new copper kettles and warm woolen mittens

Reading Memoirs of a Beatnick is an incredible experience. At least half of the pages are devoted to thrust-by-thrust narratives of Diane di Prima's sexual encounters (which include Allen Ginsberg and Jack Keroac, who wanted to do it lotus-style), and to the sexual revolution. She was a beatnick before the word was coined, a true bohemian liberated independent woman, fiercely polyandrous and openly sexually inclusive--anyone was fine--and a woman of the world before the concept existed, and I want to be her desperately.

(My dad looked it over and asked if he could borrow it; I told him not to read it because it was intensely sexual and he wouldn't like it, and he told me to "be discriminating about what you read." I found this funny because I'm one of the most discriminating readers I've ever met. It's depressing, really. I read obscure books, sure, but I never read anything I'm not sure will be worthwhile, partly because once I start reading a book I have to finish it. Anyway, I got this book from Eric, who has never lent me anything that hasn't been amazing.)

I was reading in the hallway, on my way to get breakfast and relieve Dan of watching my bag (I'd left my book in A52 and had to interrupt Charlie Blanc's class to get it; he really hates me now) and feeling great when I heard music coming from the meetinghouse--DFL and his five-piecer playing "My Favorite Things," or whatever that song is called--the one from The Sound of Music. I was enchanted. I stood in the doorway and watched for a little while, and Justin smiled and nodded over his upright bass and I felt wonderful.

I've tried many times to prove to the world that I'm not really a hippie, but my friends always find some detail to use against me. "Look at the way you stand, all leaned over to the left!" "You wear shoes with holes in the toes!" "You ride a brown bicycle to school!" But I'm not a hippie, really. I have whole weeks when I wear nothing but black. I read classic literature and listen to jazz and rockabilly and befriend anarchists. I've taken to correcting people: "I'm not a hippie, I'm a teenager with bohemian tendencies." Then again, these days people don't differentiate between the hippies and the goths and punks and beatnicks and jazz cats and anarchists and neo-nazis, it seems.

But I don't care. I'm my own hypocritical semi-bohemian self and I love it!

One of the weirdest things about me is the way I can talk all the time with some people--my sister, Harry, Matt, Lauren, Elena, etc. -- and feel no urge to say anything all day to others. I can't help it. I'm not interested in the people in my grade. I guess I could try to join the whole thing and be one of the girls, or guys, or something, but I just feel no desire to break the silence and talk to them.

So far I'm doing pretty well. I feel a few pangs now and then, like looking down a mountain, but I manage not to slide. I need to hit a plateu. I need to go to college.

I'm a lot better now in that I recognize in advance that a lot of my fears and phobias are irrational, a lot of my moods are hormone-induced, and a lot of my insecurities are baseless. I'm more in control. I can stop and breathe and put my face in Harry's chest and come out fine. I can be happy and feel free and good and alive. But it's still hard to try to throw away every mental and physical pattern I've fallen into over the last six months and restart my life. I don't know what will happen when my last few friends graduate. Maybe I'll get to know my grade a little better. They're really not all that bad. Maybe I'll be able to devote more time to writing and photography and political awareness and reading.

It'd be a lot easier to help myself if I didn't have to come home to this.

dear prudence

Ironically, I feel great. I spent a whole day wandering the city and talking to strangers about sewing machines and feminist writers and existentialism (it seems to be in now; a lot of people have raised the topic to me lately). Anyway, I feel wonderful. And I got these photos in today. As always, feel free to borrow, use, etc. The one of me in the library at the end of the people-pictures part was taken by Oona. This roll turned out quite well. I'm posting twenty of twenty-seven pictures, and half of the ones I cut out were just mediocre versions of the same shots that I omitted for the sake of not being repetitive. Enjoy!

I'm putting the people first because I know you guys want to see yourselves. "You" is Harry, Oona, Ken and Travis, but whatever. And Bob, but you can only really see his back.

Edit: Thank you, Sophie! I'm fine, as certified by the daughter of two shrinks!

Edit II: ALL THE PHOTOS ARE STRETCHED DUE TO MY CRAPPY SCANNER--SORRY!














.........................................

Now everyone thinks I'm clinically depressed, even Matt and Chloe. My bio teacher stopped me after class to tell me about his wife's depression and his sister and etcetera and it was very kind, and make me like him a bit more, but it made me realize that I never specified that I was sort of getting over that hump. I'm not clinical--I've never even seen a shrink! I'm just a little lonely since my friends left. All these people talking about depression are making me feel sad again! I'm fine! I promise!

And I don't think you guys are sexist. You know who you are.




Edit: two of my three fish that I bought last weekend died. The third one started eating them. I couldn't bear to do anything about it and I had nightmares about tiny black-tailed fish eating my flesh. My mom said she'd flush them for me.

Poor fish.

You know you're finally on the right track when you hang up with him after an hour (or a few hours, who knows?) and you're so tired you're not sure you're awake and you're crying, not from fear or frustration or sheer depression but from happiness, pure and raw and natural, and you know it has nothing to do with your damn hormones because it's not even remotely that time of month.

I gave a presentation on Allen Ginsberg today and actually got some laughs. I held everyone's attention. People (well, Eddie and Chris) gave little pat-on-the-back compliments when I finished. I hope I taught them something.

When I was younger I hated looking at myself in the mirror. I hated how I looked. But I did it anyway, because I wanted to know what I was like. In Modern today I kept looking in the mirror, watching how I move and behave and smile and everything. I'm no beauty queen but I'm not bad. I'm just another girl.

I'd taken a bunch of photos. It was beautiful out. I walked to Union Square with Rachel and talked about old friends and then finished Nightwood on the bench there. I kept thinking about all the things I am that I'd stopped being all of first semester. When I'm being myself, I'm very friendly. I tend to like people. I'm somewhat maternal towards my friends. I feel inspired all the time and feel like there's a million mysteries that will make themselves clear to me over time. I feel at peace.

I really, honestly feel like I'm returning to that. Even more, though. I feel older. I feel independent and mature and at peace. I feel intelligent and powerful and aware of myself. I'm strong enough now to read a disturbing book like Nightwood and still look into the sun and enjoy it. I'm strong enough to talk to strangers again, but now I don't worry so much about what they think of me. I'm strong enough to know that Harry loves me even when he has to do something over the weekend. I feel more in control of my own behavior and my life.

I remembered taking Yoga freshman year in the same room and thinking I'd never be as cool as the seniors. Now I look in the mirror and like what I see--a dark, spotted Mexican face under wild French hair, a lush body with bony shoulders and hips, barely visible through my huge clothes. My notebooks and camera and bike lock sit off to the side, waiting. My movements are limber and awkward and vaguely sexual. I'm tall and uncoordinated but not entirely graceless. My smile is an erruption across my face.

My attempts at gaining self-confidence haven't been all that successful in the past. I usually manage to be happy for a few months before breaking down again, unsure of whether or not I'll be able to get up again. It's different now, though. It's not an effort; it's a subtle part of me that seems to be built into the foundation of who I am.

I'm a human being, intelligent, talented and cultured, with a whole life ahead of me in which to further define myself. I have to be natural and be true to my likes and dislikes, and acknowledge sometimes that I don't know yet.

I saw Anna Paquin on the street today. I saw the same confidence in her face that I felt. It was lovely.

I really, really don't want to be depressed any more.

I have apartment fever. I keep wanting to buy ridiculous things, like curtains and duvets and paint and sofas. I bought myself a chair for fifteen dollars at Housing Works, a little black painted wood deal with all the round hand-carved knobs on the back and feet and a woven seat. I fell in love with a Victorian sofa the other day and seriously considered buying it for four hundred dollars and then paying Matt to keep it for me (or just cancelling all his outstanding debts... heh). I barely stopped myself.

Seeing Lauren's gorgeous apartment with floor-to-ceiling windows and lovely German chairs and plasma-TVs and soft, fluffy comforters and beautifully painted walls and pink marble bathroom tiles certainly doesn't help. I almost never get jealous (and when I do, it's a weird, irrational fixation) and I'm incredibly happy for her--but I kind of want to move in with her or something. I keep fantasizing (sp) about what my apartment will look like when I have one.

I want a beautiful old walk-up with a fire escape and white wooden windows latticed into small rectangular panels. I'd paint the walls different colors and buy all the paintings I wanted and have all kinds of furniture and put photographs everywhere and have a lovely soft bed and all kinds of weird artifacts and strange-looking plants and a whole tank of lovely weird Mexican fish. I'd have a whole wall of pegs for jewelry and never put anything in boxes, where nobody can see it. I'd have a Gibson solid-body guitar and an acoustic, maybe a Taylor, just because they sound so lovely, and beaded curtains hanging down and maybe an Italian-style pasta wall, for the hell of it. I would never have Venetian blinds. I would have a chandelier of some sort and lovely old glass lamps and velvet lampshades and a low table so that people had to sit on the floor to eat with me, and special cushions for people like Harry who have bony asses and don't like sitting. I'd have a black wall. I'd have records in crates and a lovely old wind-up record player with a faded trumpet-bell-mouth like a wild flower. I'd have people over all the time playing music and eating and laughing and doing things. I'd have a huge bookshelf from ceiling to floor and tiny ones all over the place and I'd buy books all the time and give my old ones away to people who'd love them.

My life right now isn't too far from that, I guess. My apartment is white and art-deco and has very few real walls, just partial walls that give the illusion of rooms while discreetly denying us any privacy. I've covered my dresser and some shelves with pipes and miniature ninjas and bakelite nude children, and I've mounted hooks on the walls and hung racks over doors and used the big bulletin board to display as much jewelry as possible. Above my dresser there's a round mirror that sits between Renata's bed and mine (we sleep in parallel Twins), and my side up to the mirror is papered in clippings and postcards and photos while hers is completely bare. I use the modernistic "room divider" as a bookshelf. I "lend" books to my friends all the time with the knowledge that I'll get less than half of them back. I buy as much furniture as I can (not much) and I've got a whole corner sectioned off for my sewing machine and cloth basket, although it's a bit inaccessible. I bought some fish yesterday, tiny black-tailed guppies weaving through a small aquatic plant.

I keep thinking I have plenty of space and then realizing days later that I've already filled it and have extra material. Maybe I'm just incapable of satisfaction. I just want my own space. My parents have given up trying to stop me from papering my walls and shelving my weird miscellaneous artifacts, but I can't do anything that really changes the feel of the room, like buy new blankets or chairs ("they don't match") or move the furniture ("it's fine the way it is") or post anything too racy on the walls.

I also want to be able to blog without my parents freaking out about how I'm going to be stalked on the internet or some shit, and get home when I want, and take care of my own tests and make friends without having to explain them all to my mom and buy clothes and furniture without worrying that I'll find them months later in a box marked "Charities in Mexico," and watch movies and not have to fight my parents to finish them if they're violent or scandalous, and be able to close the door and be naked and look in a full-length mirror at my own body, and let my boyfriend sleep over when he wants to, and buy dress mannequins and sculptures and prints and paint and do what I want with them.

To have an apartment is to be a liberated woman and finally be how I want to be and like myself for it. It's independence and individuality and adulthood and an end to all these horrible arguments and fights and discrepencies and silences. It's choices and job prospects and genuine friends and my own life and freedom.

Before it was rewritten, the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence read "life, liberty and land," not "persuit of happiness." Land and freedom have been synonymous since the slaves were emancipated but denied the rights to vote, marry and own land. "A man's home is his castle;" I want to be queen of my own small, bohemian palace somewhere.

Maybe it's the effect of having one's friends (and boyfriend) all graduate simultaneously and move to new states and have apartments and furniture and lives suddenly, but high school can't end fast enough.

Footnote: I am doomed to make horrible cookies. I used the kind of mix where you put in a stick of butter and an egg and then stick everything in the oven, and when they came out they looked fine but were extremely squishy. I know cookies do that sometimes--take a while to harden--so I just slid them off the pan and put them in a stack on a cute little plate and set it on the table. When they hardened, though, they stuck in one big mound--a cookie-mountain on the tiny salad plate. I've spent the last few days chipping away at it. I guess I'll have to learn to cook if I'm going to have an apartment. And make money.

*dramatic french overture music coming from the movie my parents are watching*

Argh! I was going to post photos of the clothes I've made over the past few days on my new sewing machine, but photobucket was being a pain in the ass and all I've got for an hour of uploading attempts (a handy excuse to browse for new webcomics, I'll admit) was this one lame half-scanned picture that I didn't intend to upload in the first place.

Anway, here it is.

Harry, I love you. In spite of your excess of charisma and general adorableness.

just like a woman

Edited in: everyone look at Zack's new blog! Blogger is by far a better host than LiveJournal.

I have a lot on my mind right now, foremost of which is my current moody PMSing dissatisfaction with this school, which I find dull. Everyone is caught up in social scenarios and cliques and such, but I just can't get into it, mainly because I don't really care about the characters, so to speak. My remaining friends--the ones that haven't been driven away by the fact that I've kept to myself for the last few weeks--are mildly sexist and don't treat me with respect. I'm younger than them and not a great musician and have been dubbed a hippie, but I know that I'm as intelligent and respect-worthy as any of them. It doesn't bother me all that much, but when I'm in a bad mood, it can get to me.

Sexism is still intrinsic in the foundation of our society. It's milder now and less perceptible, but it affects every woman in the world. I don't want to get into details, because I spent about an hour doing that with my mom last night and I'd feel cramped, but it continues to piss me off.

Another thing that's been bugging me about myself is the fact that I resent sexy and girly women. At this point, it's not jealousy or intimidation. I was thinking about why I do this during Bio and realized that I don't resent attractive women who don't use their sex appeal as a tool to make friends or manipulate people. I hate it when women allow their looks to define them and make no effort to be distinctive. I don't resent beautiful people like Heather Rose or Misa or Jaya or Lauren or Amanda or any of the beautiful people I know (too many to list) who look confident and look like they respect themselves but make their personalities their defining traits. I feel like attractiveness is something we're born with, and we either get lucky or don't; to use a tool we possess through sheer luck to gain leverage over other people in our society is an unfair advantage.

I hate it when I feel like men are only treating me nicely because they find me attractive, or aren't treating me with respect because they don't find me attractive (or know that I'm "taken" and have no intention of leaving my current relationship). It's worse than pity, and I resent it immensely.

I like people who dress distinctively. I know it sounds shallow, but I really believe that the body is a canvas we can use to express ourselves every day. I like people who use their appearance to make clear that they're different from other people. Clichés like the punk image, the hippie-pothead thing, the pretty, normal kid, etc. make me sick. I love it when people have unusual style and unusual ways of wearing normal things. I hate it when people shop at places like Urban Outfitters or H & M or The Family Jewel--stores where you go in with the understanding that by spending a ridiculous amount of money, you will look "cool," no matter how bad your taste. I like it when people are resourceful and use simple pieces to make a clear image.

I hate movies that seem to have no purpose other than to celebrate the attractiveness of the actors. I love it when main characters are unusual looking or even plainly ugly, and I don't mind attractive actors if they're given personalities. I hate it when people go to movies for the sole purpose of gawking at actors.

The same thing goes for personalities, in a way. I hate it when people use their inherent cool-ness and loveableness and charisma to get away with things that other people can't or to get things out of people. I don't care how cool your voice and face and movements and expressions are; if you're an asshole, I'll still resent you.

Those who know me (and there aren't that many any more) already knew all of that--I just felt like clarifying and really stating something true of me. I tend to want to define myself when I'm PMSing.

I also eat a lot of popcorn. And jello.

first rays of the new rising sun

I've had this blog for almost exactly a year now. It used to be that everyone had a blog, and it was almost a club. Then RCP got in trouble, and a few people went down in the blog wars and their aftermath, and everyone went to college, and some of the college people just simply quit, and now I'm pretty much the only one left of the original group that's still at Friends and still blogs.

I kind of like it. I blog because I genuinely like to, and the fact that there are fewer people at my side now isn't a turn-off.

Anyway, I'm starting over. All of my old posts are still in my archives, but they're off of the main page. I thought about making a new site, but it's too much of a hassle; anyway, I finally got all my HTML the way I like it, and I don't feel like doing it all again.

From now on, it'll be more true to me and more interesting. I'll put photos and maybe some poetry and thoughts. No more of this "what I did today" crap, because it's really not all that important. I'm living a wonderful, full life in a beautiful, full city, and this blog should reflect that.

I'm also looking for a new title.

you're gonna miss me

I've been working my ass off all week, hence the lack of blogging. I'll be busy trying to finish my roll of film and my homework and see Harry for the next few days, so blogging might be sparse. But it will be good, because despite all of my laziness and crappy plays and stuff, I am actually a decent writer.

I'm me again.

ps- it's actually a very good song. 13th floor elevators. Go!

ooby-dooby!

I feel wonderful!

Methinks a revolution is in order.

¿De dónde crece la palma?

I'm in a good place.


The weird thing is that now that I'm here and looking back, the last half-year of my blog and life look stupid. Maybe I'll start over.

I found some pictures from last summer on the old memory card for my sister's camera. There are also some from the ski trip, and from Zack, Harry and I hanging out on Wednesday night.

And for future reference, Jaya makes a damn sexy pound cake.

My cousin Alecia:








And from the ski trip:









And this is what a Veronica Midnight flower looks like, apparantly:



And from last night:

farewell

there's no need for anger
there's no need for blame
there's nothing to prove ev'rything's still the same
just a table standing empty by the edge of the sea--


I don't ever want to be depressed again.

I'm happy now. I'm confident. I know I'm smart and real and deep and genuine. I like how I look and how I feel and my friends and my hobbies and my knowledge and my capacity for love.

I have to make it and be OK.

I made four resolutions:

To be happy
To be good to Harry
To maintain enough emotional energy to read and write well
To return to vegitarianism before next year