A Way Back to Then

2009-07-07T11:19:00.001-07:00

I've got a smart complex. I have never worried about my smart-ranking as I have this summer. Graduated, no job, planning on applying to editing positions in Philly...and I'm frightened that I'll seem dumb or full of air or vapid in front of people whose opinions actually matter to me because, well, they are doing something I want to do.

I've realized how woefully few life skills I've acquired - by life skills, I suppose I actually mean 'job getting' skills. I was turned down for a teller position at a bank because I 'did not meet the minimum requirements' of the position. While at a job interview at an Italian restaurant, I described a caper as being "like a pea, but not a pea." Stupid. STUPID. Well...kind of funny, too.

But really, where did my confidence go? I AM that smart. I WORK that hard. I have talents and tons of friends telling me I've got them, and tons of not-friends recognizing them. Is it about 'getting lucky'? I don't know.

I've made the decision to move into a room in Kutztown on August first, job or no job. I'll find a way to make it work.

But it would be beautiful to be editing somewhere...

2009-05-26T10:33:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think V-- and I live double lives. We inhabit every form of duality. Similar current relationships, similar views on marriage (and on what will happen when those views, so frail, in truth, fall to the wayside of our loss of youth and beauty and charm, so artfully deliniated by my favorite female).

I am wildly and wickedly bohemian lately. I spent last night composing spontaneously on a walk with John, changing most all my philosophical views on writing and on my process, on storytelling, on the essence of narration. Then, I toured two fantastically beautiful homes, drank a French table wine that was out of this world, watched an art film (but really talked throughout it and only payed attention to the first half, which was completely worthy of my time - my inattention is no slight to the film), and painted pre-colombian war paint on myself and on my friends' faces. I spoke passionately about Mayan poetry, about Faust, about a Protestant shame and feeling of pretentiousness when I spoke about my own writing. I quantified what publishing does to a writer. I felt brilliant and charming. I am still buzzing.

Ah! So much to love down here. I feel inexplicably free.

More papering; ignore if you don't want really disparate writing on Blake and Milton

2009-05-03T21:46:00.000-07:00

What does Blake’s poem have to say about poets and prophecy? Milton’s? How comfortable are the poems with the idea of visions and visionaries?

“So the Angel said: thy phantasy has imposed upon me & thou oughtest to be ashamed. I answered: we impose on one another, & it is but lost time to converse with you whose works are only Analytics” (40)
-Much of Milton’s most involved poetic moments in Paradise Lost come with rhetoric and in rhetorical speeches.
-Milton speaks of prophecy in books 11-12 – both Milton and Blake almost use the same lines to describe man’s limits of perception. Blake: “The roaring of lions, the howling of wolves, the raging of the stormy sea, and the destructive sword, are portions of eternity too great for the eye of man” (32). Milton: “I perceive / Thy mortal sight to fail: objects divine / Must needs impair and weary human sense” (Bk. 12 l. 8-10) and “But to nobler sights / Michael from Adam’s eyes the film removed / Which that false fruit that promised clearer sight / had bred” (Bk. 11 l. 411-414) and later Adam must “close his eyes” (l. 419) in order to take in all he is to see. Blake and Milton both speak to human reason clouding some larger sense of truth (divine Good and Evil in Milton; or poetic genius in Blake). Milton relies on some sort of divine intervention in order to expand human ‘sight’, or reason (but remains limited to expansion in terms of the ability to use the human mind to reason and rationalize) – Blake gives more credit by positing that humans, if they are open to more infinite frames of mind (equally entertaining multiple or oppositionary modes of thought; or giving words multiple definitions/meanings) have the ability for themselves to tap directly into these larger truths.
Interesting that Milton uses the word ‘impair’ to describe the effects of divine ‘sight’ or foresight/prophecy on ‘human sense’, or human’s ability to reason. Impair from Latin, pejorare – “to make worse”. So is foresight or the ability to prophesy a negative thing for humans? In the sense that Michael perhaps believes we shouldn’t shoot too high? It aids in the ‘knowledge isn’t all good’ argument of the poem – ignorance is bliss, sort of. But, in reverse, does that mean that not having an absolute or not being able to predict outcomes is best? That making mistakes and thus gaining wisdom from experience is better than having the knowledge of the mistake ready-made? Certainly more ‘poetic’ interpretation of the merits of human reasoning, in a Romantic sense – not having knowledge of purpose, not knowing what should come next, lends to creating self-purpose, to fashioning a purpose independent of the pursuit of absolutes (absolute truth, absolute good, etc.).

Milton framing speeches with caveats – “so spake the apostate angel”; he “weeped as only an angel could weep”
-arguments which are easily taken apart through reasoning them through – i.e., how the Devil in the Garden with Eve interprets eating from the tree of good and evil, AND eve’s subsequent rationalizing to herself of eating from the tree.

Blake places himself in the poem both as a prophet and as a friend of the prophets. He dines with Ezekiel and Isaiah in the twelfth and thirteenth plates: “I asked them how they dared so roundly to assert, that God spoke to them; and whether they did not think at the time, that they would be misunderstood, & so be the cause of imposition” (34). Blake has concerns about the deception that poets or prophets sometimes proffer in their writings. I don’t think he means it as a purposeful deception, but is concerned about the liminality of speech in being able to describe infinite things.
Blake’s concern of the finite used to describe the infinite, or his anxiety about receiving information from the “perceptions” (35) of a secondary source, shows up later in his journey with the angel who shows him his fate. While with the angel, Blake views his fate as epically hellish: “a cloud and fire burst and rolled thro’ the deep…beneath us was nothing now to be seen but a black tempest…we saw a cataract of blood mixed with fire” (38). But when the angel leaves, Blake sees quite a different scene than the one the angel presented him, and reports to the angel that “All that [Blake and the angel] saw was owing to [the angel’s] metaphysics; for when [the angel] ran away, I found myself on a bank by the moonlight hearing a harper” (39). Blake is incredibly wary of self-proclaimed poets or visionaries who claim to show truths but instead offer limited perceptions or interpretations. Blake believes that false prophecy leads to More here. Indeed Blake interprets himself as a primary source, not as a poet who reinterprets divine (or satanic) prophecy, but as a scribe who writes directly what the divine and what the satanic speak: “As I was walking among the fires of hell…I collected some of their Proverbs” (30).
Blake sometimes directly associates poetic genius with the ability to be a prophet; a true poet, he thinks, spontaneously is gifted or receives direct communication with divine Truths or sayings. Blake has a deep concern about art being or producing something original – his illuminated paintings, each one painted and produced differently than any other copy, may be the best testament to his obsession with originality. Blake’s harshest criticism is of Swedenborg, whom he says writes “a recapitulation of all superficial opinions, and an analysis of the more sublime, but no further” and also that “he has written all the old falshoods” (40). Poetic genius, Blake offers, is established in having a mind infinite enough to be capable of receiving these messages despite conflicting messages being produced by man. He thinks the function of a poet is to reproduce the divine, not interpret it, as he criticizes Swedenborg of doing. He praises poets whom he believes recapitulate messages from the infinite – messages which he believes both take into account the angelic/Good/reason/religious and “converse with Devils who all hate religion” (40) – and cites Shakespeare, Dante, and Milton all as poets who have expansive enough minds to be considered primary authorities of poetic thought.
In this vein, Blake is damning of interpretation and of gilded metaphor or poetic speech. Most generally, his own writing in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is plain and without set verse or rhyme. It lays out claims in a very clear and almost philosophic style; these claims are often numbered, bulleted, or separated by line breaks which aid in visual ease of the work. Often Blake equates eloquent speech as the building blocks to oppression and finite interpretation: “Prisons are built with stones of Law, Brothels with bricks of Religion” (32). Blake almost argues for a reading against the grain when he says that “opposition is true friendship” (40) or acerbically claims that he “reads the Bible together [with an angel who has become a devil] in its infernal or diabolical sense which the world shall have if they behave well” (41).

Both Milton and Blake I think use images of the devil and of hell as a protagonist (or anti-hero) for the shock value; the fact that the audience finds themselves sometimes rationalizing or approving of, in Milton’s case, arguments or speeches that the devils posit, or, in Blake’s case, Machiavellian-like prophecies that do have some credence. They play with the appeal of the taboo more here how milton’s play deviates from blake’s. While Milton may only argue to think and reason for yourself, or to question authority, Blake takes it one step further and actively argues for reading oppositionally to what is being offered you in the hopes of expanding your capability for understanding the infinite or receiving infinite truths.

2009-04-29T21:07:00.001-07:00

I awoke this morning to the following four thoughts:
1. When did I become assertive?
2. When did I start needing to go to bed early in order to not be cranky?
3. When did I develop a hierarchy of the order in which I need to pay my bills?
4. Where the fuck were my glasses?

Suddenly, I turned around, and I was an adult.

Childhood me always imagined adulthood me as wearing high heels and lipstick and going grocery shopping at an elevator-background-music-playing Stop n' Shop after clicking away at my corporate job. Romanticism through the eyes of a working-class-raised child.

I never imagined at twenty-two I would be:
-blogging
-fiscally conservative
-fatherless
-dyeing bits of gray hair
-worrying about budgets
-lamenting the loss of carbonation after leaving my San Pelligrino out too long

and other various adult thoughts of the non-Romantic kind.

more to come later when I can think straight...as in, the 'so what?' is to follow.

afraid I'll lose this. Don't mind the poor grammar if you read Spanish.

2009-04-27T22:00:00.000-07:00

En “El Dragoncillo” por Calderón de la Barca, lo tomé el papel de Teresa, una esposa frustrada en una casa de, en su opinión, “necedades” (17). Teresa es una mujer fuerte en su abilidad de controlar su esposo por fuerza fisical y verbal. Su frustración viene de muchas cosas, en muchas casas relacionadas a su esposo – de la deuda que su esposo tiene a la ciudad y de su estupidéz en específico. Teresa parece ser mujer con mucha inteligencia; ella es agudo y puede mentir facilmente cuando la ocasión se presenta. Por ejemplo, cuando el alcalde llega a su casa pidiendo a su esposa, Teresa dice que él “retraído / le halleréis en la Iglesia” (28-29) en que las autoridades no pueden detenerle. Y Teresa es la maestra de bromas y puede manipular sus palabras facilmente: “Pues Juan Soldado crea y se persuada / que de todo eso hay solo la en-pan-nada” (51-52).
Teresa opera con mucha manipulación - maneja la situación con el sacristan por su sexo (al menos es la alusión), y aprovecha de su posición social sobre su criada. Pienso por su estatus asumado y actual que fisicalmente Teresa es una mujer alta (quizá más alta de su esposo), delgada y de bastante belleza. Es fuerte en sus movimientos – cada movimiento tiene una dirección resuelta.
Aunque no habla de sus motivos directamente en el texto, es seguro adivinar que sus motivos para su infidelidad potencial viene de su frustración con su esposo y su sentimiento de siendo atrapada en sus papeles como esposa y como mujer. Ella habla de sus obligaciónes de mantener su papel de ama de casa, diciendo “obedecer es forzoso” (229) y lamenta de su inhabilidad de escapar de su situación: “no hay corral, puerta o terrado / por donde os reteréis” (19).
En nuestra escena, tomamos la desición de trasladar la escena a la época de los setenta. Hay un período de muchos cambios sociales, marcado por el escape de la realidad por el uso de las drogas alucinógenas, por algunas manifestaciones de igualidad social y economical entre hombres y mujeres, y por el sentido de anti-nacionalismo en cuanto a la Guerra de Vietnam. Calderón, escritor durante los años de decadencia nacional de España (los primeros años de los 1600), era encontrado cambios similares en cuanto al sentido nacional - después de la pérdida de la Armada en 1588, el orgullo nacional se había inacabado. La promoción de las artes bajo de Felipe IV se manifiesta en un sentido más individual y creativa, promotiendo ideas más liberales en cuanto al papel de la mujer y la critica de la sistema social en general – se viste en Calderón la bias a la situación de Teresa por llamar su esposo el “Gracioso villano” (italisis mío).
Pero como siempre existía la Inquisición y por eso había una nececidad de presentar la critica en una manera subversivo – por comedia. En la versión original de Calderón la manifestación de esta critica viene de esta comedia, que yo interpreto en una manera fisical – Teresa, en su abuso verbal de su esposo, también le golpe y le arrastra por la oreja su esposo cuando él cuestiona su autoridad. En el tiempo de Calderón este tipo de poner los cuernos a un hombre por una mujer era hilariosa. El sentido de bochorno provoca a la audiencia el deseo simultando de criticar la situación entre esposo y esposa y reír en una manera y un lugar segura, permetida por la exaggeración del abuso fisical de Teresa.
Aunque habían zancadas hechas en la igualidad entre hombres y mujeres en los setenta, también todavía existe una tensión en el cambio imprevisto al papel de la mujer. Las mujeres subían penosamentes con la yuxtaposición de su papel tradicional como esposa y su nueva papel de poder como una fuerza económica como sostén de la familia. En una manera similar hay dudas del directivo economical de la casa por Teresa – ¿al que extento es Teresa ruinada por tener que mantener su papel como esposa, y al que extento es Teresa capable de administrar con éxito?
En la obra original, el soldado conducta mágico para adivinar la fuente del banquete, que en su tiempo se consideraba un espectaculo pero también una solución muy racional y aceptada por razones de y creencias en la superstición. Temerosos que está technico no podría ser interpretado en una manera seria por nuestra audiencia moderna, cambia el evento a un resulto de tomar drogas. Creo que está interpretacion era una paralela muy buena al uso de mágico en cuanto al efecto. El usa recreacional de drogas ilegales es un muchas casas un espectáculo y una performancia muy similar al uso de mágico. El usa de las drogas (como marijuana) es algo comprendido ambos como una cosa seria y una cosa comica por nuestra generación. Mantiene un sentido de lo comical en esta parte de la obra – con las palabras de tonterías que el soldado pronuncia – pero también el fin con el imagen horrible del sacristan y el ‘fuego’ (en nuestra escena, las serpentinas) es considerada como algo serio – un resulto de un mal viaje.
Teresa, en este sentido, experiencia un mal viaje y su resolución de asumir su papel tradicional de mujer – “Yo voy a mi cocina” – es una resulta directa de su propio castigo por tomar las drogas (que actan como simbolos de su natura submersiva o su rechaza de su papel tradicional y conservadora de ser esposa buena).
Pienso que la fisicalidad y la exaggeración de la pronunciación de frases o palabras por mi personaje se traslada a la audiencia muy bien. La audiencia responde a este táctico en una manera positiva y exitosa (se reían y por conectarse con el humor se asociaron más con el mensaje de la obra).
Pienso que la translación del soldado a un soldado veterano de Vietnam escaparon mucha de nuestra audiencia. El concepto de dar refugio a un soldado es algo extraño a nuestra sociedad y época pero algo muy común en el tiempo de Calderón. Nuestra intención era mostrar el idea que los veteranos de guerra no dababan la bienvenida en el tiempo de Calderón en una manera similar que la sociedad estadounidensesa en los setenta no respectaban los soldados vietnamitas.
Si tuviera la oportunidad de presentar nuestra escena de nuevo, pienso que habría añadir más tiempo para explicar por acción el uso de las drogas y los efectos de las drogas en las personajes. Este haría acumplido por expresiónes de la libertad que Teresa experiencia en su usa de las drogas – quiza por bailar o por calmar sus actidudes muy agresivos a actitudes más relajados. También no entiendo en el nivel de trama la situación de Teresa cuando el soldado conjura el fuente del banquete – si comprendiera la situación con más claridad, pienso que habría cambiado mis acciónes.
Este proyecto añade a mi sabiduría del papel de comedia en las obras del siglo de oro para un deviso de criticar las reglas y tradiciones de la sociedad española en una manera aceptable a los en poder – como en general la fisicalidad dentro del teatro añade a mostrar a la audiencia dónde debe analizar situaciónes similares en sus vidas.

2009-03-14T15:34:00.000-07:00

Sitting at my coffee shop, loving the way the coffee is always burned when I come in, perfect when I leave; it is hard for me to think, in the relative safety of having a room already paid for, five classes overwhelming me with writing, and a gig that makes me a woman of modest means, that in two months I'd better have a real job with a real income and health insurance. I'd rather work here. If I could only live off of here...

Life has been amazingly comforting lately, and I am not sure why. I was thinking more the other day about something V--- had said - about being privelaged and about having bought myself a priveleged mind and an upper-middle class education - and my response, concerning something about having "natural talent" despite your financial means and advantages, and about not feeling bad for being advantaged. And then I was thinking further about what had led me to determine that anyone had "natural talent", as everyone is a product of an environment and not of nature, or genetics, purely; that what led me to this statement was a series of assumptions I've had so successfully drilled into me - a product of our generation's "Romantic" conecpt of the purpose of Work and of Life; our "me"-centric-ness, perhaps. And I was happy about all of this thinking, and the realization that I am solely what I have created myself to be, and how others have interpreted that creation to be; and futhermore that my reality is an extension of that creation. It is an incredibly empowering feeling to know that life is how I choose it to be, how I choose to narrate it.

But I can see how easily this revelation could alternately be associated with some existential angst - to be a creation of words, mere words, and of nothing more. That the only equalizer is death, past which we have no certain narration.

hmmm.

My life is, currently,

2009-02-17T09:05:00.000-08:00

Four dates, three days,
twentyish pages of my thoughts,
five hundredish pages of reading
a swirl of kisses and scenes in the back of a coffee shop
when I should have clocked out a half hour ago.

Animated films, sushi, plates overflowing in the sink,
dinner overflowing on the stove.

a future of being jobless, supportless,
considering missionary work and salvation from the church
for an otherwise stuck existence in pennsyvania, or, worse -
Connecticut.

Walkin in Memphis
Whistling in bare feet
Bringing free coffee home to exhausted roommates.

Vine charcoal
sad music
beautiful voice.

Beautiful model
Ugly model
uglier me.

Proliferate writing.

Proliferate dating.

Too many irons in the fire.

A list of men never to fall in love with

2009-02-12T17:59:00.000-08:00

Professors
Premeds
Recovered or recovering heroin addicts
Men who like theater too much
Men who don't like theater enough
Men who are intellectual without being smart

2009-01-22T14:52:00.000-08:00

Fran jumped off the 8th street Bridge last night.

I wonder.

2009-01-13T16:38:00.000-08:00

Back at school, and back in work, and back in a rhythm. Back to goodnight at eleven on weeknights and four on weekends; back to hava java (and new as a soon-to-be-barista, starting friday); back to finding my friendships with professors wholly more interesting than most of my friendships with my peers (with some remarkable exceptions). Back to single; back to searching. Back to life without regular outings, dorm showers and bad shaves, cooking and cleaning, coins for laundry. Lots of backs.

It is time for me to move again. I am feeling the itch and am searching for outs. I really would like to go abroad right away but I feel like my daughterly duty is to stay here and take care of people. I might bolt anyway.

I am most happy when I am sitting here with the cast of characters in this coffee shop. I don't know enough about any of them to make them real, and give them humanity outside of the adjective-shell I've wrapped them in in my head, and that distance feels best to me. I can perform. I can be bold. I can make damn good coffee. Maybe.

In four months this will all be gone and I will be somewhere new and with a whole new set of people to learn and remember and perform in front of and make damn good coffee for. It's a refreshing feeling.

The Song

2008-12-23T20:32:00.001-08:00

I am perched on a stool at the piano bar.

My eyes wander like the tremulous after-tones

of notes plunked out in pleasing sequences –

Wandering down cobblestones worn smooth by sandals

into small terra-cotta hills,

Wandering past the purple haze of thick cigar smoke

and women clucking sugary bits of gossip

as they stir, in cream, their dreams.

The notes reverberate off the walls of a narrow street

to mingle with taxis and vespas and footfalls

and a delicate click of knitting needles as

a woman, scarved, brings them back into the bar

with a half-completed shawl she tries to sell me.

Notes so ephemeral, they curl around the tongues

and hums of shy undiscovered singers.

This song becomes their song,

unsung but known,

a conversation they have had many times before

and so, when the topic again arises, is

dismissed with a wave of the hand and an

“Así es.”

2008-12-21T11:24:00.000-08:00

So while everyone else seems to be doing things fun and exciting and life-changing, I am snowed in my house in Connecticut with a serious case of writer's block and no desire to research jobs.

Upon leaving for break it was suggested to me to submit my final essay for my Negative Capability class for the Sherr Essay Prize. It needs a lot of work, especially the beginning. But I certainly could use a hundred dollars, so a few hours' editing shouldn't bother me.

I spent Wednesday and Thursday of this week back down in Allentown, and wandered aimlessly around Philly and talked to Greenpeace workers and ate falafel and sat in a coffee shop on South Street and read Justine and got cold and had a nice warm arm put around me and a nice glass of wine put in me. I cried upon having to come home. My face was gently wiped clean, and my mouth gently and compassionately kissed, and I drove silently through the cold night.

I am in love despite myself. He just interests me far too much. He is someone I want to figure out. I want him to lead me around and I want to be able to watch where he is taking me. I want to be more clever for him, and more independent for myself. I want to teach him things. I like when he tells me I am kind, and that my influence on him is positive. I like when he sings, and when he looks to me for recognition for the things he does well.

I am desperate for touch. I want his arm around me while I sleep. I want my head on his thigh while I read, or close my eyes after one beer too many, or while I sigh myself into comfort. I want to dance with him.

I want to write him letters.

It is hard to be up here alone.

2008-12-08T09:03:00.000-08:00

A list of things I am looking forward to reading over the break:

Anthology of Sean O'Casey plays
Life is a Dream
The Joke
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
Madame Bovary
that book Amy got me for my birthday, name forgotten,
Beer in the Snooker Club
The Norton Book of Literature, Volume D

Hooray.

A list of things I need to do over break:

Research and apply for jobs.
Get cover letters and resumes prepared and finalized.
Get letters of recommendation.

It's scary to think that in five months I will have a job. Or not.

2008-12-04T07:24:00.000-08:00

When I become stuck intellectually and socially, but mostly when I become stuck in love, I tend to move.
Each place is bigger in some way than the last, each more expansive. My next move, for instance, will be either to New York or to a foreign country. I do it in that distinctly snobbish American desire to 'find myself', or at least find something outside myself that I can grab a hold of and sink into and distract myself from, well, the uncertainty of myself.

Kundera calls it a system of betrayals, each needing to be bigger than the last. But in the end, where can you finally run? Death is an inevitability, in which one can neither embrace it too soon nor deny it too long. We write to distract ourselves from that dirty little secret.

That writing is beautiful in that it is an innocent and sometimes naive white lie.

2008-11-18T13:13:00.000-08:00

I'm finally doing it.

I'm writing proliferately and painfully and beautifully and I feel possessed.

I am doing this.

Yes.

quick scrambled thoughts.

2008-11-14T14:28:00.001-08:00

I need to do a lot of thinking about both Bowen and Baldwin here, mostly because I am concerned about the language with which I am framing my near-future seminar paper. I talked in class about being intrigued as to why both Stella and David tell “false” or “non-factual” stories about themselves, but I don’t like this language, because really, the stories they are telling are within a work of fiction, itself nonfactual, and also, that any story told is a version and never a full truth. So I am trying to find more acceptable language for that.

So I’m thinking that I am thinking too much about Stella and David’s motivations behind telling these stories, and not enough about the narratives’ motivations for telling these stories. What is the similarity between the story Stella tells others about her divorce and the story David tells others about his sexuality? One, both characters are purposefully deceptive in their storytelling – the narrative and the characters purposely deceive other characters in the novel (and, in Bowen’s case, the reader for a great portion of the novel) – when they tell these stories. Two, the two authors occupy at least two minority positions in their own lives– Baldwin is gay and black, and Bowen is Irish Ascendancy and a woman.

The contrasts are more interesting. David lies to obscure or hide his marginalization and align himself with patriarchy (he is desirous of being viewed as a traditional “Man” – the “see I’m straight, see I’m normal” argument), while Stella becomes more marginalized when she tells a story that fights against patriarchy (she is desirous to tell others that she is an adulterer, to place herself in a position of power over the male sex – the “see I’m a wicked woman, see I’m a vamp” argument). But again, we arrive at a comparison – both David and Stella gain anonymity by telling stories, even though they tell these stories out of very opposite motives. Why do they want anonymity? I think they are uncomfortable with their own authority in telling stories about themselves. I think more largely Bowen and Baldwin are uncomfortable telling stories about people like themselves, and locking these people into stereotypical roles – perhaps motivated by the American psyche of promoting the individual, and the 40s/50s psyche of promoting feminism/the female as individual of the male, in the face of “news” telling us that women should be a certain way? (After all, Louie finds her ‘identity’ when she reads the newspaper). Certainly this is related to the cultural work that Bowen and Baldwin are both trying to accomplish through their narratives, but I’m not quite at the point where I can put together all the pieces there yet.

2008-11-05T15:05:00.000-08:00

It is refreshing to realize that you miss someone.

A healthy missing, not a pining.

And then to sink into them, exhausted, at the end of a long few days.

It is a coming home of a different kind.

2008-10-28T12:33:00.000-07:00

Three thirty three p.m., with lots of rain, hard rain, cold rain, soaking me inside and out, and a wind too harsh to give me any comfort. I've bought gloves that are 'feminine attractive' - es decir, that women tend to compliment me on and men tend to tell me look like "old lady gloves."

Feeling kind of old and noticing gray hair and an inability to sleep through nights, even next to warm and comforting bodies.

Life and friendship are sometimes unfortunate things. We try so hard to cultivate love, all kinds of love, to surround ourselves with it so that we may wrap ourselves in it on days such as these. It is hard to understand the boundaries of friendship; it is hard to work in established rules on who you can and who you can't be friends with. It is hard to work with your own emotions, your own misgivings.

I am finding solace in work lately, which is a pleasant surprise, as this semester I've been mostly shirking it and it is about time for me to crack down on my work ethic anyway. The methodical nature of my work, the time put in, is very comforting and satisfying. It is distracting. It pulls me away from the window and the garden, and narrows my view to the candle and the page.

I feel overindulged but not full, tired, but not sleepy. Exhausted of living in a system that does not work for me.

Reflective in the rain.

2008-10-19T07:30:00.000-07:00

Slept deep and heavy, a full night, with warm blankets and soft bed and warm heat, and I am waking up to a crisp and beautiful fall morning, wrapped in a towel, waiting for the shower to be free, writing and smoking and drinking hot chocolate, and looking at my inorganic purple flowers in a tall rectangular glass vase, and looking at the more organic sand and seashells holding them in place, and loving my blue curtains and the way the light comes seeping through them, and gently, gently, everything glows and I feel alive and perfect and well.

I am thinking about New York and how I want to grab a peacoated and scarved young mediterranean looking man and walk its streets in the crisp, and breathe vapor trails and curl my tongue around my warm full vowels and curve my back up against his hand, and how he is up in Vermont, speaking of me in muted tones to whomever will listen, and I am here whispering to myself about him in my warm bed, and wishing to be in his.

Life is visceral in all the correct ways. I am watching my father die, and watching the world die around him, and watching things slowly crumble and the edges of reality slowly fuzz, to phosphenes as I squint my eyes into deep, deep sleep, the sleep you get after days of traveling, after nights spent burning candles at both ends, a heavy body in a welcoming bed.

And sleep, sleep.

My white walls do not seem cold or barren. I have a gold picture frame to even them out. My jewelry hangs from a window screen. The bind of my book is broken from well-use. My pen is out of ink. I am going to wear my blue dress today, with the lace flowers embroidered on the edge of the skirt. A deep blue, against my snow skin, and boots that don't match but are warm.

And the shower is free, and I get to wash off yesterday and begin today fresh.

2008-10-11T08:09:00.000-07:00

If Verlyn Klinkenborg gets to write in the New York Times
Why, oh why, can't I?

2008-10-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

I have been living in my headphones for the past few weeks.

I think it is interesting that when I make new friends they always seem to want to impart on me something significant but small in the first few weeks to solidify my interest in them and their tastes. Gifting me new music is usually a convenient way of doing this.

I've been feeling very 1980s lately, exchanging mixed tapes and cds and borrowing iPods and loaning mine out. I've fallen in love with Damien Rice, and more in love with his backup singer, and I like Asian-Irish Gaelic-fusion, and as I walk with ears music-muted to the coffee shop, or as I drive tapping my steering wheel to the park, these things make me think of the people who have brought me to a whole new musical understanding.

Choosing music to share with someone else is an intimate process. You first bare your own soul in divulging your musical forays, be they traditional and conservative or freakishly ecclectic. And anticipating the choices of others - in an attempt to weave their independent musical taste into your own collection - is a risky task. I think deeply about the significance of the songs given to me to test out, to sound against - I think deeply about the thought that this certain person took in selecting the song, selecting the sequence of songs, the genre and type, the style and musical syntax. Like writing, composing and compilating a mixed tape is deviant and dangerous - it reveals perhaps what you do not want others to see; it reveals both conscious and subconscious desires, desires to send messages, to connect emotionally, to stimulate another's mind.

2008-09-29T15:30:00.000-07:00

I am really glad that I do not watch the news. Or, in the past few years, t.v. in general.
I am really glad that my boyfriend loves the fact that I would much prefer reading in bed next to him than going out anywhere.
I am less happy about confined friendships.
I am severely disappointed in how much I worry.

Ta-da.

2008-09-18T16:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel infinitely happier without a man.

Mostly because I think I am my best self when I am not worrying about someone else's happiness.

Things I need to get done:
-lawrence paper
-finishing movie response
-ana maria paragraph
(both of which are about 3 weeks overdue)
-arrangement
-spanish interpreting excercises
-reading trabing, mikkelson, websites, and not knowing for what purpose these things are being assigned
-philosophy reading
-spanish am lit reading
-interpreting introduction paragraph in Spanish and English

I am losing my English.
I am losing sleep.
I am losing the part of my sanity I usually have.
I am infinitely bored with schoolwork.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand nap.

The slow and painful death of a coffee shop.

2008-09-15T15:12:00.000-07:00

Fran's husband died fifteen years ago. He painted a lot of pictures of cows.
One day, Fran came in to Hava Java and hung those pictures. She was very meticulous about how and where the pictures should be hung. It started with two cows and a few smartly-placed paintbrushes. Then the cows became herded on the walls, eating grass, blue cows, purple cows, cows and disproportionately-sized roosters. And then she put up a biography on her dead husband, and an old picture. I think she must have taken it in the seventies. I think she wants to sell some of the paintings. I bet she is lonely, living wherever she lives, with a bunch of paintings of cows.

Fran is very clearly crazy and on a lot of illegal substances. She talks a lot about salvation and about Vietnam, especially if you are talking about things that are in no way related to salvation and Vietnam. But there is some light, or thread, that connects her ramblings to reality; if you reminded her, she could perhaps be re-calibrated to return to the locus that the conversation had spurred from.

I saw Fran outside of the coffee shop the last day I walked down there. The fair was going on, and it smelled like petting zoo five miles in any direction from the grounds. She was sitting outside and staring at a back copy of the New York Times. I asked her why Hava Java was closed, because usually Hava Java is only closed on Christmas. She told me it was Jesus and Vietnam, and adamantly swung her paper very close to my head. So I looked at a sign on the door. Hava Java was undergoing renovations. It would be open at nine a.m., although it did not specify what day at nine a.m. it would re-open.

I drove by for a few days. It was not open at nine a.m. or at any other time. New signs appeared on top of the old sign. Signs from the health department. Signs detailing stop-work orders, because the owners had not obtained a permit for construction. And a sign on top of all signs, thanking the loyal customers of Hava Java for voting it the best coffee shop in the Lehigh Valley area. Lots of signs, but no nine a.m. openings.

Hava Java has a following of people. Some are hipsters. Some are strung-out hippies. Mostly it is a group of 20-somethings who desperately look for intellectual solace in an abandoned steel town. They all lament that Hava Java has been closed for so long. They prophesy its impending doom. The owners have no money to pay the baristas, let alone reconstruct a coffee shop and pay off city fines. The health department has declared it not up to code. They all call for something to be done, for someone to lend money. None of them have any money except for the fifty cents they spend on playing pool at a local bar. And so they lament.

Fran has been wandering. I am not sure if her dead husband's pictures are still in the shop or not. But she seems to be keeping guard of something.

Joe

2008-09-02T08:29:00.000-07:00

Joe smokes.

Joe smokes a lot.

He won't do it in his apartment, although when he can't find his lighter, he'll turn on the gas to the stove and tilt his lips-holding-cigarette gently into the flame.

Gently and he walks down the stairs, ferociously sucking in and puffing out, jerkily inserting and uninserting. Something coital about the way he puffs, jerks, exhales, tilts his head into the flame. His legs are long and so watching him from below, one can see how his knees have to bend slightly too much, slightly too extravagantly, grotesquely, and something French about it.

And so he sits on the stoop outside his house, and watches the college kids as they neatly file down the street to the bar on the corner, and unneatly wobble back up the street toward home two hours later. And he smokes.

Sometimes he'll put his arm around me, although I don't think it is a conscious effort. It is usually removed quickly, like he just wanted to make sure I was there for a second. Once that is found out, he continues smoking, tongue curled around cattail whisps of ghostlike ectoplasm, guiding it into circular patterns of soot in sky. Soot in lungs remains unseen.

And you can taste the tobacco in his kisses. His gentle kisses, playful kisses, his nose nuzzled gently into your cheek. He has soft lips and he smells good. There is much to be said about a man with soft lips, who smells good, who tastes of tobacco and tilts his head into an open flame.

When it rains...

2008-08-26T12:59:00.003-07:00

Classes started yesterday, and quite ironically (and fitting with my neo-Romanticist expectations) the two classes I thought I was going to hate the most are my favorites so far.

It is a truth in life that when a man likes you, other men can somehow instinctively smell the primal competition and succeed in sniffing you out all at the same time. There has been a flurry of offers to hang, get coffee, go walking in the park...I have to say it is quite flattering.

And so I'm thinking about all of this, because it seems I'm being handed a silver platter of choices. I'm actually not sure if I want to choose any, but I am intensely curious at all the options. I look at my semester, the time management difficulties already arising. And I still feel a pull toward something that perhaps would go nowhere, and certainly currently is going nowhere, but nonetheless the sexual tension exists, the interest exists, and is not to be denied.

More later...

Cousins and kissing cousins

2008-08-24T22:18:00.000-07:00

Strange night. Herbal tea, pity taken on strangers, which led to poorly drawn maps on napkins and date plans with foreign doctors and me feeling entirely too much like I don't say "no" enough, a few too many drinks with the full intention of becoming drunk, and a lasting buzz that will keep me from sleeping well.

I am in a strange limbo state with a friend who shouldn't be a friend - one of those men you should fuck or forget.

A good male friend reminded me that desire is a strong emotion, but fear is by far a stronger motivator; that even though men may make good and rational decisions based on desire (and on other far more important qualities), fear may keep them from these decisions; and that I have nothing to do with the latter emotion and all to do with the former.

He then told me he trusted me, which was a gift that put my heart entirely at ease with a not so pleasant past between the two of us.

He is the brother I should have had.

I often question if I am deserving, if I am attractive, if I am intelligent. I suppose this is a typical female plight, a neverending self-doubt, which I suppose serves a purpose in keeping us humble, but greatly wounds us by keeping us from believing we have the ability to make more of ourselves than what we expect from ourselves.

Do I want to be taken seriously?

Do I value people who listen and who have sympathy more than getting advice for how to fix problems endemic to my life?

The answer is, I don't know. In many ways I'm a complete mess lately. I don't understand myself and I am not motivated by much other than raw instinct and a desire to please those I have already bothered maintaining relationships with. But I'm too tired, too exhausted, to place myself in any self-discovery. I get through days. I actually don't know if it is enough just to get through a day anymore; I think more is required of me.

I also think I'm completely drunk.

Class tomorrow, but thinking more about life outside of school...

2008-08-23T07:42:00.001-07:00

New semester. New kill or be killed experience.

I live for this shit.

2008-08-18T10:19:00.001-07:00

It may be possible that I only want to move to the City because I can thrift shop my way through life, and the good art is gratuitous and free, and my body likes the way a warm city breeze whips against it, whips up my skin, twirls my skirt, flirts with my hair, as I walk down the street and pretend I don't speak English and never have and never will.

2008-08-14T13:57:00.000-07:00

Some smart thinking, so I hope she doesn't mind if I quote a large chunk of her:

"Although QHouse is student-organized, I have to admit that I'm a little unnerved by the idea of separating queer students from the rest of the community. I think there's a real danger in extending a binary into a system of 3 or 4 categories and leaving it at that, rather than looking at individuals on an individual basis, acknowledging that biology and culture are inseparable and that the distinction is irrelevant, and confronting the fact that no one can ever fully understand the impulses that drive anyone else. Straight culture offers a lot of ways to avoid dealing with the nebulous nature of our feelings and compulsions, a lot of easy ways to claim a gender identity and criticize others', and I worry that the same cop-outs will crop up in the queer community as it becomes more widely acknowledged and acceptable. One of the great changes we've seen in the last few decades, I think, has been the way the gay rights movement has made people become aware of their own sexuality, question sexual norms on a larger scale than before. I know that to some extent, everything that becomes widely accepted loses some of its subtlety and nuance, but it unnerves me when people throw themselves into new stereotypes in defiance of the old ones. Not that my future housemates are doing that, per se; I don't know their individual motivations. But the idea of isolating queer students does seem to hold its perils."

It wasn't cool to be gay when I entered high school. I had frisbees thrown at me when I left to drive home in the afternoon. I will never forget the sweeping hush that came over the auditorium when I casually mentioned my bisexuality to the drama club. But the exotic allure of lesbianism had seemed to catch like a dry bush in a desert thunderstorm by the time I left the place. I was old news. I wasn't a rebel anymore, not that I had tried to be in the first place, although now people were alternately assuming that my 'choice' of being bisexual had everything to do with fitting in.

I made a conscious effort not to associate with any gay and lesbian organizations at Muhlenberg, nor to go out of my way to inform people of my sexuality. I've only been on one date with a woman since college began, and apparently, I wasn't gay enough for her. Because it isn't enough to just identify yourself as 'gay' anymore; there is a whole political purse-full of accoutrements that come with the territory.

It's funny to see the differing ways in which straight people define gay people, and in which gay people define themselves. And within those categories, the spectrum of different opinions. Gay conservatives - folks who are Amish-like in their gayness and in judging the acceptable level of sexual deviance of their friends - have come full circle in harboring similar belief systems as straight conservatives, although clearly if the two met on the street, the situation would turn Jets vs. Sharks very quickly. Veronica is correct to point out the gang-like persona that the gay community has begun to develop, not dissimilar to any other preceeding American fanatical social movement.

Along with V-----, I see this cult-like anathema towards non-gays to be the supreme downfall of the gay rights movement. As V---'s story unfortunately acknowledges, the gemeinschaft nature of the gay community effectively destroys the purpose of gay activism - instead of revealing gay culture to those 'outside' the circle, the gay community has begun to preach to the choir, and has alienated those who do not adhere to a list of very specific qualifications. To be gay is to be part of an elite circle, where displaying the depths of one's 'unique' and 'god given' sexuality has become the new version of whipping it out and measuring oneself against a ruler. Straight people recognize and label this hierarchy from the outside, labeling people as 'flamboyantly gay', or 'straight-gay'. The gay community accepts these labels, and creates its own. The gay community currently to has more of an interest in proving to itself that there is some sort of Platonic oneness achieved from how gay a person is than an interest in actually liberating itself sexually from the societal pressures placed on being straight.

So, like the hippie movement, I fear gay activism may be extinguished just as pathetically by its own social agenda. At the heart of it all, perhaps an individuals' sexual experiences are not dissimilar enough to warrant any kind of lasting social change. Additionally, sex never promotes just sex - all movements towards sexual liberalism have been a front to forward associated political agendas.

So, food for thought.

2008-08-14T10:21:00.000-07:00

Reasons I love my future roommates:

-Amy is Hollywood fabulous
-Shan buys red crock pots and crock pot cookbooks
-Alli brings about three carloads of stuff, which at first seems like too much, but we always end up using everything in there at least once.
-There is always at least one of us running around singing
-There is always at least another one of us running around in a towel
-Amy can't leave home without her favorite books
-Alli can't leave home without something pink on or about her person
-Shan's impressive 80s clothing collection
-shared love of Anthropologie
-TEA!

9 days and I cannot wait.

2008-08-12T14:31:00.001-07:00

I've got a bit of a girl crush.

Which makes me feel like, four years old in maturity.

I totally learned the wrong second language.

nothing in particular

2008-08-12T04:46:00.000-07:00

So although I had little trouble with the jet lag when I went to Germany, adjusting back to U.S. time is proving a bitch. Even though I now manage to stay up until at least eleven, I wake up at five.

Sigh.

The nice thing is hearing the early morning birds. It reminds me of chilly mornings at camp, my body waking up a half hour earlier than I had to, in anticipation of actually having to wake up, and I would lie warm in my sleeping bag, and watch the dawn go from gray to gold, and hear the conference of the birds outside the mesh window on the side of the cabin.

Am reading A Happy Death. I'm not sure if works should be published that authors clearly didn't want published. Are we that consumerist, that invasive?

Or just curious?

But I feel like I've stumbled across a locked diary, anyway. So I've been furtively flipping through the pages.

It is necessary for me to leave Connecticut. It is not my home. I am made to feel like a stranger. Strangely, when I had this conversation with my mother, she completely and wholeheartedly agreed that I needed to leave. She didn't even feign resistance.

You think this revelation would have come the moment I came back to find my bed dismantled and stored at my grandfather's house, and all my things boxed up for me. But my family has never been one to do rational things, like warn me that they were boxing up my life, so it didn't really phase me. We've never been warm and fuzzy.

List of things that my family should have informed me of, that I didn't until I discovered them on my own:
-bed removed, boxed up
-outside of house completely changed color (I actually drove by the house I lived in for 18 years because I didn't realize it was mine)
-dad's excessive amount of pain, pre-knowing what the heck was going on
-matt landed on the unfortunate half of the 'was I an accident' coin

I sleep on the floor on a one-inch thick piece of foam. It's actually quite comfortable. I've set it up so there are boxes on each side of me, and then lots of cushy pillows, and I am the deliciously warm filling in the center of the blanket and pillow concoction.

mmmmm.

So today...is again a whole lot of nothing.
Want to go up to Boston.
Want to go down to New York.
Want to write, but I've got work to do.

Ah, mawwiage.

2008-08-11T04:49:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking a lot about love and relationships lately.

I'm thinking about how much of my love life has been circumstantial, and about how many of my relationships have started not from a spark but from some other pressing motive. I suppose part of me would like to get married, but it would be a lie to say I would marry someone out of love. I know ninety percent of my decision would be based on the fact that I just so happened to feel like getting married at that point in my life, and the other ten would be based on the fact that I enjoy the ritual.

I don't think we have a specific soulmate. That idea smacks of elitism and a perverse existentialism for me. I enjoy being with many different people for many different reasons. I love people for many different reasons. I am resigned to say that I would be okay having sex with someone I respected and admired, but didn't necessarily have any physical attraction towards.

I think the shit we feed each other about love is intensely interesting. I think it's interesting that we propogate and pander to this very warped bedtime story of sexual success - that we as a society define sexual success as contractual monogamy. It was a curious turn of events that led marriage to be associated with love, and quite frankly, it was a poor decision. I think many of the most successful marriages aren't based on love at all, but rather mutual respect, friendship, and a collaborative effort to expound upon survival.

I'll probably think more about this later and edit this post, but there was a need to get that out of me for now.

Loving...

2008-08-10T04:15:00.000-07:00

German radio
NY&Co's ability to make fancy-pants out of sweatpants material

that European men can carry the male-equivalent of a purse
and wear scarves

beautiful weather
my delish farmer's tan
sunburn.

chocolate
and losing weight
and being in the mood to shop, and to
have an excuse to shop.

ALMOST sweater weather!

puppies.

driving my new car
to state parks.

not having obligations
to feel guilty.

sitting in the chair Goethe wrote in.

mind-fuckingly wonderful nights lounging on the side of a gazebo.

finding twenty dollars on the street.

2008-08-09T11:39:00.000-07:00

thought i'd share with a few souls that
I am feeling skinner and not only
feeling so, but actually am -
a mere 128 pounds of solitude and
counting down the seconds until
my way-too-large pants fall down.

and I'm going shopping
at my favorite store because normally
I'm just not in the mood, but the mood struck me today.

but first
I should grab a belt.

And I realize that I
own
none.

Germany and New York

2008-08-08T21:54:00.001-07:00

2008-07-28T13:24:00.000-07:00

I'm having trouble today.

I am looking out my window at familiar trees, grown trees, broad leaves. I want to throw water on the paint and wipe it all away.

2008-07-27T13:03:00.000-07:00

thunder roaring for the second time today...
time for a run.

Various Aspects of Summer Endeavors

2008-07-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

Just learning how to insert photos. These basically capture what happened this summer - aka, me going crazy on zero sleep, lots of coffee, speaking more of a second language than a first - oh, and fireworks. Lots of fireworks.

2008-07-26T19:23:00.001-07:00

I had a very pleasant drive home today, after eight weeks working and living in Pennsylvania.

I love Connecticut. I love the way the grass burns brown in front lawns in suburban neighborhoods built in the 50s. I love being thirty minutes away from the ocean, if I drive fast. I love the smoke smell left on my clothes after backyard bonfires, I love midnight runs down familiar country roads, I love how nothing changes in this crazy town. I love being wanted here, because I am now a stranger with stories to tell.

We are all grown, our group from high school. We are in Texas doing engineering; we are working three jobs; we have dropped off the radar; we have graduated and have lived in Boston; we have lived in opposite sides of Pennsylvania, and have never visited each other; we are moving to New York, getting our equity cards; we run our family's community theatre for twelve years, and many more to come. We marry our high school sweethearts; we are engaged, and then not; we have kids, they will grow up, and will play setback at our kitchen tables, and steal lawn gnomes, and go cliffjumping at the reservoir, and throw each other fully clothed into the pool, like we used to do. Some of us look old. Some of us are actually going gray (sorry AJ). We have responsibilities of our own, apartments of our own, wives and husbands, book deals and broadway breaks, and we do not stay in touch, but seem to wander back to a small, familiar house on Middletown Road, and weave through each other's lives just enough to remain friends.

I wonder about how much I belong to this town. I wonder how much I belong to anything anymore. It all seems like a lot of floating around, from house to house, from city to city, from lover to lover.

I am reflecting on the person I have become in the past twenty-one years. I am reflecting on the choices I have made in the past eight weeks. I wonder if I've stayed true to myself. I wonder if sometimes I've compromised being a good person. I wonder if it really matters.

I miss us. I miss talking about the small things. I miss curfews, bummed cigarettes, bonfires, first loves, I miss virginity and I miss innocence, I miss having a defined black and white as to what is right and wrong.

Sometimes I'd like to take you all with me. I want you to know things. I want you to tell me things about who I am now, because you all knew so well who I was. We lived together for eighteen years. We saw each other every day. How did we walk away from each other after that?

It's all so strange. A part of me was eternally happy here, with you all, never knowing anything outside the seven of us.

You made Connecticut lovely.

2008-07-24T21:21:00.000-07:00

Looking back at old blog posts, mine and his, Zack and I have grown up so much since freshman year. Sometimes it's a shame that growing was apart. Sometimes not. I'm feeling better about it; it's no longer a casualty.

Although he was so sweet then, and I was so serious. Example as follows:

He:; No no...I'm not saying love doesn't have any passion in it...what I'm saying is that you don't really know its there untill a bit of time has gone by and the newness of everything has worn off. Love can and should be passionate, but I don't think that you can tell the difference in the beggining because you're so empassioned with the newness of everything that the passion covers the love up. It's only after a bit of time has gone by and you don't need the newness anymore that you can tell that love is there.
And think about it...love and passion go together, but they aren't necessarilly the same thing. After all...hopefully you'll still love your partner when you're seventy...but I certainly hope that there won't be any physical passion between you...
My point is that love remains after passion has gone away.
kate said...: I dunno...if I think I still can do it when I'm seventy, I damn well will.

Guess that's changed.

But I am still the master speller!

2008-07-22T18:12:00.001-07:00

So, I'm the only twenty-something sitting in this coffee shop alone, with my San Pelligrino and my computer, and there's a very large painting of a surrealistic cow hanging on the wall opposite me, and I'm not even the fucking person who's knitting, and I'm alone. Usually I wouldn't feel bad about myself but there's something about today that's making me feel that ugly little lack of confidence. I think it has something to do with the fact that it is surprisingly crowded in here, and that I am hogging a table all to myself. At least no one has asked me yet if they could borrow the empty chairs.

Today I decided I was going to tell someone something important. I am sure it will remain unsaid.

Bawk bawk bawk bawk....

I write here but I am no Hemingway. I feel sometimes like telling them that although I only pay 1.75 for a tea and then stay for three hours, eventually I will make them famous by writing here, and someone somewhere will write that in my biography, that I wrote here, and I'm doing them a favor by choosing this location. But proprietor and writer know that isn't true, and so by hour two I'm usually feeling uncomfortable about hogging a whole table and not being asked for the empty chairs, especially when it's crowded, so between hours two and three I am too distracted to write anything good (by the way, I'm at 2:32). Every minute I feel like I'm apologizing for only carrying five dollars in my wallet at any given time. It's not my rule that I can't charge orders under eight dollars. I'm not ordering eight dollars worth of coffee.

Book review

2008-07-12T09:05:00.000-07:00

The Rainbow - D.H. Lawrence

The plot: virtually nonexistant. Marriage, sex, foreign people, eating, sex sex, death, sex sex sex, popping out babies, children, sex, marriage, attempts at marriage, various philosophical tangents, sex. A great character novel.

Why it might be worth reading all 450-odd pages (although I skimmed through some): Lawrence perfects waxing poetic. Plus, the gratuitous sex (riskay for 1915's standards, and enough to make you want to grab your lady for some hardcore mouth kissing by today's) makes the repetitiveness almost not annoying.

The reason you should not combine the words "breast", "quivering anemone" and "cleaved" in such close proximity (aka, the point where I felt like my feminine parts were being reduced to flayed fish skin, to be used in some strange fertility ritual): '"The moon has risen," said Anton, as the music ceased and they found themselves suddenly stranded, like bits of jetsam on a shore. She turned, and saw a great white moon looking at her over the hill. And her breast opened to it, she was cleaved like a transparent jewel to its light. She stood filled with the full moon, offering herself. Her two breasts opened to make way for it, her body opened wide like a quivering anemone, a soft, dilated invitation touched by the moon."

What's his beef? Trying to negotiate the ground between industrialization and individuality/Nature/man's "will". Also some curious backhanded digs at organized religion, and an introduction to the art of the female body (thus the banning of his books).

An interesting use of: Flaubertian f & i, and nice homage, at that.

Rating: a 6 of 10, for being slightly more useful than a romance novel.

a really rough draft of a far-off personal statement

2008-07-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

It took a tea party with an imaginary Queen Elizabeth and her stuffed animal consorts for me to realize that my diploma was not, in fact, a road map.

You may think that this would have been a simple process of elimination and identification, and argue, perhaps, that there are obvious phenotypical differences between these two very equally important bits of paper. Clearly, for this revelation to have been provided to me by my five-year-old cousin (who, because of our age difference, fondly refers to me as ‘Auntie Kate’), I must have lost a great deal of intuition between my childhood and adult years.

When Analise asked me what I had done when I left Connecticut, I proudly exclaimed that I had earned my diploma after four challenging and sometimes exhausting years of college. Ana promptly climbed onto the top of her desk and reached on tip-toe to grab a curled-up piece of paper on her topmost shelf. “Like this?” she questioned in concerned innocence, handing me her pre-school certification of graduation. I assured her in my most serious voice that it was much the same.

I had been counting my diploma as the magnum opus of laurels. As part of the first generation of my family to garner such a degree, this piece of paper was not far from becoming my golden calf. On a subconscious level, I expected that if I sat down long enough with it, and listened hard enough to its secrets, that it would unlock the path my life was supposed to take. Disappointingly (and perhaps with some relief), this did not happen.

As an exemplar student, I strove to create a path toward future success with these tangible and intangible medals of achievement. I consistently made Dean’s List, was a member of the Phi Sigma Iota national foreign-language honor society, and was given invitations to become a writing tutor for Muhlenberg College’s Writing Center, as well as a Spanish tutor for our Academic Resource Center. I was asked to present papers at symposiums, to write news articles for prestigious regional hospitals. When I decided in my junior year that I would like to continue my English studies in graduate school, I developed almost an unhealthy anxiety about how my diploma/road map would stack up to those of other applicants.

Alas, like my dream to one day weigh 120 pounds, many opportunities to garner further recognition and make me a formidable graduate school applicant remained unfulfilled. I had to make some very difficult decisions, the validity of most of which I questioned. I ultimately decided not to travel abroad during college, because I felt I would be cutting shorter an already short experience. I chose not to minor in Music, another of my passions, and instead double-majored in Spanish and English. I dated a pre-med student whose ratio of me to his studies approached 0:100, which often sent me into melodramatic bouts of grief (we do, however, remain good friends to this day). One difficult decision which I did not and will never question was to pass on the opportunity to write a Senior Honor’s Thesis in English in order to spend more time with my father, who was dying of pancreatic cancer.

My diploma-map incomplete, and my anxiety over applying to schools reaching a frenzied state, I woke up after a particularly long and hard night of studying, removed my face from my keyboard, and decided that I needed a break. I didn’t want honors and experiences just because I had the opportunity to have them – they had to be important enough to me to risk my health and sanity in order to achieve them. As a rising senior, and in light of many family difficulties, I didn’t know if graduate school was actually that important to me. I realized that I did not just want to go to any graduate school, and wear a smile that suggested I was to be privy to more of the universe’s secrets than the person I was talking to, just by having my Ph.D. I wanted to go to a graduate school where I actually cared about learning on a deeper and more intimate level, no smarmy smiles included.

So, I took some time off to do all the important things that I had passed on in college. I went to teach for a year in Chile, which was possibly the most enlightening experience of my entire life. I pursued voice lessons and taught myself some music theory. I began to learn a third language. I feel more self-actualized and energized for having done these things.

I thoroughly explored every English Ph.D. program offered in the Northeast, and came across (insert name of program). I was impressed by blah. I thought I would fit well because of blah blah blah. If accepted, I would offer blah blah blah to the university. Oh my, am I amazing.

Although my college diploma did not turn out to be the map I was looking for, it did stand for all the experiences that lent themselves to my passion to become a more knowledgeable person. I can only hope that a Ph.D. from (insert name of college here) will do the same.

2008-06-29T11:28:00.001-07:00

Finished a biography on Virginia Woolf today.

I want to be her. Minus the drowning.

How beautiful a life, at once held to a mirror with her prose, the simple abstract lines of it re-arranging themselves in an elaborate Victorian manner, to act as an ambassador to her genius.

How I wish for that.

2008-06-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today of the washed-out actress and widely-known pornstar who used to do those French in Action videos (which, due to her career, gave a satisfying double-meaning to the aptly-named workbook), and her red, pleated knee-length skirt and white blouse. I am wondering if she was also a language major at college. If so, I have a lot of pleasant interviews to look forward to once I've got my diploma in hand.

I'm thinking about what I want to do, and all the things I know about being able to do with my degree seem so unsatisfying. I've basically made up my mind to sign up to go and teach abroad two Septembers from now (so I'd be leaving to teach in February of 2010), but I'm not quite sure what I want to do in the interim.

I kind of want to use the time to be a bum. I want to do all those tiny jobs I meant to do in high school (work at a florist's, model for art classes, sing for weddings). Clearly if I live at home this will not be possible, as I will have my mother breathing angry fire at me for being a useless waste to society. I also want to use the time to write as much as I can, and clean up the drafts, and perhaps find something shiny and publishable, if I can manage to burnish off the word-rust and sleep with the right people.

I want to live in the city, and then when I come back from chilechinaspain, I want to live there and never leave. So first thing's first, I need a relatively cheap address or a clown-car's worth of roommates.

I bought an audio recorder today. I have 301 glorious hours ahead of me to interview total strangers on train rides, dying fathers, underage brides, suburban stoners, and whatever else I may come across. The best way to start to weave fiction is to pound and kneed reality into a malleable form. And the best way of kneeding word-clay is to beg, borrow, and steal real events and change them just enough so no one can sue you for libel. My shiny gem of recordings has added up to this, so far:

"Hey Brian, what would you recomend tonight?"
"A cappuchino, but I don't have any ice."
"You could recommend a coffee."
"Yes, but I'd rather recommend a cappuchino."

So now that I have my new toy, I'm really excited to use it, but no one seems to want to sit down with me and divulge the details of hot summer nights spent in airless tents when families went camping as far away from their hometown as a tank of gas in their station-wagon could take them, or how their first time was in a children's nursery in the basement of their church, as they stared into the dead eyes of a Furby and plowed away on top of their girlfriend, or how their father used to soak them in chunky-looking Aveeno baths when they got a bad case of poison ivy. I blame our country's Puritan roots, and Bush for further exposing how far into the mesas of New Mexico the Man's ears really stretch. But these are the stories I want to hear. And these are the stories I want to tell. The smells and sounds and sights of other people.

2008-06-26T13:33:00.000-07:00

The fabulous thing about working at a hospital is that, as long as you are brave enough to sneak away from your tiny cubicle, you get to experience a wealth of information bigger than the palacial institute you are currently standing in.

I am far from loving my job this summer, but it isn't bad, and jobs, unlike relationships, are something in which I am okay settling for the mediocre. I'm doing a lot of interesting but unimportant research on topics I'll only broach ever again if I end up dating someone health-savvy and have had several glasses of chardonnay.

I work side-by-side with a very cute guy from Moravian, whose teeth amaze me, as they are commercial-white and perfectly straight. He golfs, which I've always thought is funny when you're under the age of 40, although I have no justification for the feeling (I think it has something to do with the image of plaid pants and off-kilter caps). He has no clue what he wants to do when he graduates, which makes me feel better about my own uncertain future. And he's an all-around nice guy, a people person, and I'm afraid he may think I'm cold because as much as I try to return his niceties, I'm not nearly as natural about it.

My boss is slowly coming to terms with not being a kid anymore, as she's just had one of her own. The redefinition process is a curious thing to observe, as she tends to straddle the invisible but marked lines between young adulthood and parenting, between her twenties and her thirties, between boss and colleague. Transitions are always a challenge.

The doctors I work with are a blast, and certainly some of the smartest people I know. They seem to have it all, an American dream packaged neatly in a white lab coat. Despite my envy, I still prefer my life to come with some assembly required.

I'm finding that I'm not nearly as type-A as I've pinned myself to be in the past; many of my peers seem to be running as A-pluses, planning and pining and worrying and studying and hoping. I've got my biography on Virginia Woolf, my four-day-old rice and beans in the fridge, and time to nap, and it all suits me fine.

Clearly I still freak out too much about small things. There are still things I want, and that's why. I'm in the process of pursuing, and it's tiring. I'd like a few things to be figured out. Like where I'm going to live and work between May of next year and February of the following (when I'll be going to Spain, Chile, or China to teach English). Or what I'm going to eat for dinner tonight (the rice is really getting skanky).

But it's all somewhat enjoyable, and I guess for now I can't ask for much more.

My second time of the month

2008-06-20T17:12:00.000-07:00

I still have at least four days a month where I feel a burning hatred over my longest and most intense relationship in my life. I keep it like a used tissue at the bottom of my purse, and on these days, when obsessive-Kate rears her ugly head at having to face, soberly, a reality that is more than less than functional, I take out that dirty tissue and wave it disgustingly in someone's face.

Although I have become less of a psychopath about giving my heart a good thrashing with love's cat-o'-nine-tails, it doesn't seem that I have yet been able to throw away this nasty bit of pain. I make excuses to myself and to others about why healing is taking so long - I have had many difficult 'becoming an adult' moments lately, and haven't had time to isolate this one and overthink myself into numbing the nerves my breakup excited; it's impossible to avoid him on such a small campus, and with us sharing so many friends, there is no other solution but to remain friendly even though seeing him is like chewing on bits of glass and trying to smile without showing the blood; I heard from a friend of a friend that it takes at least a third of the time you spent in a relationship to 'get over' a person - the list of excuses goes on and on.

In reality, I am ashamed and embarrassed that I am still affected by something I should have been able to close the door on months ago. My pride roars on these painful four days, leaving me crying about my many inadequacies, idiosyncrasies, and instabilities.

What should I do? I should have said, "fuck you, you don't know what you're missing and perhaps eight years from now when you're still single and I am a successful writer-geisha-newyorkian-self-actualized-serene-sex-goddess-with-a-husband-ten-thousand-times smarter- funnier-and-more-gorgeous-than-you, you'll realize what an earth-shattering mistake you made. Too bad God can't just come down and smack you around a little bit now. Pity." But after such an intense rejection, I crave some sign of acceptance.

The worst part is no matter how hard I try, I can't hate him.

So I go on dates. I hate dates. I only went on one pre-relationship date in my entire life up until March, and that one sucked, too. I don't know who came up with dating as a ritual, but it's basically a tidy business transaction for otherwise taboo and untidy mating habits. Although I'd love to do away with this crazy and ineffective ritual, social anthropology holds trump.

One, cut a hole in the box...

And the worst part is I am currently surrounded by Pips, and have great expectations for success, but apparently this Estella lost her candle and the moths no longer flock to the flame. (I felt like a grossly overexaggerated reference to Dickens was post-appropriate. Hey, you'd find no worse in Cosmopolitan. At least here you don't have to pay $4.50 for shitty witticisms.) Everyone seems to be at a point in their life where they don't want to start something new because they're about to leave.

And to admit, that includes me. I think part of my not having any success is because I'm only half-heartedly trying. I know in a year I may be 99 miles away, or 3,571 miles away. I might be in grad school, I might be teaching little Japanese children. I won't have any money, that's for certain. So why should I try and shove a love-life into the mix?

So, I keep half-heartedly going on dates. I half-heartedly show an interest in half-interesting individuals. I half-heartedly maintain a friendship that is rapidly descending into a vapid hole of failure and rejection.

So I promise my next post will be slightly more enlightening. For now, I'm just having my second time of the month.

2008-06-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

"That was it simply, and you had set your face the other way from it, towards the bauble. you were heading out into an uncertain life, sacrificing the certainty of a life based on death; for what you didn't know, windblown excitements and imaginings that in the humdrum of their actuality might soon get stripped of their sensual marvel." -The Dark, John McGahern

"If your narrator is someone whose take on things fascinates you, it isn't really going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time. I could watch John Cleese or Anthony Hopkins do dishes for about an hour without needing much else to happen." - Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott

I saw a girl die yesterday.

I guess I didn't think it was going to happen. Yeah, she was in bad shape, real bad shape. But she was crying when she came in, and although the crying was out of pain and fear, something in it reminded me of the cry of a healthy baby, of someone who was meant to survive. She was in good hands. People were trained for situations exactly like this.

When she passed away I didn't realize it happened, not right away at least. I stood there and I heard the flatline somewhere floating in the distance of sound, but it seemed so far away, more like the monotonous buzzing of a fly than a death knell. And then there was silence. And the removing of gloves. We were escorted out of the room by a man in a mask and gown. I held my notepaper weakly in my hands. My feet seemed intensely interesting. They moved, I followed. They moved some more, I thought I was going to puke and ruin the little marvel that is feet in motion, body working correctly, ticking ticking, everything well oiled and functioning and oh god someone died.

I had options on this paper, little boxes I was supposed to check off. None of these boxes were things I felt like I could fill out.

She was young. And she cried when she came in, a healthy baby cry.

The doctor made sure we were okay. And what was I supposed to say but yes, and walk away? I didn't want to touch another person ever again, and I couldn't understand why I felt like that. I just knew I had to get far away from that room and that silence and that sickening heavy feeling.

I didn't puke until I got home. It was long and satisfying, emitting from somewhere deep in my gut, so happy to get out of me. I felt tired. I felt the backs of my hands. I looked at the wrinkles on my knuckles, the brown dot near my wrist. Then I ran back to the toilet and puked again.

I thought about home. I thought about my friends. I thought about being alone in the apartment. But mostly I gave deep consideration to how the backs of my hands felt. Slightly dry skin, I'd have to get on that, to go and buy some lotion at Bath & Body or Origins or somewhere.

That night I went on a date. I had fun. I came home and fell into a deep and drug-induced sleep.
I was happy to see the sunlight when I woke up.

2008-06-08T09:01:00.000-07:00

I spent a lovely 32 hours at home this weekend, after getting stuck in traffic for five hours and driving through Greenwich, Connecticut, which I had never done previous to that point, and seeing all these mansions (or rather, not seeing them, because they're all gated and far back from the road and the only thing you can really see is their huge tracts of land and apple orchards and stables and tennis courts), and feeling grossly out of place driving my dented Honda Civic along the road with Lexuses and BMWs and Audis surrounding me on every side.

That's certainly not the Connecticut I live in.

After spending several months high and dry in terms of a love life, minus a few blips, I'm finding how physically-driven I've become. I find myself searching for rings on left hands when I meet guys at work. I turn on the charm at parties with guys who I don't even find attractive, and I feign attentiveness and laugh heartily at their inane jokes. And I fantasize about being a more uninhibited woman, who has guiltless one-night stands, who picks up strangers in downtown coffee shops, who is gloriously sexy in her sexual independence, who has no emotional cares or qualms or conservative feelings about exacting pleasure for pleasure's sake.

And so then I sit alone in my apartment and eat chocolate cake and return to being me, who is very much the opposite of all these things, and wouldn't know how to initiate a purely sexual confrontation even if she was given written instructions.

And really, that's not what I want, and that's why I'd feel guilty about getting it. It's not like I don't have opportunities - I can count at least two that I have in the bag, I'd just have to linger in a hug or tilt my head a certain way or turn playfulness into prowess, and I'd be taken and ravaged and left afterwards feeling empty and abused.

I can't fully fathom why I pay such attention to the rules.

2008-06-04T11:17:00.001-07:00

So, I should be working right now, but as today has turned out to be complete crap, from the weather on up, I am here instead.

I started work on Monday. Positives? Don't have to be in the office too much. Negatives? Within fifteen minutes of starting, I found out my boss had volunteered me to be a guinea pig for Resident central line training sessions. (If you're wondering, this involves sticking very large needles in very uncomfortable places.) But it's far from being the worst job in the world, and it's always nice to be able to remind myself that it only lasts eight weeks.

It only lasts eight weeks.

I have, however, found out many important life lessons. Numero uno is that I never want to live alone ever again. I hate coming home to an empty apartment. I hate eating alone. I hate watching late-night t.v. alone and falling asleep alone and waking up alone. Being alone sucks.
Numero dos is that I am in fact capable of living on a budget. This was a pleasant discovery. Added bonus? I'm not making enough money to feed myself three times a day, so losing weight seems to be in the forecast. And finally, I will never work an office job ever again.

I tried setting up a date tonight. I think I failed. I am seriously doubting my attractiveness.

Eck, back to work...

2008-05-30T07:16:00.000-07:00

things that have made me happy lately:

Justin rescinding his faux-angry accusation of me forgetting about helping with auditions when he found out I was at a wake.
Colin and I making really un-funny southern jokes, and him appreciating my gusto at being able to use the word 'bayou' in a sentence.
Recounting a story about when I had to pee off a bridge.
Zack's nightly advice sessions. He needs no beard of wisdom.
Shannon's strange Facebook statuses.
Messages from men who I thought forgot about me.

The Connecticut greenery.
My anticipation of traveling to Harkness State Park tomorrow.

Italian.
Spanish.
More Spanish and Italian.
Having my grandma show me a picture of a beautiful baby, then telling me three minutes later that it is dead in the photo.
Mutton chops.

Justin, Carly, BT, DeMarco, AJ, and Robert.
Guys who play the tin flute and accordion.
Fake French accents.
Gay jokes.

Pasqualina.
Adoption stories.

Sleeping a full eight hours.

Vince's voicemail.
Unexpected positive responses to things I was worried about.
The beach.
The faint smell of suntan lotion in the fabric of the beach chair.
Breezes off the water.
Dad in a good mood.

Waiters giving me better service for being bilingual.
Free desserts.
Being told I have a great accent and I sound native.
Then fucking up my verb tenses and being laughed at.

My polka-dot orange and yellow bra.

Sunny days.
Seventies.
My crappy car.
Me.

a gift for me

2008-05-29T18:05:00.000-07:00

So, I need you all to do me a favor.

I need you to think of a time that I did something for you/said something to you that was nice/unexpected. And then I need you to write that something in my comments box.

It's just something I need to see right now. So if you have the time.

2008-05-25T19:24:00.001-07:00

Do you always feel this crappy when you're standing on the brink of starting something amazing and new, but haven't quite gotten there yet?

2008-05-24T17:19:00.000-07:00

Despite being a relatively mature and worldly eighteen-year-old, at least for suburban American standards, I was still naive enough to believe that 'kapeesh' was a common household phrase. From Tulsa, Oklahoma to Fargo, North Dakota, I pictured old sweaty Southern men on tractors and young blond-haired blue-eyed housewives with Scandinavian ancestries 'kapeeshing' their offspring from dawn till dusk.

Perhaps it wasn't actually naivete that drove me to this conclusion, but rather the fact that I had never really thought about it before. Don't talk back to your mother, kapeesh? Take out the trash and we'll go for ice cream, kapeesh? Don't tell Aunt Lena that I threw out her moldy leftovers, kapeesh? The word was far less foreign to me than most of the vocabulary I encountered and stumbled over during my formative years. Kapeesh was short and to the point. It rolled off the tongue pleasurably, a rush through the first syllable in order to savor the long 'e', the whoosh of the 'sh' as it cut the word furtively short. It was a code that everyone understood; it revealed a contract of responsibility and sometimes secrecy, an unrivaled bond between the kapeesh-er and the kapeesh-ee.

This abrupt discovery, this hidden enlightenment, was probably the first time I ever realized any important distinction between myself and other white people. It was only when someone revealed to me their ignorance of the word that I finally realized - not everyone was Italian-American.

This small and ignorant gain towards a sense of my individualized Caucasian identity led me to investigate other insignificant differences. People found my pronunciation of the word 'quarter' - 'water' flooding into my enunciation - nothing short of hilarious. Realization: not everyone was from central Connecticut. And what about 'pellow' and 'melk'? Not everyone was the child of a second-generation working-class immigrant family. My 'chasm' didn't hide the 'h' but rather pronounced it with New-England pride; and my 'subtle' was anything but, as I revealed the holes I had received in my seventh-grade education. I wasn't White. I was different. I was me.

It didn't make me special, because no one else saw. That was fine with me. At least I knew I wasn't White anymore. I wasn't bland. I wasn't categorized, shipped out on a conveyor belt to be coupled with those blond-haired blue-eyed Scandinavian housewives or those sweaty men on tractors with whom I shared no real common identity save that which society imposed upon us. And I realized the ludicrousness which shaped my Caucasian identity, this system that robbed me of my heritage just because I had no pigment in my skin. To be White was to be bland. To be White was to be judged and to never be able to call other people on it, because inherently to be White was to be racist.

I became a Spanish major. And I started speaking about the reverse-racism in our society because I got sick of hearing about how I was the oppressor. I wasn't the oppressor because I refused to buy into the system. And people looked at me in disgust when I suggested that I felt uncomfortable around the Hispanic population in Allentown, NOT because I was racist and because they were different, but because they robbed me of my ability to be different right along with them. They bought into the White label. I wasn't allowed to speak Spanish because that difference didn't belong to the label I was put under.

I am fed up with being told what I am and what I am not.

But don't tell the other people I told you, kapeesh?

2008-05-23T14:46:00.000-07:00

I miss feeling secure.

Today I went for a drive with my dad on small back roads in small towns, whipping by small colonial homes with crippled fences and demolished stone walls. And the air smelled of dogwood flowers and wildflowers and fresh grass and resevoirs, and the trees bent low over the road and the sunlight was dapple-patterned as it snuck through the space between their leaves, and the seat was warm and my dad was smiling, and we were both quiet as we drove.

As the youngest child, it seemed everyone else's job was to look after and take care of me. I was responsible for no one but myself, and the security I garnered from the protection of my elders was immense enough for me to grow confidently into myself. My dad was a big part of that security system. At times he seemed overbearing and overprotective, which encouraged me to find and fight for my independence even more. And every time I failed to be strong, he was there for me.

When we came home this afternoon, I noticed my dad had turned pale. I got him quickly to the couch and gave him his medicine. Then, I held his hand as he moaned and shouted and cried, and I left his side once he finally fell asleep.

I have always been attracted to men who have wanted to look after me. I like the sense of protection I find in a relationship. I have someone to run to, someone to talk to, someone to hold me when I fall.

I wonder how long I have left with my dad. I worry that it isn't enough time, but that's a silly concern, because no matter how much time was left, it wouldn't be enough.

The men I have relied on so inherently have all seemed to leave me when I need them the most. I need them now. I find that without them, I have no basis to be independent. You need to have a safe base established before you can branch out on your own. And my base is cracking.

I love my friends, but it isn't enough. I feel so scared at the thought of being alone without the people I rely on the most.

I just want something to be stable for once.

mostly for myself

2008-05-23T07:38:00.000-07:00

Exciting week.
Back to reality now.

Things I need done before next weekend:
Grammar workshop write-ups
Supplementary writing workshop write-ups
Flashcards made for the verbal sections of the GRE
Packing and cleaning my room
Car tire rotation and oil change

Things I should have done last week:
All of the above

Things I am currently reading:
The Snapper
Bird by Bird
The Life of Pi
A Happy Death

Things I should be reading:
Don Quixote
Sons and Lovers
Every other British classic known to man

Things I am arranging:
I Remember
I'd Give It All For You

Where I want to be:
the beach

Where I am:
the breakfast table.

Jobs I've been offered in the past week:
Tutoring for a Parkland High student, 20-30 bucks an hour
Cleaning a neighbor's house, 80/four hours

Jobs I'll actually do:
the parkland high

Additional jobs I'll have next semester:
tutoring with ARC
workshop tutor, ARC

Additional jobs I want next semester:
Barnes and Noble cashier
Info Desk receptionist

Number of jobs I have time for next semester:
0

Amount of money in bank account:
24.37

Number of jobs I've been frightened into taking on account of my poverty:
4

That's a pretty fair list.

2008-05-17T23:00:00.000-07:00

I was apprehensive entering the train Saturday morning. I had gotten woefully little sleep, but, and perhaps because my body was on guard, I felt no vestiges of my non-soporific evening. (I am also studying for my GREs and therefore have to begin using words like 'soporific' so that I don't forget them for the test. Look it up - it's listed between 'sophomoric' and 'soppy'.)

When I arrived at Grand Central, I felt, almost defensively, a posession of the environment I had entered. I must have exhibited my assumed indifference while catching the six, as a rather pushy woman with a heavy North-Jersian accent asked me if the train would take her to Bloomingdale's. This was MY train. This was MY city and MY path and MY destination.

I had to give that all up when I saw Zack in the park, my deference present in the hug I gave him.

So much has changed and not all of it bad. Veronica has changed slightly, and seems much more approachable. Harry definitely echoes myself - he has learned a bit of caution and self-defeat. His facial expressions parallelled mine on more than one occasion, which was strange, as I felt like I was looking at a reflection of my male doppelganger (not in my dictionary, although 'Don Quixote' and 'Dostoevsky' are). And Zack? He seems normal again, but in a strange way incredibly untouchable. I am beginning to notice now how his aloofness and his sometimes-inability to have tact when speaking really grate on me, and I am allowing myself to get annoyed by it, finally, after three years. He is not special anymore, although he holds a special place in my heart and brain. I react to him viscerally and subconciously, my brain not remembering our past but my body fully present. He serves as a constant reminder of how I am mired in a past life.

Switch to a couple of days before that, when I was lying on a strip of sand in the middle of nowhere Connecticut, desperately removing a tick from the back of my neck and being watched bemusedly by an old friend. The reeds rustled on the far shore, which in reality wasn't very far, and strange birds swooped low over our heads, their iridescent blue bodies glinting like mini-firecrackers in the blue blue sky. We cuddled that night and briefly kissed, both of us knowing that the timing wasn't right, that in two days he would leave for Texas and I probably wouldn't see him for another year or so, but it was so comfortable that we couldn't resist at least playing pretend.

I am sick of pretend. It seems to permeate my life more than reality ever has.

2008-05-14T09:15:00.000-07:00

I have decided that by the end of the summer I will find someone willing to paint a head-to-toe mural on my body.

I'll even wear undergarments if they get embarassed easily. They can paint over those, too.

And then I will take tons of glorious pictures.

This is my summer goal.

Things this year made me realize...

2008-05-10T17:42:00.000-07:00

I have realized that I am not unsure of myself, but rather, I am unsure of everything that happens around me.
Six bottles of wine per semester is not enough.
Probably the most pleasant surprise is finding you are tired enough to fade quietly into sleep at the end of the day.
My bank account will be woefully empty for the next ten years, and I should get used to it.
Sex is not the only physical activity that succeeds in keeping me in my body and out of my head. But it may be the most pleasant.
Losing things you love is the most painful feeling in the world.
Time is a fucking bitch.
My aura does not attract amazing people like a magnet. I have to go out looking for them.
There are easily 20 people on this campus I could instantly be best friends with, if I had the time and energy to find them.
You can hate someone's guts and love them to death at the same time.
Or, you can hate someone's guts and feel perfectly justified in doing so.
I am more intimate with men whom I am not dating.
I constantly want to be surrounded by the people I love.
I will never be content while standing still.
There really are FBI agents lurking around every corner!
I will never write anything incendiary enough to get me killed in a capitalist society. This suits me fine.
Considering myself a genius does not make me pompous, but rather self-empowered.
When you spend the proper amount of time on it, English is in many ways a more challenging major than Biology.
For every twenty crappy things I write, there is one sentence that makes it all worthwhile.
I cannot stand dirty bathrooms.
Dating down is both a good and bad idea.
I get in the way of my own happiness.
Crushes are my muse.

a beautiful song i'm currently finding inspiring

2008-05-06T16:24:00.000-07:00

I want to live where soul meets body
And let the sun wrap its arms around me
And bathe my skin in water cool and cleansing
And feel, feel what its like to be new

Cause in my head there’s a greyhound station
Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations
So they may have a chance of finding a place
where they’re far more suited than here

And I cannot guess what we'll discover
When we turn the dirt with our palms cupped like shovels
But I know our filthy hands can wash one another’s
And not one speck will remain

And I do believe it’s true
That there are roads left in both of our shoes
But if the silence takes you
Then I hope it takes me too
So brown eyes I hold you near
Cause you’re the only song I want to hear
A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

-soul meets body, death cab for cutie

2008-05-05T18:08:00.001-07:00

Sometimes, without doing anything different, I begin to feel like I've got a grip on things.

It's good stuff.

2008-05-05T08:34:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to do some independent work and research on Colm Toibin's The South and despite having considerable knowledge of third-wave Irish drama, I feel like I'm missing an important piece of the puzzle when I begin to look at this novel.

I wish I had the time to sit and figure it out on my own. Were I graduating this year, like I wish I were, I would have that time. I would make that time, at least.

My writing is so dull lately. I feel like I can't think through what I want to try and say. I am proud of very few things I've been producing. I feel like my writing isn't connected to where the world is currently. I feel like because of that, it won't ever be publishable, and if it is, that it won't sell.

I've been thinking in brief spurts about perhaps pursuing a master's in Publishing.
I've been thinking about quitting school and not telling my family, and moving to the city and working a shit job and being very poor.
I've been thinking about going to Spain but I doubt I'll actually get there.

I do too much thinking because I'm stuck and can't do any doing.

A letter to the dead.

2008-05-04T08:34:00.000-07:00

I used to write beautiful things when I was happy.
I knew they were beautiful because you would come in and peer over my shoulder, which annoyed me, and you would tell me very simply, "That is beautiful." It was the only time you ever tried to admit you were proud of me.
I would write metaphors, I would write similies. I would write small poems on bits of tissue and rip the top layer with the point of my pen. And you would come in and say, "That is beautiful."

I remember the day you died. By the end of August the weather had become strange; there was an unusual proportion of mid-summer's dry heat which permeated the shortening days. The rose petals stood like small glass vials filled with cream and milk and pink sugar. There were too many bees, and I couldn't lie in the backyard on my towel without being molested by them.

I can think about the day but there is much else that I do not allow myself to think about. I do not allow myself the image of you connected to all those tubes. How they would come and turn you, side to side, and put vasoline on your lips with their fingers, and comb your hair to the side. I do not allow myself to think about how I lied in bed that morning with the light streaming in through my wispy shade, wishing away knowing that I had to go and see you, and kiss your forehead, and whisper goodbye to you. You had changed. It was your body but already you weren't there.

I don't allow myself to think about how beautiful my writing used to be. I can barely remember my favorite sentences, and I cannot remember yours. You would say them out loud to yourself and smile gently. Recently a man asked me what was Italy like? And I told him it was like eating chocolate all day and never getting sick of it. I hated that metaphor. It felt false and ugly. It was trite and stupid. Never like when I used to write beautifully.

I have entered the city now. I have sat here and thought perhaps you would call, but I know really you can't do that now, can you? You should have been busy here too, with your own friends. Perhaps we wouldn't have stayed in touch anyway. Sometimes I walk down the sidewalk on the side of Central Park, the morning still cool and damp, and watch the street vendors set up shop on old tablecloths and flimsy tables with rusty legs. They all sell the same things. I walk down and then up after I've reached 86th Street, because we never went much farther down than that, unless I had made a mistake and continued walking and you just followed me and watched me get lost. But you followed so you could lead me back and you would laugh at me and say that's just what I did, I got lost, but you would lead me back.

You have been dead too long. It was too soon. These are also ugly things I say, although they aren't forced into metaphors.

I am very poor and you would not have enjoyed me being poor. I have lines on my face that shouldn't be there for another ten years. I don't smoke. I drink a little too much and a little too often on my own. I have a television but I don't use it. I have a typewriter but it is mostly for show. I have my computer and on that I write proliferately. No one comes in and looks over my shoulder and tells me it is beautiful.

It isn't beautiful. But that's the way these things go.

about a girl

2008-05-03T18:25:00.000-07:00

I feel very disconnected from life lately. Sort of floating around, not quite in my body, not quite in the moment, saying and doing things that aren't quite what I normally say or do.

I'm thinking about a girl. Well, not a girl in particular, although this stemmed from a girl in particular, but the idea of a girl. It's a very enticing thought - warm arms, soft hair, witty repartee. Evenings in coffee shops. Evenings at home. Listening to stories so similar to mine, being understood, being casual but close. Just being in the moment.

I've almost entirely forgotten what that is like. It is a vastly different feeling than liking a guy. It is more subtle, more demure, sneakier in the way the idea unfolds in my mind, slower in my uptake and cautious in my movement.

It's been so long since I've even considered the option. It's so rare that I actually look at a girl and go, yeah, that would be right for me.

Perhaps now, more than ever, that would be right for me.

2008-04-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

This morning I woke up and felt like I was about to take a long vacation somewhere far away.

Whenever I'm about to take a trip, I get this excited feeling in my stomach. The anticipation follows me through my shower, getting dressed, eating breakfast, checking final packing lists, and heading out the door.

So this morning, when I had that feeling, I was very confused. I am quite confident I have not scheduled a trip for today. It made me think about Germany, and how desperately I want to be in Europe this summer, and to have an escape plan, and to never come back to Muhlenberg. And for a moment this feeling convinced me that I was actually about to fly away from here. I feel a desperate longing for this to be true.

I often wonder if I am following the path I should be following. Often I think the answer is no - I do not think I would get these feelings that I should be somewhere else if I was meant to be here.

I feel like everything in my life now is out of sorts. It is painstaking for me to go through each day convinced that I should quit college, pack my things, get in my car, and just drive as far as a tank of gas would get me. I often daydream that I would actually have the confidence to go through with this plan. I know in all seriousness that I am woefully stuck here for another year.

And making plans for graduate school is that much tougher, because every time I sit down to do this, my mind wanders to a year from now, when I will finally be free of this place and all its vices.

I just want to start over somewhere. My mind and my body rebel against me, not understanding why I succumb to my obligations here.

Perhaps one day something inside me will snap, and I will leave, and I will never talk to any of you again.

I suspect that would feel surprisingly good.

An Addendum

2008-04-24T20:28:00.001-07:00

Dear Dr. Carbone,

For telling me this morning that you thought I would make an excellent teacher, I rescind my request for two extra points on my exam. But just this once. Otherwise, you are still unforgivably mundane in my eyes.

Thanking God I Only Have One Week Left With You,
Kate

A Letter

2008-04-23T05:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Dr. Carbone,

Pluralism, as defined by a Google search:

The condition of being multiple or plural.
1. A condition in which numerous distinct ethnic, religious, or cultural groups are present and tolerated within a society.
2. The belief that such a condition is desirable or socially beneficial.

As you have used pluralism as a noun in one of the countless inane multiple-choice questions you added to what clearly should have been a predominantly essay-based test, and as, according to this definition, I correctly eliminated the answer containing the word "pluralism" from the other three answer choices, and as, despite you being a very pretentious dick, I have made it to the majority of your classes this semester, I would like the two points you deducted from my test grade to be reinstated.

It is not my fault that you use words (the definition of) which are largely out of your grasp, and therefore I should not suffer from your ignorance.

Sincerely,
Kate Ponte

Musings

2008-04-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like God is a suburban fiction.

Mostly, I concentrate on how good tea feels going down my throat.

You may think these two thoughts are unrelated, but in my head, it all makes sense.

Pennsylvania is Right Out.

2008-04-22T14:33:00.000-07:00

Certainly not the most original, but perhaps one of the most pot-influenced, songs to come out of the Northeast, Jonathan Richman's "New England" captures my sentiments in that oh-so-I-wear-my-heart-on-my-sleeve sort of way:

http://giniaginia.muxtape.com/

I think there's something to be said about living with your people.
I'm certainly heartsick for it.

2008-04-22T09:49:00.001-07:00

Perhaps I am not that intelligent, but rather I appear smarter than 1,923 kids on this campus because my grammar and spelling are astoundingly accurate compared to the rest of the Muhlenberg population.

I certainly hope that intelligence has something to do with it, though.

2008-04-21T15:15:00.000-07:00

I am single.
Why am I single?
I am an intelligent, quirky, funny, cute-bordering-on-sexy attractive type of girl.
I speak two languages fluently.
I am willing to put it all on the line.
I AM NOT PSYCHOTIC.
I am the appropriate amount of crazy.
When I speak, I'm interesting 82.4% of the time.
And when I ramble, I don't expect anyone to listen.
I am in the process of self-actualization.
I can read ten books in a day and still want more.
I'm a cheap date.
I always have extra singles in my wallet.
I am affable.
I have weaknesses.
I really enjoy having sex.
If it's good sex.
Sometimes, even if it isn't good sex.
I write bad poems and I post them on my blog shamelessly.
I dig lighting things on fire.
I wear sandals in the wintertime.
I'm better than a shower-singer and worse than an opera star.
I smile at people I don't know.

Apparently, guys just don't go for that these days.

Little poem, little tree

2008-04-20T09:56:00.000-07:00

little tree, little tree,
dances nimbly, haw and gee.
Wind-weaved silk arms bend to me
Sings and spins, weaves and grins.

little tree, tiny tree,
teach to me to grow and be.
Lift me branch-high, build with me
songs and dances, clothes and glee.

little tree, Perfect tree,
what tears me away, you see,
is obligation, rule, and law-
no time to live in poetry.

little tree, lovely tree
dances nimbly, haw and gee
Wind-weaved silk arms beckon me
to sing and spin, weave and grin.

Things I try to keep in mind...

2008-04-19T18:42:00.000-07:00

As the deer pants for streams of water,
so my soul pants for you, O God.

2 My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.
When can I go and meet with God?

3 My tears have been my food
day and night,
while men say to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"

4 These things I remember
as I pour out my soul...

5 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?
Put your hope in God,
for I will yet praise him,
my Savior and 6 my God.
My soul is downcast within me;
therefore I will remember you...

8 By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.

9 I say to God my Rock,
"Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I go about mourning,
oppressed by the enemy?"

10 My bones suffer mortal agony
as my foes taunt me,
saying to me all day long,
"Where is your God?"

11 Why are you downcast, O my soul?
Why so disturbed within me?

-excerpts from Psalm 42

18 "Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.

19 See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the desert
and streams in the wasteland."...

26 Review the past for me,
let us argue the matter together;
state the case for your innocence.

- Isaiah 43

22Then Jesus said to his disciples: "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat; or about your body, what you will wear. 23Life is more than food, and the body more than clothes. 24Consider the ravens: They do not sow or reap, they have no storeroom or barn; yet God feeds them. And how much more valuable you are than birds! 25Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? 26Since you cannot do this very little thing, why do you worry about the rest?

27"Consider how the lilies grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 28If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today, and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! 29And do not set your heart on what you will eat or drink; do not worry about it. 30For the pagan world runs after all such things, and your Father knows that you need them.

-Luke 12

For a long time now I've been fairly angry with God. I don't know if that is really practical, or if it helps to be mad at someone I can't see, someone I'll never know if they exist. Sometimes it feels good just to name my emotion and state my anger - sometimes that's enough.

Lately it has felt like God (or whatever you so choose to replace this word with - life, fate, Allah) has given me almost more than I can handle. It has come to the point where little things that would normally not greatly phase me have made me upset to the point where I can't function. I have been depressed. I have been praying and yearning and searching and wishing and dreaming to wake up one morning and have everything right itself.

I know life isn't that easy, but it is so tempting to think that maybe if I try hard enough, I can make it that easy.

I had a rough day today, and it was made the rougher because I had anticipated having a very lovely day. I do not like surprises, especially not-so-good ones. Every move I make has to do with a sense of establishing some sort of security around me, and when these constructs fail me, I often feel hopeless, desperately afraid, and alone.

Now, I realize I am not alone. My rational brain tells me, "Kate, you are silly. You have a bajillion people you could call right now and they would come and comfort you and hold you and tell you that you're going to be okay." But for some reason, I have an awfully hard time asking for this help. I have such trouble calling to ask for comfort, for a friend, for anyone who will hold me while I am sad and help right me so that I can keep going.

And realizing, at some level, that I am not alone doesn't stop the rest of my traitor brain from telling me that I am overwhelmed, lost, terrified and alone. I haven't quite mastered how to stop this from happening. That will be a very liberating day.

I know I am not upset by what happened today. I feel proud that I can name what DID actually make me upset - it was the feeling that I was just settling in to something I thought was going to be secure, at least on a very basic and casual level, and having that be taken so suddenly away from me. And what made me most afraid was how everything snowballed into one big Problem - things that weren't even closely related to the problem I was dealing with. I felt so overwhelmed, and I started thinking in the way that I would have thought during sophomore year. And that's what REALLY terrified me. But at least now I have the sense to call for help.

I feel very paralyzed sometimes by the past. I feel like being vigilant about my emotions is a double-edged sword, alternately helping and inhibiting me to form a plan of action for the present.

And God? It doesn't seem like he helps. But I have these quotes read to me by close friends, and I think, "That makes sense." Now the hard part is trusting in it. I know that is not something I am ready for, or perhaps it isn't something I want.

What I want is to trust in myself. I want to trust I have the strength enough to make the choice each day to get up, do the work I need to do, be supportive to my family, and fall asleep without having time to take for myself. I would really like to have strength left over to help me think about what I need and want from my life right now. But at least I have enough to want to keep going.

But I think that's enough thinking for tonight. I am tired and it's time for bed, so I can get sleep to get up and do it all again tomorrow. I'm happy that's a choice I get.

2008-04-19T10:22:00.000-07:00

Ha, life is ironic.

2008-04-19T05:22:00.000-07:00

Approaching summers always seem surreal. Summers kind of float in dead-time, at least for me, because I'm reflecting on the year that's just ended and yearning for the year to come. This summer seems particularly trippy - it is the first year I will not spend a significant amount of it at home; it is the first year I will take a vacation for myself; it is the first year I have a 'real' job.

I keep having dreams about being in New York. They are quiet dreams of wandering the Upper East Side, on a cool morning near the end of summer, walking beside the wall that separates Central Park from Fifth Avenue. They are of forgotten playgrounds, broken water fountains, slow traffic, street kiosks. They are of staring out of Zack's second-floor window, eyes meeting with kids dancing in a feeble-looking gyser forcing bubbles of cold water out of concrete. They are of the damp smell of old apartments and the dry smell of steam heat emitting from radiator pipes, the old white paint slowly cracking off, like a damaged eggshell. They are of my favorite mornings in my not-so-favorite-summers. They are the moments I felt grounded.

I really don't want to go to graduate school unless it's in New York City. That's where I can think the most without having the rest of my body float away with my head in some trippy transcendental state.

Being in new relationships always confuses me, because there's a really terrifying period of time between the initial feeling of like and the eventual feeling of falling in love that is kind of devoid of any feeling for me. And I always worry that that feeling will never go away, and that I've started something for no good reason. So far it has always passed.

I'm always waiting for things to pass.

2008-04-16T09:03:00.001-07:00

Everywhere I look there are people who know exactly what they want to do with their lives. They go through college with that purpose and that plan, firmly implementing it at every given opportunity. And then there's me, who can't figure out where she's going or what she's doing, who is scared of every option she could take, to the point where she's frozen and she looks at her blank blog page and thinks "How am I supposed to make a living from this?"

2008-04-16T05:44:00.000-07:00

the short list of words i like saying because of how they feel in my mouth:
phosphoric
bedizened
claro
sacapuntas

words that feel ugly in my mouth:
subtle
pillow
chasm
llueve

my peculiar pronunciation i like using the most:
quarter

things i find i use far too frequently in my papers:
juxtaposition
subsequent
ideal

things i use incorrectly in my papers:
irony versus humor
motif, metaphor, symbol
the implications of tragedy
or comedy, for that matter
or what exactly happens when the author insists the two combine
(although they combine anyway inherently)

things i am going to be 2 minutes late for:
class

2008-04-15T21:38:00.000-07:00

a laundry list of today, for future reference:
-first slam poetry experience. a self-proclaimed chicano.
-a peculiarly acceptable dinner in the garden room. fulfillment of my weekly requirement of carbohydrates.
-mitch hedburg, overdoses, and urban myths
-two bottles of poland spring; halfway through the second, the realization that i have come to like aquafina better
-olive oil from italy with rosemary floating on top
-stress about future. ALWAYS stress about future.
-mulling family and father
-mulling repercussions of speaking about family and father
-mulling
-too much thinking and subsequent headaches
-fabulously brilliant conversations with intriguing professors
-nineteen wonderful kisses and a warm hug

2008-04-15T11:46:00.001-07:00

There is something really un-funny about a stand-up comedian dying.

It just kind of ruins the experience of the funny.

2008-04-14T07:30:00.000-07:00

On a gentle slope you kissed me
Blue stone set in silver ring
Appropriated for this occasion
To signify another thing
And you chose to make that moment
pass without a hint of bliss
Had it been there, perhaps I would think
that's something I would miss.

Pursed lips brush against my shoulder
as a snore becomes a kiss
and I think, "When I am older
I will come to realize this
as a moment that I let pass
in a daydream-laden mist
I could lie and tell myself that
it is something I won't miss.

Did I force you? Did I blame you?
Did I leave us in the fall?
Did I love you? Did I leave you
missing anything at all?

On a gentle slope you left me
falling into an abyss
But the language and the symbol
stand to forge a part in this
blue stone cold in silver ring
promised so much in the spring
words and metal a decree
twist to see the silly thing-

just a hollow promise given
to invoke the need for this.

Facets

2008-04-09T18:18:00.000-07:00

There is much happiness I find in new relationships.

I'm not talking solely about romantic relationships (although those come with their own fun and awkward introductions, as I am currently re-investigating). I'm talking about all types of relationships. Facebook-friend-relationships. Five-minute-introduction-relationships. Lunch-gang-relationships. Relationships based on sharing texts in class. Relationships centered around a common caffeine addiction. Probably most importantly, the relationship between a writer and their medium.

I find it particularly difficult to write on paper. I think after countless classes of Computer and Typing, after countless hours of Instant Messenger and e-mail, paper these days borders on the sentimental. I'd like to think my writing avoids the sentimental and has the gift of "seeing things as they really are", as quite a few Marina Carr characters would dream to have accomplished.

But I guess that all depends on if we share a common opinion as to how things should be seen, and how things really are. If you are reading this I assume that we have at least common elements in thought that have previously brought our relationship to a strong enough point where I can relax and give you pieces of me through this blog. So perhaps, we see things in a common light. I am not sure if any two people can compare how things really are.

I do trust that you separate the author from the person. Writing always reveals a part and not a whole. So I suppose what you find here is an edited version of many facets of me, of how these facets form to see things and emote how they function together to produce a reality of sorts.

Currently, this is my reality.
I expect that to change.