with someone who could help me shape them sent me into this frenzy of self-consciousness about the futility of my research. I am sick of being this whiny, scared girl. I want to be sure that my ideas are worthy. How can I do that? Hopefully, my chronicles of thesis writing will help me discover this for myself. I am so fucking tired of hearing myself complain. I need to change. Somehow, I feel like this new change in me is only just beginning. I feel like the road to becoming a more positive person is so so long. It would be so much easier to resign myself to this. But no.

I basically quit being a columnist. I don't like being talked down to, I certainly don't like my time being disrespected, and I do not respond well to passive aggressiveness (I have a Southern mother, I promise she's better at it than you. Even trying passive aggressiveness on a Southerner is just absurd if you're not Southern yourself). At the same time, I know that I can only blame my own laziness for "disappointing" people. It's just that I don't give a shit about the Daily Bruin. It's a joke. I knew that leaving the editorship and accepting a real internship in a world outside of Kerckhoff Hall would open up crazy new perspectives for me, I just don't think I realized the real implications of this. The Daily Bruin is currently undergoing a "hyperlocalization" shift. This means that the paper is attempting to focus solely on UCLA/college issues. To me, this is so small and meaningless. It's like writing for the Burlingame Daily News. And, you know what, that's great for some people, living in a bubble makes the world more manageable for them. But for me, I can't make every issue relate back to Los Angeles and UCLA. I shouldn't have to. I shouldn't have to qualify why I care about something just because it may affect me personally. So fuck that. I care about women's repression in Iran because I can. I care about coups in Africa because I want to. I don't care about the pope visiting and Catholics on campus. Sorry guys. So I'm officially resigning from that world. For these reasons and also because you have no idea how retarded the paper will be next year. I'd rather keep my distance from that immature, power playing world.

Finally, things are all in a mess with Joe. I always get this way. I think it's part of my neuroses, but I always doubt my own happiness. I don't understand people who live in euphoric bubbles of romance. I also don't know if I can ever fully accept anyone's faults. Brian used to have no sense of when a joke was too much. It was fine if we were by ourselves (most of the time), but it would sometimes embarrass me like crazy around my friends and parents. Brian and I also started out very similar and grew apart so much over three years. We got new friends, new stories, new interests and all of them were completely incompatible. I worry a lot about whether these changes are inevitable in relationships, whether you can ever be good enough for someone else or whether they can ever really be good enough for you. I think of how I can make myself accept someone else into my life. I think of how much easier it would be to never compromise.

biotechnology.

I asked you to come over,
and within half an hour,
you were at my door.
I had never really known you,
but I realized that the one you were before,
had changed into somebody for whom
I wouldn't mind to put the kettle on.

i repeat and rewind.

i miss london and romanticism, in all of its idealized depictions of places i've only imagined in my childish dreams. and, yes, this picture makes me laugh.

photo from london's platform for art.

two steps forward.

Do you ever feel like your life is beginning so quickly that you want to recede into the profession of academia and never leave school, living your life in a state of perpetual self-development? This would, of course, necessitate a shrinking away from traditional career paths and, instead, a favoring of a path of selfish intellectual pursuits.

I do think that academia, like law, is a very self-serving and arrogant profession. It requires the belief that your ideas are better than other people's. For this reason alone, I have the utmost respect for it. It is difficult to always know you're right.

At the same time, wouldn't it be so easy to live inside your own mind? To contribute to a constant debate in a field that drives you?

I am so scared of not having this in my life. I think most people my age, readying themselves for graduation in a possible recession, are afraid of this. That's why graduate schools like law school and PhD programs become so bloated in hard times.

Ugh. I don't know where I'm going with this. I just know that, for the last 3 months, all I have wanted is to know what I want and all I end up with are paved paths that someone else created. I want my own desires, my own thoughts, my own ideas. I want to feel like my intelligence means something to someone, anyone at all.

maria taylor etc.

I had this song stuck in my head all morning. I think it's symbolic.

I made my place by the door.
I didn't know what I was waiting for.
Felt just like home.
Except no grass, no yard, no pictures.

I could see across to the park.
And there were friends, they were laughing hard.
They looked just like my home.
With no face, no name, no voice I'd know.

I finally made it.
I made a clean getaway.
I finally made it.
I made a clean getaway.

I met someone at the bar.
He had a great smile and a great heart.
He felt just like love.
Except no fear of losing, and it wasn't tough.

I finally made it.
I made a clean getaway.
I finally made it.
I made a clean getaway.
And I miss you,
I miss you every single day.

the accidental interview.

Because I decided to turn down the internship HarperCollins offered me (yeah, I'm a total douchebag), I just experienced my first real internship phone interview. I will not name names. But it got me super excited for all the possibilities. I try to treat interviews like a pleasant conversation, and so that's what I just had.

Now I have another interview Thursday. It's super high profile and for a paid position, so I'm a bit nervous. There's going to be conference calling action for that one.

I think as long as you remain calm, your only goal for a telephone interview is just to sound professional and relaxed and completely sure of what you're saying. It kind of sucks not to have face-to-face interaction, but distance is a huge problem in my situation.

Anyway, I'm sharing this information for others who are going to be looking for important internships this summer. Hopefully they find it helpful.

a quick note.

I did a total revamping of my blog. New links, new photo, updated profile, etc. I think this better represents my interests and areas of concern now. Hopefully it will also help others who are interested in the same things (i.e. my friends who may be bored one day). I have also decided to pick up the pace with blogging for BoredLA.

I went to a really lame party tonight. We left after 5 minutes and ended up talking on the front porch instead.

denoument.

Cross out Das Kapital. I can't get through the painfully obvious symbolism. It hurts me too much when authors use clumsy allusions. This book takes the allusions to Marxism to the next level and uses them in the exact same way Marx did. Also, the fact that the character calls Bloomberg Gloomberg is pathetic. Try a little harder next time, please. Nice try, Simon & Schuster. There had to be something more worthy to publish than this unintelligent novel. It's Marxism for dummies. It's a love story that is neither believable nor interesting. It's something I will never finish.

So there you go. The only reason I recommend picking this book up is for its cover. It's beautiful and creative but also simple. It creates a false sense of hope for what lives inside.

I give up.

what do you know.

It's about 85 degrees outside and all I want is a fresh mango. Is that weird?

2 books for me to mention:

Das Kapital: A Novel of Love + Money Markets by Viken Berberian - It's charming, but the symbolism is heavy handed. I'm still enjoying it, and it's short. So it remains recommended.

Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris - I haven't even started it, but I will let you know. I have read the first sentence and it sounds so so promising. I've heard a lot of hype around this book, and I plan to either add to it or dispel it.

And my personal moment of perfection for the week:
A text message conversation the day my article was printed:
Me: "Can you get a newspaper for me? I need it for clips. Thankkks muah."
Joe: "I already got one."

toaster ovens and coffee makers.

Quick Life Update:

• Interview with a great small publishing house tomorrow
• Lots of thesis thinking to do
• Amazing amounts of reading to do
• Veganism
  

lists.

bliss and happiness and success and excitement and anxiousness and freedom and healthy and friendly and outgoing and easy and busy busy busy.

These are all the things I feel right now.

Finished Savage Detectives. It was wonderful. I wrote some cheesy line on my scholarship application that said something like "I want my life to be a continual education, a continual growth, and a continual sharing of knowledge" and I feel like all of that is just beginning.

That's me. All those things and cheesy, too.

greater than, not equal to.

That morning when we fought, when I threw your bag of things off the front porch and onto the grass outside, when I was shaking violently, that was the morning when your friendship bracelet broke. I should have listened to the symbols. I should have waited. We shouldn't have wasted our time.

Three nights later, I made you dinner. The carrots were undercooked and I couldn't bring myself to eat the chicken. I should have thrown it all away, saved myself some energy.

Should Should Should. I hate that verb. Because by the time you know that you are convincing yourself of reality and not living it, the verb is already should. And should never changes a thing. It just breeds anger and regret. I don't have room for that anymore. No matter what kind of revenge or payback you want to exact, it will never be good enough. Because I don't live in that world any longer.

gone into blue.

I cut Joe's hair all off tonight and he asked me if I could do everything.

here's to ireland.

Weak economy this. Weak economy that. I am so glad that I will be graduating into an America with a weak economy. It means my bachelor's degree will really take me places, you know?

I've been thinking about my passions lately. And I think what I want most out of life is to live what Robert Bolano makes fun of in The Savage Detectives. I want a small apartment and tea in the morning and afternoon and long discussions on love and literature. It's all cliche and makes me believe that my life is a narrative defined by a few select novels and television shows and films. So I come full circle. I don't want it anymore because I know it's what I'm supposed to want.

Also, my professor cited an interesting study today. I hate that class, but it's still interesting. Couples rate their satisfaction with life higher after having children. But they rate their happiness higher before. What is the difference between satisfaction and happiness? Is there any? How can they be so separated from each other? I can definitely see why. It's hard to be satisfied with your life when you constantly have family members, friends, and the media telling you you're living it wrong. But once you've satisfied others' expectations, where do you go? Where do you fit into your own life plans? Or are you just living to tell people that you're satisfied? You're married. You have two kids. You have a new kitten and you only eat organic and ride your bike to work. Your life must mean something.