I am SO LUCKY to have had so many cultural experiences. To be a New Yorker and understand the midwest, the south, the west coast. To understand my mother's family and know how to make tortillas and also know how to eat sushi and order at fine restaurants. To be able to talk with Rosa about her huge family in Bolivia (father had 14 brothers and sisters with 7 or 8 kids apiece) and talk about business with my parents and understand the networked worlds they live in. To know how small towns work and how real middle-of-nowhere ghettoes work. I'm living a rich life.

It's incredible how much you can learn from Wikipedia. I thought my head would burst. Did you know that Shakespeare only split one infinitive in all of his printed works? Watched Jailhouse Rock a few minutes ago with my dad, who was fascinated by the infinitive debate. I could live alone in a cave with nothing but Elvis music and movies and be happy for the rest of my life.

I think I made myself pretty clear in my last letter from the editor, but for those of you who didn't read it, I fully endorse personal pride, so long as condescension isn't part of the package. I'm up for criticism. But I'm not conceited. I actually am intelligent, attractive, loving and interesting, even at my young age. And a lot of people I personally think are intellectual and generally awesome seem to agree, because they keep hanging out with me. Yes, I hold high standards for myself, but without aspiration, there would be no high art. And it's conceit to believe that you can judge people by their naked one-in-the-morning daily recaps and cowardice to justify it by leaving your first name.

Just woke up and barely remember my freaky dream, but it was the first nightmare I've had in a while. It was very surreal. At one point I was being chased by shoes that had come to life by the power of speculation and came out of the yellow wallpaper of the bathroom (a nod to Charlotte G-P). There was something about a hotel room where they stole my DVD player, and then I was in this building with all these thin pale people whose features were fading away. And then this woman came and took me out of the building and told me she was going to make a lady of me and then she tortured me in wierd ways. I had to take a shower in this huge beautiful round shower thing, but all the soap and shampoo and stuff was just out of my reach. Then she started giving me pictures of people and told me to start falling in love with them. I was on this huge gorgeous white canopy bed that must have gone on for at least a mile and I couldn't get off of it until I'd picked someone to marry.

I think it has to do with college. It won't leave me alone!

I'm sitting in Harry's room and he's been asleep for the last hour (he's really sick) so I've been reading and web-surfing and such. Been doing some studying, but I have to admit that I did the fun stuff first. Got 800s on two of the three sections of my practice test today. Harry's friends are nice to me.

Thanks for the encouragement, guys. It's a constant fight to keep my chin up, but so far I'm doing pretty well.

And Sophie, I don't know why I can't leave comments on your blog, but if you do end up coming to the city, mi apartamento es tuyo. And you can eat mexican food made by real mexicans to your heart's delight!

Rediscovering the joys of sleeping in, long hot baths when nobody's in the house, staying up late over Joyce and Walky, and ice cream with fudge for breakfast.

PS-No one low enough to criticize me anonymously over the internet can really insult me.

Facebook is like MySpace without the bitter edge and the high-school-ish pictures everyone puts up to make themselves look sexy. It actually feels kind of homey. And I'm Evan's mother.

I was reading some of my old posts last night trying to get a sense of myself, and realized that my grammar wasn't that good. Granted, it was better than most high school kids', but there were obvious errors that I had assumed I could never make. It's been over a year now. I guess that's enough time to grow up a little.

Expanding on what I said briefly yesterday: I've somehow gained this sense that high personal standards are dangerous. I hate to admit it, but my personal standards are extremely high. Ever since I was about ten I've wanted to grow up to be a literary genius and write the next great american novel, and I know it's impossible. So I force negativism on myself and take a grim view of the adult world. I guess I watched my dad get kind of depressed when he was unemployed for a while, and my relatives are almost uniformly religious zealots with emotional problems and either too many or too few marriages/children under their belts. When I was little I wanted to be a doctor like my Uncle Oscar because I thought that he was living proof that medicine was the only way for someone in our family to escape insanity. (I also liked the stethescope.) Anyway, from here my future doesn't look too bad, provided I don't drop out of school or anything.

It kills me that I'm a B+ student because it's so close to an A-. A few more A's might get me into an Ivy. So I can't help but feel like I screwed myself over in a serious way. I know I'm being melodramatic and all, but I really liked Brown and I hate that I won't be able to go there.

So I started out trying to express myself and just ended up talking about colleges. That seems to happen a lot these days. Yuck.

Fell asleep last night in a state of depression at the thought that life will suck and that I can't get into any of the colleges I've liked so far, although Harry did a wonderful job of laughing at me and cheering me up when I attacked his optimism as delusional.

I get really cranky at night, and really upset when I think about college too much, and my family's history, which I'm learning more about, is pretty depressing on both sides. But my attempts at realism are just a guise for my incredibly high personal standards, anyway. I guess I should learn to deal with that.

Anyway, I woke up late the next morning with blind puffy eyes (been wearing glasses for the last few days) and my parents started grilling me, so I told them the whole story and they agreed that I'm a bit delusional myself. So I showered, shaved, and donned man-clothes (well, gay-man-clothes) and stalked out in beat-up boots to take back my city, with Ginsberg in my pocket for support. Now there's a man who faced everything and came out laughing. What thoughts I have of you tonight, I thought, and almost missed my stop.

H. and I just lazed around, did errands, napped and had a sweet, quiet day until I tried to take him to a concert. He was sick and couldn't really walk. It was Ray Davies. (Y'all should know who that is, but if you don't, think "Village Green Preservation Society.")

The thing about Harry is that he doesn't make an effort to be optimistic, noble or moral--he just is. I don't know if he was born that way or was raised well or if it's just magic, but he really is what he seems to be. He knew how tired he was, how much his foot hurt, how much I love concerts, and how excited I was about this one, and said "V, I love the music, and I'd love to get some from you and listen to it later, but I really just have to go home and take some painkillers and go to sleep. Have a really great time and tell me about it tomorrow, okay? Promise?"

I figured that if he was leaving me on a Sunday night, he must really be in pain, and that there was no point in torturing him. So I promised to enjoy myself, and it wasn't very hard. Ray's energy was boundless. He played until he'd soaked his shirt through in v-shaped stains and had a dark ring all the way around his right arm, and then he went offstage and returned in a fresh shirt a few seconds later. Sweat and spit sprayed every time he sang and he never paused for even a second. You'd think a guy in his sixties would be losing his voice, but he sang better than anyone I've heard in their twenties, and his band was incredible. He was also very sweet and personal with his fans. His daughter came to sing with him and he announced her engagement for the first time. The crowd was lively and kind and sang along to every song, much to his delight. I found myself knowing all the words. He joked around and talked about his past and kept everyone laughing. When it got to "low-budget," he pranced around demonstrating the fictional too-small shoes and pants, tugging at his balding hair and grabbing his ass ("arse") to cheers from the audience. He did the robot. He handed out VIP tickets to something or another to people who claimed to have seen all three of his shows. People threw paper plates with song requests at him and he played them. He passed out set lists and picks to his stage managers when he left and told them to distribute them randomly. (I got a pick by a stroke of good luck, and a paper-plate-airplane.) Then he came back and played "Lola" and the entire place shook. Nobody wanted to leave after it ended. It was one of the best shows I've ever seen, and that's saying something.

In the middle of the show, my dad leaned over to me and said, "You're not going to believe what I did today, V. I bought another guitar." We already have five guitars, two keyboards, drums and a ukelele, so this was completely unnecessary. "It's a Yamaha acoustic." We already have a Yamaha acoustic. "It's got a crack on the bottom that needs to be fixed." We've already fixed a guitar with a crack on the bottom. "What did you pay for it?" I asked. "Seventy bucks." So I didn't say anything. It's not much of a price to pay for something that really makes you happy.

When I saw it, I knew right away that it was worth it. It's a beautiful guitar, infinately superior to our other Yamaha, with book-cut natural wood and ivory insets around the sides. The crack will be easily fixed, and the tone and low strings are incredible. It's a guitar to dream about.

Sorry for the boring post. Will write something deep later. It's been a long day.

Harry turned nineteen and got money, a razor, funnies and a sore ankle. I got a facebook (gasp!) and glasses and toured colleges with my dad in Massachussets and Rhode Island and we talked a lot.

My dad is the family member with whom I fight most but is also the one who is most like me and who understands me best. It was a good trip, actually. I can't really explain myself very well, but I do feel like I have a vague sense of who I am and that I'll be okay wherever I go, and he gets that. I'd still rather go somewhere really good, though.

Lots of deep philosophical thoughts but I'm too tired to do anything but change out of these jeans and take off my glasses and fall asleep in the fuzzy blindness.

Why does everyone but me hate Zora Neale Hurston? I LOVE her.

I'm smart.
I'm a great editor.
I'm not ditzy.
I'm loving.
I'm independent.
I'm always thinking.
I'm learning what my tastes are.
I'm happy.
I'm well-read.
I'm young.
I probably say "society," "intellectual," "empowerment," and "perspective" several times a day.
I'm in love.
I'm lucky.
I'm unusual.
I'm mature.
I'm awkward.
I'm big.
I wear boots to make myself bigger.
I'm a word person.
I'm a night person.
I'm not at all a morning person.
I'm not a hipster.
I'm an insomniac when I'm unhappy.
I can see really well in the dark.
I'm a good sister.
I'm a bad daughter.
I'm not a stoner.
I never excercise.
I never wear makeup.
I never write in blue ink.
I keep secrets well.
I often misjudge people on first impression.
I drink a glass of chocolate milk with coffee every morning.
I'm a terrible guitarist.
I'm a decent harpist (harmonica, not harp).
I'm a mediocre singer.
I love folk and rockabilly and jazz and gospel and blues and motown.
I love autobiographies and Russian literature and e.e.cummings.
I love making my own clothes.
I love street hot dogs.
I'm not a vegitarian.
I'm in a good place right now.
I like taking SAT's.
I hate getting bad grades. (I think everyone does.)
I love finding people who are cool but don't leave a bitter wake behind them.
I'm sick of high school.
I'm sick of living with my parents.
I'm sick of not having time to read.
I'm addicted to webcomics.
I'm addicted to wikipedia.
(I blame Harry.)
I don't know myself perfectly and I'm pretty much constantly confused, but I feel like I'm making slow progress that I can only see after it happens. If you can decipher any meaning in my last sentence.
I'm seeing an eye doctor pretty soon, so I'd better cut this short.

PS-wrote this a moment before reading Jaya's last post. Cosmic coincidence?

Ms. Reyes took my 89.5 and gave me an A-, and I suspect that Quinones and Spieldenner did the same, and Harry has Spring Break, and V for Vendetta was amazing, and everything worked itself out, and there's only two months left of school, and the freshmen and sophomores respect me, and I'm reading some really amazing stuff, and all my hard work payed off! And European colleges look exciting.

When I was a freshman it was my dream to be a senior that the underclassmen worshipped. Now I'm a junior and I don't really care what they think (with the exception of a few I really like). Other people don't seem important to me any more. Am I maturing, or just becoming an egotist?

Had a good time at Matt's on St. Patrick's, but as always the weirdos followed me home. I got three calls before noon the next morning, and I only gave my number to one guy who said he'd make me a t-shirt! Scary! Have to figure out how to dissassociate myself from all of them at once.

Got my Scholastic thing and got grumpy about it for a while, got Harry's present in the mail and cheered up, and got to see Chocolate Jesus and the Beards and a little Brotherhood last night in a thoroughly awkward evening. Ran into Moll. Didn't write my essay. Didn't do an SAT. Went to Daffy's. Now I have a TON of work to do today before I can finally see Harry again, and no time to read A Coney Island of the Mind, which came in yesterday. Dammit!

One more issue sent to press.
One more class with Ms. Reyes and one less left.
One more time Emma Q. has been nice to me for no reason.
One more time I cried in school (about Ms. Reyes leaving).
One more Jazz Vocal class sacrificed for layout time.
One more wonderful memory of LK.
One more day without Harry.
One more bag full of clothes, Apple Tea and dollar books at the foot of my bed.
One more blister on the sole of my foot.
One more time when I had to ask a stranger to spot me ten cents.
One more St. Patrick's Day when I wore green by accident.
One more week where my nails got bitten all the way down.
One more quarter towards college.
One more day without lunch or breakfast.
One more party that I don't know if I'll go to.
One more white sticker on my wall.
One more roll of film.
One more day when Will D. thinks I'm depressed and I'm actually not at all.
One more prediction that I'll be a journalist.
One more book in the mail.
One more tray of cupcakes devoured by Renata's friends.
One more page of poetry I don't hate.
One more 89.5. (Possibly two, actually.)
One more neighbor who has a password on their wireless internet.
One more conversation with a book vendor while freezing in my italian silk skirt (which I'm in love with).
One more day without word from Scholastic.
One more time my knowledge of Shakespeare has come in handy.
One more time someone noticed that I make more random comments than anyone during class and one more time I didn't mind being laughed at.
One more time I really felt like a dark-eyed gypsy.
One more lunch with cheerful sophomores.
One more weekend already planned without a second to breathe.
One more semipretentious blog post.
One more day of being me.

Today was good. I was incredibly busy but kind of didn't mind being busy, or being here. People are nice to me now because they think I'm depressed, which I don't like, but it does make things comfortable.

I'm going to miss Rody Reyes SO MUCH.

My dreams are getting so weird. And creepy. When I start to remember them, I always get a little freaked out. And they always seem real to me, even afterwards, so that I think I've already done something but I really just dreamed it.

It's interesting, though. Who knew I had all that in my head?

Poor sweet thing is having an awful time. Guess money really can't buy happiness. Why do they force us to grow up so fast?

If I can have lunch with an utter stranger who's my dad's doctor's daughter and a junior in college and leave laughing, I can do anything. And it turned out that her last two names were Veronica Nacht. There's hope for me yet!

Taking last post a step farther, in the shower this morning I realized that what I really dislike and what ties all of the things I said in the last post together is the sense that people don't see the larger picture. I feel like everything is part of a larger spectrum and to fixate on only one thing and ignore its immediate neighbors or, for that matter, the rest of the spectrum, is close-minded and uneducated. It's not an "I can't help it" kind of ignorance, either, because they're often subjected to the same environment as everyone else. It's a lack of observantness, maybe. Or something. I'm not really sure what.

This is why I dislike people who obsess over their cats, or their gymnastics, or ice skating, or skateboard or something. In fact, a lot of my irritation with people stems from a feeling that they don't see the larger picture, which can mean believing that they're the coolest person alive, or that the OC or their chem class is really important.

I say all of this with the knowledge that I'm a hypocrite. I'd still rather say it and risk hypocricy than not mention it. Also, I try to avoid that stuff, even if I'm not always successful.

I got distracted then and opened my eyes and got soap in them. The price we pay for introspection.

Spent all morning at school doing layout and only finished about half of it, but it was all worth it when my mom called and asked if I wanted to go to Daffy's downtown with her (the one by our house closed). We spent all afternoon there and I got to buy nice clothes for the first time in a while. I do manage to find high-quality stuff at thrift shops, but there's an essential difference between weeding through and finding one FCUK shirt and having whole racks of discounted Chloe and whatnot at your disposal.

I kinda binged a little.

The more I shop, though, the more I realize that I don't really like clothes that are "cool" in themselves and that are meant to make the wearer instantly cool. I like simple, well-fitting clothes that I can pile other simple clothes and simple jewelry on top of until I have an intricate and self-made outfit. I like buying simple clothes and altering them myself. I LOVE making my own clothes. I don't know why I restrict myself this way, because it does make things difficult, but it's much more rewarding to feel like your style is unique and your own creation than to feel like you're wearing a pile of factory-made clichés.

This is true of the way I regard people as well. I hate it when people use clichés, lofty or vulgar, to define themselves. I hate it when people advertise their cool-ness by plastering themselves with images of other things they think are cool, talking about things that they think make them cool, and using phrases or gestures that they think are cool. It's too much of an admission of being nothing but a pile of cultural mannerisms, rather than a genuine person with individual tastes. I'm sure I do a bit of this, but I know that the things I like and the things I do I do purely for my own sake, because I enjoy them. I read famous books, but I drop ideas, not names, when I converse, and I hate it when people do it the other way around.

Other people, catchphrases and clichés will not make you "cool" in the eyes of anyone but others of your type. When will people get that? Or maybe I'm the only one who thinks that way, and everyone else is happy to judge each other by purely cultural standards.

I can't wait to go to college.

chipi chipi - ey!

I can't explain what warm weather does for me. It's friday and I had no particular plans, so I wandered the East Village and shopped and met an old friend who was quitting his job at Urban Outfitters to go back to college and gave me free sandals. I ran into Alida, Miles and Nigel and generally felt wonderful. It was windy and warm and soft and humid and I felt like a beautiful grunge goddess, queen of the streets. I'm me!

Updated this for the first time in a while. It feels good.

I kicked ass in English today until several people were nodding and I thought Sarah's head would fall off, but I'm still going to get a B+ because of that damn poetry test, and she didn't even give me any credit for identifying the random poem that wasn't by any of the writers. And I got an 82 on my bio test, which wasn't so bad because there were only a 94 and an 84 above me, but what the hell? Who gives a test that nobody can do well on? I hate him. I have to get an A in his fucking class and he's making it impossible on purpose.

In spite of these setbacks, I had a lovely day talking to underclassmen, drinking coffee, reading Look Out! by Gary Snyder, and thrift-shopping afterwards as a reward. I bought a jacket for Lauren, but I don't know if she'll like it.

I don't understand these teachers that are loaded or ingenius but still choose to teach at Friends, like Schubert, Fahey, Zippoli, Ted S. or Ms. Witt. Why? I don't even have any other options, and I still spend most of my day wishing I were out of school so I could spend more time on my education.

Today was the first time I'd ever heard "Hide your love away" and not become depressed instantly. It was more of an opposite-ends-of-the-spectrum feeling, a coexistence of sorts.

The shrink keeps staring at me and asking me how I'm doing. I usually smile and say I'm-fine-how-are-you and run off, feeling guilty. It's not that I couldn't use a shrink. But I really don't have anything to complain about, and if I can't manage to get by on my own now, without any real setbacks, I'll be screwed when the going gets tough and I don't have the money for a new shrink. She also seems really sensitive, and gives me this look like I'm rejecting her every time I don't go see her.

What the hell. Maybe I will.

Oh, and I linked to Bram's blog a few months ago in my sidebar, but I don't think anyone noticed. It's here, but it's not very personal or anything.

I've resumed my attempt to make brownies for DaSilva and will probably succeed sometime next week. Wish me luck!

You guys are very sweet. Harry's preparing for midterms and I miss him. I'm just being my melodramatic adolescent self.

Walked out of my poetry retest without turning it in, which put me in a bad mood for a while, which partially explains why I was so awkward after school when I got an ice-cream cone with Will D. and Lily. Went to UBC to get credit for my service hours. I had a whole bunch of work to do and intended to leave right away but they offered me a fresh extra-large pumpkin muffin and I quickly got sucked into the fifty-cent rack. From there it progressed to one-dollar, culture, music, contemporary plays, unusual, autobiography and poetry. I spent every last penny I had and stayed and read for a while. Now I'm going to be underslept again and overworked.

There was this beautiful baby with very strange parents and as it drank milk from its bottle from the left side of its mouth, half of the milk came out down the right side and onto its white sweater. The parents didn't notice. I laughed so hard that they stared at me. I bit down hard on my sore gums around my incoming wisdom teeth to shut myself up. "Your child is very beautiful," I said. It took the bottle out of its mouth and looked at me. Then it turned the bottle upside-down. Milk dribbled onto its shoes and I almost broke the chair.

Realized that I hand-wrote ten pages last night pretentiously entitled "New York" after Ginsberg's "America" and laughed in the dark on the way home. Gave the rest of the muffin to a homeless man.

If I didn't have to go to school, I would go to sleep just as the sun was rising and wake up when it went down. I love new york in all atmospheres, but there's something about night that enchants me.

Feeling SO literary right now. Maybe it's an escapism thing. I'm very much an escapist. It's the main reason I stay away from addictive substances, especially romantic ones.

I finished "Me talk pretty one day" in the café. I have to admit that his writing style sucks you in, but the more I read, the more I kind of hated it, which is sad, because I'm very much an autobiography person and I want to believe that there's a future for the genre. The fact that three people have already donated copies of a book that came out only a few years ago and that nobody's bought them testifies to my belief that he's a talented comedian but not much more.

I hate hipsters and I'm afraid that I'm becoming one.

Books in all forms thrill me.

I hate keeping secrets from my blog, but I'm going to have to.

I'm so sick of looking at American colleges that all look roughly the same. I want to go somewhere unusual. I kind of want to go to England. Mexico would be my first choice, but there aren't really any good colleges there, and it's not all that safe. I want to do something really insane, like join a monastary or something. I want to pretend I'm a male drag queen for a few years. I want to move to Spanish Harlem. I want to teach sailing on the Hudson River. Nice campus-y colleges with quads and fraternities and social circles seem horribly monotonous.

I woke up sunday morning exhausted from saturday. I had double bags under my eyes and wore a plaid shirt and underwear all day. I didn't even bother to shower. I stayed inside from dawn 'till dusk doing work whenever I was able to concentrate and fell asleep in my sister's arms at one-thirty. I did get one break, though; after watching me do a day of doing nothing but college-oriented work, my dad sensed my exhaustion and used my SAT II books to prop up the slide projector and show me pictures of him and mom in Mexico and Italy before and after they were married. My mother was beautiful. She's sexier than I'll ever be. Her waist was tiny and her cheeks were full and she was really spunky and alive-looking. My dad didn't have any of the bitterness he has now--he was just happy and in love and in a country he'd never imagined seeing. I don't ever want to be bitter.

I'm terrified of getting my results back from the Scholastic competition, and I'm even more afraid of going to the ceremony.

I learned how to make tortillas today.

I feel lovely like my mother.

My heart really, really hurts.

I guess you can't ever really predict where things are using yourself as your only point of reference. No two people are ever in the same place in their lives at any given time.

Been working so hard and writing so many SAT and AP essays that I barely remember how to spell stuff.

Feel like I'm all dressed up with nowhere to go, despite the fact that I'm not dressed and will probably be late to school.

Happy and a little pained.

I'm not one of those people that freaks out when they get a ton of work piled up on them, but it's still a pain in the ass.

I don't know why Sills hates me so much!

I have to stay strong.

What a wierd day. It turns out that I missed a bio quiz by showing up late and Blake never told me about it but gave me a zero and counted it like a lab and so my grade is a D. Two periods before I'd gotten a 98 on a spanish test. Right after that I took a history test I thought I would fail and did ok. I bought a pair of jeans and a pie and watched Pierrot le Fou, courtesy of Neo, whom I adore. I really like underclassmen. I feel pretty. I feel smart. I feel vaguely bored. I have to piss.

I'll tell the hobo story later. Not much in the mood for blogging right now because I've been writing so much and don't really want to re-articulate every deep thought of the day. Suffice it to say that there were many.

The last week has been a rush of touring colleges, doing homework, negotiating test scores, taking practice-SATs and practice-APs, being tutored, filming "Jaime Bond" for my spanish class, trying to keep up with the back-row tap class, being social for a change, hanging out with underclassmen, playing guitar again for the first time in over a year, repairing relationships, jamming to Dylan on my harmonica decently well, writing like crazy, chasing journalists, and being called a hippie in various forms.

It all started when I used the word "descalzarse" in spanish class (to take off one's shoes). From there it was discovered that I sit in empty buildings and write when I run into them and that I was mistaken for a homeless person the weekend before last. I'm no longer just a hippie in their eyes. I'm a squatter. It's gotten to the point where when I say that I don't really like ACDC, DaSilva just says "yeah, but you're a crazy hippie feminist and shit."

While it's true that I have some kind of liberal habits, como descalzarme, I also do a lot of un-hippie-ish things, like:
get a rush out of studying for the AP english test
break down
fight with my parents
not get stoned, high or drunk (much)
dedicate myself to the newspaper every quarter
eat meat uninhibitedly
enjoy physics and calculus
openly piss off Charlie Blank (google-proofed, he uses a c, not a k)
cut Jazz Vocal to do work
act possessive
be an emotional strain on everyone in general
resist non-coed colleges
resist a lot of non-mainstream colleges
judge people
be materialistic
read and listen only to semi-classic books and music
be uptight in general
enjoy really nerdy things, like graphic novels, superhero movies and French silent films
.

Actually, I kind of wish I didn't do most of those things, with the exceptions of enjoying things and pissing off Charlie B., and maybe the newspaper. Anyway, I maintain that they're mislabeling me.

I'm in such a good mood, though, that I don't care.

It feels so good to write. I have a million things on my mind that I usually supress for a variety of reasons, and it's nice to feel like I'm learning something about myself for a change. I even tackled the "why I write" question today.

Something in me really likes being busy.