schizoforest love suite

Today was a feel-good, look-good day. I laughed and had confidence and liked people and learned two new tap steps and left at two to go to the East Village Thrift Shop, where I bought a belt, a shirt and two sweaters for cheap, and then ran some errands--that is, bought myself thigh-height stockings with a lace top and a stripe down the back and new underwear and shampoo. Highly important. I got back around four thirty and painted my nails and reheated Chinese food for dinner and put everything away and tried on the tights and underwear and clothes and surfed the internet for a while.

And now it's six and I have an essay to write.

I can't get rid of my MySpace. I've unfriended Tom twice. It didn't help. I can't find a "help" page or a "delete my account" button, and they keep sending me emails saying that I have comments or friend requests. I almost never refuse to friend anyone, so my "friends" aren't really my friends, anway.

Several people have said that they like my hair better now than before, which confuses me.

I'm feeling very hippie-grunge-french-Veronica.

I haven't heard from Diane about my play and I'm terrified. I hate it. I'm ashamed to own up to having written it. I wish it were someone else's. I wish I could write better. I wish I was in college. I wish certain members of my editorial staff knew how to write. I wish to go to the festival...



Edited in: I don't want to make a new post for this, but check it out:
http://www.ampleforth.net/index.php?strip_id=27
Most of the strips aren't that good, and this one's cheezy and everything, but I like the sentiment.

And Diane's going to meet with me sixth tomorrow. I'm scared!

the sign in the shop-window

Why? Because I feel like writing it. Maybe it will make me happy.


Things I love:

silver rings
old things with the colors faded and holes in the crushed velvet
eerie artists and writers
black ink pens
German plays
wigu
the English office
the Crevice, when it's empty
my sister
seeing my sister happy in high school
the smell of old books
Grimm fairy tales (I've been reading them a lot lately)
Elvis fanatics
people who go barefoot
going barefoot
summer
old bicycles
doing things by myself
getting things done
getting emails
sparrows and fish--I don't know why
real conversations
grunge
Harry
being in love with Harry
being loved by Harry
being comfortable with people
sudden bursts of really good writing and inspiration
people who really like math
folk music
surrealism
playing the harmonica
buying books
people with unusual glasses
boots
eighties headphones
Taylor guitars
cake
french food
people who have enough self-confidence to compliment people sincerely
superhero stories
shakespeare
kids who are serious
kids who aren't serious
my big mexican family
people who are well-read
feeling well-read
taking photos
darkrooms
camera shops
talking to strangers
the smell of concerts (pot, beer, sweat, cigarettes)
the smell of cigarettes (I don't smoke, but everyone else seems to)
reading under the covers
vintage slips
silky underwear
old wedding dresses
russian short stories
vinyl albums
upright basses
guys who are vegitarians
queen anne's lace (a kind of flower)
people who have cats but aren't weirdly obsessed with them
finding new restaurants
when people have unusual interests like millinery or whittling or abstract physics but don't brag about them
thrift shops and thrift markets
sugar popcorn
elaborate lampshades
stores that are on the second floor
sitting on my fire escape when the sun comes up in the summer
concerts my friends play
dancing, even though I suck at it
watching movies with people
cactuses
being taken care of when I'm sick. Even though I get sick a lot, this never happens.
foreign languages
sci-fi or fantasy that's so good it excuses the rest of the genre
giving things to people that they like, like books or old clothes or ukeleles
rockabilly music
Child balads
painting with gesso
action figures
cloth with unusual patterns and textures
talking about poetry
newspapers
indian soup
hearing about other people's happy relationships
weird-looking actors and actresses
beat poets
1920s and 30s fashion, especially the dresses with split capes and the haircuts
fabric stores
harware stores
going into churches to find the sixth station of the cross
old boxes
beautiful cover art on old paperbacks
swimming
the gay man in my lobby who used to be a dancer and has a dog named Gomez
little kids' drawings
finding rolls of film that I forgot I took and getting them developed
standing-room opera tickets
tattoos
Harry's parents
rain in the summer
the Texas hill country
people who drink tea but aren't pretentious about it
when Renata and I speak in unison
when my plants don't die
eerie dreams
being given hand-knit things
polaroid cameras
other people's bookshelves
old mirrors and combs
people who listen to tapes
old cars and motorcycles
Swedish motorbikes
monks

brokenhearted jubilee

I'm happy--actually, nervous out of my mind--because I finished my play and gave it to Diane, who really is a wonderful amazing person. I hate it. It's tacky and horrible and everything. But at least it's done.

Renata's sitting on the floor leaning against the sofa playing macca's "junk," which is where I got my quote, for those of you who hadn't figured it out yet and are probably Harry.

I wrote two essays and a five-page lab after school today, after writing five pages of my play during my frees. I still have to write my letter from the editor and make a graph, but I'm saving it for later.

I sustained myself with a piece of chocolate cake and chinese food for dinner. I'm so bad! I wrecked my eating-healthy streak, which was fairly successful, with one night of stress. I took breaks to search authors on wikipedia, read a few webcomics and order some books off of amazon.com.

So while I'm in an intellectual and accomplishing-things jubilee, I'm brokenhearted because I won't see Harry for two weeks and I'm worried sick that I can't talk to anyone any more and because junior year sucks.

I'm bored with school. I used to feel so much love for the people around me! Then again, I had Harry every day, and LK and Rie and Frankie and David Tay and Evan and Peter and Zack, and Oona and Rachel and Amanda and I were all friends, and Matt and Clark and Lucas and Ty and Ja weren't hibernating in the stu, and Chloe was here, and everything was sunny and fun and I started thinking I knew who I was.

Now it's just my grade, and I can't help it if all the girls look the same to me. They think I'm weird and I'm not interested in them and the whole thing falls apart. Some of the guys in my grade put up with me, but we're not really friends. I don't play pool or cards or do their thing. (Actually, I do play cards, and quite well, but I don't play with them.) I'd have to be a stoner or a really good guitarist or really popular to hang out with the current seniors. I can't hang out with the underclassmen because my sister does that.

So I spend my frees reading art books in the crevice and reading books in the reading room, which is pleasantly devoid of upperclasmen, and writing ideas for plays and to-do lists and wishing I hadn't forgotten my ipod. I spent a whole period in the English office talking about the American belief in meritocricy and the new place of intelligence in the value system and everything else under the sun with Donovan and Mr. Schwartz. It was glorious.

every time you move your mouth

If I thought there was any worth to anything I've ever written I wouldn't care about anything else in the world.

I've spent the last few days either procrastinating or working on my play. And I still hate it.

Diane Moroff says that's natural.
I still hate it.
I think I've killed my muse.
If she was real in the first place.

In other news, I sorted it out and decided that I like my closet. I can't wait to get a sewing machine and start re-making things.

I am a drifter and don't have very many friends but I'm getting used to it. Someone told me today that I came across as very strong. (Not physically, of course.) I was pleasantly surprised. I've always wanted to be considered strong, more than almost anything else, but breaking into tears just about every weekend doesn't exactly encourage that belief. Strong like Misa and Adrien and Sonia and Jaya. Tall and beautiful and independent.

I just wish I knew how to talk to H.

honky-tonk blues

This break:

-Saw a crowd of old friends and acquaintances and generally missed last year
-Saw very little Harry
-Got very sick
-Got well again
-Bought underwear
-Made chocolate cake
-Fought with my dad
-Got dandruff
-Ate French turkey and Mexican side-dishes
-Worked on my play
-Ordered my glasses
-Almost finished the Norton
-Spoke a lot of Spanish
-Discovered the Hell's Kitchen Thrift Market--how had I not known about it?
-Bought two pairs of boots and dollar-bin jewelry and nearly froze
-Made a hat
-Learned to bend to a third note on my broken A-harp
-Spent a day with Elena and decided not to shop anything but thrift shops, even though it means getting sick three times as often, according to an article I read recently
-Had Thai soup with Lauren and then splurged at the thrift market (at $40 in a day it's almost an addiction)
-Decided to see The Squid and the Whale
-Worked on a bike for hours on end. There's steel wool between my toes, grease across my forehead and varnish under my broken nails. It feels sexy.

After all of this, I decided to return to my hippie-grunge roots a little.

Guess what?
I feel happy.
Maybe it's the chocolate cake.

it's okay to shoot the moon...

I AM CAPABLE OF BEING AN AMAZING PERSON.

I'm feeling better.

I want to go to college and live like a free spirit and start over again and be wonderful.

I think my posts will be a bit more concise from now on.




Edit: PS- Happy (belated) thanksgiving, everyone. I hope yours was as Mexican and less viral than mine.

black jack davey

142. My blog is now so huge that I can't envision anyone ever reading it from the start.

I am a dylanite through and through. Sincerely.
I'm trying not to cry over this.

I spent Thanksgiving feeling miserably sick in a house of seven, six of us speaking Spanish nonstop. I felt awful. I kept curling up in corners and falling asleep. I thought I would pass out in the shower. I locked the door and slept naked in my parents' room and then put on my bathrobe and fell asleep on the couch and then got dressed and fell asleep on my bed, currently my abuela's bed. I knit a hat that's too big. I stuffed myself with French turkey and Mexican side dishes and Renata's apple pie, after skipping lunch and dinner the day before from fatigue. I painted my nails and wrote three more scenes. 4/9 is almost halfway done...

I feel very isolated. And sick.

I hate that I don't know how to carry out a conversation any more. There's nobody left that I like who I am with, not even Renata. I need to fix this. Soon.

I was talking with Harry today about fashion and whether I consider myself fashionable. I guess I like to think of myself as a little fashionable but with more of a personal twist. I like feeling elegant. I like evening dresses and belted sweaters and swept-back hair and silk scarves.

I went to H&M with Elena yesterday and felt disgusted by the hip-ness of the place. Forever 21, though somewhat lamer, produced the same effect. I opened an Allure magazine today and found myself turned off even by Miu Miu and Versace. I don't know why, but I hate mass-marketed style. I want to dress my own way.

I'm officially 100% thrift-shop-dependent. I want to look the way I feel. I want to wear clothes that are utterly unique. If I have to make them myself, so be it.

I wish I had something more interesting to say. I feel kind of dead. I want to get healthy again. Physically and mentally.

splish-splash

My whole house emptied out early this morning, leaving me free to make a cake, read A Naked Lunch uninterrupted, do some errands and surf the internet for a while.

Then I realized what a waste that was of a perfectly good empty house. I logged off and took a long, hot bath, blow-dried my hair and warmed up again in my thick black bathrobe. I took a look at myself in the full-length mirror and got to see for the first time in ages what I really look like.

I'm in good shape. I'd gained a few pounds but successfully dropped them off over the last two weeks. I didn't mind what I saw. (Aside from the haircut, though Harry claims to like it.)

I like clothes and all but bare human bodies are infinately more beautiful than anything a designer can ever dream up. I firmly believe that.

I also believe that nobody in New York should ever own things they don't love or wear clothes they don't like. There are a million thrift shops and places to find things. Nobody should ever have to be discontent with their style.

That said, shopping is a little time-consuming. But still.

This play is proving harder to write than I thought. The plot has gotten very intricate and it's hard to make the dialogue flow realistically and still support the plot twists. And the name Frank Grimes turns out to belong to a character from the Simpsons, so I'm short a name.

And I still have to see Walk the Line, even though I hear it's not that great.

Meh.

which will bring us back to "do"...

So my haircutter set back the clock and I can't get over it. Harry insists that I post pictures. I hate it. It's not me. My sister is seriously pissing me off by saying I'm stupid to obsess over it and then telling me that she doesn't like it. And singing "do re mi" over and over and over again... argh!

No guy I've talked to so far can tell the difference, but everyone else can see the difference, and agrees that it's not me. I'm more classical, I guess. It's too cute. I like being taken seriously and surprising people with lightness and humor, rather than the other way around.

The ugly, grumpy expression is due to a splitting headache, fatique from having walked about fourty blocks in the cold and spending half an hour waiting for a prescription at RiteAid and then not having it filled, having laryngitis and HATING my haircut. It's not that it's a bad cut. It's just not me. And it will take a long time for it to get back to where it was. I don't really know how long hair takes to grow. My optimistic guess is a few months; my pessimistic one is a year. Great. Just in time for all the alums to come back.

Click to enlarge. I'm using the Blogger photohost instead of PhotoBucket because they disabled me for a few more days.

On a completely unrelated note, Diane Moroff agreed to read my play! I am overjoyed. So far it is only one scene and eight typed pages, but I've written three more scenes that I haven't typed up yet, and they get longer each time I transcribe them.

Dialogue is my greatest foe, and I will conquer it. Before next Thursday 12:00.

Sorry for lazy grammar. I'm exhausted and I can't breath through my left nostril.

Nevermind

I'll be wearing a lot of hats for the next few weeks.

Somehow a seventies shirt, natural-waist belt, bucket hat and tall peppermint mocha from Ms. Reyes make everything OK.

I have laryngitis.

My pictures came back.

I like meeting new people.

I blog too much.

I told him I wanted a fucking trim and now all my hair's gone and I feel like crying. It's ugly as fuck. It's like being in seventh grade again. I fucking look like my mom.

Beat it

My weekend:

I freaked out and broke down on Friday.

On Saturday I screwed up the lights for the play (mildly)--"Veronica, I love you, I love you, I love you so much. But you really fucked up the first act." -Lucas

Had dinner with Nico and my sister at Joe Jr.'s between performances--"Senior year was my best year of high school"--and bought a book on his reccomendation that is proving extremely depressing.

Decided that I love Dan Yawitz--"Look at you, you just radiate personality!"

Tap danced at the cast party and got a piggy-back ride from Clark, who then proceeded to put my rose in his hair and imitate me--"Bob Dylan! Thomas Hardy! Treeees!"--for the rest of the night.

I also took Tory home with Burke, Tia, Matt and Clark and scared her a bit when we started reminiscing about last year's parties. In addition, I lead everyone about twenty blocks in the wrong direction, leading us to "People With A.I.D.S. Plaza" ("People-with-severe-testicular-disorders Boulevard!" -Matt). Clark's never, ever going to let me hear the end of it.

Didn't do any homework.

Didn't work on my play.

Found a pair of glasses that I like better than either of the pairs I've got.

Had a good time with Harry.



I've decided that I simply have to be happier. I need to make an effort to make myself happy every day and resist depressing thoughts. It's starting to be a real problem. It's starting to affect other people and other aspects of my life.

I think I can do it. As recently as last summer DaSilva and his ilk called me carefree (well, "so fucking carefree!"--to be precise) and I felt like a free spirit. I had a good time this weekend. I know I can be a confident, fun person. I know I can be happy and carefree again and know myself and know my own opinions and hold decent conversations. I need to eat healthy and treat myself well and do things that make me happy.

Winter's coming slowly. It's like it's giving me extra time, one last chance to cast a better shape before I'm frozen in place.

I think I can do it.

Blue Danube

I haven't blogged for a while, mainly because I wanted to get your opinions on the glasses (I'll make the final decision after Harry looks at them both). And a lot's happened. And I'm too lazy to put it all in sequence. Gather what you can from my collage.

My evil bio teacher (whose name I won't write because I know everyone googles it) made me get up in front of the whole class with Andrew T. and do a lab for a whole period. Andrew poured liquids into test tubes. I got the fun job of cutting week-old beef liver into parts and putting it in the blender. Then he told Andrew to pour hydrogen peroxide into the test tubes of liver-juice. It foamed up and exploded all over me. Then he made me do it two more times, with the juice and peroxide sliding around inside my broken lab gloves. This was a mere week after I told him I was "squeamish."

I got my revenge by working on a play (I'm finally doing it!) all through the next class and suggesting that his "Conundrum Clues" came from a book heavily endorsed by Disney. Which is probably true.

Ms. Daly made me come in for my conference at 7:30 so I wouldn't have to miss ten minutes of jazz vocal and then told my mom about how I got in-house for riding the elevator. My mom didn't seem to care.

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons sitting in the light-box and writing while trying to make all of the cues, and getting yelled at by Mike, the evil light-man whose job I apparantly stole. The play opened tonight. Doug yelled at me when I screwed up the first show I'd ever run--and then apologized in the library the next day and told me I'd done it perfectly the second time. The sophomores gave me lollipops. Dennis missed a cue and I hit one too early, and the curtains got stuck halfway through, but it was all right. I get all the details on his ex-girlfriend, personal issues, college and high school experiences, grudge against Doug ("Prima Donna!") and qualms with Jennifer. He mentions Frankie and Shapiro every other minute, as well as every other theater-involved alumni. He's a nice guy, though, and he seems to like me, which makes the play more relaxing and less... pressured. I guess.

I wonder if he's ever read this.

I think I've finally resolved some very deep personal issues that gave me a lot of grief, or come close to resolving them. I'm still not sure what the nature of the thing was in the first place, but it's dying, and I'm glad.

My mom and I went shopping at the Housing Works designer-label event. I bought a lot of expensive stuff, and she bought two chairs, but I got us a 20% discount because I work at UBC, and with the chairs and all it nearly covered the cost of the stuff I'd bought.

I miss my beautiful Lauren Taylor! She called me during Zippoli's class, and he was about to answer it when she hung up. I sort of wish she'd been there to say something funny or witty or cutting and either get him to make a joke and forgive me or stun him into silence.

Adam started complimenting me, seemingly randomly, during a dress-rehearsal. Then I remembered that I'd given him the rest of my milkshake earlier. Karma, or calculation?

I feel weird about eating meat but I feel just as weird abstaining from it. It's a strange conundrum.

I convinced the-bio-teacher-who-shall-not-be-named to let me use a potato instead of a cow liver next class.

And all my photos got taken down until the 26th when I tried to upload the pictures of the glasses. It's annoying but oddly convenient, because now the page loads faster. I guess the internet's trying to teach me self-reliance.

I bought concealer in an effort to hide my zits. It worked pretty well. I felt pretty and elegant and everything all afternoon, and cursed out several oversexed delivery boys in Spanish.

I don't have the energy for this. I'm going to get a Gunter Grass novel and a glass of apple cider and fall asleep reading.

I am so in love...

They say that our ore ain't worth diggin'

I have so many issues.

On a lighter note, I feel like I'm really getting to be a good biker.

And I bought glasses this weekend. I couldn't decide which ones I liked best, so I bought them both on the condition that I'm going to return one within the prescribed thirty days. Tell me which ones you prefer and then vote! As a disclaimer, I'll take y'all's opinions into consideration but will ultimately make the decision myself.

Another thing you should know is that I also have contacts, and wear a lot of dark red, so matching my wardrobe isn't that big of an issue.

They look less similar in real life.

PhotoBucket says I can't upload any more pictures this month, and Flickr doesn't let me use tags to blog my photos (each one becomes a seperate post), so I'm just just including a handy link so you can see all the pictures at once and then vote below that.

glasses here



Oh, and I got into a conversation about Edith Wharton's work at UBC with one of the customers, and then he noticed that I was reading one of Harry's dad's books and started going on about how great Eric was. I wholeheartedly agree.

I love Harry and I love his family. The whole bunch of them are wonderful.
My mom is getting on my nerves, and I'm trying as hard as I can not to resort to cookies.



Edited in later: I gave in and ate the cookies. And I hate Flickr.

may you always be deep-rootedwhen the winds of change shift

I met Adrian Tomine and Seth and stumped them with a good question! That's a lie. They answered it very well. But they were happy about it and smiled at me. Until my mom and I made them sign about a dozen books.

Parties these days are getting lame. Harry, Travis and I went to a huge one and left early because Harry was the oldest guy there, and Travis was the youngest, and neither of them wanted to talk to anyone, and I barely knew any of the people there. Everyone just talked about how this year's parties were nothing like last year's. And there was nothing but lite beer and a little vodka, which I don't like.

Is it just me, or do most of the sophomore girls look the same?
I finally found a Christmas present for Harry.
I can't think of what to write. I'm going to the thrift market. More later.

the world will see a new georgie girl

The train of thought mentioned in my last post lead me to the conclusion that there's nothing for me to live for but myself. If I can't affect change, why not make myself and the people I care about happy? I decided to spend the rest of the week being as positive as possible. My free-spirited inner self usually gets buried in snow during the winter, but this time I'm determined to try to be happy even though it's cold and the flowers are all dead. I have my Harry and my friends and a lovely life. I have no reason to be unhappy, or to do things that make me unhappy.

It's remarkably easy. At least, today it was. I enjoyed every minute of Jazz Vocal, the class most indicative of my mood (I love it some days and hate it others) and talked about literature and love with two freshmen who seemed interested and took club photos and biked over to East Village Thrift Shop afterwards and bought myself a shirt and Harry a sweater, even though he's going to resist it. I even took a picture of myself smiling, which I haven't done for a long time now. It looks horrible, which is why I don't usually do it.

Oh, and I saw the greatest Trey Anastasio show last night. It was incredible. I kind of got a second-hand high or something and started feeling dizzy and had to leave before the encore, but the show was great.

I only have two classes tomorrow, Precalc and Bio (and Jazz Vocal, which isn't really a class), but Ms. Daly is making me come in at 1:40 for my conference instead of at 11:30 as previously planned, even though I'd only be missing fifteen minutes of Jazz Vocal which probably wouldn't be life-threatening. She got very pushy about it when I told her Bob had said it would be okay.

I'm going to a book signing tonight, too, because I'm a dork.

Have some pretentious photos! I was feeling pretty, but after this little session with the camera and my bathroom mirror, I felt somewhat less so.

In the middle of that hub I remember one jazz club...

Today the newspaper came out. I proudly handed out copies outside the door of the meetinghouse--"The Oblivion is here!"--and spent the rest of the day picking copies off of the floor and poring over the mistakes we'd failed to catch. "This is a horrible newspaper," Doug said as I walked into History. "Yeah, it's the worst newspaper I've ever read," said Beni. "That's because you've never read a real newspaper," Julianna quipped.

Mr. Byrne also came up to me in the hallway and, instead of trying to make me move, started telling me how the English office had been talking about how "brilliant" I was.

But enough bragging. I want to go back to last night, when I was biking home from the Used Book Café in black fishnets and a dark-red plaid shirt, freezing.

People have strange thoughts when they're cold. I rode slowly, because it was dark, even thought I was freezing. I began thinking about how futile man's struggle against nature is. No matter how big the building is, you still have to cross the street at some point, and if it's cold, or wet, or too hot, you're going to suffer a little, no matter how important you are or how much money's in your pocket. I usually end up thinking about the futility of trying to reach out to mankind when I get that feeling; but instead I started thinking about mankind as a whole being futile against the vastness and emptiness of everything else. It was strangely liberating. My twisted logic was as follows: I can make no difference to mankind (which usually makes me sad), but mankind can make no difference to the world or the universe or the weather, so it doesn't matter if I can change mankind. It's a wierd application of the standard. Being unable to make a difference previously made me feel invalid. But now, because mankind is incapable of making a difference, it is invalid, making me valid either way, whether or not I ever impact humanity.

Do you see what I'm saying?

I've also been thinking about my feelings about the whole vegitarian thing. I don't know if I'm going back or not. While it's a wonderful theory, the fact is that everything about our culture (to quote Harry) revolves around the death and use of animals. Glue. Plastic. Sneakers. Jello. Most foods. I'm starting to feel like the four years I spent as a semi-vegitarian were useless. I guess I always knew that I wasn't making much of a difference, but I was able to pretend for a while and feel good about it. I felt as guilty being a pseudo-vegitarian at the end as I feel eating meat now. I don't know which is worse; I don't know what I want to do. I'm starting to feel an Emersonian "are they my poor?" rising in me, confusing my previously-held morals. I used to resent women who established themselves socially as superior to me. Then I started telling myself to prove to them that I was as good as they were. I wonder now if I'm unconsciously giving others the message that I'm superior to them--if I've switched sides in my rebellion and become that which I hated.

Anyway, it gave me a sense of liberation. I called Harry and tried to talk about it, but ended up just laughing when he said he had to go and saying "Wait. I love you. Make me laugh some more." I need to laugh more. I don't laugh enough.

Call it hormones, but I'm feeling a little better. The sense of liberation pervaded my day and made the publication of The Oblivion even more cheerful.

I got my dad to read Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. He resisted for a while, but finally agreed to read it on the plane on one of his business trips. He loved it. He kept saying that it was ingenius and that he needed to read it a few more times and take notes and such, and I kept saying "I told you so."

It's ten minutes to the end of seventh period and I want food. Unfortunately, the cafeteria is closed and I don't have time to go out and get something.



Thought of the day: mixing metaphors should be illegal.
People are okay I guess.

who's that knocking on my door?

I feel like I should clarify my last post a bit before kicking off this one. I meant that while I try to be cheerful and make everyone happy I end up crying anyway. I don't cry every day or all the time or anything. I just live a normal life punctuated by spells of unhappiness.

I also woke up this morning bleeding all over the place, which might have something to do with it.
It's tough being a woman.
At least I have an excuse for looking so hefty lately.
I hope I'm a little saner by the time I reach college, by the time I have kids.

My cell phone rang in Ms. Reyes' class ten minutes before the bell. Doug shouted "answer it!" to her, and I nearly let her, because it was Harry, and it would have been amusing, but she actually asked me if I wanted to answer it myself. I shook my head and turned it off, and ten minutes later I signed out of in-house for the last time, ran down the block to Starbucks and began my weekend.

So after some sadness and a lot of happiness, I fell asleep watching a Sherlock Holmes movie on Harry's lap, and before I knew it I was thrift-market-shopping and watching Amelie and eating dark cherry sorbet at Emack & Bolio's and apologizing and watching more movies with Renata and Travis and reading Wilde and falling asleep again with the book still in my hand, only to be woken up, handed a Patti Smith shirt and told to brush my teeth. I must admit that I didn't. I just curled into a ball and closed my eyes and woke up in time to say good-bye to my dad before he went to Atlanta.

Today I went shopping with my mom, my sister and Matt. I think the poor fellow felt a little awkward, especially when my mom cornered him and started asking about the new college counselor for twenty minutes. We had sushi and went to Daffy's, where I bought several men's shirts and a men's belt.

I worry sometimes about how much I like men's clothes. I like women's clothes, too, but they never seem as edgy or interesting as men's fashion, and I'm not thin enough to make them look good, anyway. So many lovely clothes are left behind because men are afraid to be called gay for wearing them. I buttoned up shirt after shirt in the dressing room and felt great about it. Black corduroy. Black plaid with peach accents. Red washable silk with miniscule blue lines. Dark red and brown with black buttons that pull tight across my breasts. I feel full and luscious in these clothes. I don't see my abdomen protruding or my shoulders sagging forwards. I see dark hair falling around a face that's a little paler than it ought to be, giving it a fragile, Rhonda-like look. I don't see acne or dark circles below my eyes or eyebrows that badly need maitenance. I bought comfortable men's flannel pijama pants, too, the kind that hang over my feet and leave an extra foot at each end of the drawstring.

So I splurged a little. My mom seemed happy to buy everything, and I was more than happy to have it. Matt left to photograph squirrels and we went to Bed Bath & Beyond and splurged again on discounted shampoo, razors and closet organizers. Mom made dinner and I compulsively organized everything and threw a bunch of shoes in a bucket to give away.

Oh, and I tried to make brownies and made cookies instead by accident.

After a long, full weekend, I put on a Mexican blouse (men's), ate a cold slice of cherry pie, watched Scorcese's first movie and sat down to blog, at H.'s request.

Enjoying a beautiful sense of self right now. It's probably from the hormones and the cherry pie, but it still feels nice.

And some photos! Most of these are from today, but a few are old.

I'm blurry.




sequential art; would Scott McCloud call it a comic?




(those were old ^^ and these are new vv)

renata made these for me...




brownies?



My mom used to tell me how her brothers would take apart their car engines and come out with extra pieces.




After all that sorting, it was kind of the same story.

Me in my I'm-bloated mexican blouse. It kind of works better when I don't use a mirror.




The wall, as it stands.



I guess I just want to be a nice person and genuinely appreciate people.

I wonder if I'll ever be free of my tears.

honey pie, my position is tragiccome and show me the magicof your hollywood song

I'm posting for the fourth time in two days because I feel like it.

I did a lot of shopping today, mostly at Bed Bath & Beyond and at The Container Store. I set out with the purpose of buying bins for Harry to hold his stuff with (his room was a mess last time I saw it... I couldn't see the floor when I walked in). I bought myself a six-dollar shelf system, too, and a few other knick-knacks.

I'm starting to realize that while I've been a disorganized person all of my life, my split-personality alter-ego or something LOVES ORGANIZING. Not just organizing, per se... more like taking care of things and being busy and such. I don't like having nothing to do. I always end up renting a movie or buying groceries or biking up someplace or making cookies. The weird thing is that I don't do it to watch the movie, or eat the food, or get wherever I'm going; I do it because I like having somewhere to go, something to do. I like being busy. I like working, even if it's only knitting a hat while I talk on the phone.

Those are awfully stereotypical housewife-ish things to do, and I do other things as well. Usually I shop for books or clothes or christmas presents, or go downtown and walk around and try to meet people. I've just been doing homier things lately. Maybe it's a winter change.

Anyway, I ended up biking home with my backpack in the basket and three bins and a shelf strapped to my back via bungee-cord, wearing the cable around my neck and getting bruised every time I went over a man-hole cover. I think I actually bruised my back. We'll see when I shower tomorrow.

Anyway, I realized that I'm actually perfectly suited to living alone, provided that I'm busy. I love walking through the streets by myself, whistling or playing the harmonica or just being quiet, and coming home with fresh apples or presents for Renata or my parents or freshly-oiled gears on my bicycle, or even a bit of good news. I like doing things. I like feeding myself independently, taking care of my own things... just generally being busy by myself. I like being busy with other people, too, of course, but when I feel okay about myself it's nice to be alone sometimes.

I'm ready to leave the nest and live in my own dream-apartment up in Harlem somewhere (provided I get into Columbia, which I probably won't) and dream away the days and make new friends and be happy.

My only concern is that I won't be successful at making friends. Harry's done very well at this. Everyone just likes him.

Hrmph.

those condemned to act accordinglyand wait for succeeding kings

I've developed some seriously bad habits in my short time on this earth. Talking to strangers, eating candy for lunch, biting my nails, tap dancing under the table and sleeping irregularly are the more physical ones. I also let myself get upset and get emotional over the stupidest things, and give people the impression that I don't like them, and get awkward a lot. Plus I have a wierd voice.

Last night I saw Batman Begins with my parents. They hated it and shut it off half an hour in, but I was already ready to cry over Bruce Wayne's dead parents. And then I saw Zorro and got happy when they defeated the Dons and liberated the Mexicans, despite my mom's insistence that none of the lead characters looked even remotely Mexican (which is true) and had some candy to celebrate.

I really hate myspace. I'm going to try to delete my account again.

The paper went to press with some typos and no page numbers beyond seven. I'm torn between agonizing over its imperfections, feeling relieved that it's finally out of my hands, and worrying about the next issue (deadline in three weeks). Donovan told me to go home and eat some ice cream because I couldn't stop tap-dancing and biting my nails as the pages fed through the printer one laborious, meticulous, painful inch at a time. I took his advice.

I'm wearing pink. It feels strange.

I took a PSAT at Loyola School yesterday, conveniently missing all of my classes except English and Rock & Mythology. The kids there are FREAKY. This one girl kept saying, "Do you know Alicia Harris?" and when I finally admitted that I did, she went "Oh my god isn't she the nicest sweetest coolest best person ever??!!" until I admitted that yes, she was sweet, and then the girl started going "Are you, like, best friends with her??!!" until I finally told them all that I didn't know anyone in my grade (only kind of a lie) and thus didn't know any of their friends. I went to Petco to look for fluffy things for Harry, even though he's not allowed to have them at college, because I know that once he saw it he wouldn't be able to send it back, and I ate at a pizza restaurant where I almost passed out with Harry and Elena last summer on the way to the Met. Even then the Loyola kids infiltrated and tried to get me to talk to them. I barely escaped with my life.

I'm in love with T.S. Eliot.

I feel strange about having this free while everyone else has an art class. I wish I'd taken more art classes, but in a wierd way I resent classes that teach me things I've already been learning on my own. I kind of want to do my artistic stuff independently of the classes. The problem is that I don't do them as much as I ought to, leaving me no choice but to take a class and force myself to write/draw/whatever.

I want it to be friday so I can get out at twenty-after-two and enter my happy weekend-world where nothing is awkward or lonely or cold. So long as I stay out of my house, anyway.

I think I deserve an award for misspelling my own name more than anyone I've ever met. I usually set my account names to "veronicavm" or something so I won't forget them, but I always misspell things and end up locked out for twenty minutes.

It's strange. Nothing seems to mark the passage of time for me any more. I don't know what I'm doing here. I used to feel like I had a place here. Now I just drift, attending things only when I feel like it and ususally leaving early or arriving late. The only thing I really remember is weekends. Weeks are just a vague continuum of bike rides and phone calls and thrift shops and layout and books with no fixed points to use as points of relativity.

It's kind of frightening.

Can You See Me?

My mom and sister went to see Santana without me, so I ate a cupcake, reread Understanding Comics (so good!) and decided to post again with some of the halloween photos I found on my sister's camera.

Look at Harry's sketchlog.

Fish eeeeeemailed meeeeeee....

And out of sheer boredom I checked to see what searches people have done recently that came up with my blog. (StatCounter does that for you. I didn't ask around or anything.)
They are as follows:

3 "darkeyedgypsy blog"
1 "andres andrade"
1 "what clear liquid would turn another liquid pink"
1 "rock n roll if you wanna dance with me"
1 "myspace aviators"
1 "i got the sun in the morning"
1 "how many awards have the poet thomas hardy recieved"

I think that says something about me.
I dunno what. Something.





Travis was Tom Perry^^^















I hate that people care what other people look like so much. They judge people by their looks completely. They like to be friends with good-looking people. They want to date good-looking people. They like elusive, unreal people, perfect images, even if they're images of pain and helplessness. I feel like I'm constantly being judged by people I don't even know how to judge back, like I was born naked on a battlefield without armor or weapons.

I'm so fucking sick of it all.

I don't even have the emotional energy to get up and feed myself fattening food.
I feel SO FUCKING PATHETIC.

Upon the beach where hound dogs bayAt ships with tattooed sails

Life these days is a macabre mixture of novel-worlds, moments of complete comfort and then days at a time of utter awkwardness and antisocial self-deprication. Everything runs like clockwork but my reactions are different every time.

I don't know why my friends are.
I don't know who my readers are.
I don't know what anyone thinks of me.
I don't know what I want to do with my life.
I break down a lot more lately but I always know that I'll get through it.
I always know what I'm doing on the weekends.
I always know that Harry loves me. He doesn't always say the right thing--but nineteen out of twenty isn't bad.

Wow, that was really whiney.

Dennis just walked into the lab and interrupted my posting to talk awkwardly about the lighting of On The Razzle, which I'm expected to take care of.

I wonder if there's any point to knowledge at all. I wonder if I'm smart enough to pick up a million pieces and see how they fit. I wonder if I'll ever be in a relationship this nice again.




Edited in later: I just ate an orange kit-kat and the more I think about it, the more it freaks me out. Whoa.

Keith's dad stopped by UBC on monday and his daughter recognized me. It was reassuring.

I think way too much about christmas presents. It's too early.
But if you know what you want, drop me a line, hm?

My PSAT tutor is nice but I forget to work so he just bullshits for an hour every other week. I'm skipping school for half a day tomorrow to take the PSATs because I missed them when I went to the Yale thing.

I'm afraid it'll tell me I'm stupid.

I have in-house for the next week. What's with Margaux enforcing all the pointless rules about the elevator and such? How can she stand spending her whole day enforcing petty, stupid rules that make no real difference to us and giving us punishments that look bad on our college transcripts? That said, I like Margaux fine and think she's nice and all. I just don't get it.

And Halloween was fun. Thanks.