so what do we do.

Oh, I'm having such a lovely day!

I don't even know what else to say.

I feel like I drained all of the writing out of myself in the last month and a half and now I'm left with... short sentences. And a blank mind. And maybe even a new start.

okay so.

I love Nerve magazine. You should too.

such innocence on those long hot days.

I am sick. So sick. So lots of contemplation and reading and things. I just want to sleep forever. Here is a poem I find lovely. It was featured in Poetry magazine this month. Makes me miss my adolescence and makes me realize how far I've come from where I'm supposed to be. It also gives me hope, hope that life is circular. It makes a lot of sense to me right now, as I step closer and closer toward making decisions I can't take back.

"Midsummer" by Louise Glück

On nights like this we used to swim in the quarry,
the boys making up games requiring them to tear off the girls' clothes
and the girls cooperating, because they had new bodies since
last summer
and they want to exhibit them, the brave ones
leaping off the high rocks--bodies crowding the water.

The nights were humid, still. The stone was cool and wet,
marble for graveyards, for buildings that we never saw,
buildings in cities far away.

On cloudy nights, you were blind. Those nights the rocks were
dangerous,
but in another way it was all dangerous, that was what we were after.
The summer started. Then the boys and girls began to pair off
but always there were a few left at the end--sometimes they'd
keep watch,
sometimes they'd pretend to go off with each other like the rest,
but what could they do there, in the woods? No one wanted to be them.
But they'd show up anyway, as though some night their luck would
change,
fate would be a different fate.

At the beginning and at the end, though, we were all together.
After the evening chores, after the smaller children were in bed,
then we were free. Nobody said anything, but we knew the nights
we'd meet
and the nights we wouldn't. Once or twice, at the end of summer,
we could see a baby was going to come out of all that kissing.

And for those two, it was terrible, as terrible as being alone.
The game was over. We'd sit on the rocks smoking cigarettes,
worrying about the ones who weren't there.

And then finally walk home through the fields,
because there was always work the next day.
And the next day, we were kids again, sitting on the front steps in
the morning
eating a peach. Just that, but it seemed an honor to have a mouth.
And then going to work, which meant helping out in the fields.
One boy worked for an old lady, building shelves.
The house was very old, maybe built when the mountain was built.

And then the day faded. We were dreaming, waiting for night.
Standing at the front door at twilight, watching the shadows lengthen.
And a voice in the kitchen was always complaining about the heat,
wanting the heat to break.

Then the heat broke, the night was clear.
And you thought of the boy or girl you'd be meeting later.
And you thought of walking into the woods and lying down,
practicing all those things you were learning in the water.
And though sometimes you couldn't see the person you were with,
there was no substitute for that person.

The summer night glowed; in the field, fireflies were glinting.
And for those who understood such things, the stars were sending
messages:
You will leave the village where you were born
and in another country you'll become very rich, very powerful,
but always you will mourn something you left behind, even though
you can't say what it was,
and eventually you will return to seek it.

venice beach.

Show, don't tell. Show, don't tell. Things are moving by me meaninglessly quickly. I feel so small. What is the purpose? What is the end result? I may never get back to where I was and the worst part about it is that I don't know whether or not I want to go back to the way things were or not. I never thought I would be someone to not see things in clear-cut ways. What can I say, I'm spoiled, I guess. But now it's like I'm right back where I was - in a different context, of course - feeling the exact same way, not knowing whether or not anything is good or bad or sad or happy or smart or stupid.

I only wanted this time for myself. I never meant to bring anyone else into this mess. But now it's too late. All this does is reinforce my resolution that all I am able to do is hurt people. I miss making people feel good. It makes me feel so happy to know that I have the ability to make others feel as though they have found some meaning, some consistency in this world. But, right now, I need to do some things for myself. If I stop now, I will never find a way out of the unrequited.

Also on my mind: I am considering transferring to Berkeley for a semester next year. I'm not sure how possible this is, but L.A. is suffocating. And I feel like I'm counting down the days. L.A. is where I make all of my worst mistakes.

i may or may not have a real problem here.

I have spent so much time thinking about language lately. It's interesting how a notion that started out as a sentence in a Faulkner novel turned into a thought one year ago. Then into a perspective on love and the meaninglessness of words. Then into a consuming and personally-defining idea. And I have been thinking about how the idea that words are futile is perhaps the most solipsistic, selfish, self-involved, culturally-fragmenting idea possible. If words mean nothing, we may as well never communicate with one another. However, I do believe that non-verbal communication and the simple day-to-day feelings that we experience mean everything that words cannot handle. It isn't that humans cannot communicate our feelings effectively with others, it's that we can only do so when we decide that words are not the correct way to handle this communication. Words are simply symbols for gut reactions and intense emotions rendered inexpressible by the complexity of the human mind. As Kenneth Burke puts it, humans are the "symbol-using animal" even though we are also the "symbol-misusing animal, inventor of the negative, separated from our natural condition by instruments of our own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection."

But for all of this cynicism it isn't true that we are simply separated from our natural condition. Or at least, it isn't true that we have no solution for this. I think recognizing that language is bounded and honoring our limited capacity for understanding will connect us to others in the end. I don't think that this comes easily. It only comes when you are honest with others about this, and that, of course, takes intimacy and time. But I can't live my life thinking that there is no way to communicate my happiness. When I think about it, I know that I don't believe that my happiness is inexpressible. I just know that it isn't expressible through words. That leaves a million other ways of approaching my destination, if there even is a destination after all.

Related to this, I read a fantastic piece about magical realism in The College Hill Independent. Here is a short excerpt written by a Brown University student named David Noriega and here is the full article.

"When Gabriel García Márquez delivered his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1982, he was issuing a plaintive warning as much as an expression of gratitude. On behalf of the generation of Latin American writers exaltedly categorized as ‘magical realists’ by the academies of the First World, he dispatched this simple caveat: Be careful how you read us. Be careful, because the magic and wonder you have so consistently gleaned from our words is not a mere stylistic indulgence; it is the only way we have found to interpret a reality perhaps too grim and violent for you to understand."

But if the only words that these writers can use to explain their unimaginable pasts can be exploited and commodified, how are we ever expected to comprehend each other's experiences?

And I have two more points to make before I return to my real life:

1. I need to stop reading so many modernist novels. I blame them for all of this self-reflexive pondering.
   
2. Why is the College Hill Independent so fucking amazing? I could never imagine such a beautiful piece of literary criticism running in the Daily Bruin. Put quite honestly, one never would. We don't do book reviews in our paper. Granted, this paper was (they don't seem to be putting issues out anymore, wtf!) a joint effort between students of Brown and Rhode Island School of Design and it isn't their official school paper, but I wish there were something so beautiful and intelligent that I could hold onto here in Los Angeles.
   

quickly now.

I just returned from voting. I still don't understand why people wouldn't want to vote. I feel guilty if I even wait until after 4pm to do it.

Also, my favorite quote of the day, from Hillary Clinton: "In my White House, we will know who wears the pantsuits."

And now I go to class. Even though all my roommates are ditching. Fuuuuck this.

whiskers on kittens.

Inspired by Paul Madonna and my recent love for blog searching and finding uncultivated talent (including this story and way too cute discussion of how Woody Allen chose Windsor as his go-to typeface):

Lists of things I remember about this week.
Reading
Portrait of the Artist
Lost City Radio
Winesburg, Ohio and other novels situated in the 1920's
New York Times
New blogs
Sartorialist
Query letters and failed attempts
Would like to Read
The New Yorker
Nylon
Martha Stewart
Savage Detectives
Anything published by Chronicle Books or Ten Speed Press
Reference books galore
Anything new and exciting and disjointed
Photog magazines
A million books that may or may not be published by my future place of employment
Movies & TV
15 minutes of Hannah and her Sisters
Flight of the Conchords
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Friends
StuntRock (ok that was last week! Still good!)
Comedy
Jeff Garland (Curb is changed forever!)
Mark Maron (omgbff)
Eaten
Chai smoothie
Pancakes and shit
PB&J
London Broil with Roasted Potatoes and Red Bell Peppers (I made that shit)
Vegetables
Gift burrito
Horchata
Mixed Drinks
A slice of Venice Beach pizza
Caroline's disaster of a casserole
rocky road!
Negative Eaten
Sushi
Projects
"Clean Getaway"
Finding my internship
Reading the Chronicle Books Blog
Keeping up with PW
Editing other people's work
Writing a column
Studying?
Putting together a new fashion portfolio for Fall 08
Learning to love new forms of art
Painting for my living room
Other Things Done
Watched Planet Earth
Tried new unmentionable thing
Cafe 101
Went to new Albertson's
Took Sam and her b/f on a tour of Los Angeles
Beverly Center
Drove aimlessly
Hari Krishna free dinner night
Told secrets
Rock Band
Danced to Bay Area hip hop
Got a little vomit on my shirt
Felt older

high heels high school dreams.

I feel as though I just wasted my life reading this. And now I offer it to you to do the same.

Lipstick Jungle vs. Cashmere Mafia.

I'm still left with the question: Why do they have the exact same adjective-noun constructed titles? Don't executives talk to one another before they get the go-ahead on vapid, gender-stereotyping names for vapid, gender-stereotyping television shows? Don't they hear rumors?

I constantly see billboards for these shows driving on Sunset or in the Valley and they make me want to shoot myself. I wouldn't watch the shows based on their imitation Sex and the City vibes alone (yes, I know Lipstick Rainforest or whatever the fuck is written by Candace Bushnell, shouldn't she move on already?). Oh, and the fact that I can't tell them apart. And because I'm sick of being pandered to, watching marketing schemes as they are pawned off as entertainment. I'm disgusted by the entertainment industry right now. From the Writer's Guild strike to the sudden proliferation of beauty pageant reality shows, it's just in a disgusting mess. So, for now, I'll stick with HBO. It's not really television anyway, or so I've seen in their ads.

***Edit: Also, ever since I wrote this post, I keep getting Lipstick Jungle banner ads on my windows. The Internet is a tricky, tricky, creepy thing that reads my mind and feeds me what I hate the most. Fuck that.

taking a short break.

My little Sammy is visiting me with her new boyfriend, who I think is really great.

I'm having a great weekend. Today, we hung out in Venice and I took her all around L.A. Tonight we're going to a "planet earth"/other earthly substances party and then out for a night on the town at this lounge in Hollywood.

Things feel simple. It's nice to live a pared down existence with no in-betweens and maybes. Just easy. I guess that's why the girls next door get drunk and party every night. You never need to sit down and examine how meaningless it is because you're never conscious of it.

Okay, back to Nintendo/music/pre-partying.

in the heart of the midwest.

This book I'm reading makes sense to me only because it makes absolutely no sense to me. But that's the whole point. Nothing makes sense; nothing is supposed to. I think I'm okay with that.

I had a long discussion last night about the futility of language. Now I only believe in irony and paradox.

" 'Love is like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black night... You must not try to make love definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made tender by kisses.' "

"One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant... one loves life so intensely that tears come into the eyes."

-Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio