1.30.2008

modern literature.

List of Terrible Things That Have Happened to Me Today:

  • I woke up late and had to move a bunch of cars and trash cans in order to get to work on time.
  • Said good-bye to Brian for the last time in a long while.
  • John Edwards decided today of alllllll days to drop out of the presidential race. Right after I spent 2 hours last night writing an endorsement of him for tomorrow's Super Tuesday issue. Fuck that guy.
  • For some reason (my guess is a bomb threat), the 405 was backed up for 20 minutes at the Sunset exit. Sunset was closed off for as far as I could see. Police were surrounding all of the ramps connecting Sunset to Westwood, so I got lost and almost had a mental breakdown.
  • They were cutting down a tree on Gayley for no apparent reason and took up the whole street so that Veteran was totally blocked and it took me forever to get back to my apartment even though I was about 30 seconds away on a normal day.
  • My 3-hour seminar was today. I fucking hate that class. I was totally wrong in thinking Old English would be cool.
  • I am currently working on an 8-page paper that I thought was a 6-page paper up until an hour ago.
  • I ate a Sourdough Jack.
  • Time keeps moving.
  • I am listening to a terrible Britney Spears song.
I really think that the world is against me. I mean, I guess I really haven't been a good person lately. Ugh. Whatever. I just want this week to be over.

1.29.2008

radar.

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

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

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

1.28.2008

reckless abandon.

Jazz floating, tinkering
I have to strain to hear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So now I must take the long way.

1.27.2008

can't get away.

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

1.26.2008

filling the gaps in my memory.

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

1.25.2008

more than gossip.

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

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

In conclusion, I hate L.A.

1.24.2008

1.23.2008

love me all over again.

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

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

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

1.21.2008

lovely.

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

1.20.2008

first class.

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

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

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

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