as the kiwis do.

Time has slipped away from me. I am in Blenheim and it's hard to distinguish between Monday, Tuesday, and all those other days of the week.

In Auckland, Marie and I would go out until 4 am. We had BBQs with Kiwis, ate hokey pokey by the beach, played mini golf with two Kiwis and a German, and I personally spent a lot of time hungover. To be constructive, we also hiked a volcano and went to some beautiful North Island beaches. We slept in an attic one night and I felt homesick sometimes, but it was all right.

In Christchurch, we walked around and shopped at handmade craft stores. We went out for Halloween with a Swedish guy and an Australian. We took tequila shots and sang karaoke at an underground bar filled with New Zealand-transplanted Asians. We danced on stage at a nightclub and laughed before taking jager bombs. We walked home in the chilled air and we ate KFC at 3 am. We made the best and smelled flowers and all that shit.

The train to Picton was breathtaking. The morning clouds cleared away, revealing groups of sheep and cows huddling and grazing together. The ocean came out of nowhere.

We hitch hiked to a small home in Rai Valley, where we spent 2 days walking country roads, talking all night over tea, eating homecooked meatballs and potatoes and eggs and ham, and playing badminton with a bunch of locals.

Now we are working on vineyards in Blenheim. The fog clears in the morning across endless rows of grapes. We live in a hostel with a bunch of Germans and a few other Europeans. I do not judge the passing of time. I think about love and how blurry its definition can become and how clear it can seem at times. I think of a dark bedroom in Culver City that feels like it never existed. I smile when I think of breakfast burritos and the beach and falling asleep in Agoura Hills. I usually imagine this as I fall asleep at night and I wake up feeling strangely at home, but strangely dislocated. I feel excited for the past and for the future, but I live in the present. This is because I have a hard time connecting my past to my days here and I have a hard time envisioning where the future will take me.

As the days fall away, I realize I am happiest with a cup of tea and a piece of toast, swapping stories and slang from countries far away.

uhhh...

Leaving for New Zealand in, oh, two and a half hours. How the hell did this happen? Not that I'm complaining.

the sun rising.

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late school boys and sour prenticesprentices apprentices,

Go tell court huntsmen that the king will ride,the king will ride James I, the king of England at the time of Donne’s writing, had a known passion for riding horses and hunting.

Call country ants to harvest offices,

Love, all alike, no season knows nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

- John Donne

in my ears and in my eyes.

I knew it was going to be hard to say goodbye to him, but how was I to know that finding out exactly how hard it would be would be harder than the impending doom brought on by imagining it?

In the park, I said I would miss him. It was perfect clarity bursting forth into the foggy afternoon.

cheezy blasters.

30 Rock completes my life. So what will I do when I get to New Zealand when I have no Liz Lemon to relate to?

seeing the waves.

If I could stop being sad for a while, well maybe then I'd be happy.

And if I were happy, maybe I'd walk out of your life with a swift goodbye, never to return again.

a color of the sky.

...Last night I dreamed of X again.
She's like a stain on my subconscious sheets.
Years ago she penetrated me
but though I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed,
I never got her out,
but now I'm glad.

What I thought was an end turned out to be a middle.
What I thought was a brick wall turned out to be a tunnel.
What I thought was an injustice
turned out to be a color of the sky...

so Nature's wastefulness seems quietly obscene.
It's been doing that all week:
making beauty,
and throwing it away,
and making more.

by Tony Hoagland

you lied and now i can't stop thinking.

Birthdays come and go. They pile up and you forget them. Sometimes you sleep right through them. They arrive and disappear, and each year, it feels the same. I remember thinking not even six months ago that I would never worry about getting old. But as I watch television and read books, I'm constantly reminded of time passing and the fact that I've accomplished so little that I've set out to accomplish. I hate birthdays because they remind you of that. When I get to the birthday where I can say I've finished grad school, live in a place I love, have a job that challenges me/own my own business, and am surrounded by people I love, maybe then it will be a cause for celebration. This year, it was a farewell birthday.

It's been a really tough year for me: I let go of a damaging, cyclical relationship that was going nowhere; I graduated college into the worst job market in decades; I had to let go of my independence and move home for a while; I said goodbye to many of my friends who graduated.

But it's also been a wonderful year for me: I took action and am going to New Zealand, I fell in love with myself and met someone new, I let go of resentments from past relationships, I met new friends, I got an internship at a pub house I love, I went out a lot and finally discovered Los Angeles on my own terms, I resolved disputes with my friends, I wrote a thesis, I presented a thesis, and so on.

Looking at the list, I see the good outweighs the bad. I know this is only because I let go of past hurts. I know that this is something I must do in the future. I refuse to sleep through my next birthday. Instead, I hope to celebrate the small triumphs of my year and hopefully some larger ones too. And I hope I can get over the fact that he hurt me and move on with my life so I can restore my faith in relationships once again. It always breaks down and builds back up again, and I've done it over and over. That's how I know it will be okay.

almost to my valediction.

I seem to have acquired a terrible case of writer's block in the last few weeks. Someone once told me that in order to get over this sort of affliction, you just have to work right on through it. I worked through it with a note; I worked through it with words on top of words.

I left a note on your pillow for the very last time. Writing it, tears fill my eyes. I imagine your eyes skimming my words, dry and dark, deep and understanding. Understanding, but something tells me they do not empathize, they do not get at the core of how I am feeling. I think I am alone in that way. I wonder at your strength as the tears dry where they were never truly started.

The sky has turned a dark gray. And as it gets darker, I imagine the morning sky embracing blackness and turning itself around into night. In the nighttime, I imagine your arms cradling me, putting me to sleep. I try to remember how I fell into bed the night before, if you held me at all. Nothing comes back but blackness. In the morning, you tried to tuck in all the covers around me, but I whimpered and the ceiling spun again. I closed my eyes and tried to take it back, my last night in your bedroom. Instead, you closed your door and said "sleep." I slept. For what felt like days, I tossed and turned on your mattress, battling back against a throbbing headache caused by the emptiness of your indented pillowcase. If there was anything conscious in my sadness of sleep, it was my awareness of the nothing you leave when you are gone.

I finally wake up enough to take a shower. I speak to your roommate for what is probably the last time, take a shower in your bathroom, leave hair in your drain, brush my teeth. I take a pen off of your desk (which used to be mine, and I miss terribly the way it used to sit in my luminous room beside the bed we first slept in and the nightstand where I kept my journal) and rip a piece of paper from your notebook.

I begin to write. At first it is slow. I write your name. I see myself here again in the month of June, with the heat already coming in through your open window at 9 AM. I see myself here in May, our bodies wet from the hot tub, my eyes wet with tears I could no longer hold back in the darkness. I see myself here in May, where we first began, wishing it were April again, so I could meet you all over again and we could go back to my apartment and drink wine while tracing our fingers along a map of the United States of America (several days later, I was re-tracing your steps to California, going back to Chicago, where you started). I see myself on your bed that morning in October. It is my birthday. My head is spinning and my hair is wet. My eyes haven't started filling with tears yet. I see you left me a bottle of water, and I put the pen to the paper and breathe.

It is hard to know where to begin, so I tell you I will miss you. I don't tell you that I already do. I don't tell you I can feel that you've already left in so many ways. I begin with memories of you and I, and I find that I can't stop writing. Your apartment is full of memories: early mornings, late mornings, salmon, waffles, breakfast burritos, late nights, early nights, wine, watching television, margaritas, swimming, surfing, kissing, cuddling, smoking, so much laughter, ice cream, running errands, eating dinner, slipping out of my jeans and into your bed that starts out so cold until you follow me and I feel your breath against my forehead and you kiss me and it leaves a warm, damp mark. I keep writing, and I can't stop, and, by the end, I am crying until I see your dry eyes in my head, and I get angry.

I feel like time has gotten away from us both. Somehow one night turned into seven months. We barely spoke of the future, and we never spoke of the past. Seven months, and I still know so little. I only know that you are stronger than I am. I only know that when you picked up that note, you didn't cry like I did when I wrote it. I wish my words had the power to translate all of the ways you meant something to me, but something tells me they don't. That is the curse of words: I can cry and write them, and you can smile and never understand a thing I say.

making sense of moving abroad.

My favorite places in the world I've been are:

Galway, Ireland
Killarney, Ireland
Youghall, Ireland
Half Moon Bay, California
Venice Beach, California
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico (down on the Marina or off on a deserted island)
Parque Guell, Barcelona, Spain
Chicago, Illinois
Savannah, Georgia
Eze Village, Southern France
Smokey Mountains, Tennessee
Sunderland, Northern England

Here's the theme: water. There's a large body of water in each of these places, and that's why I know New Zealand was a good pick. No place in New Zealand is further than seventy-five miles from the ocean. Italy may be next. Mostly because it makes sense geographically.

say what now?

One week until my birthday, three weeks until New Zealand. My internship ended yesterday, and I don't remember how to have free time.

My final days in America look like this:
This weekend: Santa Cruz
Next week: packing, tying up loose ends
Next weekend: my birthday, friends from LA visiting
Two weeks from now: Go to LA, finish getting ready
Two weekends from now: Treasure Island Music Festival
Three weeks from now: New Zealand

three four two one.

Had a wonderful weekend in Napa with Alex and his sister and their friends.

In other news, in France, a politician from the president's party is gunning for a warning label placed on all retouched photographs in the media. It would read: "Retouched photograph aimed at changing a person's physical appearance." Interesting. I know that reading that in magazines as a pre-teen would have had a dramatic effect on me, and I am hoping something like this catches on in America in the future. Certainly would save a lot of people from misinterpreting their own imperfections.

marcella

Marcella was born at 4:49am on September 24. Out of the many babies I've seen born (just kidding), she's definitely the cutest.

and then and then and then.

I keep disappearing lately. It's mostly because I do not allow myself to write in my blog at work and then I refuse to use the computer after a long day of screen-staring at the office.

Some sort of news:

• My best friend went into labor yesterday at 11:30AM. She's still in the early stages and it's been more than 26 hours. I can't even imagine what that must feel like-- an unstoppable approaching hurricane and a mixture of elation and exhaustion and pain and bliss. I haven't been able to sleep well for worrying, and I feel like I can't call her because this is such a sacred time in her life. I'm not sure if I've ever felt so helpless.
  
• I'm going to be in the city all weekend. Wine tasting on Saturday in Napa and the rest will just be chilling out and eating a lot of good food.
• New Zealand wtf
  

bad television and being a woman.

I absolutely love feminism and the non-radical notion that we should secure equality for all genders at all times in all situations. I love what it has done for generations of women before me, my own generation, and what it will most certainly do for the generation to follow.

But I'm also pissed at you, feminism, because you've ruined Glee for me. I can't watch it without thinking of how simple and one-dimensional the female characters are. I can't enjoy MTV even a little bit. I can't listen to rap music without making snide comments. I hate the portrayal of the timid, disempowered female character in Eastbound and Down.

I'm not sure what the solution is here. I have been using irony for a long while. But maybe I just genuinely like the song "Best I Ever Had." What am I supposed to do about that?

I think third-wave feminists are facing a particularly complicated struggle, and they don't get nearly enough credit for all of the intellectual work involved in being a feminist today. While first- and second-wave feminists had clear goals, ours are opaque. Sure, there is the obvious abortion rights debate and the issue of equal pay, but we've realized that all of this is born out of how we are portrayed in the media, so our goals are now more like "change the way women are represented in television, movies, music, in casual conversation, in drunken conversation, over the phone, on blogs, in advertisements, on youtube videos..." Then comes the question of who is doing the looking at these women? If it's one person, it could be empowering. If it's another, it could be objectification. Take the porn debate, for instance. Porn stars and other sex-positive feminists argue that the women are the "queens" of this domain. They make the most money, achieve the most fame, and are overall more successful than men. At the same time, though, they are profiting off of selling their bodies to the male gaze. They're not enjoying that sex-- it isn't even realistic and they all effing know it.

My own awakening is only just beginning. Maybe I'm late, but I don't really think I'm too far behind. These complexities have become so much more real to me outside of the idyllic university setting. Now I am awakening to my own role as a woman in this society. It's messy and stressful and, gosh darnit, I just want to sit down, relax, and watch Glee.


*That picture is just funny.

volunteer me.

Community service is clearly selfish because I had the most amazing night sitting next to two chatty 87-year-old women and the sweetest woman and joking around with people who were three times my age.

Barack Obama promotes volunteer work, and I'm all about it. Everyone should take a look at their own community and see all the ways they can give back. Or I also suggest www.idealist.org. Find a way to help in your area.

stay with me.

I forgot I had a blog. I apologize.

After writing an album review, 4 news pieces, biking 9 miles, running 3, and biking another 3, I feel like I'm done for the day. Instead, I have to go to a 3-hour training for this volunteer thing I'm doing. There's something wrong with me.

Also, I'm very frightened what will become of me after I get back from New Zealand, but how the hell am I going to worry about this now?

Vapid, shallow, boring. I apologize again.

at least there is this.

The day is filling up with music writing, faking it (and succeeding) through my freelance career, accompanying my boys to fast food, finding a job in new zealand (no success here yet), putting together pictures for sammy, and trying in vain to find my passport.

Things are picking up and keeping a steady pace, which I appreciate. I wake up every morning in a panic as to how I will ever pay my credit card bill if I never actually work.

I think I could probably write haikus about the steady passing of nothing through the impenetrable wall of time.

the movement of the moon.

When fog envelopes the City and the stench of the cows settles into all of the corners of Central California, my city remains warm and sunny. A few clouds pass overhead. I crane my neck upwards and count: 1, 2, 3... 4. Sometimes I strain to see shapes in the sparse summer clouds, but right now, they are just there to be there.

Those four clouds, their simple presence, swallows up the postcard you sent, the 160-character text messages that pass through the air inexplicably, the phone conversations that last anywhere from one minute to four short hours. The clouds are here. They are now.

There is poetry in the presence of things.

This is an antiquated notion.

Because more than my own propensity toward romantic idealizations, I know there is also poetry in the present absences that technology creates. Your words float on waves from behind your chocolate eyes, down to your thumbs, and to me so far away. When I think of your words this way, I can also imagine how fitting they are. Like the way you looked when you caught that wave in Malibu, the way your body shined with the sun and the water, the way the word "amazing" surged through my body just as you let your body drop. My stomach turned upside down with the distillation of you. And then you floated on waves as you paddled toward me through the water, me counting down the seconds, you reaching for my hand as we sat in the middle of the ocean. As we held hands, the words we spoke felt endless.

In the ocean, we were insignificant. Your 160 characters are insignificant too, even when I try to find beauty in their presence. They're always smashed up against each other, always aching from abbreviation. I read them in one second and they disappear, swallowed whole. Compared with our long talks, they seem to enter an abyss that I can never fill with anything worthwhile. I erase them. But I find that you always replenish them with new words. So, no matter what I do, our words keep floating back and forth, across phone lines, across mailboxes, in letters left on your pillow, in all the short text messages.

Yes, I still have five weeks to pretend that all the words are greater than the ever-presence of the present. You cannot live your life in between ephemeral words. You can only live your life for that antiquated beauty of what is here for you now. This is the painful blessing of realization you have brought me.

in the subway.

I hate that I have nothing important to say, no important developments. I am tired of being tired.

storks and shit.

When planning for my best friend's baby shower makes me want to have a kid just so I can buy him or her a onesie and decorate it, I know I have a problem on my hands. Sam says my biological clock just started working. I say I like the idea of being endlessly occupied. There are definitely better outlets for that than warping a child's life (which I would undeniably do at the stage of life I am in right now).

Other than that, the shower has made me realize I am an obsessive planner, but also that I thrive in fast-paced, stressful situations. What this means for my future, I have yet to learn.

All of this makes me realize I need to get my butt over to New Zealand and start living the life I had meant to be living. October 19th can't come soon enough.

colors passing through us.

Purple as tulips in May, mauve

into lush velvet, purple

as the stain blackberries leave

on the lips, on the hands,

the purple of ripe grapes

sunlit and warm as flesh.

Every day I will give you a color,

like a new flower in a bud vase

on your desk. Every day

I will paint you, as women

color each other with henna

on hands and on feet.

Red as henna, as cinnamon,

as coals after the fire is banked,

the cardinal in the feeder,

the roses tumbling on the arbor

their weight bending the wood

the red of the syrup I make from petals.

Orange as the perfumed fruit

hanging their globes on the glossy tree,

orange as pumpkins in the field,

orange as butterflyweed and the monarchs

who come to eat it, orange as my

cat running lithe through the high grass.

Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,

yellow as a hill of daffodils,

yellow as dandelions by the highway,

yellow as butter and egg yolks,

yellow as a school bus stopping you,

yellow as a slicker in a downpour.

Here is my bouquet, here is a sing

song of all the things you make

me think of, here is oblique

praise for the height and depth

of you and the width too.

Here is my box of new crayons at your feet.

Green as mint jelly, green

as a frog on a lily pad twanging,

the green of cos lettuce upright

about to bolt into opulent towers,

green as Grand Chartreuse in a clear

glass, green as wine bottles.

Blue as cornflowers, delphiniums,

bachelors’ buttons. Blue as Roquefort,

blue as Saga. Blue as still water.

Blue as the eyes of a Siamese cat.

Blue as shadows on new snow, as a spring

azure sipping from a puddle on the blacktop.

Cobalt as the midnight sky

when day has gone without a trace

and we lie in each other’s arms

eyes shut and fingers open

and all the colors of the world

pass through our bodies like strings of fire.

-Marge Piercy

pink and blue.

A day at the shopping mall looking for baby shower decorations reminds me that I do, in fact, hate shopping malls. Just in case I had forgotten somehow.

empty glasses of water.

I just spent the last five hours at a party for my best friend, Sam. Sitting there in the sunlight, I acknowledge we are growing older. But we are still so much the same. Too much the same. We're dating different people and our hair is combed differently, but we're all moving in circles. I don't know what it is about this place, but I feel two things in realizing the static lives of its inhabitants. One, I feel upset that I am stuck in the middle and that nothing has changed much for me either. And then, two, I feel incredibly hopeful and happy that I am able to see outside of this world and enter into a new one in about two short months.

That is all I have to offer for now.

i love my belly, and i think yours is beautiful too.

Inside the last issue of Glamour (page 194 to be exact), they nonchalantly included this image:

There isn't too much I want to say about this image that hasn't been said here, but I really think this shows that American media is headed in a more positive direction in terms of the representation of the female body to female readers (this is merely one small step, of course, but it's something). Basically, it's a way of saying "Fuck you for telling me I'm not perfect. Go blow yourself." And I really admire that bluntness.

thank you for convincing me.

The days and activities of this weekend in Los Angeles/San Diego have blended into a mess of colors. Blue occupies most of the scenes. The sky turning from blue to gray along the hiking trail. The ocean and the waves as I tried to surf for the very first time or as I got yet another sunburn. The lights flickering over the audience at the Flaming Lips show.

Even through the darkness, I could see the blue in the comforter, the pink in the pillows, the dark of your arms against the lightness of my own.

And then our faces go from smiles to serious and we let go again and I'm okay this time and along the edge of the sidewalk, all I am is thankful that you are alive.

As I think of my time away, the pavement rushes past me in long stretches of infinite gray, yellow lines blurring into each other, into the ground, into the dirt. I try to recall each individual day, but I only see colors. When I sleep tonight and the world goes all black for a few hours, I'm sure you'll come back to me more vividly and, if I'm lucky, I'll feel your arms instead of merely associating them with caramel and chocolate wafers. Yes, that would be nice. Though I like the simple delicacy of the latter as well.

my dream was of you.

Beyond the ridge to the left, you asked me what I want
Between the trees and cicadas singing around the pond
"I spent an hour with you, should I want anything else?"

One grinning wink like the neon on a liquor store
We were sixteen, maybe less, maybe a little more
I walked home smiling, I finally had a story to tell

And though an autumn time lullaby
Sang our newborn love to sleep
My brother told me he saw you there
In the woods one Christmas Eve, waiting

I met my wife at a party, when I drank too much
My son is married and tells me we don't talk enough
Call it predictable, yesterday my dream was of you

Beyond the ridge to the west, the sun had left the sky
Between the trees and the pond, you put your hand in mine
Said, "Time has bridled us both, but I remember you too"

And though an autumn time lullaby
Sang our newborn love to sleep
I dreamt I traveled and found you there
In the woods one Christmas Eve, waiting

-Iron & Wine, "Sixteen, Maybe Less"

giving away my small possessions.

In Berkeley, people like to leave things on the street for their neighbors to pick up. They put out a jacket or a blanket or an old cookbook and they prop a neat "FREE" sign on top of it. When I walk to work in the morning, I see these kinds of mini monuments in front of at least one house per block. By the time I walk back at 5:30, all of the objects are gone. Sometimes a sign remains, but usually it is in a recycling bin near the driveway. There is something beautiful in this reciprocity between strangers. It amazes me every day to see all of the things that are left out on the street. To me, it is a gesture of openness and a testament to how much emotional and physical garbage you can rid yourself of if you only share your love, your memories, and all the rest of your broken and not-so-broken crap with others. In that way, things are circular. They may not make sense in your lifetime, but certainly someone else can make sense of them.

I bought a ticket to New Zealand last night. I bought a ticket out of here. It is time for me to clean up some of my messes and make clean, sharp breaks with my past. Pieces of it come back to haunt me in dreams on Saturday mornings and in old photographs left in their dusty frames on my desk. These things have remained 4 years too many. I have thought of putting my personal objects on the street too (or at least some sort of a metaphorical street). I think sometimes that's all you can really do to rid yourself of all the baggage you carry. I'm ready to be weightless, floating in still water, or maybe even carried through the ocean with dolphins swimming alongside me. If I believed prayer had ever made a difference in my life, I'd say a prayer for my future home.

on an island in the middle of the sea.

In an effort to prepare for my one-way departure to New Zealand, I checked out three pieces of travel literature from the library today. As I read them, the excitement pumps through my veins and my hands start to shake a little against the pages. I am leaving everything for nothing, and nothing is the thing from which you build something again, until that something finally becomes an everything. Then you leave all of that behind and start from scratch - an empty piece of paper, a blinking cursor, a post-it note to-do list of nothing to do at all.

These narratives are both liberating and frightening to me, and I try to breathe through them the same way you breathe through the pain of ripping off a sticky bandage on your arm. My home has become redundant to me. I feel like I'm living the best years of my life over in rewind and everything is out of order and with each passing second I only get more and more naive, more scared, more little (this is especially angering to me since I have worked years to get to my diminutive height of 5'3"). So I'm siding with the books on this one, and I hope they inform me and give me strength and maybe even offer me new ways of writing my own narrative as Marie and I set off to discover the fiordland.

never up for long.

At the peak's precipice, there is a sharp drop that falls off into a dry valley. You take one step and you've fallen in.

scenic world.

This song made me feel better:

The lights go on
The lights go off
When things don't feel right
I lie down like a tired dog
Licking his wounds in the shade

When I feel alive
I try to imagine a careless life
A scenic world where the sunsets are all
Breathtaking

paint the black hole blacker.

Los Angeles was surreal this weekend. The congested freeways, the sunshine heating up the sidewalks, the busy cafes and restaurants all felt like part of a movie set constructed over a place where my life used to happen. It is strange returning to a place you once called home only to find that you no longer belong there. I was merely a visitor this weekend. And despite the negative connotations of being a tourist and an outsider, I have never had a more positive relationship with that city than I do right now.

I found it beautiful the way the heat dried out my hair minutes after stepping out of the shower or a swimming pool (I was in three different swimming pools this weekend). I found it comforting that the heat turned sticky at night. The food tasted better. The streets seemed cleaner.

So three margaritas, one lemonade, one frappuccino, one gin and tonic, one ice blended from Seattle's Best, two Tecate's, and 12-15 glasses of water later, I have imbued my old home with a nostalgia I never really believed possible.

Perhaps all you have to do to appreciate something deeply is to make it disappear from your life for random intervals of time. I have learned that lesson many times in the last four years, but I never realized I was learning it until right now.

in a glass house.

In many ways, this summer takes me straight back to a simpler time. Though I constantly wonder where my next paycheck will come from, I have no real concerns here. It feels like a continuation of my college life - even my high school life - in that deep inside myself somewhere, I feel like I will return to the safety of student loans or the safety of living at home while studying calculus and biotechnology (that was me in high school, yeah). It is hard to wake up to the fact that this is not the case. For instance, today I spent the morning running at my high school track and then going to beach. My friends and I buried each other in the sand and screamed when the icy waves grabbed at any skin above our ankles. My guy friends played frisbee, and I fell asleep with the sun hanging directly above my head.

The other night in the Mission, Saleh and I chain smoked and got into a heated conversation with two people sitting beside us on the long picnic tables outside the bar. The guy was 32 years old, and he was still dating wildly impractical people. The girl said she was 28 years old, and she complained that she was too old, that life was passing her by. It made me so upset. First, I told her that was bullshit. Besides the fact that she actually looked 23, women without children shouldn't feel their lives are over by the time they've hit 30. Of course, she simply looked at me with her eyes squinted, angry, when I told her I was 21. Of course, my protests have no effect on her; I have yet to reach an age where I can honestly say my life is not where I want it to be headed.

But I could see a little bit of myself in her. I could feel her fear, her disappointment in herself. So while my summer of repeat childhood is nice, I know this cannot last. I refuse to sit at a bar when I am 28, complaining that I am old. I don't plan on having everything figured out by then, but I do at least plan on being satisfied with my own life choices. So I'm giving myself a deadline of mid-October. If I am not happy here, I am going on a working holiday. And that is that. Because part of growing up is realizing that your endless list of choices are merely arbitrary decisions that lead you down new paths and you lose yourself and then you begin all over again. If you ever feel old, you start over new and stop the self-loathing.

pictures of yore.

Smoke rings linger in the front seat. You exhale and the circles come spiraling out of your mouth and make pillows in the air by the rearview mirror. I suddenly remember when your memory used to mean something. The ashes on the tip of the cigarette crumble and disappear. I remember how we shared a pillow and the cold tips of our noses touched, the moon shining, my head spinning. The tip burns red for a moment as you take a breath and more ashes form as you inhale lightly. Now it only seems funny that we ran down the streets of Berkeley, you holding my arms in a dark alley, my nose running, your friends growing impatient. I laugh at my naive longing now because I can see outside of myself. At the time, my whole world could be summed up in one memory.

It's strange to me how I look at past versions of myself and want to run to her rescue, protect her from what she will inevitably face. I wonder if many other women do the same. And if my life is simply meant to be a progression, then why can't I understand who I have been and who I have become? The girl who longed for your fingertips on the edges of my lips no longer lives in me. Now, I couldn't care less about whether or not you stick around. Come and go as you please; I plan on doing the same. That is my philosophy. And in this new philosophy, I have no room for romantic idealisms because the reality of my own mercurial mind has become more real than anything else these days.

The smoke rings clear, and I am in my bedroom, falling asleep, thougths all disappearing, and the only face that ever enters my mind is my own.

sunlight piercing through black curtains.

If it comes to a point where you can't stand your own words, where love poetry transforms into farce, where you hate the way you rationalize your decisions... well, then, I think it's time you swallowed all your dumb little romantic notions and bought that plane ticket.

She wishes it were so easy, the way those words flow from his mouth, the way his mind must work in order to shut her out. She wishes she could take it back, sharing so much of herself. But then she realizes he knows nothing of her past. He doesn't even know the names of the people who have made her into who she is. He doesn't know the quantities, only vague qualities that she hints at behind juice glasses filled with vodka and orange.

His intransigence, his pride, who knows what explains any of it. But he knows it isn't worth waiting around for. She knows it isn't worth regretting her youth.

The back and forth goes forth and back until the phone calls stop coming and the memories fade and she's sitting on the grass in front of her high school, thinking of the regrets she had back then and how the regrets she has now only keep piling, keep building, keep chipping away at her strength. She is afraid they will reveal the girl behind her hard exterior. She is afraid of sharing the past with anyone, afraid of moving forward without pieces of her past, afraid to engage in the present for fear of regretting the past in her future.

writer's block.

I am lost and the world is huge and I don't know what else to say.

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

el nacimiento.

What if I turn into one of those people who make elaborate plans and never follow through with them? What if all the dreaming never takes shape in reality?

it feels the way you told me it would always feel.

Today, while waiting for my next class to start, I decided to walk to one of my favorite nooks of campus (it's a secret location, I don't want anyone else to know about it). My stomach growled, so I began to calculate whether I could afford buying coffee to help me through the next five hours of class I had left (earlier this morning, I checked my bank account, and it kind of freaked me out). Then my thoughts shifted to how I would ever earn money again. Then I thought of how far away Europe is. Then I thought of the GREs. Of PhDs. Of languages I want to learn. Of places I'd like to travel. Of Chicago. Of Portland. Of New York. Of Nashville. Of balancing all of this. Of other people I know who have jobs. Of living in Berkeley. Of affording to live in Berkeley. Of re-registering my car. Of getting out of shape. Of a certain boy. Of men. Of the next generation of powerful women. Of the brevity of life, how all of these things will never get done.

And I began to hyperventilate. I lost my appetite and had to lie down because my vision went blurry.

Then I systematically put barriers around myself for the next year. I put them around San Francisco, Berkeley, and Los Angeles. I told myself to stay within the confines of these 370 miles just for the time being.

Then I tore them all down when I found out I have an offer to teach English in China.

So I'm back where I started, only this time with my sight set much farther in the distance.

beach boardwalk.

I spent the weekend in Santa Cruz with Amber. It was quite the Memorial Day weekend. We arrived at 11PM Friday and I never stopped moving (except to sit sedentary in the car for 8 hours today) until just now.

The sky was gray pretty much the entire time we were there, but we walked to the beach anyway. I met some amazing people and spent time with some of my favorite people in the entire world. Santa Cruz and Los Angeles are like sisters who don't get along. They have many similar features (bars, delis, beaches, house parties, highways), but they play them out differently. So differently that they cannot relate to one another and they've slowly lost contact over the years.

My best friend is having a baby. She is 21 years old, and we have been friends since the second grade. Even though we've lived apart for 4 years, I talk to her at least once a week (usually more) and feel closer to her than ever. And I feel that, in many ways, she is still a child herself. Hell, we're all still little helpless kids. But regardless of what her actual age may be, or what her financial situation is, or her status with her boyfriend, she has decided to become an adult. I will stand tall beside her and love that child to death, just as much as I love her. I worry, of course, that this will change our friendship. It will, inevitably. It makes me terribly sad and terribly sick inside. But I know that she is doing what is right for her. One day I'll look back at this strange time in our lives and think how odd it is that things could have ever turned out differently. C'est la vie.

autobiography.

I kept the cup once full of lemonade I had held so tightly as the freeways passed us in the cold of dawn. I kept the empty container of sugar you handed me as we pulled out of the driveway, the sugar I placed on your lips in the middle of the night and in the morning as you left for the ocean. I kept the sheets in a pile on the floor. I kept the soap and the brownies and the ice in the freezer. I kept all the pieces I could hold onto. And I know that one day those pieces will mean more to me than any reality ever did. It's because when I think of you, I think of impossibilities. Tangible objects prove to me that you exist as a small piece of my world. They will prove that you were a part of my existence long after the freeways stretch farther than we are willing to drive.

taking a deep breath.

I had honestly forgotten what I looked like without glasses. Weird. They're an extension of my being.

I am exhausted, and even though I kind of just want to watch Freaks and Geeks, I'm going to go out with my friend Zach.

Life moves far too quickly. I only have 4 weeks left here, and I cannot admit that to myself. Or anyone else for that matter.

I would apologize for the general lack of quality in my entries lately, but I think I'm the only one who cares really. Well, I plan on changing that soon. It's a promise.

warning sign.

I have found myself writing during, between, before, and after all of my classes, on the bus, on the grass, while sitting on benches, in the middle of the student union, in bed. I apologize that I have begun to find catharsis elsewhere. In the mean time, I have several boring updates followed by several vague assertions about the roots and directions of my own inviolable happiness.

I have a job interview next week with a small feminist press.
Tuesday was Alex's birthday, and we did lots of cool LA things: Cinefamily, Kogi at the Alibi Room, Yogurtland, other things *cough*.
In the last 3 days, I have given myself 11 hours of sleep and have drunk 6 cups of coffee. Today, it began to catch up with me, and I'm back to hating the world like usual. Phew.
Nina's party turned into a kickback because Facebook Events is evil. I had a lot of fun and ended up falling asleep on the stairs after going on a McDonald's run.
School is a bitch, and I've already put it in its place.
I have two recommendation letters for Ph.D. programs, so if I choose that path, I'm on my way.
I'm thinking of living in Berkeley this summer.

When I wake up, I look in the bathroom mirror. I try to wipe away the smudges of mascara from beneath my eyes. There is a mysterious set of scratches on my arm. I run water over my face, try to wake up in pieces. I think of previous versions of myself, how I have washed myself clean of who I was before, of the versions of me I had offered up to other people. I am pretty much sure I like this one best, and so to everyone new, I offer the best I know how to give. Someone else, someone whose name is not worth mentioning, argued with me about this, told me that my growing up would be the most painful thing he would ever have to witness. Why couldn't I just be the way I am now at a time long before? Well, things aren't that simple.

I don't know what I'm saying, only that my anger has turned to acceptance, and acceptance has turned to complete happiness in all of the bad decisions I thought I was making. So he was wrong, I was right, and now we're both happy. Now we both no longer have to deal with each other's neurotic ways. Now I no longer have to look at him and think of all that he will never be. Love never should have turned us into those people and love never will have to be so cruel again.

keeping it plain and simple.

Having a massive party at the apartment tonight. Super excited, super busy.

link me, sister.

My new blog is up over at the Westwind site. It's a travel piece about my experience driving to Wisconsin. It has PICTURES, teehee!

How the Midwest was won.

rien.

Aujourd'hui, j'ai un examen dans ma classe de francais et je suis tres fatiguee, et je ne veux pas le faire, et je ne comprends la langue, et je pense que ma vie est absurde. Et, peut-etre, je veux aller a la campagne avec un bel homme, je sais un homme que je voudrais amener avec moi. shh, c'est secret.

All I really want in life is to sit on the beach, in a park, in the middle of the forest, and read and eat omelettes. Are these things compatible at all? Probably not. Until then, I will settle for sitting in my apartment, studying, imagining all the other places I'd like to go.

This is one of them:

maybe.

I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think too much.

then on friday.

After class (which I need to stop attending hung over), I spent the afternoon in the Botanical Gardens writing, and I think that maybe I have forgotten what it feels like to write things that actually mean something to me. When I wrote the last sentence, I felt clean again. I spent that time writing a treatise on the mutability of all human connection and how clean we all must feel all the time because every interaction that we ever take part in is terribly clean, terribly disconnected, terribly temporary.

And I thought: Isn't it sad that (though you may feel happy now) you may never be able to imagine all of the happiness you have not yet experienced? Isn't it blissful that your next step will only lead you to a life apart from the happiness you know now and into a happiness you never could have defined without leaving your past behind you? Isn't it terrible that everyone you love is replaceable? Isn't is liberating to know that every person you meet, who you spend a night with, who you have a conversation with, has the ability to show you new ways of feeling mundane things?

Isn't it wonderful, depressing, fabulous, futile, freeing, devastating? Doesn't it make you want to give up and settle? Doesn't it make you want to run away and scream at the top of your lungs?

My response to this epiphany is to drink margaritas, stand on the top of a tall building, stretch backwards, and watch the city sparkle upside-down.

you always were a little disappointing.

In response to a theory about my existence that Zach imparted to me over pho tonight, I have decided that I will almost certainly never be happy in any relationship I am ever in. I make no comment about how this relates to my current situation(s)/non-situation(s). But I find this kind of sad. Yet at the same time, it also keeps me searching, keeps me hoping, keeps me thinking of everything I want and do not want.

another straightforward entry.

This weekend has been incredibly entertaining. I did, indeed, get my tattoo done. That is obviously it in the picture below. I went at about 1:30 in the morning and stayed until 3:00. It was so much fun, and it didn't really hurt very much. I guess I have a pretty high threshold for pain though.

Last night, I went to a kind of dinner party at one of Amber's friend's houses. He made us some delicious shrimp scampi and we drank wine and pretended to be civilized. Except not because he just moved into his apartment and didn't have a table, so we ate out of our laps. Not that I mind. With food that good, you don't even need a table.

Then we met up with Tristan at a bar in Santa Monica that had one of the best happy hours I've ever been to. I had a drink called Sois Sage (which means "Be well-behaved!" in French, cute). Then we continued onto a lounge down the street that was brand new. It was a cool scene, but we were definitely some of the younger people in there. That always spells out creepy guys hitting on you.

We took a cab back to Westwood at two. The cab driver was blasting electronica and dancing. Probably one of the most entertaining cab rides I've ever been involved with.

We got back to Amber's and there were five frat guys from UCSD hanging out in her living room. They were pretty lame, so we ordered a pizza and hung out in her room all night. Then I fell asleep on the floor at around 4 and woke up at 8 with a dog jumping on my face. We went out to breakfast at Literati this morning and now I'm doing everything in my power not to do any work. I've got to stop doing that though, so I will do that... now.

erasing the erased.

Never mind. Fuck yes. It's back on. At least SOME of my friends aren't let-downs.

erased.

Scratch the tattoo. My friends in LA are so fucking lame. I am so sick of this shit. It's time this school year ended already.

locked away.

I am getting my tattoo tonight. I am so excited!!!

Also, I just found this in an old drawer as I was looking for my father's southern biscuit recipe. It is strange how I don't miss him anymore. I will never miss him again. I also realized while reading this that love will never feel the same twice. That is not to say it is better or worse, but every time you fall in love, it is different. This is something I have learned in the last two years, and something I continue to learn, and something more important than all of the words he ever said and felt deeply and meant, but that no longer mean anything at all:

"all i could really hear was the last phrase of whatever Jeff Buckley was saying because of the overtones of the reverb and maybe a high echoey guitar note here and there and how every song that you played was just a sorry bassline for the symphony of your breathing, while we were falling asleep even when I knew I'd have to get up and leave at four thirty, or five, or some other ungodly hour and how when we were falling asleep, every chord, every note sung made me feel like I knew you better and like I wanted you to be a part of my life forever and still do."

without context.

filling in the blanks.

I only have seven more weeks left in Los Angeles, so I have decided to make every day count. That means being at my apartment as little as humanly possible, thus the non-attendance to the blog. I apologize for that.

Middle America was astounding. I feel so lucky to have done what I did and have seen what I saw. Runza's and throwing up along I-80 and presenting my thesis and spending the night in Chicago with some awesome people. Even though there were ups and downs, I was always enjoying myself (minus the vomiting part, but I think I kept that to myself pretty well). I learned several important lessons about road trips while out for six days. The first is: fucking relax already. Even if you're uncomfortable, even if you have no interest in the city you have stopped in to get gas, even if you think you don't have enough time to see it all. Just relax and do what you can. I also had epiphanies about other things that I will keep to myself.

Since I have been home, I have gotten much of my work done (there was a lot to do, there continues to be a lot to do), but I have also gone running every morning, renewed my veganism for an indefinite period of time, went out to a crazy weird electro dance club last night, had margaritas with Amber (probably the highlight of the week so far :) ), gone to meetings, spent time with new and old friends, celebrated the holiday on the 20th with a swimming pool and a BBQ and bad television, and have felt extremely contented. Rebecca's been at Nick's practically the whole week, so I don't have to feel guilty stumbling in really late and waking up at 6AM to do my run warm-up in the bedroom.

My mother has asked that I move home so I can take care of the cats over the summer. I suppose if I have no other back up plan (I don't, this whole Ireland thing is at a standstill), I can always be an effing cat sitter. I think my eventual plan is to work in the city for a while and save up money to move into an apartment with some strangers. I have met a few people in the city in the recent past, and I think I might be able to resign myself to that kind of middle-of-the-road plan for a few months. Besides, I sure as hell don't want to be in Los Angeles when it's this hot outside. I feel like I'm melting. I have lily white skin and I'd like to keep it that way, thank you, Los Angeles!

Ugh. I'm in the midst of a bloggy-blog entry. I hate reading these, so I avoid writing them. It's so self-indulgent.

But now I feel indulged, and I can sleep. With this photograph of Texas, I leave.

i realized in oklahoma.

I'm back in L.A. I've never wanted anything less. I will update when I have not been in the car sitting on my ass for 12 hours straight. I will just say that I do not belong here. I'm sorry to everyone I love here, but I do not belong in this city. I'm sorry. Sorry. Sorry.

Also, am tired.

Also, am going on a raw food diet to counteract the pizza mcdonald's burritos bbq food poisoning too much meat from this week.

hopefully i don't leave anything behind. oh wait. too late.

Through California, to Nevada, into Utah, Wyoming, onward to Nebraska and Iowa and Minnesota, and then to Wisconsin. From there, we skip over to Chicago, go to some bars, eat some bomb pizza, hang out with Zach's (and maybe Alex's??) friends, and head back through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and home to Los Angeles once again. Starting... at two in the morning. The plan is pretty much ridiculous. But it is in that ridiculousness that I find myself making much much much more sense.

my recitation.

"If I could only get hold of the-whole-of-you-now,
How could you ever be for me what I myself am?"
-"The Second Trying," Dalia Ravikovitch (trans. from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld)

Perhaps life becomes merely a listing of things
When I enter for the second time,
a box of matches, an empty bottle, an empty room, the sheets, the pillow, the light switch, the thoughts I suppress, those I call forth for you.
This time I am brave.
I do not fear my own contortions.
I do not think of the torn photographs.
I do not wonder.
Perhaps you feel the change in me, in the softening of my bones,
in the thumpthump thump thump of my chest,
the irregular heart beat.
A girl calling out to a man in an open field.
A boy, "you are astounding.
you are assiduous."
he says in the natural rhythm of the language, in the natural rhythm forming from their hushed exhalations. she says tell me how. he never answers. the men never answer. the women wonder how how how and why why am I anything at all? i am nothing at all until the existence of you within me. my thoughts are not my own until you reside alongside them. my breath turns sweet when i share it with your breath.
share me, please share me, please show me what you mean. answer my questions with the parting of your lips.
I end by pleading. I ask for forgiveness in the dark,
where your eyes turn to sometimes-sparkles,
where the smooth surface of the back of your hand
feels like the back of my hand,
where we search our bodies for new ways of searching.
In my sleep,
I stop looking.
I dream of nothing, of the spaces between the burnt brown of static electricity.
I wake up reciting lines of Middle English from memory.
And when it begins again, I forgive you
In another language. I learn that
We are both alone.
That
We are always alone
That
When the tips of your fingers finally melt the white snow enveloping the backs of my legs
We are not one.
For One is an illusion, One disappears
when distance absorbs your bed and your music and the soft echo of our a capella.
It is I alone, it is I
You, well, you are a handsome diversion from the reality of never-ending exile.

days and days.

I have probably gotten a cumulative 18 hours of sleep this week. No life left in me. Am also terribly sick and it won't go away. I got a whopping 2 hours of sleep last night, proceeded to drink a big effing cup of coffee at 9, went to class for 2 hours, presented my thesis process in one of my former professor's seminars, took my car into the shop, and tried to get work done before falling asleep at 5.

On Monday, I am leaving for Wisconsin to present my thesis and eat pizza in Chicago. And today may be Friday, but I feel a little dead and I just want to be back to myself again. I hate hate hate that things start to work out for me just as I am about to get the hell out of this place. It makes me feel defeated and like fate and romance and any kind of direction can never exist in my life. Even if they exist for short periods, they are mere stops on the way to further confusion. Oh well.

one by one.

Perhaps in either place, the grass will feel the same. Perhaps the sun shines through the clouds the same, the heat of little sun-drenched slivers of light falling to my feet through the filter of a tree's branches. In the night, the stars will blur together the same, reminding me of home (or at least a place I once considered a home). As I tilt my head upwards, look into the orange glow of a street lamp, my eyelashes capture drops of water. I think of the singularity of places. But I can't help but feel similarities exist; similarities must exist. I am not sure I will ever be able to quantify the differences, the vast gaps in meaning and definition between one location and another. What good would it do? All I am sure of is that I can find home under drops of water, under street lamps, pressed against my kitchen cabinet, inhaling the warm and salty scent of the skin across your neck. Whether I find something in one place or another is of no consequence. I suppose grass and sunlight and the brightness of the moon mean nothing. I only know I like the weight of you.

the sparkles in the concrete.

I have to leave for class in 10 minutes, but I am just writing to ask the question: what have I done to deserve something this good? Is it because I send thank you letters and try to express my gratitude for simple things, because I don't cut in line, because I often am friendly to salespeople? If someone could answer that for me, it would be nice. But mostly I am just thankful for the moment, so I won't question too much.

I will write more later. French is a waitin'.

incoherent.

It is 8 o clock on Saturday morning, but I can't sleep anymore. I feel like I went to Vegas and won at four hands of blackjack in a row. That is one of the more simplistic descriptions I have offered recently for my inner state of affairs. But that is just to say that I have settled into a more secure state of affairs over the last few weeks. I feel my absolute happiness needs no qualification at the present moment. Anyway, I should probably try to go back to sleep; I'm feeling fairly delirious.

And now I leave with something to ponder:

"I know that language is within the world and that, at the same time, the world is within language. I know we are at the border between language and the world... I know that time is bound up with space. Time is the shadow of space. Space is the shadow of time. I know that we live in the shadow of a shadow and that it returns to light. " - Patrick Dubost

standing up again.

A night at the Academy of Sciences, a day in the car, a walk by the water, a few puffs of a cigarette.

Days pile up beautifully, gracefully, like individual ripples of water as they stretch out and embrace one another.

My last quarter of my undergraduate education. I try to reassure myself that this is only the beginning. Of course, I know that is true. I know that Rebecca asked me to move to San Francisco with her last night. I know that is entirely possible. I think of bars and co-ops and music and quiet evenings with nothing but cold air by my side. It will have to come after Ireland, but it will come eventually.

From my window, pieces of light tap me on the shoulder. They wake me up. I wanted to come back here. My last quarter, and I finally wanted to come back. It's freeing and jarring and very open and I can already feel a vague nostalgia wrapping its arms around me.

I do not know how to end my random series of thoughts. I could continue with the list of amazing things we have planned for the next ten weeks, my last ten weeks in this empty, crowded city. But I will not. I have always preferred mystery. I always side with the unknown.

late storms.

Fingers interlocked, elbows locked. He touches your hair and brushes your cheek, whispers something sweet, and you think you can't think anything at all right at this moment. But if you're thinking you can't think something, doesn't that still mean you're thinking it? And if you know you can think it, does that mean whatever you feel is fleeting, self-created? You forget as he whispers more words. They aren't meant to be funny. You break into soft laughter, give him your eyes with your eyebrows raised, lips parted as your laughter cascades down the path, through the grass and flowers.

Purple has turned to shades of gray in the black night sky. Everything is white, black, gray, absence of light, fullness of life. When you are young, you grow ripe in the night air. You learn to live in a world of nighttime, turning the stars into little lanterns to light the path to the top of this hill. Somewhere in the star-littered sky, someone watches you and smiles. You look back at your interlocked fingers, you think of how hard his shoulder presses into yours. Maybe you are watching this scene from outside of your own body. Maybe those are the eyes you feel pressing you as you straighten your posture, lifting your legs to your chin to try to keep your core warm.

In the room, a British flag above the doorway, his family lineage, a parade, quiet music, a glass of water. He asks you to return, you think of the impossible possibilities encompassed in the humid room. That is all they are. Impossible possibilities, with more emphasis on the former. You keep it that way. He will too, you know he will, even if his whispered words form the shapes of open doorways, miles of highways, airplanes and hot air balloons. You decide you will remember him only through words, words which cannot possibly distill what you felt as the sky looked down on you.

write and write everything right out.

May 18. I am so excited.

1. ‘Make Light’
2. ‘Little Secrets’
3. ‘Moth’s Wings’
4. ‘The Reeling’
5. ‘Eyes As Candles’
6. ‘Swimming In The Flood’
7. ‘Folds In Your Hands’
8. ‘To Kingdom Come’
9. ‘Sleepyhead’
10. ‘Let Your Love Grow Tall’
11. ‘Seaweed Song’

I am going out to Ethiopian food in the Mission tonight with a someone.

Other than the fact that I just paid tuition for the last time and am now broke, I am fabulous amazing excited happy happy happy.

wide awake on friday morning.

After a stressful week, I am now sipping English breakfast tea and eating veggie wraps at 1 in the afternoon. Then my momma is taking me shopping (i.e. I don't have to pay a dime and I get new shoes for summer in Dublin).

My thesis is in. My adviser gave me an A and lots of positive comments. I'm so excited to present it now. I plan on changing the humanities one paper at a time (ha! if only...).

I had an amazing dream last night that involved me hip hop dancing in front of over 100 people, one of my favorite UCLA professors, music, England, and being the class clown.

So far, spring break has been exactly what I needed. I've finished A Portrait of the Artist, rented a Chinese film, hung out in the city, gotten boba, eaten great food, seen friends, and so on. I can't wait to see what else happens. If I don't get to Napa, I may slap some bitches.

I have been so happy lately. I looked at my journal from the last two months, and I realized that at the end of each entry, I write about how satisfied I feel at the end of each day. This is how my life is meant to be lived, I think.

Okay, I plan on making my next update more earth-shattering.

forever is a long, long time.

The new Phoenix album pretty much rules my life. Passion Pit is also up there. And if I can ever find this Grizzly Bear leak, all the pieces of my life will come together into one whole so beautiful elation will prohibit me from comprehending my very being.

That is all.

ma chambre lumineuse.

This afternoon, when I finally caught my breath, I decided to spend some time in the courtyard behind the communications building on campus. I sat under light filtered through bright green leaves and low-hanging branches, watching a boy strum a guitar.

I have moments where I miss something while I am experiencing it. This happened one night when my friends and I got dressed up to go out to a club on Melrose. I smiled as I took each step down the empty street. I asked them, "Do you guys think you will miss this one day?" They laughed at me, and I never got my response. My question drifted into the air and flew up above us. This happened another afternoon in February, when the rain fell down in thick drops and broke Leslie's umbrella. Leslie and I ran home along Wilshire screaming and laughing so hard I almost couldn't walk. My jeans soaked up so much dirty water that I had to will myself to take each step. As we turned the corner to our apartment, I said to Leslie, "I will always remember this. I am nostalgic for this moment right now, as it's happening."

Similarly, I missed campus today as I sat on the red stone benches. I missed it like it was a piece of me I was letting go. In some ways it is. I have realized far too late that I could have made my own life in Los Angeles. Now, I know. Now, I run around attending lectures about Faulkner and France and the Caribbean, I stay in the Reading Room until it closes, I spend time with my professors. I try to make up for lost time, for misplaced passions. The landscape of campus is itself a home space to me, not so much rigidly defined in its perimeters. Rather, the idea of the kind of light that filters into the windows of Royce is part of my oneiric home, part of my dreamed ideal space. I am letting go of that for broader definitions.

Yesterday, my English professor hugged me good-bye. Other than the fact that this man is my idol and basically the embodiment of everything I love about everything in the world, this hug made me realize how much more contact I have made in the last year, how much closer things have come to my core (if you will excuse the cliche), how much I have made myself vulnerable and offered myself up to be changed by scholarship. I walked with him to the library, and then I stepped inside. As I scanned the bookshelves, my eyes started to water. I couldn't place the emotion: happiness, sadness, satisfaction, resignation, hope. I only know there is some sort of affinity here, some sort of right answer if I only keep asking questions.

Well, now I'm supposed to take what I learned and apply it somewhere. No one ever specified where. I guess I'm just supposed to know. Well, I don't. But I can tell you I'll be searching, I'll be searching endlessly.

orange and blue.

I apologize for the lack of meaningful updates lately. I hardly have time to breathe. But I am still alive in case anyone is curious. Anyone at all? No? Not so much? Okay, I'll go back to doing my thing.

things that remind me.

Wallace Stevens, "Sunday Morning," 1915

I

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late

Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,

And the green freedom of a cockatoo

Upon a rug mingle to dissipate

The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

She dreams a little, and she feels the dark

Encroachment of that old catastrophe,

As a calm darkens among water-lights.

The pungent oranges and bright, green wings

Seem things in some procession of the dead,

Winding across wide water, without sound.

The day is like wide water, without sound,

Stilled for the passing of her dreaming feet

Over the seas, to silent Palestine,

Dominion of the blood and sepulchre.

II

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?

What is divinity if it can come

Only in silent shadows and in dreams?

Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,

In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else

In any balm or beauty of the earth,

Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?

Divinity must live within herself:

Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;

Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued

Elations when the forest blooms; gusty

Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;

All pleasures and all pains, remembering

The bough of summer and the winter branch.

These are the measures destined for her soul.

III

Jove in the clouds had his inhuman birth.

No mother suckled him, no sweet land gave

Large-mannered motions to his mythy mind.

He moved among us, as a muttering king,

Magnificent, would move among his hinds,

Until our blood, commingling, virginal,

With heaven, brought such requital to desire

The very hinds discerned it, in a star.

Shall our blood fail? Or shall it come to be

The blood of paradise? And shall the earth

Seem all of paradise that we shall know?

The sky will be much friendlier then than now,

A part of labor and a part of pain,

And next in glory to enduring love,

Not this dividing and indifferent blue.

IV

She says, “I am content when wakened birds,

Before they fly, test the reality

Of misty fields, by their sweet questionings;

But when the birds are gone, and their warm fields

Return no more, where, then, is paradise?”

There is not any haunt of prophesy,

Nor any old chimera of the grave,

Neither the golden underground, nor isle

Melodious, where spirits gat them home,

Nor visionary south, nor cloudy palm

Remote on heaven’s hill, that has endured

As April’s green endures; or will endure

Like her remembrance of awakened birds,

Or her desire for June and evening, tipped

By the consummation of the swallow’s wings.

V

She says, “But in contentment I still feel

The need of some imperishable bliss.”

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams

And our desires. Although she strews the leaves

Of sure obliteration on our paths,

The path sick sorrow took, the many paths

Where triumph rang its brassy phrase, or love

Whispered a little out of tenderness,

She makes the willow shiver in the sun

For maidens who were wont to sit and gaze

Upon the grass, relinquished to their feet.

She causes boys to pile new plums and pears

On disregarded plate. The maidens taste

And stray impassioned in the littering leaves.

VI

Is there no change of death in paradise?

Does ripe fruit never fall? Or do the boughs

Hang always heavy in that perfect sky,

Unchanging, yet so like our perishing earth,

With rivers like our own that seek for seas

They never find, the same receding shores

That never touch with inarticulate pang?

Why set the pear upon those river banks

Or spice the shores with odors of the plum?

Alas, that they should wear our colors there,

The silken weavings of our afternoons,

And pick the strings of our insipid lutes!

Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,

Within whose burning bosom we devise

Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

VII

Supple and turbulent, a ring of men

Shall chant in orgy on a summer morn

Their boisterous devotion to the sun,

Not as a god, but as a god might be,

Naked among them, like a savage source.

Their chant shall be a chant of paradise,

Out of their blood, returning to the sky;

And in their chant shall enter, voice by voice,

The windy lake wherein their lord delights,

The trees, like serafin, and echoing hills,

That choir among themselves long afterward.

They shall know well the heavenly fellowship

Of men that perish and of summer morn.

And whence they came and whither they shall go

The dew upon their feet shall manifest.

VIII

She hears, upon that water without sound,

A voice that cries, “The tomb in Palestine

Is not the porch of spirits lingering.

It is the grave of Jesus, where he lay.”

We live in an old chaos of the sun,

Or old dependency of day and night,

Or island solitude, unsponsored, free,

Of that wide water, inescapable.

Deer walk upon our mountains, and the quail

Whistle about us their spontaneous cries;

Sweet berries ripen in the wilderness;

And, in the isolation of the sky,

At evening, casual flocks of pigeons make

Ambiguous undulations as they sink,

Downward to darkness, on extended wings.