Moonshadow

Elena and I are starting a webcomic togethern (nothing there yet), and you'll have to email me if you want the URL of the crappy poetry blog, since it's off my profile.

Europe was so magical that I have decided not to describe it. Maybe I'll post some of my photos when they get developed.

Edit: made the first comic!

Hit the road, Jack...

Going to Germany, France and Switzerland until the 28th. Kind of a spur-of-the moment decision on my parents' part. Had an amazing day with Harry yesterday and said a heartwrenching goodbye to my beautiful, beautiful Laura the day before, after a jeans-shopping trip for Harry and a dinner during which our waiter heard the words "okay... what the gynecologist did to her." The only negative things I can think of is that I still haven't showered (it's 11:50) and that my ipod charger won't plug in there.

PS- I may see Jack2 there.

I'm in tune

What I don't like about myself:
I'm irritable and self-centered
I'm a bad daughter
I fight with my dad a lot
Once I get really, really comfortable with people, I tend to get snappy with them
I still don't feel understood by anyone
I don't feel intellectually appreciated by anyone
I live off of chicken, granola bars and jello cups
I'm a bad vegetarian
I trust people too much sometimes
I'm easily disillusioned and deluded
I doubt myself
I don't try to hide my faults or seem normal
I don't know how to take a compliment
I don't know how to accept a gift
I don't know how to give a compliment
I like lying to strangers
I cry a lot
I think I resent my dad most because I'm afraid to be like him one day
I'm a lot like my dad
I've done things that I'm ashamed of
I always think I heard my name when I didn't
I procrastinate writing stories when I have free time and end up writing them during class or instead of doing things with my friends
I get nervous talking to people (even little kids) that I haven't met
I still nourish a dream of being famous like Bob Dylan
I fantasize about what my first book will look like when I can't sleep
I have trouble sleeping
I have a lot of fears
I'm more materialistic than I'd like to be
I tell my sister everything, which is a little selfish of me, because I don't think she's ready for everything I have to tell her
When I'm embarassed, I act really frivolously and get embarassed about it later
I bottle up my emotions sometimes
I can't play music to save my soul
I always think that people dislike me when they actually don't
I'm not appreciative enough of what I have

What I like about myself:
I'm smart
I'm more well-read than most people my age
I've known a lot of different emotions
I've known people from all sorts of places and lifestyles
There are people who like me. I'm starting to understand this.
I'm capable of appreciating high art
I'm capable of finding artistic merit in the mundane
I feel less and less of a need to be understood as I grow older
When I'm comfortable with someone, I'm a good conversationalist
Although I have a lot of fears, I don't let them stop me from doing things like talking to strangers or to people I'm intimidated by
Although I'm very sensitive and easily hurt, I'm capable of healing and arighting myself
I have good taste
I can spout random musical and literary facts on command
I'm outgoing
I'm affectionate towards a lot of people
I'm constantly thinking and easily intellectually stimulated
I almost never get bored
I have awesome friends
I have Harry
I appreciate a lot people
I like most people
I'm confident enough now to go anywhere and not feel daunted by it, Urban Outfitters included
I'm learning to treat myself nicely
I'm learning to eat better
I'm learning to write better
After all this time, I'm starting to really enjoy being myself and living my life.

got to be a joker, he just do what he please

I've been doing this baby-sitting thing where I take this kid to her bus stop for camp at quarter to eight every morning and it's killing me. The kid's mom is a bitch who underpays me, and I end up dead when I'm with Harry and tired all day.

Yesterday, after taking Arianne to her bus stop, I went to the Used Book Café to work my four-hour shift. I shelved for a few hours until the counter was clear and then asked for more work. "It's slow today," Catherine (boss) told me; "Straighten up the A-frames and then get yourself a cup of coffee and take a break." I dutifully rearranged the A-frame displays and then sat myself down with a tall cup of coffee and a tattoo art book.

Then Lauren walked in, all smiles, and sat down with me for a while. Discussions between us are invariably dense and interesting. We're both relatively opinionated and relatively well-read, so we talked about favorite writers and books and concerts we wanted to see together or had seen, and about men, and about college and Heather and journalism and Harry and Yoko Ono and everything else in the world, and then she left to do some errands and I priced all the books that had come up from the basement. I felt guilty about having taken such a long break, so I stayed half an hour late and bought myself lunch at a sandwich shop down the block called the Crosby Connection on Crosby and Bleecker..

It was seriously the best sandwich I've ever had.

Then Oona called, in trouble and unable to lunch anyway, and I went home and met up with Lauren again and we went off to rent Masked & Anonymous because it's amazing and she hasn't seen it. After a complicated fiasco with her sister (R.'s age) and her sister's gay best friend (I need one), we ended up leaving Renata, Alecia and Travis to play Lazer Tag in Times Square while we had sushi with Harry, and then splitting off for the rest of the day. I went thrift-shop shopping and bought myself a skirt for $6, and just as I finished paying Lauren called me back to say she'd gotten into college.

Is it strange to admit to the whole internet that you feel proud of your friend who's three years older than you?

Another thing I've noticed about Lauren: she's not afraid to compliment people. It takes a good deal of self-confidence to hand out compliments freely without worrying about whether you're getting any in return. I'm new to the whole self-confidence thing; it's only now that I'm learning to really live with confidence in myself. Just talking to people takes confidence; sometimes talking to strangers is the hardest thing in the world to do. It's so revitalizing, though! And why not compliment someone? I think of all the nicest and most likeable people I know, and I realize that they have total self-confidence. Someone who really likes themself doesn't go around being stand-offish. They're so comfortable with themselves that they focus on other people, and they're positive enough to find what other people have to offer them. I'm going to work on that this year. Not to the extent of being manipulative, of course, but enough to make people a little happier.

After watching two episodes The Prisoner with Harry and his family and getting home half an hour late, I collapsed into bed at 12:30 and woke up at seven, the best night of sleep I've had in a week. I walked to Arianne's apartment, coincidentially in Will C.'s building, in a daze, and discovered that her dad is really cool. "Is that Bob Dylan on your t-shirt?" he asked, staring. "Yeah," I said, "I'm a really big Dylan fan. I've seen him three times now." "You know," he said, "he used to perform at a place around here, on MacDougal and--third, is it?" "Fourth," I said, and he grinned. We watched the Discovery land and he kissed his daughter good-bye and Arianne and I headed off, hand in hand. And I think--think--I saw Reneé Zellweger (sp) on the street.

After a short nap I had a jello cup for breakfast and sat down to write this, and now Oona's coming for a bite of lunch and summer's still vital and life seems lovely.



Edited in later:
Thought of the day:

Much to my neighbor's chagrin, after the second shower of the day, I have discovered the joys of playing Crashdown at top volume in the nude over cold coffee.

...drifting in and out of lifetimes unmentionable by name...

I can't help having these bouts of pissyness from time to time, during which I get snappish and easily irritated. My parents don't know what to do with me, because they don't really see me all that often, and when they do I'm seldom in a good mood. It doesn't help that my dad's pretty irritable, too; we don't really get along very well. Which is okay, I guess. I can't complain of my situation. I just get sad about it sometimes.

I feel as though I'm many different people sometimes, and I take turns doing things they would do. Does that sound insane? Sometimes I just want to be alone and sometimes I can't get enough of people. Read the events of the last day and tell me if I don't seem to be living several lives.

Yesterday was great. I woke up late, conspicuously free of my usual baggy eyes and crumpled hair, took a shower, and went to a nearby café to write. They were out of croissants, so I ate a chocolate cupcake and planned the plotline of the story from a narrative perspective. When I started getting cold I moved to Union Square and got in an intense conversation with two gay guys about racism and homophobia in society and how the Bible Belt came to be, and red states and blue states and everything else. I don't know why I love talking to strangers so much. Life is about living, you know? I love seeing people with their own energies and ideals and personalities and exchanging ideas with them. I love making friends with street vendors, store workers, bookshop volunteers, homeless people who play the harmonica, strangers in the park. And why not? I'm careful, and I don't usually walk alone at night anyway. I want to live my life as richly as I can.

After talking to them I decided to go to Barnes & Noble on a whim and spent a while looking at tattoo art books--why am I so fascinated by tattoo art?--and finally wandered over to the shelf of baby-name books. I bought one for $4 and decided that my main character's name is Spooner.

When I got home, Renata and Alecia were preparing a "present" for Harry, who's at his country house. We laughed about it for a while before we went to chinatown with my mom and I ordered jellyfish just for the hell of it. It was delicious, although too spicy for me to really handle. We walked around and bought things: sunglasses for Renata, rocking chair for my cell phone, strawberry gummies, I <3 NY tee-shirt for Alecia.

When I got home, I called Harry and we talked for a while about all sorts of meaningful things. I told him about buying the baby-names book and he groaned. I visit him at work almost every day, since it's so near where I live: "Now all my co-workers are going to think I knocked you up!" I was in a great mood, and I just laughed and kept laughing. I really am lucky. Harry still makes me laugh as much as ever, and loves me even more. I fell asleep content, though a little pissed at Renata and Alecia, who kept me up again.

I got my school schedule this morning. It's actually quite nice, with the exception of the fact that I have chorus four times a week on top of jazz vocal twice. If I drop chorus, I'll be able to take yoga instead of tap and maybe LCD, too, and still have a decent amount of frees. Renata's schedule is stuffed, mostly due to Latin, but advisor is Meghan, which rocks, although I'd already known that because Meghan told me at Prom while she was a little tipsy. "Don't tell anyone I told you, though," she giggled, and I grinned. How can you not love her? I had a dream once that she and Fish got married.

And I love Bob Dylan beyond the nameable or even the rational, because his lyrics understand me and speak to me and teach me to aspire.

heart-shaped box

I bought this a month ago from a guy on St. Mark's who'd lost the van he was living in and gave the box and four books to me for $5.

It's noon, and all I've done all day is write notes about the story I'm working on, photograph random things with Renata's digital camera and eat two low-fat jello cups. Renata and Alecia went to the Empire State Building, but I stayed behind because I don't really want to waste mom's money and my time on it, and besides, it has too many weird memories for me. I tried to read The Essential Bogosian, bought last week, but I can't shake this reluctance I have to read it. I don't know why. I'm afraid it will be amazing.

Spent yesterday walking around with Elena, shooting photos and trying on makeup, which is unusual for me. I'm actually very good at applying makeup, but I'm far too lazy and naturalistic to wear much of it. We talked about feeling comfortable in stores and about sexuality and high-end brands and about how strange it is that we're friends and dropped into Jamba Juice and I thought of Doug and Trevor.

I've been blogging almost every day over the last month. I was about to blog a second time yesterday when I decided to write a story instead. Whenever I feel guilty about not writing more often, I think about how often I blog and realize that I do write (albeit in bite-sized snippets) with fair regularity.

I bought myself a bowling pin the other day. The woman at the thrift shop, a new volunteer, said "Girl, what the hell do you plan to do with just one bowling pin?" "If you have more, I'd love to see them," I said, but she just laughed and said "no, we don't have any more," and rang up my bill. Travis and Harry teased me about it when we met up with them for lunch, and Alecia decided that Travis is incredibly hot. I ate Travis and Harry's salads while she oggled.

I do this thing after I publish every post where I read the one at the bottom of the page to see what I was thinking a month or so ago. I like about every other post, and generally hate the ones I don't like. Is my blog really that sporadic? I'm always surprised when something happens and I realize that somebody reads my blog who I didn't think would have bothered to.

My mom got me a Princeton Review SAT I and II tutor. There are times when I don't feel like reading, and they frighten me. I'm probably going to see Matt when I get to France. I like 24 in a guilty-pleasure sort of way. I find myself getting really interested in tattoo art. These are the recent oddities of my daily life.

More crap pictures I took in my house:



the bowling pin!









Lauren, this one's for you:



These are Renata's, and they're damn good:

Why don't we do it in the road?

Although my last post alluded to it, I never fully explained how I came to be sitting on the floor of the top balcolny of the Beacon Theater for three hours, sobbing helplessly in front of Crosby, Stills and Nash. Because my cousin was coming from Wisconsin the next night, my parents planned ahead and bought monday night tickets for the show, so that we could pick her up from the airport on tuesday. We all came in late after a huge argument and my dad beligerently informed the guy that he and his girlfriend were in our seats. He pulled all four of us into the two vacant seats left and obnoxiously pulled out a blue LED light that the whole audience could see and brandished our tickets. "Dude," the guy snorted, "those tickets are for tomorrow night." Nice planning, dad. I didn't hear any of this, though, because I was terrified of the height, and once the next song started I forgot even the height and closed my eyes to listen.

Soon my parents left, huffily nursing their wounded prides. Renata and I, after some pleading, were allowed to stay, but we were afraid to go to another balcolny, and there were no more empty seats, so we sat on the floor. The show was amazing. We subwayed home happily and went to sleep with music in our ears.

The next day DaSilva came over and called up minutes before Domino's did. "Hang on a minute, let me put some pants on and buzz you in," I said. I went to the lobby to pick him up in my tapioca-stained men's pants and tank top, greasy hair and all. "Barefooted hippie," he grinned, and we shared a lovely day on St. Mark's and everywhere else and finally bussed home when the heat became overbearing. I finished off a roll of film and put a dent in my next one, and my picture-taking escapades ranged from lying on the sidewalk to take a picture of a mosaic-covered lamp post to making Alex sit on a vacant motorcycle to add a "human element." Once I lay on my back on the hood of a car to photograph a store front from the right distance and then realized that someone was in the car, glaring at me. I laughed.

Harry and I had a lovely dinner after Alex left, and when I got home Alecia (the aforementioned cousin) was already there. Although my parents had been able to get new and usable tickets for the same show that night, I'd decided that it couldn't possibly measure up to the previous night's experience, and that I wanted to see Harry anyway, so my dad and Renata went and sold the extra tickets for cover price while my mom picked Alicia up from the airport.

Alecia is lovely and just like my sister, except six months younger, Wisconsinese, and a little less intellectual. They've been great friends since they were babies and they never stop laughing when they're together. We've shown her a significant portion of the city of the last few days, the Village included, and they've deprived me of a significant amount of sleep, which frankly pisses me off, because I get tired and I don't like having dad's blue LED light flashed in and out of my eyes for an hour when I should be sleeping.

I can't get over William Goyen. I read two more of his stories and I can't stop thinking about them. Goyen's words echo in my head. When I read him I realize why I never felt like I belonged anywhere: I belong to stories like these. Certain songs, certain novels, certain stories understand me the way no human ever could, even when they treat topics so alien to my life that I have to google them to understand what he's talking about. So many things move me--how could I ever be bored? There's so much voice, so much emotion and power in his stories. I'll never tire of them.

And when my dad won't read more than two pages of Uncle Wiggly in Conneticut and my mom has decided that she "doesn't like Salinger," I want to cry.

Instead, I take my sister and my cousin to a French bakery and have my watches fixed and buy a pair of plaid converse for $15 only to discover that they're not Cons at all and play Beatles songs (hence the title) and look up their origins in A Hard Day's Write: Paul was in India and saw two monkeys copulating shamelessly in the middle of the road.

And he knew and I know that there's something beautiful about that.

just close your eyes and sigh and know they love you

A really good concert is like an orgasm. It's about the liberty of sensual pleasure. At a concert you're there only for you and for them, whoever you came to see, and you don't give a flying fuck about anything else. You're pampering yourself, treating yourself to an experience that speaks for itself, and only you will know afterwards if it was worth it, or even any good. You get there and sit still and wait, shivering, exposed, anxious, wondering if it'll be any good or if you've been deluded by a smoke-and-mirror musician who won't perform the way his records promised.

At a really good concert, though, you're never let down in the slightest. The music grips you from inside and grabs onto something and doesn't let go. You feel it in every muscle in your body and you succumb to it at first, sit still and let it wash over you, watch your own enthusiasm surface and break out. Music is almost more sensual than touch at these moments; a wrong note is repulsive like a blow to the face, and the right one sends a chill down your spine. You can't help but move with it after a time, let it stretch its puppeteer's fingers into your limbs until you're positively convulsing and have no desire to stop. It's luxurious and wonderful and when everything's going right it's pure, sensual pleasure. You feel like they're playing just for you, watching your face closely to make sure you're feeling it and catering each note to your specific desires and whims. You begin to trust them to hold you here, keep you in this place, whatever it is; to let them please you and enjoy having you in their hold. Once you've broken your ticket the band grabs you, throws you in a chair and takes you, whether you like it or not, and you hope and pray that it'll be good. If it's wrong, if it's bad, it's worse than rape; you have to get out at all costs, even if it means spilling beer on your neighbor or stepping on someone's foot in an attempt to get out; and often you stay, hoping it'll aright itself and give you the thrill you came for and paid for. When it's good, though, you moan, you scream, you sob, you close your eyes and then wrench them open again to stare into the blaring lights and feel the heat of the room. A good concert has a very specific smell: sweat, spilled beer, fresh t-shirts in plastic bags, pot smoke that seeps into everyone's clothing. Your eyes and legs and feet and arms ache but you can't stop yourself from standing up at the end of the song to embrace your lover and whisper "thanks" to their bare chest as attractively as you can and feeling their warmth and satisfaction with their performance in their steady heartbeat.

After the show, sometimes you can remember every titillating moment of it and sometimes you have no idea what the fuck they were doing, but you know you liked it because an echo of it is still lingering on the fresh lawn of your mind, a shadow of the events of the night, and you know you're going to remember the walk home, the cup of coffee, the metro-card machine, though not as vividly as you'll remember the music. Things fade fast and you realize that there are tears on every inch of your face and that you've been thinking about yourself all night, through the haze of the pleasure, and you feel that shudder, that need to end it all, all the feelings and emotions and touch, and you want utter silence but you still feel the soft echoes in your ears like soft kisses in the small your back and you shudder and wait a while until the night seeps out of you and leaves you nude and contently apathetic and before you know it you've drifted into sleep.

for the benefit of mr kite

these are old.

me


me & H.


fire escape where I watch the sun rise


us