I cannot lift my eyes to meet his. Nor to his bandaged legs twisted over the betel-stained asphalt, nor to his handless arms swung like a baton to pronounce its wretchedness amidst the procession of cheaply made umbrellas and gaudy saris. I cannot meet his eyes because I don’t know how to see him. I am afraid of flaunting my pity, of showing off my shame. Shame because I do not stop, I do not give, I am not courageous enough to face his indignity with my discomfiture. The aggressive humanity of his misery forces me to disconnect. I ignore him because I am horrified by our nakedness.

i'm hungry

i spend a lot of sunsets on the balcony. (i don't go out much at night in kathmandu, because i don't feel particularly comfortable roaming around by myself after dark, partly because i am frightened of being run over by a drunk rickshaw driver, and partly because i realized i have terrible night vision, and there aren't many street lights in ktm.) i watch the houses around me come alive as it transitions from day to night. they become full and rowdy as they toss and turn like children getting into bed. dins of warm milk and bedtime stories clattering against rattle of momo street carts being pushed home.

over the weekend, i went to the mountains near the tibetan border. a three hour drive out of the city and through the himalayas. once out of the smog of the city, i climbed to the roof of the bus, and hung on tight while the bus screechingly curved around mountains roads. (the bus also made sudden stops for goats and chickens on the road 6 times.) the two other guys also riding on the bus roof sang nepali songs and tried to teach me some, and that obviously failing, tried to get me to sing any song, nepali, english, or chinese. that's when i realized i really don't know the words to any whole song. i don't even know the entire chorus of any song. i'm really quite terrible at karaoke, and not just because i can't sing.

the mountains were beautiful. there were houses built in every color of earth--red clay, sand, granite, charcoal, sunbleached mud... -- shrines carved onto the sides of mountains, prayer flags draped from tree to tree, mountains hidden behind riverbends and i, exhilarated by my own dumb stupid luck to be there, clutching rusty bars on the roof of a sputtering bus, the color of which i can't remember for the life of me.

i'm alone. i don't know anyone in this whole damn country or the next country over. i'm hungry most of the time because my tummy aches 90% of the time. i have 11 mosquito bites, three are which are blistering. i have a hole on my ankle from a leech sucking on my blood. the best job of my life is turning out to be the worst. but i think i'm still a pretty lucky asshole.

canyoning

this is me:



and i also jumped off a 160m high bridge attached to a rope, and did a freefall 100m into the gorge, then swung in a pendulum in a 240m arc at 150 km/h.

i know, i'm such a badass.

oh yeah, and another thing. there are way too many hippies here. I've never seen so many 16-28 year old hippies, reggae-heads, stoners, whatever you call it, since I lived in a co-op in Berkeley, Ca. It's like a Loth house field trip out here. I blame all my problems on all these assholes with loose fitting drop-crotch burnt-orange/sea green/lavender genie pants. Damn YOU all to abercrombie and fitch, you future/half-way-there yuppies.

Kathmandu

is amazing.

And I'm going out of my mind.

I came here to work with AATWIN, which was supposed to be awesome, but I am fast finding myself completely useless as all the work is done in Nepali. I am so close! as they do really great and interesting work, but damning it all to hot muggy hell, just not right, as I can't understand a word they're saying. Why they invited me as an intern, I have no idea.

Without "real" work to do, I am about going out of my mind here. I spend days just trailing lines around the city trying to figure out mazed streets, sitting on chowks watching people watching me (i seem to draw a fair number of stares around here), hanging out near the temples intoxicated with incense, and doing a lot of reading in my tiny hostel room. It may sound romantic, sure, but half the time, I'm bored out of my mind.
(Somewhere along the way, I think I turned into a workaholic. I need to be doing something, whether working, taking pictures, drawing pictures, being actively passive, or walking, just walking walking walking. If I have work, then I really appreciate my time off, but if every moment is time off, I think I want to shoot myself in the face for the distraction of pain.)

I am going to try to find some other work. That failing, I might be forced to say fuck it and move to India.

But really, Kathmandu is a pretty amazing city. While I have time, I think I will go watch a cremation ceremony by the river, go visit a Tibetan settlement, and go bungee jumping. But really, I'd truly truly rather be working. Like really working on what I wanted to do and came here to do. Damn it all to humid sticky regurgitating hell.

(tell me if I'm just being crazy.)

spent yesterday in the pacific with all of my clothing, watching large brown pelicans bob a few waves away. there is nothing so healing as the sea.

always, always, the sea.

insomnia concludes

The answer is: Craig's disappearance and death.
Bizarrely, psychically wrecked over this.
Did not sleep for 40 hours,
and when I finally did,
his presumed death had been announced.
That's what I woke to.
This grief is tearless and leaden.

soon, flight to london to new delhi to kathmandu. i booked a room at a hostel with a culturally kitsch name.

finals are done, but there is still one more paper to go. i am trying to care, but i don't. instead i pace around the house, minding needless things. it's hot so i am in my bra and underwear. i don't look particularly good, but i avoid the mirror and i am comfortable enough.

today, i miss smoking and drinking a lot. an act of vulnerability backed by a sense of invincibility. wasted--what a ridiculously appropriate term. i've been enjoying myself sober, and haven't needed a drink. but i've already wasted 5 hours today not doing anything and not particularly enjoying myself, so perhaps i should get myself drunk.

there's all these little things i have to do. buy bug spray. find my passport. wash my clothes. trim my nails. how mundane and incredible.

insomnia persists

what is it that i am so afraid of dreaming of?

King of Pentacles reversed,
and when I asked for clarity, was given
the King of Cups reversed,
the King of Swords reversed
and Justice reversed,

Leading to the easy interpretation of
Don't trust that man.
I hate it when I'm wrong.

Restless and taking it out on Highway 1
and the Central Coast.
South. South, south.

i have to tell myself to be good sometimes.

we've both got edges that are a little uneven, and once in a while, they fit, but so much more often, her faults keep elbowing against my faults and all the shit talking just gets crusty in between the giant tectonic plates of our bitchy ass selves.

let's be good to each other.

PPD

I always forget that I get serious
post project depression.

It hits and I'm like
WHAT is going ON,
why can NOTHING please me today,
and then I'm like OH RIGHT,
I accomplished
something
huge.

Yesterday was awful,
I finished the IS, IS books before
noon and the rest of my day
was ruined.

Mickey's, shitty wine, shitty vodka,
circus cookies,
salt and pepper chips,
grossssss.

It's like a breakup but stupider.
How do you process it?
Cos really, what exactly am I processing?

Throw yourself back into so you
won't feel it so hard;
my own printing this week and
a sculptural book reconstruction
for that awesome Florida thing,
design/print covers for Christina's CDs,
printing E's poems for that
photography exhibit, wedding
invites for M, finish the second
round of edits for the novella MS,
MOUTH dummy, submit the new poems/stories
before the reading season is over,

don't stop so it can't catch you.
Don't don't don't.

i come from a land of

farren says the reason i cannot sleep is probably only spring itself. i never feel tired, but people notice. the eyes. dark and purpled, as if some figure from a claudine novel, prattling on about how attractive dark circles are. sickness is probably not far behind. my lungs are weak, they always have been. even the suggestion of cigarettes, too much milk, stress, insomnia.... the bellows in my chest fill with water.

this town is small. will it accommodate my quiet obsession with the moon.

few pics from NC-PA

out.com

april (!)

it's last week of classes, finals is around the corner, and summer is visibly hiding behind finals around the corner.

(i knew it. that this year would fly by. i am not sure i am ready to recap yet, but i can say that i definitely feel like i went through something.)

i'm just trying to keep zen in the middle of all the books i haven't yet read, all the cases i haven't briefed and all the classes i haven't outlined. i'm keeping off of coffee, as it disturbed me a bit that it was just getting blacker and blacker, until i seemed to be just taking multiple espresso shots throughout the day.

so i've been trying to drink green tea and eat apples instead, which results in me falling asleep in property class everyday at 2:15p.m. sharp. this little dozing off lasts about 5-10 mins, and an entire notebook page's worth of unintelligible scribbles that are apparently trails of unconscious note-taking attempts.

somehow in between all the half-conscious practical sleep walking through classes, i got two new jobs. one for the summer and one for the next two years!

the summer job is working with anti-human-trafficking NGOs in Nepal. I will be spending the summer in Kathmandu. two goals for this summer. One, do enough research to lead into my independent study next semester on the cultural aspects of human trafficking and the implementation of human trafficking law. and Two, bring a video camera along and hopefully visually document some aspects of human trafficking.

the other job is working as a legislative coordinator for Amnesty International. it's somewhat of a coordinator/lobbyist position, so while i won't be able to do any field work or anything, i will get to do some close work with various human rights policies, work with various activists and organizations in the area, and get to lobby our representatives to sign off on them.

doing extracurricular work like this reminds me of why i came to law school in the first place. helps me to clamp down on the stick and keep going. i know sometimes i talked about the dilemma of money and law firms, but i think that maybe i am subconsciously putting myself in a public interest hole. i have no skills i can really offer to a corporate firm, and all my background is in NGOs and civil liberties, etc. i don't think a firm doing securities or mergers would hire me even if wanted them too. perhaps this way, i am and have already been making the decision. well, there goes the $160K first year associate salary.


last week i followed jamie on his tour from North Carolina to NYC. We hit Greenville, NC, Norfolk and Richmond, VA, Philadelphia, PA, and finally Brooklyn. even that short trip made me realize how weird US was. Just a 30 mins drive, or even 3 blocks can make such a difference in the type of people, lifestyle, and culture. This is probably true for most of the world, but in US, people are so much stranger sometimes. US is Lynch-ian in ways that no other countries can be. (Europe can have their Kafkaesque. US has Lynchian.)

Along the trip, we got to stop by the Great Dismal Swamp. It was pretty darn dismal, to say the least. I wish i had pictures, but it was so dismal, i couldn't even take any. but we did take picture of the liquor store down the street. i will post soon.

as you will have noticed, i am obviously a little delirious and ranting. but updates are imperative in times like these. another soon, i'm sure...

if

been thinking about dying.

if i am on life-support, without any cognitive faculties, (the classic scenario, i'm practically a fried veggie stick) i believe i wouldn't want to continue "living" in a hospital bed, hooked to machines.

just putting it out there, so if anything happens, you can let them know i said this.

oh and you can give my organs and whatever else they need away and burn the rest (or use it as fertilizer if possible.)

thanks.

Existing more and more in that porous state of the soul I have always desired to call my own. Considering the possibility that there is also freedom in the choice to stay.

the equinox changed me.

do not weep as women weep, and do not weep as men weep, and weep no more as children weep. weep instead as a lion of the desert slinking through broken cities.

friends

and she hurt you. and your anger elaborates memories of every moment you had with her. it pulls at seams of the trust she took for granted and stitches them back to your pain. how stupidly we hurt each other.

what are we, filthy little things, to cheat each other and collect reasons to cry. we hurt, then we ask for pity. what are we, filthy little things, to ask for pity.

when yr young you get sad and you get high

werewolf

r's energy demands a shift to the nocturnal. i don't mind, for once. an intense series of werewolf dreams that i cannot stop replaying, examining for meaning. let's just say that for now i have stopped wearing silver. this year i will observe lent strictly and traditionally. my ideas of purity are false but i have ideas of purity and i lack discipline in every goddamn area of my life save my writing, so why not. why not try to do something even though i don't want to do it, a tradition that has guidelines for the discipline of the mind and body and desires. practice. practice. i cannot keep living like this. it occurred to me the other day, for the first time in my life, that i could simply stop writing. i could. i could willfully, completely stop. and what a relief that would be.

happy valentine's day

I am not sure whether I really have a taste for women; I believe I have never loved except in the woods. I didn't love the woods, I didn't love anything. I didn't love myself; but I loved, immeasurably. I have never loved anyone but you, but what I love in you, make no mistake about it, is not you. I believe that all I love is love and in love itself only the torment of loving, which I have never felt except in the woods or the day when death...

-My Mother, Georges Bataille

to forget moment by moment.
i pit my memories against memories and draw lines to fiction.

everyday I defend myself against this place, commanding the vocabulary of memos and briefs and judicial review, and hope that i will pass muster in the eyes of someone i hope understands. but they seem made of money and suit, and i keep fraying past the lighter-burnt edges.
i'm growing out of myself, and it'd be curious to see how much i have in common with her anymore. somehow, i think i'm getting the gist of her movements, her words, but the ends, again, frayed. (but perhaps it is amidst these ends...)

for some here, you'd think everything was an emergency. the readings for tomorrow, the case law, the memo, the office hour, the lunch meeeting! the endless dull and uncolored tics and tacs are somehow matters of self-preservation. with hurried talks in between gasps, and almost reckless propulsion through days, they lunge from one class to the next, and leave me feeling like i'm not moving much at all.

for others, it's all a podium. the i's are always i's, even when they say you's. they wrap tape measures around themselves and challenge anyone to read through their marked units. they mete out sycophant sophistry, and i'll be damned if they don't choke on their own spit.

i'll be damned if i don't drown in their spit.

Happy Birthday Rabbit

inauguration

jimmy and jon took a cross country drive from california for the inauguration. i enticed them with some homecooking and hot showers to come pick me up from the south and take me with them.

DC was packed with people. excited and happy people. i wish i had gotten some obama gear, like a rhinestone obama hoodie, as souvenirs as a physical and cheap manifestation of my bound-to-fade memories. i guess i'll settle for this picture instead.

the REALITY of the social significance of barack obama has started punching me in the gut and i keep crying because it's so awesome. my views on american democracy and my role in the context of a democratic society haven't shifted much, but goddamn! i'm so, so happy i voted this time for reasons that have hardly anything to do with any policy, any system, but instead the very sanctity of of our human souls.

CLOV
Is your throat sore?
(pause)
Would you like a lozenge?
(pause)
No.
(pause)
Pity.
(CLOV goes, humming, toward window right, halts before it, looks up at it)

HAMM
Don't sing.

CLOV
(Turning towards HAMM)
One hasn't the right to sing any more?

HAMM
No

CLOV
Then how can it end?

HAMM
You want it to end?

CLOV
I want to sing.

-Endgame, Samuel Beckett

If you grow so comfortable with a part of yourself, those parts strange and treasured, do you, in a way kin to forgetting, begin to lose them? Or, because you have learned to love them, do you simply no longer need them and there is no loss? What is the scent of the skin between memory and obsession?

to smear ourselves across these stained times.

i began 2008 in a small bar in the outskirts of nairobi with the few other volunteers and strangers, sharing tuskers, smirnoff black, and variously-directed prayers for the safety of our kids through the election riots and tribal murders. i then saw lions tear apart a zebra, sleep, and fuck from about 5 feet away. separated by history and money, i am just a tourist in the end.

then i went back to the bay area and worked at gv for a while, then went to korea.

then i came back and went to law school.

now it's 2009. well into 2009. whether i am a stain or have been stained i'm not sure. i feel smeared.

although i'm trying to maintain an enlightened sense of pessimism for this year, some part of my gut is tingling with a knowing of some forthcoming ... adventure?

the adventures of our generation, of our culture, of this world of blogs and malls and self-imposed diy, the adventures of this generation are so different from those before us. everyone's great grandmother, grandfather, great aunt and mother's godmother, someone has an epic. whether he was a jockey and she was a rich heiress giving everything up for love, or he was a painter burning alive for his art rather than paint communist propaganda, or she was an orphan running away from countless houses of abuse and apathy.

i wonder what story i will have to tell. i think it will be of such different proportions, different worlds. while i picture all their stories in black and white, i wonder if mine will be seen in mere 32-bit color.

happy new year.

sweetheart

sitting on the couch, watching travis watch a pbs documentary about sit-coms, dating back to the times of I Love Lucy.

tonight he made us dinner; portobello mushroom sandwiches and french fries. i bought four navel oranges - two for appetizer and two for dessert. soda-cat just crawled up to me, purred, and jumped to the top of the couch to curl up and sniff the clean laundry folded next to her.

tonight i got an email from an old friend from berkeley who i haven't seen since my sophomore year. he was a street kid i met at the monday night drop in who got near and dear to my heart in a matter of days. and stayed there. tonight his email said,

spell this backwards
massive levis sam!
Swap god for a janitoR Rot in a jar of dog paws

and also i went to the monday night drop in and felt old and hateful.

love ___.

And then he attached an ee cummings poem.


right now on television bill cosby is critiquing a white racist television show...didn't catch the name of it.

On the coffee table in front of me a copy of WIRED magazine, cover story, "the truth about cancer: don't try to cure it. just find it. inside the science of early detection."
sometimes i think, any minute now i will wake up with the worst headache of my life. i will go to the ER and they will tell me of a tumor in my brain.
how many things can happen in an instant that could turn your life around forever? you have brain cancer. your parents were in a fatal car accident. you won the lottery.
lil wayne wants you to be his wife.

new

new years eve.
i'm sitting in bed at my parents house in palos verdes. i am thinking of lists.

1. unbreakable
I am thinking of conviction, will power. Making a decision that's difficult to make and sticking to it. Being sure that something is right and however impossible, despite everything, sticking with that sense. I am breakable but looking into changing that.
2. space
When my head is cloudy, when it feels like white noise, I read berger. fiction. The text gives me the sensation of open space, like i am in a bare room, white walls, faded beige carpet, a patch of sunlight streaked onto the floor through an open window. air, space, light. It's not just his words but the appearance of the text. quote from To the Wedding:

"There's very little you can do, she says, and what you can do never seems enough. One must go on though.



I shall have a house one day, but not in this murderous valley. I want a house from which I can see the sea from every window. Ninon's house. It must exist somewhere. Not blue sea, a silver sea..."

space.

3. the new year
i am feeling too unwell to leave the house tonight. but i typed "new year" into my itunes seach bar and am considering listening to the five songs that come up. considering. i think that might be all i have to say about the new year.
4. hearts
big hearts stuck in skinny bodies, my friend said to me. i dont know if its true about us or if we cling to the idea because of the alliteration, the way the idea feels, like sipping ice cold water, when it falls from our lips.
5. history and magnets
how do you put a value on friendship? public health is all about turning the unmeasurable (health, racism, community) into the meausurable (life expectancy, infant mortality, rates of disease, money spent on health care) so that we can say something "scientific" and create "change."i don't care for it anymore. science, that is. how do you put a vaule on friendship? when do memories cease to suffice as justification for devotion and loyalty?
6. enough

happy new year.

california

my mother, my heart, my earth, my scent, my lover, my spirit, my freedom, my home, my all....
i had no idea that i've really, really missed you.

this constant waiting for epiphany. my need for newness, rebirth, revelation, is a froth that drips to my breast. living in a continual state of prophecy, expectation, and never the fulfillment. i am frightened of how few lived to see the messiah. simon, only. and anna, too. of all the prophets. why am i so easily bored. forcing scenery, people, motion, goodbye, a flip of a scarf, there i go. motion. the swinging of bells, of mute and iron bells. motion. goodbye. but all so molded. so cast by my own hand.

r snarls at my perversions and i whimper back. i attempt monogamy and my need for deep and strange eroticisms resurfaces harder. this is, truly then, as l said and who i always, always, believe, this is the death room. the birth room. the cedar box in which i encase my sex, the ledge on which i worship it, behind a black and silver polished door. there is nothing casual about my sex. spit into my palm. i will mix it with the dirt lining the seams. i will bless you with your own fluid. i will call you holy. i will feed you cakes of smoke until you weep into my mouth. i will spit your tears over my shoulder and call it lucky. this is not so violent, though it could be. there are wars that mantle my shoulders, wars in the hollow where you touch my neck. but you will only find it strange and frightening. you will only find what forests men have found before in my green eyes. and how rarely i have dreamed of the sea.

don't leave me here

lately it's been long days of boredom broken by bursts of frantic fits. taking law school finals is not as hard as i expected it to be, but boring like i haven't even imagined to bore. i spend hours making lines under lines over lines and not learning much but mere lines.

jamie makes me feel and so i do.

i think of ways to do away with myself, but it's hard to forget why. and so i always come back to myself. there's something that i always believe so much to be a part of myself, something that whether true or not, i refuse to believe that i can change, that i will never let it go. and so i wear my pain loosely and hope that it will slip away.

i dream of being someplace beautiful. where streets are uneven and ripped apart and the walls are grey, smudged with human dirt. i want to walk to buy my chocolate, and take the train to a friend's house. and i'm having a hard time accepting that it just is.

sometimes i wish you'd taught me...

do you want to be good or do you want to be whole

I have spent the entire day writing and putting on lipstick OVER and OVER, that same dark wine shade I've been wearing since I began wearing lipstick, that color that looks either mysterious or nerdily gothic on pale brunettes like me. My sister and I are having simultaneous depressive breakdowns, which is interesting to observe along genetic lines. She's become obsessed with amateur night at her strip club (which she finally won) and I'm doing phone sex again. We take turns standing in the shower, not bathing, just letting the water scald us. Oddly we're eating well, lots of vegetables from the market, and doing healthy things like.... yoga. Spend what little time we do venture out wandering through parks and the conservatory, the library and bookstores.

But mostly we stay in our little basement room, playing with the cat, pinned between an equinox and a solstice, paralyzed by our inability to move, and the impossibility of staying....

Help.
unemployment + can't make rent + i don't leave my apartment + winter a'comin on = oh noes....

Rich's career suggestions for me:

- official letter writer for fan clubs/royalty
- mail mistress/lady/carrier
- horse whisperer
- animal lover/tender/doctor
- geologist, horticulturalist, botanist, biologist
- zookeeper of animal and insect spirits
- designator of beautiful bones
- roller skate rink princess
- bicycle lender
- jeweler
- gem dealer
- tarot reader
- nutritionist/vitamin dealer
- teacher of SAT verbal classes
- seashell collector / seashell seller
- lawyer's researcher
- internet spider / web guru, web master
- graphic designer, typographer
- book maker / book seller
- chef
- clergy woman
- tea specialist
- baker
- candlestick maker
- obama advisor
- dog walker/cat sitter
- entrepeneur (book store, small press, waffle house, etc)

basketball

they say it is bittersweet

i feel that many of us are struggling a bit with having to deal with the incredible joy of having Obama elected as president, and the shocking slap to the face that is Prop. 8.

Obama's election has marked a crucial moment for many of us skeptical of the future of America. It has given us renewed hope and optimism that I haven't seen pervade America since... well, never. As Ezra Klein said, it seems to mark a transition from the era of fear into what I would optimistically say is an era of hope.

However, the passing of Prop. 8 has created heartache that feels even sharper in contract to this incredible moment of hope. I imagine this is what it feels like to birth your baby the same moment your husband dies, like in those cheesy moments in dramas.

How have we broken down one of the biggest racial barriers in US, while at the same time denying another minority the right to marry whom they love? How have we told one person yes, yes, yes, you can, and the other, hellllllll no!?

I am feeling so confused. I'm crying with joy and crying with disappointment. either say, i'm crying. (again)

YES YES YES

via soo.

i am so thrilled. i voted for the first time since i got my citizenship, and in north carolina too!
i was on the airplane from nyc when obama was declared the president, and a couple of other passengers and i had a hard time containing our excitement.
then garth picked me up, (with chris in the back seat) and it was amazing to drive back to my house listening to obama's acceptance speech while sitting next to close friends. it felt just right.

someone on the news made the commentary that made me really happy: that the "joe the plummer" idea of an american is no longer applicable. that joetheplumber is not the all-american like mccain wanted us to believe. we are a different generation now. we are a different america, and while joes still exist, of course, they don't represent america anymore. WE do.
the "real america" palin talked about, the "rural" america, the white, middle-aged, middle-classed, hockey-mom, conservative americans are no longer the "real america."

instead, i think the enormous crowd in grant park in chicago perfectly represented who we are. watching the crowd made me so proud to be here, in this country, at this time. i actually do really feel proud of my country.

OBAMA!

my other other blog

hi. some friends of mine and i started a blog on strange food in the world and the people who eat it. it's over here at srslyfood.blogspot.com if anyone on here would like to contribute, just shoot me a line. i'm workin on an article for bug shit coffee right now.

<3

here

ex heroin dealer

o's brother was an addict. it killed him eventually. died on a hospital bed in a hospital on some island off of spain or italy or greece. one time, he'd run off trying to escape the draft, and lived the winter in some shepherd's cottage on and off believing in suicide. when we roamed around the countries, the police would stop us for an hour or more while checking passports because of o's last name. they always assumed he was his brother, although his brother was dead. i could never fully comprehend the expression o always had while waiting. looking back on it, the most interesting thing about him was his brother because it gave him pain.

lunch time

sitting here in the law school, browsing through weeks of backlogged 3quarksdaily posts, i am consistently drawn to and romanticized by tales of literature, writers, libraries, words.
the temptation to write!
to feel the freedom in language, to let words bloom as they will, and you wielding but the water can.
and yet, here, i'm constantly hedging. every word is solid, immovable, refuses to be coy. i'm constantly hedging, constantly chopping away at words. letting them wilt to fit into point.
how medieval.

i'm currently living in constant evaluation and re-evaluation of my goals in life, as opposed to my desires, as opposed to longings and temptations. i feel i need to convince myself that this phase is but a phase. a step in the direction of where i ultimately want to be. a step in the right direction.
but at a certain point in my life, i think i decided that 90% of school was bullshit, and i'm having a hard time convincing myself otherwise.

i have headaches often and everyday sleep too much or not at all. after months of attempts to relate and connect to this world outside me, i am now finding myself drawing closer to myself, trying to ignore rather than fight with most things around me.

this is a part of everyone's reality at one point or another?

i want them to say "it's ok. we don't care. do what you want." but even if they did, at this point, i wouldn't believe them anyways.

.

i love the part of you that is me and i love the part of you that is you and i love the part of you that is no one.

miss you already

she came on monday night.

tuesday, we swam in the lake. it's october, but still not too cold. after a while, you can feel it melting around you. i think next time, i'll bring a tube, tie it to a tree with string, and see how far i can float away before land tugs me back again.

then we got kicked out of costco, bought a pumpkin, had north carolinia bbq, and made pumpkin ice cream. others came for dinner and we had baked butternut squash, pumpkin curry with walnut and apple cinnamon quinoa, fall salad, and pumpkin pie with pumpkin ice cream. then we set off bottle rockets and made window blinds blink open and lights switch on then off.

wednesday, we drove to dc. went to the smithonian, but too late! we missed the last show of imax 3d. but with a smile and a "please", the usher let us in to watch the last half of giant squids and scuttling crabs. then the monuments, then dinner, then drinks, then midnight-past trip to the vietnam war memorial, then "let's not sleep here, but drive back tonight, we'll drink lots of red bull, and listen to music and speed." and speeding, i got a speeding ticket. and then at a gas station, i accidentally spilled gasoline on myself. driving back with the gasoline fumes swimming in the car, "i wouldn't light that match. let's wait a while."

and 5am we're home. and we sleep. and wake. and sleep again.

thursday, the state fair. so much food! deep fried mac and cheese and deep fried okra and deep fried pie and deep fried pickles. ice cream and funnel cake and candied apples. blue ribbons on cows and rabbits and gourds and watermelons and pumpkins and caskets and ferns and wreaths and legos and everything everything blue ribbons for this and blue ribbons for everything in your house and everything you can do and anything you can brag about.

the beers then dancing. "that girl has a light in her vagina!" and then a foot! then the music and we dance and dance and sweat. "the girls keep touching my ass." and i say "that's just how it goes." and she says "i know." but still...
then we dance some more.

this morning, she packed up, and she's gone. i wish she hadn't left, but i wouldn't/couldn't/shouldn't make her stay.

baby girl i miss you already. come back.

i like it here

I am selling my mother's Vicodin to my sister for rent money. Well, not really selling, more like "Lilli if you loan me rent money, I will bring you perfume and Mom's drugs back from Paris." I'm halfway through writing a novella and it's the most difficult thing I've ever written. Yesterday I was sketching out a scene in my cafe and I quite nearly vomited, there on the floor, it was so upsetting, I choked it down but had to cry a little and retyping it later that night.... it's like I go somewhere else, a different somewhere else than anywhere else. I told Rich about that and he said "Oh you are so tortured!" and I was like "Shut it! Am too! And I'm gonna paint my nails black." I am almost positive I have tendinitis in my right wrist. Dream: I am Gloria Estefan and Prince is my husband. He's wicked and cruel and slaps me around a bit and I love it. I wear "vintage housewife" clothing and do a lot of dishes.: I got everything for the structural dummy for MOUTH yesterday and am stumped now because I don't have a board shearer, but, it keeps unfolding. Trying to get to Raleigh for Thanksgiving. Mentioned off handedly that I wanted to read some Colette before I went to see my book in the Colette gallery. Jezebel showed up with a volume of the Claudine novels, I'm so pleased! I lounge on the bed full of silver pillows and sip bitter milky tea from a proper tea cup and read and read. Finished Sanctuary, it was terrible, I don't understand how THAT'S the novel that earned Faulkner fame. Was it because of how bizarre the rape was? Was it just a trick of the bizarre? There's something wrong with me but I can't put a finger on it, what is wrong or what is making it wrong. Maybe it's habit. Maybe I'm just so used to feeling wrong and off that it's become what Is. When I notice I am talking to myself I turn on the CD player. I only listen to five musical artists, and I have for the past year. What does that mean. Am I saying the same thing because I keep hearing the same thing? The one thing that needs to be said, and when it has been said....

these are the times we nurture our beasts

.

it's hard to sleep when you're not here.

i don't see enough of my family. between classes and jobs and money and jamie, it's hard to find more than a few days to go back home. i'm trying to be more fair to them. trying to be ok with being in the valley for more than a week at a time. but the thing about families is that most of the time, they just keep making you feel like a big fat liar. (which you are).

i watch a lot of tv while jamie is gone. well, to say i watch is not quite right. i like to just leave it on, half the time on mute. is it strange that i've suddenly developed a sense of kinship to khloe kardashian? probably.

i just finished rereading To Kill a Mockingbird. and it was good. really good. it Felt good. to read and feel. i felt a pang for something afterwards. it made me wonder about writing. reminded me of old fantasies of literary solace. and now? i don't know. nowadays, i feel tangible.

actually, i don't know. i can't tell if i'm tangible or invisible. if i'm grounded or floating. if this or that. who!
only a mass
a mass
is matter enough? what!

i'm still waiting.

durham fall break

i can't help but want to be everywhere at once.

julie is coming monday, and the prospect is provoking in me a glee i haven't felt since... since i'm not sure when. no matter, we'll spend days doing hopefully blissful nothing. i'm skeptical, yet hopeful, that her presence will lighten up the perpetual dreariness i've come to cast upon existence here in durham.

oh, don't think of me as so horrid, i know what you're thinking. why don't i go do something. life is what i make of it. etc etc. but in my defense, i do. i do spend the week running around from one thing to another. classes to GAL training to ACLU to lunches to whatever social occasion i feel inspired or obligated to attend. but subdued between the hours, whatever sparks of passion i may feel at random moments of inspiration quickly dissipate as the weight of town of drunk college america descends upon it.
is it too obvious i hate this place? don't worry. i'm sure it'll pass. it's just that for now, this small part of universe terrifies me with ennui.


jamie calls me from russia in the mornings, and my sleep is broken by hard swallows of longing as i gulp and whisper i miss you. he's so far now in places i dream about every day. places i am constantly comparing this or that too. the heart of discontent sullies the longings with ugliness.

i want you to say no. i want to tell you to say no because i hate that you are realizing love in this. that you stay because he makes you cry. that this is everything.
and i know this. to know nothing else, to need pain that is not even worth while. a sickly desire disguised as... hope? the disgust in yourself makes you ignore disgust at him.
don't do this. don't do this.
but i will never say this to you because i love you.


i can't feel the ground beneath me sometimes.

are you angry? you're just annoyed. but i'm just looking for something to hold onto and hoping i don't find anything. i want to at once eat too much and nothing at all. i want to feel stuffed and starved. it's the same sometimes. both are suffocating. and sometimes all i want is to be stifled. and your annoyance hurts more than your anger.
will you be patient with me? you're the only thing that can hurt me.

he doesn't eat butter with his pancakes. i always do, and steal his tiny paper cup of it, hoping he doesn't notice. i like a lot of syrup too. too much. and milk and sugar in my coffee. a lot of coffee. and salt and pepper and ketchup on the hashbrown. i wish i had eggs too, but i wouldn't ever in front of you. that would be too gross, right? how could you stand eating with me?

she says it like she doesn't mean it. she doesn't care about it anymore. but it still means so much. the pancakes with the butter and the hashbrowns and pie. where do you want to go? do you want to go home? do you want to go out? sometimes, it's easier to be alone. easier to be unhappy.


it's fall. the sun and the frost scold each other every morning. i exchange short sleeves for coughs and pinch off cotton balls from last year's tights. i find myself constantly wishing for something. c says small towns are places for big dreams, but i find myself sleepless.