Me & Julio Down By the School Yard

These last few days have been crazy and involve:

-MoMA (I fell in love with Cezanne)
-Forever 21
-lots of coffee
-a night with Travis and Renata watching Cry-Baby again while Harry worked
-shooting my first roll of film only to discover that I hadn't loaded it right
-shooting my real first roll of film
-lots of web-surfing
-anonymous comments
-lots of texts
-a new ringtone (Paint It Black)
-a flea market (jacket, shirt, necklace, $10, $5, $5)
-a day with Renata and Julia
-being embarrassed by Harry and Travis
-lots of writing: the secret sex life of ___? for my former class, now a club
-more Existentialism
-dead plants
-embarrassing Harry and Travis by loud behavior, driven by sleep deprivation
-lots of fights with my dad, which leave our guests with the impression that I'm just a bitchy teenager who hates her parents for no reason
-a "chill" at the house of someone I'd never met
-sleeping on the sofa for three consecutive nights and thus getting very little sleep
-lots of tapiocas that Renata shot at me through her bubble tea straw
-Had I A Hundred Mouths, which is possibly the best short story I've ever read
-an English guy at Terra Blues who tried to card me--what the fuck?
-an abrupt decision to leave Terra, inspired by the realization that I still had two tapioca balls in my hair
-the recurring fear that I'm just a bitch teenager who hates her parents for no reason
-an abrupt decision to listen to free live music in Washington Square, inspired by the fact that they were playing Me & Julio Down By the School Yard and moved on to late Beatles work
-calls from Elena Solli, who's back, and another Elena, who wants me to babysit again tomorrow morning
-about ten minutes of free time to blog in

New York is amazing. Just walking through the streets you see tons of people you'd like to know and talk to. Reading William Goyen I was struck once again with the very life a person is capable of having, the depth and emotion and strength and soul. I once wrote on the back of my notebook, "where does Neruda's fire come from?" Now I ask only "where does anyone's fire come from?" Because I see so much fire in this city. I see life and pain and hate and racism and sexism and fear and strength and love, so much love. Love keeps us strong and keeps us sane. Too often now I feel loveless and lifeless.

I feel like in the last day I've rediscovered it, whatever it is, this sense of life and passion and intensity and such deep-running beauty that I cried as I walked home, camera bouncing against my chest, hair riddled with tapiocas and mangy like a dog's. Isn't it beautiful when thirty people can stand in a circle and sing together completely spontaneously? When plastic bottles become instruments, when music comes to life, when everyone's smiling and nobody cares who you are?

I cannot describe the feeling I had as I walked home; I only know that it has nothing to do with hormones or my body, and that I would not have been surprised to find Neruda's fire burning in my empty apartment when I got home. I think I would have smiled, and looked for things to burn.

Here I stand, hat in hand

I've been posting a lot lately, mostly because Renata sleeps later than I do so I have the time to. In fact, I didn't intend to post anything this morning, because nothing's really happened since last night that merits blog attention, and I was so tired that I fell asleep on the sofa (I'm supposed to be sleeping there, there's blankets and everything) with all the lights on while everyone else was still eating wine and cheese five feet away from me instead of culturing intellectual, blog-worthy thoughts.

Then I got an email this morning from H. and realized that I never blog about him. Not seriously, anyway. (Hobo/lazy ass polls don't count.) That camera I'm so excited about, for example? Harry's birthday gift to me. How could I have skipped over that?

The fact of the matter is that there's a little filter in my brain as I blog that edits out things that I think people don't want to hear about, or that I don't want to write about. I've never been into writing romance stories or love poems, so I don't write many romantic posts, either. In reality I'm leading a very romantic life, because Harry is amazing. He's always there when I need him, not afraid to apologize, not afraid to say "I love you" in front of anyone, not afraid to send me sweet emails at two or three in the morning. I never doubt that he loves me, and he doesn't doubt that I love him. I don't feel underappreciated or jealous or misunderstood around him, and I hope he doesn't either. I miss him if I don't see him for a day. We're very close and very in love and it's very beautiful.

And that's the type of thing that I don't usually write. Part of the reason that I do this is because I know I'm lucky. It's not that I think I don't deserve him, or vica-versa (sp?): it's just that I know that most high school kids are single, and that they're not really in love with either Harry or me, and that they probably don't want to hear it for reasons connected to both of those facts. I'm a quirk, and I'm lucky, even though I believe that everyone mature enough to handle one deserves a great relationship. And so I filter.

Because of this habit, though, it isn't clear to the readers (haha... I feel like a writer) how close we really are, which is almost unfair. It's unfair to Harry, who doesn't get his share of screen-time, and to the readers, because I've pretty much promised them honesty on my page, and ripping a chunk out of my life and hiding it directly breaches that unspoken promise.

The truth is that most people don't know what our relationship is like, my parents and friends included, because when you see us together, we're still filtering. (Sometimes we don't "filter" enough in front of certain sensitive people; that's a problem, too.) The only people who really understand what's going on between us is us. Sometimes that's the way I want it. But I can't keep clipping articles from the front page before people have a chance to read them. I have to be a bit more honest.

I'm not going to get into details about what goes on behind locked doors and such, because I don't want to write it and you don't want to read it, but I'm definately going to fix my filter so that Harry gets properly acknowledged and so that anyone who reads this gets a better sense of my life.

And Harry, I love you, but don't leave a commment, okay?

Go-Getter

My lovely, dear Oona, whom I still refer to as Cornelius from time to time because I'm lame like that, turned sixteen yesterday (Wednesday--I should clarify, since blogger will probably add a few hours onto this and tip the scale). My thrift shop paperback (the unauthorized biography of Ewan McGregor) didn't quite match up to her tickets to London, but she grinned and bestowed a scrunch-nosed kiss on my acne-infested forehead anyway.

We spent a whole day walking in hundred-degree weather, watching French movies, scanning things onto iron-on paper for her new sweatshirt (okay, I had no real part in that) and generaly discussing life, celebrities and people we knew, particularly A. We saw The Island and both loved it, especially (okay, chiefly) because of Ewan, and put carnations in our hair (red for me, white and pink for her) and had exotic food and chocolate souffles at a restaurant with Harry and her parents and some friends of the family, and I slept over at her house and it was all very lovely and mellow.

I left a little after eleven the next morning, after a hearty round of Cocoa Puffs and some Dawson's Creek. I put the red carnation in a glass, hopped on the subway and showered and donned SoHo gear for my interview at the Used Book Cafe. I didn't finish all my community service last year and I don't especially feel like helping my abuela brainwash Mexican children with her religion just to get the service credit, especially since she doesn't think it's safe for me to cross the border and meet them now anyway. Anyway, the cafe was my alternative, and they accepted me with open arms. I even get free coffee/tea/beverages there and a significant discount now, since I'm a volunteer. I feel great about the whole business. The people there seem really cool, and they're all bookworms like me.

On the way home from the interview I bought a vintage Bob Marley t-shirt for my mom for $2 and a $5 sweater for myself by means of congratulation for getting out of the whole religious thing cleanly. And I realized that I'd successfully emptied a previously-full wallet in a week. I had another wallet at home with a bunch more in it--I'd only emptied my on-the-go wallet--but still. I've been living outside of my means, and it's got to stop. I have enough clothes. I have enough jewelry. I need to get rid of a bunch before I buy myself more stuff I don't need.

When I got home I dumped my bags on the sofa, carefully labelled all the unread books I'd bought myself at the cafe for $.50 a piece with white reinforcements, took off my boots and cleared up all the leftover papers from dad's cleaning spree.

My dad got all germophobic on us because his awesome hippy friends from New Mexico are coming to visit. Vooch (his real name is Jim, but we call him Vooch for reasons too strange to list here) works at Sandia Labs designing computer chip ceramics on an atomic level. I once questioned him (okay, my dad questioned him) about what exactly he did there, and he said "I try to make it fluffier." His girlfriend teaches dance of all types. She's danced on St. Mark's Place and all over the country and she goes to all sorts of Native American things that they won't let any other white people go to. She's beatiful. She's got this crazy dog named Pippi and we're not sure what breed he is because nobody's ever seen a dog like that before. He doesn't shed.

Anyway my dad started hyperventilating about how messy our apartment was because he saw a mouse in the kitchen and told Rosa to make us clean everything up. I didn't clean of my own free will, though. I'm more fiesty than that. Rosa at least knows me, though, and she knew I wouldn't do it without a greater incentive than the one he gave. After much deliberation she decided that the best way to get me to pick up would be to block the door to my closet while I was at Oona's and thus force me to clean everything up before going to bed.

It worked. I'd organized everything within an hour of coming home and I happily donned my boots again, took two of Renata's fresh sugar cookies for the road, and set out to fix my camera.

Long story short, I ended up buying a new lens because fixing the old one (regular mount) to the body I have (bayonet mount) would cost even more than the lens they had on sale. And it's a beautiful lens. I never thought I'd own a camera or a lens that nice. I never thought I'd find one I liked more than my parents' old black Nikon F-2, but that's life, right? I got lucky somehow and I now own my own lovely camera. I made my mom go over its subtleties with me for about two hours after dinner (which consisted of baguette, cucumbers and mozarella) and she keeps ooh-ing and ahh-ing over the camera. I'm dying to learn how to develop my own film. Ideally I'd like to learn to print, too, but there's not enough space in my house to set up a real darkroom, and I'm not exactly rolling in cash to pay for all the equipment with, either.

I justified the purchase, of course, by telling myself that from now on I'll be shopping a lot less. I won't have the time. I'll be too busy taking pictures.

I got irritated when my mom turned down the Bob Marley shirt ("V, I don't really like rap...") and when she moved my hot pink milk crates into the toy closed that I was planning to turn into a makeshift darkroom this weekend and accidentally turned one of my ring-holder hands upside down and got my to-upload cd pile mixed with the ones I'd already finished uploading in an effort to make my room "more presentable." "Your room looks like CBGB's," my dad complained when he got home. "Thanks," I said proudly. He frowned when he noticed that I'd put a poster of his high school rock band, Kermis, next to my favorite Monet paintings (ripped out of a two-year-old calendar).

It's not like I haven't been thinking about how my room looks. I just have very different taste than them. And he's wearing a plaid shirt just like mine in his band poster.

My mom's new obsession is 24, even though it makes her nervous and after she watches it she always starts warning me about strangers and men.

In writing things down today for the first time all week I realized that I'm simply overrun by ideas. With absolutely no obligations I manage to write Stonehenge-sized to-do lists, booklists, dream lists, story- and poem-lists, concert-lists... my brain never rests, even when I give in to silliness or romance or food. I'm so alive and interested in everything, and I just never stop!




P.S.- the humpty dumpty shirt mentioned in the last post turns out to have been designed by Grace Slick. Awesome, huh?

Some photos for your amusement:

My new camera! Had to get this out... sorry.



This is the lovely Lauren Taylor. It's the only one I've got of her, and it's not very good... sorry, m'dear.



















Grr. No more apologizing. It's my blog and I'll do what I want.

The truth is that I can't help it. No matter what I say, I still want your love.

wind music

It's 7:23 AM (the timestamp on these posts is severely messed up, and I'm to lazy to fix each one) and I'm fully awake, typing in a Humpty Dumpty tee-shirt I slept in and a pair of jeans. I set my alarm for seven and made myself get up because a woman who I've only baby-sat for twice recommended me to a friend, who wants me to take her kid to camp this morning so she can sleep in. And so, for sweet Elena (that's the woman's name) I let myself get up and pull my pants on even though I knew I'd only gotten two hours of sleep or so.

Yesterday was busy. I dug through bins looking for something I thought I'd seen that Oona might like, ate lunch with H., bought Renata a Dilbert book, wrote an essay, went to "class"--that is, dinner with Lauren, Alan and H. at Sammy's--and read the essay, rented Cry-baby after Harry saw a minute of it on the screen at Emack & Bolio's while buying himself ice cream. It was a great movie. We talked about art and books and Alan for a while and then put it in. Lauren and I couldn't stop grinning and groaning at Johnny Depp, causing H. to roll his eyes, and we ate ice pops from the fridge until I we left and I got home late. Fortunately, my parents weren't awake enough to yell at me or even to notice.

Renata was taking advantage of my parent's oblivion to reread the entire Harry Potter series by blatant lamplight in the living room, pausing every few seconds to pose continuity questions that simply cannot be answered ("if Bellatrix Lestrange is descended from Slytherin, doesn't that mean that Sirius is, too?" "Mmmm.") I read a few pages of War and Peace, thus giving in to the man, and then tossed and turned until a little after five. Now I'm sipping my mom's fresh Mexican coffee and watching the time very closely. I'm going to be late.

Well... yeah. Maybe I'll edit more in later.

and the words of the prophet are written on the subway wall...

Today I had a tiny cavity drilled, and the novocaine shot didn't go in completely so I was able to eat afterwards. I went to a french cafe called The Bread Factory and finished The Stranger over a croissant and then came back for lunch with Harry at a sandwich shop I hadn't known existed. I found the booklist Camille gave me the other day, and I'm happy to have it back--I'd misplaced it for a while, which made me sad.

I'm babysitting for the Harry Potter/Star Wars kids again tonight! I kept thinking about them while Elena and I watched the That '70s Show episode about when Star Wars first came out, in which R2D2 gets made into a vacuum cleaner. Their names are Lissa and Daniel and they're adorable and very easy to manage. I remember when my mom used to ask me what I did with my babysitters and she'd get mad if they'd been reading magazines all day or left me alone for a few hours. One cut my hair once, and it looked horrible. My mom got really angry.

Babysitting is a strange thing in that sense. When I was staffing at a Y camp in Wisconsin, they told us during training that a child is someone's most valuable posession and the most important thing in their lives, so we had to be absolutely certain that no physical or emotional harm of any kind came to them. Isn't it strange, though, to think that people are trusting you with their kids?

After organizing my bookmarks and cleaning the house a bit (Rosa is angry because my dad made us pull all these boxes out in an effort to clean the house up and left a mess behind for her to clean up) and eating cold mac and cheese between the last graf and this one, I've decided that my life is pretty uneventful. And yet it constantly fascinates me. I never find myself bored or uninterested or zombie-ish. I'm decidedly not an existentialist; I appreciate my life for its petty humane emotions and its decidedly pointless ups and downs. I like feeling great one day and shitty the next. I like being in love and everything that goes with it. I like being happy and positive and I'm willing to accept a little depression, too.

Lately I've been really into this appreciate-the-unappreciated kind of thing. I've been reading obscure novels by really famous and really great authors and shopping at places people don't usually like shopping at and listening to bootlegs and vinyls selected at random with my eyes closed. Everyone keeps bugging me to read War and Peace but I really just feel like reading Patti Smith: Early Work and old National Geographic issues. My friend Lauren, mentioned previously, collects magazines. How cool is that? Who the hell collects magazines? I consider telling people I collect jewelry, sunglasses, undeveloped film and used batteries but it just doesn't have the same ring of conviction to it. A psychologically-driven addiction like shopping is not the same as a hobby, and neither is a lazy accumulation.

Come to think of it, I do collect a few things, unwittingly, like old Bradbury cover art and Poe anthologies and Dylan biographies. I save all my concert tickets in a box on my dresser and all my letters in a drawer--does that count? I have every Monty Python's Flying Circus episode and a hell of a lot of vinyls, so I guess I do collect things sometimes.

What I'm talking about is appreciating things, and the feeling it gives you. It feels great and terrible at the same time to play a record that you know nobody appreciates the way you do, or buy a book for a quarter that you've been looking for for years, or find a piece of history, personal or otherwise, that nobody seems to understand but you. You feel like a great person because you understand it, but you're smothered by a kind of sadness at the same time because you know the object isn't appreciated the way it ought to be and it's terribly depressing. Do we associate ourselves with these objects? Is that why they make us sad?

I'm an idealist. I know this. But physical things sometimes symbolize ideals for me. Even clothes and jewelry that nobody seems to want to buy but me--it stands for something. Buying it and wearing it makes me somehow a bit of that thing. Do I put myself in these positions as a way of defining myself? Sometimes I feel like clothing itself affords us cowardice. It gives us another way to be judged other than by our actions and our behavior, and we cling to it.

I know I'm insecure. I'm much less insecure than I used to be, and these days I have a fair number of mornings when I wake up and feel beautiful; is it mere insecurity that drives me to shop more than other people, obsess over these physical trifles?

I know one thing, at least:
Harry appreciates me, and I appreciate him.
We could all be nudist anti-consumers on a commune, and it wouldn't change that.

Mountain Trip To Japan, 1959 / Mr. Spaceman

Isn't it wierd how numbers align sometimes? Just before I hit the "new post" button I noticed my stats lined up in a column. Eighty posts to Dark-Eyed Gypsy (including this one), forty to Songs the Lonesome Sparrow Sings, and five to My Crappy Poetry. How strange.

The concert Friday night was ridiculous, by the way. The band was called--I think this is it--the Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players. Their gimmick was that they bought slides from auctions and things of dead people during their lives and wrote stories about them and then set them to music. The dad played keyboard and guitar and the daughter drummed while the mom ran the slide projector. The daughter was eleven and extremely cute and quite a good drummer, but the parents were really, really wierd.

The guy had huge glasses and dissheveled fifties hair and muddy-colored pants and a two-button sweater and the mother dressed in severe purple and blue from head to toe. The guy had a stutter and some other kind of speech impediment that I can't quite put my finger on, but he insisted on talking more than he played. The whole thing was almost painful. And yet... I'm glad I went, because it was such a bizarre experience. One of their songs (title) was so catchy that it's still banging around behind my forehead and it won't go away.

There was a Q&A session and my mom asked, "Are all the people in the slides diseased?" Silence fell. The whole room stared at her. "You mean deceased," I whispered. "Yeah. Diseased."

And you all wonder why I mispronounce things sometimes.

After the show we did the usual talk-on-my-bed-until-one-or-two thing and then Elena and Harry left and I went to bed. Renata was sleeping over at a friend's house, so when I woke up in the middle of the ngiht I could read Albert Camus for a full hour before I fell asleep again and almost forgot about the whole thing in the morning.

Saturday was a "family day," so I spent my morning obsessively distinguishing every unread book on my newly-organized bookshelf with a white reinforcement sticker. This posed a problem for white books, but it was otherwise effective. It's also quite interesting. I find that there are very few white labels on the Biography, Shakespeare, Poetry and Science-Fiction shelves and quite a few on the Russian & German, Plays and Misc. shelves.

Not that I checked or anything.

So once I stopped labelling we went to some thrift shops and some camera shops, because Harry wants to buy me an old manual camera for my birthday, and I found a really great deal at Alkit, where I intend to return today. I had a light dinner with H. during his lunch break and the woman at the table next to us freaked out and had breakdown while we tried not to look. Mom bought me a bunch of jewelry and I bought myself a really cool old copy of Wuthering Heights for a quarter.

My mom has become obsessed with these Mexican cookbooks in a series based on local regions. She thinks they're the most authentic recipes she's found yet. She dragged me to a Spanish bookstore (okay, okay, I wanted to go) to look for more of them. Everything was ridiculously expensive, so I didn't buy anything, but she made a really great Mexican dinner and purposely left the chiles out for me. Elena came over and we watched Wargames and I got all excited about it (it's SO GOOD!) and then I changed and we left to pick up Harry from work.

We'd intended to go see Karwreck, Fish's band (it's so close to being a palindrome!) but when Nestor told us that it'd already started and that we couldn't make it in time anyway, we decided to get shaved ices at Otafuku instead and made it back just in time for my curfew.

When we got back, of course, we had no choice but to stuff ourselves with low-fat ice cream all night ("I'm making a Healthy Choice again!" -Elena) and talk about high school and college for hours until Harry got kicked out and Elena decided to sleep over even though she lives two blocks away. We pulled a mattress out between Renata's and my beds (grmr?) and promptly dropped like metaphysical rocks into our seperate slumbers.

And now it's morning and I'm blogging over a cup of warm, sugarless coffee (although I haven't weaned myself off of the milk just yet) and Elena just woke up and she's putting her contacts on behind me and Mom's sitting at the table in her rollers painting her toenails and Renata's sleeping with a guitar by her feet and everything in this room is cozy, from the piano bench I'm sitting on to the coffee pot to the guitar stands to the books to the shoes to the towel over the piano so Tweedy won't chew it up to the piles of jewelry and contact lens cases to the empty ice cream bowls and mugs that wait for me on every flat surface.

And my mom started playing the Byrd's Fifth Dimension to wake us up, and the song Mr. Spaceman started playing and I remembered, suddenly, how about four years ago we all went up to Renata's friend Tory's country house, but since I don't really like Tory's rich, preppy, yacht-club parents, and I don't really like Tory all that much, I locked myself in a room for four days and read a huge volume entitled The Golden Age of Science Fiction edited by Martin Gardener and Isaac Asimov and listened to the Byrds, the Lovin' Spoonful, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, Judy Collins, the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane and knit a shawl for myself. I consumed ridiculous amounts of Nestea and only went outside once during the whole four-day weekend. I remember thinking that this song was so cool and so funny and witty and all.

It's not. But I can't help liking it anyway.

Oh, and I'm getting good at identifying bands by sound. I just named CCR, the Byrds, Steve Winwood and Stevie Ray Vaughn by sound on songs I hadn't heard before. Victory!

I read a few of my old posts yesterday. This blog used to be pretty awesome. What happened?

Oh, well. Coffee, shower and Elena time.

Feelin' Groovy

My dashboard says this is the 79th post I've made, which is scary. (49th would be more fitting, don't you think?) I do this thing when I'm done publishing each post where I read the last post at the bottom of the page, since I've set it to hold 30 posts on the main page so that all my monthly archive buttons don't ever cut anything off--does that make sense? It's one of my little superstitions that I really enjoy. I guess I really have been blogging for half a year now.

Yesterday was possibly the most awesome day ever. Harry and I bought lunch, spent a while lying on the grass in the shade of one miniscule tree, and watched The Full-Metal Alchemist, an anime thing that I resisted. It was actually pretty good. I borrowed this movie called Wargames, too, with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy, which looks great.

I got stuck in a position yesterday where everyone made plans involving me at the same time and I had to be bitchy to everyone. It really sucked. At risk of reiturating, I felt like a bitch, and nobody was there to say "It's okay, you had to cancel on someone" because they were too busy feeling like I was being bitchy. Renata understood. She comforted me--a little. "I know how you feel--either way you have to be bitchy to somebody. It sucks. Still," (after a pause) "If I were one of your friends, I'd probably think you were a bitch too."

Lovely.

Around eight we came back to my house to pick up Lauren, my friend from my essay writing class. In the course of the class, we'd made friends with a lot of people, including a fifty-five year old Jewish guy named Alan who writes like a racier David Sedaris. I showed him Mamoun's Falafal. He looked skeptical every minute of the way--until he took his first bite on the lawn of washington square. "This is good!" he said, surprised. Lauren and I are so similar it's ridiculous. We're on the same wavelength about everything from chocolate to Ginsberg. Lauren and I watched with smiling eyes while Harry struck up a conversation with a street artist, and then began discussing Keroac with two washed-out hippies who hadn't read anything besides On The Road and Howl but were nice anyway. "Have an absolutely beautiful night," they said, and we did. We had ice cream at Ben & Jerry's after dinner ended and Alan went home. Then we came to my house and talked about books and life over Renata's home-made cookies until one or two, when my parents threw everyone out.

And now I'm getting into the shower and thinking about the concert I'm going to see tonight with Elena and about Harry and Steve B. and about Oona, who I won't get to see until next week and whose birthday is on Wednesday, and about Lauren and Alan and our essay-writing class, and about the movie I've got and about what I'm going to do about lunch and about the crazy wonderful beautiful city we live in.

Hear Me Roar

Yesterday was uninteresting all the way through until my class. It was the last class, and it was very emotional for all of us. Lauren came over afterwards and I introduced her to Renata, Abbey, Mom, Dad and Elena. "This is my crazy friend from my crazy class!" I told them. "I could say the same for you," she retorted. We finished the bag of mint chocolate chip cookies that I'd slipped out after class and sat on my bed and talked about all the people we'd met there and about our lives. Then Elena came and Lauren left and the Blues got cancelled and we headed off to see Rie. We didn't get to see her for very long, though, because of my nazi curfew and the tense situation at my house.

So we sat on my bed, waiting for my parents or hers to insist that she leave, and discussed life and self-confidence in wake of our seperate trips. Basically we decided that it's important to treat yourself as nicely as you can, to tell yourself you deserve it. Even do little things that nobody will notice, like wear nice underwear, or paint your nails even if you're not going anywhere, or wear nice pijamas even if no one's looking. If you can pamper yourself a little, without getting carried away, if you can use material things to your advantage to make yourself feel nice, why refrain? We planned our Wednesday perfectly: thrift shops, lunch in the Village, more thrift shops, Star Wars movies. (Who says girls can't love Star Wars? And I fully intend to perpetuate my belief that Luke is hotter than Han Solo in the original three films. He has that whole "I'm a really cool Jedi" thing going for him, you know?) We made a list of things to do and titled it 'The "Hear Me Roar" Day' and decided to pamper and respect ourselves until our next meeting. I wore a silk slip to bed. Why not? I bought it for five dollars at a thrift shop and I see no reason not to wear it. Why not be beautiful all the time? I got a good night's sleep and woke up just as the sun finished lifting its head. There are no bags under my eyes today, only leftover eyeliner from yesterday, and I like the way it looks. I'm going to go take a shower now and enjoy being myself.

I found this inside a chocolate I bought while I was taking my Columbia class, and I love it. I taped it to my bedroom wall.



And... yeah. Vote, so Elena and I can settle this onceandforall:



Don't ignore yesterday's polls, either! Isn't it awesome?

Cool, I can make polls!
Check it out!

Late nights all alone with a test tube... oh, oh, oh oh...

I can't help but think there's a double entendre under it all. Don't get all excited, though, because it has nothing to do with this post.

Yesterday was marvelous. I spent the day walking around with Renata from thrift shop to thrift shop, found a dress from the '30s for $15 at Love Saves the Day and danced there, ran into Justin again (his mohawk is reddish-hot-pink-ish now), ate Otafuku shaved ice, and actually bought something at Claire's. Then I babysat for these two beautiful children, Lissa and Daniel, who live across the street, and they wanted to talk about Star Wars and Harry Potter, for which I was well equipped. We watched Episode II: Attack of the Clones until their mom came home and they ate two cookies apiece, which seemed so sweet to me that I almost cried.

When I got home Harry came and I told him I'd meet him downstairs, and my dad chose that moment to rant at me for about half an hour about how I'm not earning my allowance and am a failure of a person and think I'm superior to him somehow and give him attitude all the time (even though I don't think I said one word the entire time) and how he didn't like the way I was looking at him (in the eyes) and how I don't deserve to go out at nights for reasons still unclear to me. He's really starting to crack. I stood there and took it for about half an hour and then said calmly, "I realize that this is important but Harry's waiting in hundred-degree weather outside. Can we do this when I get back?" Renata held him off by defending me while I slipped out the door. I barely managed to escape, I tell ya.

And then Harry was all sweet (though his breath wasn't) and I told him my story and realized that I had won the last battle and was cheerful and myself and happy all night. Even though I made us walk up and down 17th street a few times before I finally dialed 411 and remembered that Chat 'N' Chew is on 16th. Poor overworked Harry was exhausted by the time we got there. They charged me five bucks for a scoop of ice cream. Grr.

Other than that, I'm feeling pretty good after all that. Not haughty or anything, just secure and comfortable with myself.

The way I must come across on this blog is strange. I write when I'm emotionally upset or especially happy, which must make me seem like a mood-swinging, self-centered, hormonal teenager wallowing in chemical-induced angst. Which I am. To a certain extent. I'm not that bad, though. For the most part I'm pretty happy these days. Readership came back from wherever it was travellling, too, which makes me happy.

Renata's been teaching herself classical pieces from sheet music because she's not taking classical lessons any more, just jazz and jazz guitar. She sounds amazing. She has a way of making even our pathetic, muffled piano sound grand and majestic and rich and brilliant. I think she improvises even on the classical piecs after she's learned them straight. We talked until three or four last night. Nobody, not even Harry, can make me laugh the way Renata can. Mmm.

Found Elai's blog this morning. An interesting read. Very emotional. I hope he doesn't mind that I added him to my link list, as I don't think he even remembers who I am any more.

Damn. It's one in the afternoon and I'm still sitting here in my pijama pants and a ridiculous hot pink shirt my mom bought for me with Veronica of the Archie comics on the front, leaning on her pink cadillac. Not many people (still alive, anyway) have seen me in pink. I made us mac & cheese for lunch and haven't moved more than ten feet since then.

Low-fat capuccino chocolate chip ice cream time.

you see, I couldn't leave unless they threw me out

...'cause I'd already promised I'd keep an eye on the kids.

My ornate and intricate plans to finally get some fucking sleep last night were easily demolished by Renata's friends. They arrived in twos with their frazzled parents, forcing me to politely answer the door every five minutes while Renata talked about movies and my parents nervously cleaned up the house. It was not a party, it was not an "event," it was not an occasion of any type; Renata had merely decided to invite five friends to sleep over. They rented movies (Uptown Girls, Wimbledon, Hitch, The Notebook, Tuck Everlasting and--R. picked this one--Harold and Maude.) I tried to write poetry at midnight but my chair was an island amidst a sea of blue sleeping bags, and I couldn't block out the noise well enough to do better than this.

They came up with all kinds of games--who could stuff the most mini-marshmallows in their mouth, who could make the gooeyest putty using only the marshmallows and their fingers, who could balance the most of my books on their head--and then decided that it would be fun to stay awake all night. They prepared glasses of cold water for anyone who started to fall asleep and giggled when I told them to watch West Side Story instead of one of their chosen flicks.

They turned the volume up every five minutes, left the lights all on, gossiped loudly, and generally disturbed my peace all night. Once again I got four hours of sleep at most. I woke to the sounds of noise and my mother's extremely physical insistence that I "bond" with her today.

"Bonding" with my mom always entails renting videos that we never agree on, shopping for clothes that we never agree on, or drifting aimlessly through the Strand. We chose the latter and took a Pie-by-the-Pound-break around noon. I left with my customary overflowing bag, and she left with a Mexican cookbook that has a recipe in it for making tacos out of fried grasshoppers and another one for salsa spiced with worms. We stopped at 12th Street Books afterwards and emerged equally victorious, and I spent the next two hours trying to get everything to fit on the shelf in my bedroom. All of my shelves are double-layered now, two rows deep and two rows high on each shelf, and I've started stacking the leftovers on top of the damn thing. Renata insists that I can't touch her pristine side, laden with plasticine figurines and vinyls, even though mom and dad use it to store magazines.

Renata fell asleep as soon as she started reading the book I got her (Martin Gardener's Science Circus, a math book from the '70s) and we stopped talking at her. Dad went somewhere, Mom started reheating steaks, and I ate two-day-old cold noodle salad from Republic over T.S. Eliot.

Notice that I get wordier when I'm bored.
Here. A window into my dull day. Two from yesterday, too, 'cause I'm lazy.


it looks worse in real life


stupid angle makes all my eyebrow-raising efforts useless


dwarf nose in front of the propaganda


the man himself


mom speed-reading and being cute


that shower curtain always freaks me out


had bags under my eyes were big enough for all my textbooks yesterday

Feel enlightened?

Me neither. I need my Nikon, you hobo.


EDIT: just as I hit the "publish" button, the phone rang. Conversation went as follows:

"Hello?"
"Hi, I just called to... Do you know who this is?"
"Uh... Susan?"
"Linda, Samantha's mom. Renata, I hope you haven't..."
"Sorry, I'm Veronica."
"Oh! I'm sorry. I thought you were your sister."
"All good. What were you saying?"
"Well, I just called to tell you that I think the Chinese food Renata and Samantha split yesterday was bad, because Sam's been throwing up all afternoon. You didn't eat any of it, I hope?"
"Uh... thanks for the warning, Linda."
"Any time. Is your mother home?"
"Yeah."

I gave the phone to mom and got up to throw away the empty Chinese food containers. Just what I need. A whole night of projectile vomiting.

I feel like a dark conspiracy is bent on depriving me of sleep.

serve the servants

I promised more pictures, so here they are. I can't take any credit for the one of Renata from the ground; Tory took it in Ireland while they were vacationing with T.'s rich family and I was learning how to drink beer fizz.

look out, kid, it's something you did

A lot has happened lately, most of which I am not at liberty to print.

The printable version is this: got four hours of sleep (less?) on Thursday night and three max on Friday. I am being punished for doing nothing--literally--and was forced to go to Penn State University to tour today instead of to LK's country house to have fun.

This morning I was shaken awake. I rolled over and fell on the floor, giving myself a fat lip, and groggily stumbled in the general direction of the bathroom. I missed and got a bruise on my shoulder. I stripped and stepped into the shower only to discover that there was no more hot water. By nine we were in the horrendous-smelling car and on our way to Philly.

My dad's habit of switching lanes every five seconds makes it difficult to sleep, so I finished the Harry Potter book and my bottle of water and stared out the window for a while.

Within five minutes of the start of the lecture I was sound asleep. I brought it on myself by reading Harry Potter until three in the morning, granted, but I was still exhausted. I made my left arm pink pinching it to make myself stay awake, remembering how I once reprimanded Harry for doing the same thing, but it was no use. I just couldn't listen. I couldn't tell whether my eyes were open or closed; I had no idea what state of consciousness I was in. I actually started hallucinating worms in the hair of the poor over-highlighted girl in front of me. I imagined that people were there that were actually in different parts of the country or world and wasn't sure how much of it was pure delusion and how much of it was true. I finally fell asleep and my mom had to force-feed me water to wake me up. Turns out I'd had a heat spell and was severely dehydrated.

So my wonderful, considerate dad bought me a bottle of water and sent me on the two-hour outdoor walking tour. Aren't I the lucky girl.

They bought me jewlery at a thrift shop, though, so I forgive them.

Right now my sister is having about a dozen kids over to sleep here, including Leslie's sister Lauren, and while they left to rent movies Walter, Tory's dad, is chatting my parents up.'

He's so rich and congenial it makes me want to puke. He's not a bad guy, although his hair is a bit too perfect and his voice too smooth for my liking; I just get unnerved by his bottomless closet of Ralph Lauren striped shirts, perfect brown loafers, Hampshire three-story country house, and yacht club membership. If the prep-bourgoisie (sp) thing was ever an item, he is its camera-ready lovechild. He discusses the pros and cons of Miami vs. West Palm Beach as though it's the most fascinating topic in the world; he needs to vacation (Paris or Hawaii?) soon because the pressure of coaching his daughter's softball league is affecting his weak knee. He's bought himself a special pair of glasses, too, so that he won't be heartbroken if they're smashed in some rough game. He happily chats about golf and first-class airplane service; "what was that stewardess, a student? On drugs?" (or "a student on drugs?"; couldn't quite hear).

And my parents, ever predictable, happily chat back, nodding at his monologues as though he's the cleverest man they've ever met.

That's just our daughter in the other room. She has one of those internet-diary things, you know. Everyone seems to have them these days. Even celebrities. It's just a matter of time before we find a way to advertize through them.

Oh yeah, and I went to Oona's house yesterday and watched alternatively crappy and amazing movies and discussed life over brioche (sp?) and Thai food and I realized how much I've missed her and the way she always smells like milky tea and clay.

a simple twist of fate

Thoughts for the day:
LK gets prettier every day, and her style is through the roof
When the noveu-OTP gets together, luck favors us
must escape the iron grip of poetic stagnance
Lauren, if you're reading this... Monday sound good?
just found out that Philly is famous for its thrift shops. Since I'm going there anyway to tour Penn, I may as well check it out, right?

will write more later/tomorrow.
peace.

Links are back, everyone. Comment or email me if you want/don't want to be listed. Or just because you feel like it, whatever. Note that the "email me" button works now.

I'm such a fucking procrastinator.

Give me hope Help me cope With this heavy load...

Good News:
>>LK and I shopped at one thrift store and found about ten things apiece
>>My sister is learning my ways
>>Harry's feet won't die now
>>I'm not in Texas any more
>>I bought a shitload of stuff
>>I cleaned my closet
>>I don't have to take AP Physics next year, although my parents think that's bad news
>>My teacher hates me but otherwise my class is going very well
>>Harry's free half the time
>>I have concerts lined up:
Crosby, Stills & Nash
Paul McCartney
Brian Wilson's Smile tour
The Allman Brothers
Blues Harp at Terra next tuesday (real harp, not harmonica)
La Lanterna this sunday
>>I bought a new harmonica
>>Coffee be good, even if I've over-romanticized it (Harry!)
>>Bought pretty underwear this morning.
>>H. brought me sunflowers, which has always been a childish romantic fantasy of mine. It was really sweet.

Bad News:
>>Old harmonica's screw is lost
>>Elena unhappy in France
>>Have to cough up cash for the two things I asked for for my birthday because Mom bought me things she wanted for herself and everyone else was too lazy to buy me gifts
>>I'm not in Texas any more
>>I'm going broke from buying so much shit
>>Moral code won't let me get stoned and forget about everything
>>Harry's working half the time
>>Not going to perform Irish folk music in a club, since backup guitarist is in France
>>Have to design flyers for Abuelita
>>Have to tour Penn this weekend instead of going to friend's country house, which means awkward four hours with Dad in the car
>>May not get job at Used Book Cafe
>>Pretty underwear was from basement of Old Navy
>>Perfect belt is elusive
>>Got stuck on subway for half an hour and missed my dentist appointment on Wed. You're right, Clark--there's no reason to bless the MTA until the 1-9 and Lexington Line get fixed.
>>No bullet points on this damn thing
>>Blog readership is 1/4 of what it used to be due to summer and crap writing
>>Two assignments due in an hour
>>Have stopped reading essays assigned in class
>>Chocolate jello pudding stains on keyboard now
>>Don't have time to find cheap Nikon manual camera that fits my lens before weekend
>>Have effectively killed the word 'hobo' in a laboriously slow and painful manner
>>Lower body aches from Texas-related atrophy combined with re-introduction to strenuous habitat (NYC)
>>Renata's friends are too inquisitive about my love life! It's creepy!
>>Got no photo for this post. Sorry.
>>Sty under my eye
>>Need to fix two-dollar watch.

Horrible News:
>>Apparantly, my parents don't respect my privacy
>>...or my first amendment rights
>>Spent about an hour sitting on the floor and crying, listening to G.H.'s Give Me Love until Renata woke up and comforted me
>>I'm not going anywhere past six o'clock for the rest of the summer. Possibly ever.
>>REALLY don't want to live here right now.

Yeah. So. Reread this post. It's basically a laundry list for my life. Sorry.

Fly Away Home

Okay, I cheated. A little. That was a movie. About Canadian ducks. But I think it has a soundtrack, so maybe I didn't really...?

Anyway, in the movie the girl realizes that her geese or swans or whatever they are aren't happy and she teaches them how to fly home when they want to.

Well, my parents aren't that girl. I'm still in Texas, land of accents and the friendly obese. But before even the wee hours of tomorrow morning I'll be rudely awakened, shoved in a cold shower, frowned upon and packaged neatly into a Presentable Shirt if someone gathers up the courage to open my suitcase or a Unpresentable Shirt if they don't, in which case I will sit in the middle of the back seat. We will stand in lines and I will sit on the baggage cart and daydream about coffee shops and about not-so-Victorian-ly greeting my not-so-long lost love until they make me get up. I will try to write the two assignments that I owe on Tuesday on the airplane. I will fall asleep halfway through and leave black ink marks on my Presentable Shirt, or my Unpresentable Shirt, as the case may be. My parents will be Very Upset. I will put my headphones on so I don't have to listen to my dad's lectures and snide remarks and won't take them off till after the horribly new-car-smelly car ride, when I will run upstairs to call H. and put on my high-tops and then I will gloriously, magnificently WALK. AWAY FROM MY FAMILY.

God bless the MTA.
And coffee and attractive civilians and parties and Smirnoff Ices and thrift shops and clean paper and pens that work and shiny bookstores and cell phone service and the internet and friends and Washington Square and air conditioners. And people whose names I won't mention who leave him an empty house.

See? Look at that. Away for a week and my atheism is already wearing thin.
As is my readership. Now that I finally have internet access and cell phone service(blame San Antonio) I have discovered that in my absence someone actually WANTED a copy of The Oblivion, somebody remembered my birthday, and nobody bothered to read this.
That's a lie. People read this. Just not many.
Meh. Too bored to care.

Texas is beautiful. It really is. And it's not all Republican, either. In fact, it's almost evenly split, which makes things pretty interesting. Nobody dares to bring up politics at dinner.

My cousins want to hear about my mischevious doings. I've informed them about my newspaper controversies, all the times I've broken into places I wasn't supposed to go to, all the tricks we pull on Montaturo, the way Chris knocked the ceiling out once, the way Maya G.P. and I broke onto the roof, my dealings with the Hubbellator, Matt's rebellion, the concerts, the parties, the Rocky Horror nights (of which I would love to see more!), the Senior Projects fiascoes, the soccer censorship... everything I could think of for an entire car ride.

And when I was done?
They wanted more.

My life isn't interesting enough, apparantly.

I tell ya, I get no gratitude.
Harry, if you say one word about my grammar I will slap you.
In a very un-Victorian way.

I feel like a Cathy cartoon. I want to sob helplessly from homesickness. I want to shop for shoes. I want to buy a membership for a gym I will never visit and calm myself with jello at midnight. I want to buy into a sales pitch and pick up a lemon-yellow bikini that I will never wear (instead of my three-year-old one that doesn't hold my boobs up any more, and which I never liked in the first place). At the very least I want to pour over a motorcycle magazine and decide how much my freedom will cost.

But I am not Cathy, or one of the Hell's Angels, and they want me to eat pizza and be Lively And Entertaining and not myself again.

Someone write some guitar chords for me. I have a gypsy song brewing behind my boredom in the key of E-minor. It is angsty and hormonal and lonely and hopeful and sexy and a little insane.

Like me.

Shades of mediocrity

Catch THAT reference, Lucas!

...oh yeah. You're in Nova Scotia.
Never mind.

I'm writing from Texas. Texas is beautiful. There's unusual wildlife everywhere (my favorites are the armadilloes) and lots of greenery but none of the trees get taller than about eight feet. My family is wonderful: hilarious, hispanic and often annoying. I turned sixteen, which is scary. Everyone gave me presents they wanted for themselves, except for Renata, who gave me a pocketknife that looks like a Harley Davidson fender, purchased at the Motorcycle Museum where we ate lunch. I NEED a motorcylce. NOW.

I've been apathetic for most of the trip, which is unlike me; usually I have more energy and passion than I know how to handle. The only thing I feel out here is lonely and a bit powerless. Anyway after complaining about headaches all week and not being heard my uncle Oscar (a doctor) finally took my temperature and realized that I had a fever. They stuffed a bunch of Tylenol down my throat and gave me lots of food.

I have been vegetating lately. Most of my time is spent lying around, either in the house, the hammock, the car (invariably with one or two cousins piled on my lap), the beach (which has no sand), and various burger restaurants. When I'm not lying around, I'm eating tomatoes, chicken hot dogs or macaroni and cheese, the only semi-vegitarian foods out here. My Abuelita made menudo, too, but I decided not to eat it when I found out it was made of chopped chicken intestines and livers. My mom tutted and said it was good for me, like chicken soup. I made a bowl of macaroni and ate it as slowly as I could until the menudo was all eaten up.

The people are really nice here. The accents are great. I miss Harry a lot, though, and calling him from here involves walking through and empty playground every night and dialing about four times before I get through and scaring away the cats that live under the porch. It's a lovely place, though. We rented this big houes for the whole family and we still have so many people that we end up sleeping in tents on the porch or on the floor in sleeping bags. Nobody minds. We watch movies that my uncle projects onto a window screen every night and set off fireworks, since everyone brought more than they needed. Went to a rodeo a few days ago. Texan stuff. Got affected (effected?) by the heat and had to stumble in and drink three glasses of icewater. Read My Antonia, The Supernaturalists, Artemis Fowl 4, The History of Spider-Man (again), The Death of a Salesman and the first half of the Ovid I brought. Hummingbirds everywhere. Am afraid of lapse into suburbia and mediocrity more than of death. Wear same clothes for days at a time. No control over life. Being forced to leave. Can't wait to be back in city. Love to all.