i don't want you here.

I had five cups of coffee today. Being around book people is bad for me. Now I'm coming down off of the caffeine and all I want to do is sleep. Also, I love Roberto Bolano. The end.

boombox.

I would just like to point out that I just discovered that the aforementioned deleted me from his facebook and myspace friends. I bring this up for two reasons. One, it's funny that it took me this long to realize it. Two, it's funny that this would even happen in the first place. Why? Because it's funny learning how petty people can be. And, honestly, I am not hurt. I was a little taken aback at first. I couldn't believe someone would actually take the time and energy to do that. But I seriously laughed after that. Oh, broken relationships in the time of social networking websites.

I am going to a huge publishing conference tomorrow. Excited? Actually, kind of feel like I'm going to puke.

I am so happy I can barely contain myself. I talked to Sam on the phone earlier and I know no other word to describe myself but giddy. Such a stupid word. There's just a constant elation running through me. All the laughter is starting to make my head spin.

five minutes.

It is so strange thinking about him these days. All he is to me now is a series of lessons learned. His face is no longer concrete, the way we laughed feels so forced from so long ago; I strain to remember the jokes we told. It doesn't hurt because it feels like it never happened, which I suppose hurts in theory. The truth is, I fell out of love long ago. Probably the moment that I attained my romantic vision. I was like Gatsby, moving forward so quickly that all I knew how to do was look back. It was innocent and naive. Of course, I feel that because of that, he has a right to hate me. I was the girl who didn't know what she wanted. But how can you blame me? It wasn't my fault. You really never know what you want. It was awful circumstances, terrible confusion, youth leading youth, directionless.

After watching All the Real Girls last night, I couldn't help but see myself in that movie. "I don't know what I'm doing." You think you know what happiness is. Then you see the world, meet new people, and realize that happiness is not a checkbox for "yes" or "no." There are gradations and categories, a million kinds of happiness. I think I am happy now solely because I know this.

One day I may return to thoughts of him. They may feel real again, feel like they happened to me and not some stupid little girl. For now, he's two or three lifetimes away, a sleeping memory that feels like I something I read as an adolescent. Did it mean anything at all? Or was it just a diversion? At the very least (and he'd hate me for saying this), he taught me so much. Now I am able to see outside myself, look at myself critically, and examine why I do the things I do. Then I am able to correct them.

This new guy takes that one step further. He draws me out and makes me feel like an independent, free-thinking person again. I don't feel as shy. I feel like my words, my opinions have consequence. Because of this, I feel like I want to experience a thousand new experiences, big and small. New York, Chicago, Silver Lake, quiet dinners in the dark, movies, new books, driving far far away. I see everything through new eyes.

And, believe me, I feel terrible for what I did to him. As he sees it, I wasted three years of his life. But I spent seven years of my own wondering what if with him. Even when it was it was what if. Still, I don't think that was wasted time. I think he used me as a crutch to stop his loneliness. I used him as a crutch to keep myself from discovering who I am - because that process is dark and scary. My only hope for him is that he finds happiness. I want him to find someone who can cater to his needs without putting as much effort into it as I had to. I want him to find someone funny and cute and not too smart (because I'm not sure he can handle smart smart) and sexy and sure of herself and ready to be there for him. That person is not me. It never was (not to say I am not some of those things). More than anything else, I do not want to have destroyed his faith in love. I hope I didn't do that to him. My ending our relationship was my hope that he could find love, not someone to falsely idealize and delude. I believe one day he will.

Until then, I will be waiting. Until then, I will be trying in vain to make a memory out of something that feels like it was never my own.

award winning,

So tired. I was ready to write about how excited I was that Joe is letting me borrow his Prius. But then I scraped it on a wall trying to get out of his maze of a driveway and all of my elation about the whole situation just disappeared. Though I do love that car, which is probably why I feel so deflated about it. Tomorrow, I'm going to a Q & A with his friends for the movie All the Real Girls. I feel so... literal. That's all I can think of. I'm fucking exhausted.

cars drive drive drive talking heads pajamas closet sunshine runway coffee gold

construct some sort of narrative.

I spent last night in San Juan Capistrano at a large Brazilian BBQ in a beautiful house with interesting people and good music.

I feel like I've had a lot of caffeine today because I am so jittery, and there is this fire burning within me. Music sounds more upbeat, food tastes sweeter, places and people are full of interesting charm, books make more sense. But it's not the caffeine. It's butterflies.

Also, Caroline's party was successful.

I just love everything so much right now. I feel like a new world has opened up for me. And, yes, it hurts to say it, but I made the best decision of my life. I've fucked up a lot in the last twenty years (though more so in the last 5-10), but now I feel like it's time to make things right again. I also think I may be beginning to take myself too seriously. Hearing the way that I talk, you'd think I would have been reading too many academic journals coupled with too much avant garde poetry (it's kind of true though). But really, it has a lot to do with my current English teacher, Professor Dimuro. The way he speaks is so inspiring to me - it's very visual and he adds up a lot of adjectives and nouns which attempt to capture concepts that would otherwise be incommunicable. I actually feel myself beginning to emulate it. It's starting to scare me. Not only that, but I am beginning to adopt concepts of the modern period into my life with no personal foundation for them. It's hopelessness founded on hopelessness, which I really think characterizes our generation. We're the apathetic ones, the ones who have experienced so little and who are so removed from the wars of our world. Today's youngsters are all about self-discovery, but they have no concrete experience with which to discover themselves. So they take trips to Europe, take time off of school, read lots of beat poets - they manufacture life experience. I have no solution; I'm just a part of the problem.

And a final note to self: Go to Brazil.

garcia madero.

Tonight is Caroline's birthday party. Decorations are going up, food is being cooked, cake is being baked, alcohol is being served. All in the passive voice.

I've been thinking a lot about the difference between values within our country, specifically in the context of sexual relations. My family in the South are all Southern Baptists more or less. Of course, there are varying degrees of their religious conviction, but they all come from a social background that preaches abstinence and sexual repression (in my opinion). Living in California, it may be hard for us to understand that more than half of our country still feels this way about sex: that it is purely a reproductive act, or at least that it is a pure act, to be done with one partner after marriage in your king-size bed with rose petals everywhere and little cliche phrases uttered every few moments. Not to say that this vision is negative. It can be quite beautiful. The problem of it is that it is merely an image - that elevating sex to a cinematic quality removes it from human experience and makes it unattainable. This is the sort of human interaction that makes me completely uncomfortable. Sex is not a godly experience, it shouldn't have anything to do with the religious. It is a conscious decision made by two people (or more, if you're into that) to explore the limits of human contact. The very physicality of it - the body, free and released, open, inviting - attests to this notion. I think conflating abstinence from sexual intercourse with Christian purity is more dirty than partaking in the closeness of human interaction. It leads to fetishism, to desires unmet and unexplored, to frustration, to alienation. And this alienation is exactly what sex should be preventing. I'm not advocating free love. I'm not a hippy, far from it. What I am advocating is responsible love and love that takes into account the profound implications of sex to the human condition. Maybe it's close-minded of me to be so open-minded, but looking at sex any other way seems backwards and, for me personally, a limit on the already limited closeness that we feel for one another.

elephant.

I just saw this guy

who Marie and I used to be obsessed with.
He was buying chicken breast fillets.
And I was buying chicken breast steaks.
It was love at first sight.
Or more like 80th sight for me.
Because Marie and I spent a lot of time fawning over him
In high school.

brie and crackers.

My car decided to break down today. So that was fun. My day thus included a hilarious ride with a tow truck driver who offered me gum ("Dirty mouth, clean it up." - Jerry the tow truck driver) and talked to me about Dr. Suess, a conversation with my German car dealer, a long shuttle ride back to Westwood, and then an Old English quiz. I am still shaking a bit from how scary the whole situation was, but I think I handled it pretty well.

The whole thing makes me feel so old - just thinking that I can get myself through situations like that unscathed. Lately, I have felt very old, in the good way. I feel independent and free. I also decided that I am a good person. No matter how many times someone tells me that I am not, I don't have to believe it. We are not our pasts. The whole point of time passing, in my opinion, is evolution. Sometimes certain people take you back to your past when you're really much better off leaving it alone. Now that I am free to move forward, I am beginning to see all the good in myself. Childish notions fade, idealizations wane, and what is left? A little cynicism and a little realism, a few pastoral notions mixed in with compassion and care for others. Things I thought I had lost. I am happy to say that I have found them again.

silver rings from barcelona.

This personal essay is fucking hilarious. It's about a Johnny Cash tattoo and meaningless sex and awkwardness.

Tattoos can go either way for me. Either they're beautiful and sexy (this usually requires some sort of personal connection to the art) or they're a stand-in for something beautiful and sexy. As Faulkner would say, "a shape to fill a lack." I know a lot of people with small tattoos - shamrocks and stars and things of the like. The ink doesn't mean anything more than a cry for attention, maybe even for sexual or personal validation.

Personally, I have only really liked two tattoos in my lifetime. One belongs to my best friend, Sam. She has two beautiful sisters and they all have the same spiraling curls and dark eyes. Her father passed away almost three years ago, but it took them all until about a year ago to realize that they all had the exact same tiny birthmark in the space between their stomachs and their ribcage. They all had their father's signature tattooed - very small - beside it. It's a point of connection, a manifestation of their sisterly bond. It's a bond that I will never understand but will always wish for. And this little swirl of black commemorates their father, who was musical and intelligent and loving and showed each and every one of his daughters what it means to love. I think it's just gorgeous.

The other tattoo that I truly do like belongs to Joe. It's a cherry blossom tree that runs down his arm. The pink blossoms sprinkle across the branches and give the whole thing this sprezzatura feel, of carelessness and natural beauty. He tells me his friend designed it, but I don't know much else. I just know that it's beautiful and that it made his parents angry and that it blends seamlessly with his whole aesthetic as a human being. Yeah, I said it. A human aesthetic. I don't know any other way to explain it.

boyz in the hood.

This will read more like a day summary than anything else, but I left my journal in Los Angeles and I don't want to forget this.

All of the nights I've spent in Berkeley have been a success. Last night was no exception. Marie and I drove home all day yesterday and I finally got home and took a nap, completely exhausted. When I woke up, I drove to San Mateo to pick up Evan from work and then Evan picked up me, Marie, Ryan, and Akira and we drove to the city to get BBQ on the Haight. We were supposed to swing by and pick up Jen and Saleh, but Market street is a huge left-turning nightmare, so we just met up with them at the restaurant. They were already buzzed by the time they made it to us. How I adore my friends. Seven of us fit into Evan's tiny car and I tried to eat my ribs with Marie sitting on my lap. It was a huge, delicious, meaty mess. We all sung along to terrible songs on the radio.

I got that feeling I get whenever I come home. The lights of the city blinking and sparkling as we cross the Bay Bridge. All of my friends together again, bonding over the stupidest, smallest things: Traffic, barbecue sauce, Greg Lee, new stories of adventure.

As we pulled onto Saleh's street, we saw Charley's car park in the driveway. We all jumped out and hugged, all the obligatory oh-i-haven't-seen-you-in-so-long stuff. We met two of Charley's friends from Davis, who were cool. Toasts were had, circles were formed, pie was eaten. We all trekked down the street to a frat party and we danced and made fun of everyone who wasn't dancing. Somehow, Charley, his friends, and I got separated from everyone and we ended up at the Berkeley branch of their fraternity. Charley told me to act like I didn't have any opinions for just a few minutes so we could get in without any problems. Interestingly, this worked.

Charley and I then got separated from his friends. One of them ended up going home with some random girl. He called later and I had to instruct him on how to get back to us (long story). We found the other one as we stepped outside and saw Marie staring up at us from the porch. I'm still not sure how she got there, but it was hilarious.

We headed back to Saleh's. Someone made a passing joke that we should go swimming. Unfortunately, I didn't think this was a joke. We all convinced each other it would be a great idea and we headed out. Jen and I were the first ones in the freezing cold water. Huuuuuge mistake. Huge. Evan, etc. all jumped in afterwards. We all walked back through the cold night air. Charley and I somehow fell down. I have the bruises to prove it. But even after we made it all the way back to Saleh's, we had to turn around and go back to the pool because Charley left his cell phone there. This is when we found his other friend roaming around the streets by himself.

Anyway, long story short (a little late for that though, isn't it?), last night was a success. Even though I slept on the floor without a pillow or a blanket and I shivered myself to sleep, we all had an amazing time. Every time I come home, it makes me reanalyze everything I thought I knew. Because, really, even though I think I'm happy, there is no time when I am happier than when I am with all of my friends. However, I would like to say that there is a certain something I miss about L.A. Usually, I can just forget that life so easily even when I come home for a day or two, but last night I realized that I have found something really worthwhile.