My lovelife According to Disney?

shit's deep man....


You are:
BELLE

You are fiercely independent and loyal to those you love.
You have a tendency for stubbornness - this being a strength and a weakness
You are fearless when it comes to getting to know people.
You value intelligence and have no time for vanity, arrogance, or popular trends.
You will take personal risks for those you love.



Your Love Life:

You are drawn to complicated people, particularly those who may have a “wall”.
You aren’t swayed by physical appearance - you understand character lies within.
You tend to fall into relationships that are complex, difficult, and possibly dark.

Fall in Love

I love Pixar shorts for so many reasons I could never list them all...

A Dublin Moment

National Museum (14:36)

Went to see the "bog people" today.

One of them
(a hand curled softly, fingernails
trimmed and real.
legs and head were gone
lost somewhere down there -
the skin darkened from
hundreds of years feet below
mud, water, silt, mud
but the hand still is curled
waiting, as if in sleep)
made me miss you.

If it rains here, it only lasts about 15mins
then the wind shoves it elsewhere (England?)
You would love it.
Bare feet near a back door, drops of water releasing themselves from the eave above
you loved it.

Ray Bradbury Quotes

Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me. After the explosion, I spent the rest of the day putting the pieces together.

---

If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business, because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down.

---

Ask for no guarantees, ask for no security, there never was such an animal. And if there were, it would be related to the great sloth which hangs upside down in a tree all day every day, sleeping its life away.

---

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.

---

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

Poem ofthe Month

A Story About the Body
By Robert Hass

The young composer, working that summer at an artist's colony, had watched her for a week. She was Japanese, a painter, almost sixty, and he thought he was in love with her. He loved her work, and her work was like the way she moved her body, used her hands, looked at him directly when she made amused or considered answers to his questions. One night, walking back from a concert, they came to her door and she turned to him and said, "I think you would like to have me. I would like that too, but I must tell you I have had a double mastectomy," and when he didn't understand, "I've lost both my breasts." the radiance that he had carried around in his belly and chest cavity--like music--withered, very quickly, and he made himself look at her when he said, "I'm sorry. I don't think I could." He walked back to his own cabin through the pines, and in the morning he found a small blue bowl on the porch outside his door. It looked to be full of rose petals, but he found when he picked it up that the rose petals were on top; the rest of the bowl--she must have swept them from the corners of her studio--was full of dead bees.

One of Top3 Fav. Moments

Being Emo About Shit (pun intended)

A few nights ago, around midnight, my friend and I stood shivering in front of a church.
The street was dark and sleepy, it was a neighborhood street, and I really had to take a shit. The church was hunched over behind us. It was made of brick and only had one car napping in its parking lot.
The light from the church lazily reached around our waiting bodies and faded into the cracked pavement. The light had no warmth to it and my stomach still really hurt.

My friend and I watched two figures, one walking a tiny dog, stagger towards us from the very dark end of the street.


A few nights ago I started to write a poem about this night.
One version was angry
One version was sad
One was questioning & confused
One was hurt, vengeful, furious, apathetic, pointlessly trying to come to some kind of conclusion about the cold air and the large silent church and the tiny frantic dog on the leash that was lit up by the light behind me this long string of luminous shine extending from the mans arm to the neck of the tiny dog This One was trying to understand something about anything that we see and try to comprehend while one half is sloppily illuminated and one half is in murky shadows.

One version included a mother crying on the phone and me doing the same.

When my friend - my amazing and beautiful friend - finally took me home I took the biggest shit I have in years. In that version I had purged myself of it. In this version it's still writhing in my lower intestines and I'm still standing outside that church and I'm still waiting.

I've Got

this big hairy monkey clutching to my shoulders. His breath smells like self-doubt and insecurities.
Everytime I look at the calender, in the mirror, or at the clock, he slaps me in the face with his bushy tail.

At least my scalp is mite-free....

Story ofmy Life

Small Moment of Truth

I heard a knock on the glass behind me: I was sitting in the periodical section of Borders, a ceiling to floor length window at my back.

I turned to see a tiny girl standing there. She wore a blue dress with white polka-dots and she stood about as tall as my cross-legged height.
Her expression was oddly serious as she waved at me. I returned the gesture and waited, positive she was about to reveal some introspective secret, or the name of my first child...
She intently stared back at me before leaning forward to speak, her words solid and muffled against the glass: "I want ice cream."

I then watched her turn to walk away. I felt gypped, like the time I opened a box of chocolate-covered macadamia nuts on Christmas (ooh my favorite!) only to find a hat inside.
Where was my gem of wisdom tiny prophet? What's my destiny??

I'd come to Borders to research Graduate Schools, read about publication options, and contemplate life. I suddenly realized this miniature girl had looked at a complete stranger and announced her deepest and truest desire. No sugar-coating, no apologies; she knows what she wants and isn't afraid to let it be known.
If anything it reminded me to stop bullshitting myself and go after exactly what I want and what will make me feel fulfilled.

I should have looked up at the next person who wandered past me in the periodical section and shouted: "I want to be happy!"

Today

Today is a good day.

A poem about my first kiss will be my first poem published.

Hugs for everyone!

Scrubs Quote ofthe Day

Of course I'm holding back! I'm insane, you idiot! Remember the other day, when you told me that I had pit stains? Well, I have cried every fifteen minutes on the half-hour since you told me that. I am wracked with self-doubt. I have panic attacks. I'm claustrophobic, germaphobic, phobiaphobic. I talk to myself. I talk to my cat. I talk to three separate shrinks about the fact that often my cats respond to me in my mother's voice.

And yesterday, when that stupid pretty surgical nurse handed you a pair of latex gloves, I almost killed the guy whose leg I was stitching up because I couldn't stop thinking about the two of you having sex on a box of steaks! Why a box of steaks? 'Cause my dad had an affair with a female butcher! And, as I mentioned before, I am insane. There! I opened up! Are you happy?

- Elliot

I'm Guessing

Everyone at one point in their lives looks around and asks, "What does everybody else know that I don't?"

I'm in limbo - and not the fun, get grandma drunk, put a party hat on her head, see how far she can lean back before her artificial hip breaks kind - but the depressing confusing kind.

Quote ofthe Day

"As she rubs Louis's back, Clarissa thinks, Take me with you. I want a doomed love. I want streets at night, wind and rain, no one wondering where I am."

from

The Hours

by Michael Cunningham

10 Things I Think About

10 Things I Think About While Waiting to Board an Airplane

1. Who sitting around me has a fear of flying

2. How many people just said goodbye to someone they love

3. How many people are on some form of medication

4. How many people in the terminal are unhappy

5. Why some people prefer window v. aisle

6. Who is flying to see someone they love

7. Will we hit turbulence & will it be the fun kind or the scary kind

8. Who is the person that I'll end up sitting next to & will I get to find out

9. How many people just said goodbye to someone they are glad to leave

10. What do other people think about when they wait to board a plane

Poem ofthe Day

The Lucky Criminals
By Kevin Prufer

We are not equal to our criminals. A raftful floats by every day,
dainty blue canopies flaring in the breeze. Cigarettes dangling

from downturned mouths, eyes screwed to the shore -
the criminals are slim and beautiful, draped

in their lawnchairs so their fingers leave trails in the river water.
They are sentimental and lean, shirtless and droop-eyed.

Oh to dig my tired toes into the soft mud of the bank,
the pickpocket says. To drop coins in the river and retrieve them,

to retrieve all the coins that have ever been dropped in the river.
The others are silent, smoke leaking from their mouths. Wishes

are everything to criminals, and the burl of black clouds over the trees
is unimportant. My father was buried with a mouthful

of stolen gems, the con-man replies, swiping his guitar. I dug
one hundred holes in the yard before I found them. The black clouds

curl into mouths that rustle the trees. Around their feet,
fifteen bags of coins. The hacker picks his golden teeth, the falsely accused

stares hungrily to our shore. Our women are in love with criminals.
They have the soft glow of lamplight on pavement on clear nights after rain.

How we envy criminal ambition. We are strung like pearls
on the weedy shore, white-faced and furious as they pass.

Our dinner burns, our children cry, and the wind cools
as the storm sweep over. Justice, justice, we call to them.

But the long-fingered criminals in their gorgeous swimsuits,
the lawless with their guns draped over their chairs, the shifty-eyed

and doomed with bare chests, the exciting - they'll never notice us.

The End of the World

Since January I've had the recurring nightmare of an Apocalypse. They vary in degree of scariness, locations, people I interact with...but I wake up with the same physiological reaction each time.
The first one I had in January was the most horrifying. Very reminiscent of Cormac McCarthy's The Road. I was with my family. The sky was a blanket of ash. Headlights shone through the dust and soon huge trucks came rumbling towards us. The people running nearby were being shot down.

Since this nightmare I've seen the Golden Gate bridge engulfed in rising water as a steamboat crashed through it's lines. I've seen skyscrapers collapse all around me as the sun turns deep red with smoke. I've seen mankind turn into cannibalistic robots who repair the destroyed cities every night only so they can ruin them again the next day. I've run from splitting asphalt, ducked behind buildings, jumped off bridges, cried in countless friends arms, and watched several people I love be captured or killed.
And in each dream there is always someone holding my hand throughout it all. This person varies as well. It's usually a male, sometimes a familiar face, sometimes a stranger.

I wake up and I'm always shivering always terrified. The first few times I had this dream I woke up and said "fuck The Road," but now I wonder..
I always wake up with a racing heart and feel like "they" are outside my room waiting to hear me breathe.
I always want to call people from my past to make sure they are still alive and I always wake up and realize there is nobody holding my hand.

Pre-Death List

I was cleaning out a drawer in my childhood room and came across my List of Things To Do Before I Die

The very first thing on the list is "Flying Lessons." Really? That's the first thing I thought of? I'm sort of scared of flying. Although maybe that's why I wanted the lessons..

I wrote the list in High School. It was exciting to see I'm able to cross a few things off:
- Ballet lessons
- Sky dive
- Get a manicure & pedicure (wtf? lame.)
- Be an extra in a film
- Walk across Golden Gate & Brooklyn Bridge

A few others I realized I may have to re-evaluate:
- Be on "Price is Right"and get kiss from Bob Barker
- Meet Tom Cruise (oh Tom, how you've fallen so)
- Work at Disneyland as Belle (pssh yeah right)

It may be about time I write a new list.

The new

Star Trek left me all kinds of hot and bothered....

23 Things

I've been thinking about lately -

1. Graduation
2. How to finish my short stories
3. Bees
4. Our torn up front yard..stupid plumbers
5. Thank you cards
6. Far away friends who I miss. A lot.
7. Getting older
8. The bruise on my leg
9. My summer reading list
10. Moving
11. Puffy paint
12. Glitter
13. A certain scene in the movie Proof
14. Revising my final poems
15. How much Advantage costs
16. Traveling
17. Children's Benadryl
18. Michael Cunningham
19. Gas prices
20. "My business is words"
21. Dill Harris
22. Goldfish crackers
23. The next 6 days

I will

probably always feel this loss:

Last Day.

Today was my last day of classes (ever) as an English major. I feel very melancholy and am clinging to a mentality of denial akin to the likes of Norman Bates.

Highlights from my Last Day:

1.) Watched my friends Improv class final on campus which involved marathon runners sprinting to a finish line in the library, a safari in front of the science building, and a reenactment of the final scene from Harry Potter in our cafeteria equivalent.

2.) Watched, thanks to my sister, a Muppets version of the "tipping scene" from Reservoir Dogs. The Muppets swearing = very disorienting.

3.) Was driving to work on a remote woodsy road. Saw a tiny dog scampering on the side of the street so I pulled over and tried to call him over. I was barefoot and getting sunburned as I crouched near the baking asphalt. The dog ran from me and I felt rejected. Then a car came around the corner and I'm sure I looked silly.

4.) Was late to my last class since I ran up 4flights of stairs (in boots) at the library to check out On Chesil Beach. Had a feverish need to read it tonight for some reason. When I breathlessly slapped the book on the checkout desk the boy looked at the screen and whispered, "Ooh. You can't check this out. You have a lot of fines, did you know that?" Yes, I knew that.

5.) Forgot to turn off my cell phone so R2D2's cheery beeps filled our classroom. Awkward. Also, I'm fairly positive this is first time this has happened to me at college. Typical.

6.) Saw a giant black plastic bag caught in the wind, drifting higher and higher into the clear sky. I pointed up and said "American Beauty."

If

you're looking for something to get me for my birthday, look no further:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8078827.stm

Bus Sermons

I sat on the bus and the woman beside me - who had a chunky mullet and neon green string looping behind her neck attached to her glasses - turned to me. She asked what I was studying at school. I told her English. She asked me where I grew up. She asked me what church I attended from my hometown.
When I told her I didn't go to church she got frazzled and gave me detailed directions (street names, Rightturns vs. Leftturns, a tree on a corner to make sure to drive past) for a large church downtown. It was recently "re-innovated" and was worth looking at. I told her maybe next time I went home I would.

The bus turned a corner and we fell into silence, I wasn't sure whether or not the conversation would/should continue.
Then she whips out this question for me:
"So, are you married yet?"
Yet.
Yet?
As the film High Fidelity taught us, Yet implies some kind of intent or desire for it to occur soon in the future. Horseshit.
I couldn't stop from snorting and then laughing out loud. I said no, I was most definitely not married. Looking down at my left hand she said that was a shame. I just shrugged.

She then says, "Well, when you do, make sure you get married in that beautiful re-innovated church. When you do, make sure you go look at it before your wedding day because your wedding day is the only one you get and it's all yours."
When you get married. When? When.

She meant well. That's why I didn't look at her and tell her I'd recently been doing a lot of thinking and accepting that life's end goal shouldn't be marriage and that I'll be just fine if I never get married. I didn't tell her that recently I've been digging for happiness in myself and being content in solitude. I didn't tell her that statistically woman become lonelier after marriage. I didn't tell her I don't know if I believe in God or not.

She had a chunky mullet, spoke with a stutter, and didn't blink while talking. So I didn't go into it. I wasn't in the mood for that conversation, yet.

SexyTime

I love him. This one is about nerdy virgins. Get past the lame intro first where they try to make him look like a badass... Check it:

Stuffing My Face.

I binge on memories. Every day I shove the past down my throat and allow it to fill me. I bob through the day, waddling, swollen with what I eat & eat & eat.

At night I sit at my desk and purge. Weak poetry, erratic and incoherent journal entries, unfinished short stories, scraps of paper chicken-scratched with thoughts..

I binge and purge. Every single day. When will we learn?

Moths

I titled my senior project portfolio "Gypsy Moths" because of this. I may have even been inspired to mirror (cough *steal*) some of it for my main poem.
This is one of my absolute favorite passages in any book I've read and the reason why I feel happy when I see a moth fluttering around my room or around a streetlamp at night.

On the path now, urged leftward toward a stand of maples, I hear the sound of droplets falling through the leaves. It can't be raining. There are still stars visible intermittently overhead. No: here are the gypsy moths, still in their caterpillar form, chewing at the maple and serviceberry leaves, devouring our neighborhood forest leaf by leaf. Night gives them no rest. The woods have been infested with them, and during the day the sun shines through these trees as if spring were here, bare stunned nub of gnawed and nibbled leaves casting almost no shade on the ground where the altered soil chemistry, thanks to the caterpillars' leavings, has killed most of the seedlings, leaving only the disagreeably enlarged thorny and deep root systems. The trees are coated, studded, with caterpillars, their bare trunks hairy and squirming, I can barely see them but can hear their every scrape and crawl...
...And in my night confusion it is as if I can hear the leaves being gnawed, the forest being eaten alive, shred by shred. I cannot bear it. They are not mild, these moths. Their appetites are blindingly voracious, obsessive. An acquaintance has told me that the Navahos refer to someone with an emotional illness as "moth crazy."
-Charles Baxter
The Feast of Love

50%? (A Rant)

An editor from a small SF publishing house came and spoke to my class tonight.
Basically what it boils down to is this: Writers have an icicles shot in hell of getting published.

They are a small publishing house and when their website says "no unsolicited manuscripts" they still get 250 manuscripts a week. When they remove this stipulation it goes up to 400! A WEEK! He said they have - literally - towers of manuscripts reaching to the ceiling, wrapping around tables, and crawling under chairs.

I learned that only 50% of the books sold in bookstores are ever read. 50%?
And I learned that 80% of the books sold in bookstores are gifts.

I've been wracking my brain lately as to why everyone has this fevered desire to be published. Why, despite the obvious impossiblity of it all, so many people crave it. Why? Especially if in the offchance you are published, and the offchance someone randomly picks your book off the shelf and buys it, there is still only a 50% chance the person will read the damn thing!

Is it our need to leave something behind? I think a big fear people have is dying and having nothing to show for themselves, nothing that will remind the world that they existed in the first place. Is it this? The fear of mortality?

Do writers believe being published will solidify they have talent? Do writers hope their words will improve others lives? Do writers crave fame, money, esteem? What? WHY is it something people bleed over and literally pour out their heart and soul over? Why have so many authors (even successful ones) committed suicide?

And seriously, 50%??

It's Like Meeting the Man of Your Dreams

As I sat on the hilltop overlooking the ocean, gulls soaring above & waves sparkling below, I noticed something even more breathtaking in my line of sight: A gorgeous (and shirtless) young man, frolicking in the surf with his dog.
Wistfully looking up at the clouds I daydreamed....
Me(after seductively climbing down the cliff to the sand below): Oh! Hello I didn't see you there. May I pet your playfully charming dog?
McHottie: Why, of course. His name is Scout.
Me: My cat is named Scout!
Us: (Proceed to twirl on the sand and possibly hardcore make out)

My daydream was suddenly broken when the guy started yelling up at me and I realized the dog had scrambled up the hillside and was galloping in my direction. The dog slammed its wet body into me. I looked down at McSexy and he yells "Hey, can you hold her while I grab the leash?"
Pssh...can I hold her...faw...mahoo..hehe...
I start to pet her sopping sandy hair and then flip her tag around. The word Scout jumps out at me and my heart freezes.
I look up to see McShirtless jogging towards me in the flesh. He thanks me while laughing something about a training gone awry and I blurt out "I named my cat Scout!"
He laughs and then.he.says. "Besides To Kill a Mockingbird I've never met another Scout."
I jizzed in my pants. Somehow I managed to say "That's why I chose the name -"
He chuckles "Oh yeah? Me too!"
He thanks me again right as I hear footsteps approaching. I turn to see a young blonde woman walking towards us, with a baby strapped to her stomach.

It's not called ironic Alanis. It's called fucking sucks.

Oh and PS - i'm totally psychic. minus the whole twirling/makingout part...

I Wonder

when I will stop feeling like a little kid playing "grown-up."

I wonder why reduced-fat Oreos actually taste better than regular.

I wonder when I'll really fall in love.


I wonder if the smell of trash in my room is coming from my open window or from our kitchen.

I wonder if you think of me as much as I think of you.

I wonder why people act happier than they actually are.

I Know It's Immature

but I still laugh at this. Everytime.

To Thine Own Self

Be True -

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/glasgow_and_west/8003067.stm

Hola?

I decided to explore Highway 1 today.
As I was driving in a particularly desolate and empty portion of the stretch, rolling hills curving around me in every direction, I realized I really had to pee.
I saw a sign for a city. I drove up up up a very windy incline and got to the top of a mountain and then drove down down down it, seeing the town only as mere specks in the valley beyond.
I realized I wasn't going to make it so I turned around and wound back up the mountain. Pulling over twice to find a tree to squat near, I quickly realized that I was on a cliff and any tree I might find was growing directly up out of a dramatic incline.
As I eyed some of the sparse shrubbery near the roadside several cars rushed by, forcing me to admit I'd be seen, bare-assed, by motorists passing by.

So I kept driving. Quickly reaching a breaking point. As I sped through the valley I came upon several fields of agriculture. Then, as I turned a corner I spotted a field full of workers. Next to their vehicle, I saw it, a porta-potty. Like a beacon of hope.
I pulled over onto the gravel, bumped to a dusty stop, and turned off my car. Several of the workers stopped to look at me curiously.
This was about the time I froze.
What was I going to do? Wander out into the field and ask to use their bathroom? Should I just make a run for it and burst into the white rectangle?
I started panicking. What if they didn't speak English?

Precious minutes were ticking by, pressing into my bladder, as I scrambled to construct pitiful sentences from my four quarters of Spanish classes. These are what I dug up - covered in mud and mildew:

Yo necesito usar los banos por favor!
and
Necesito (hold crotch) muchas ahora!

You don't have to be a fucking genius to know that I turned my key in the ignition and sped away. I felt embarrassed, like they had read my mind and seen my abysmal attempt at Spanish, and were now snickering to each other, speaking fluently. It took me twenty minutes to finally find a bathroom (at a YMCA..wtf)

Buenos noches mi amigos?

Sometimes..

..I miss people when I'm with them.

..I'm homesick while I'm home.

I tend to ruin the moments I'm in the middle of, because I can't tear my thoughts away from what will be. I'm weighed down by the what ifs and how things might be soon be shifted.

Reality can't come into focus because I'm seeing possible-tomorrows too clearly.

This is an infuriating way to live. I'm constantly frustrated with myself and wishing I could be different. But then, this goes along with previous actions, right? If I ignored this buzzing wasps nest of thoughts I incessantly have in my head, then I would be living falsely. This is how I am.
But I piss myself off. And other people in the process.
I'm sorry.

Flaccid

I've been working on a short-short for fiction class. It involves an older sister walking in on her 14yrold brother attempting to try on a condom.

Not being male, not having male siblings, or any experience with the male species, I decided to run this scenario by a friends boyfriend.
I told him the situation, asked him if he thought it sounded believable.
He paused, looked off in the distance for a moment, before saying "yeah that could happen."
Then he proceeded to smirk and laugh, a little too much like he was remembering something. "Yeah that is definitely something that could easily happen."
Haha.

If nothing else I learned I don't have to edit a large scene of my story.

On another note, I finally saw Slumdog Millionaire. Haven't felt that depressed in a while.

Happy Easter Egg Day! Stuff yo' face with them peeeeps!

I've Been Downhearted Baby

This video is boring as ass

but I love the song.

5 Things

I Did Last Night

1.) Scooped a soggy slice of sourdough bread out of my toilet. It slopped into chunks as I tried to pick it up. My fingers just sank through the saturated flour & yeast, it felt like I was trying to pick up yogurt. It took me 6 tries to get the entire slice out. It took me 4 tries to wash my hands until I felt "clean"

2.) You.

3.) Saw this band http://www.myspace.com/lowvsdiamond which apparently I'm uncool for having never heard of, but who were really good! They were playing at an Autism fundraising event, which makes them even more likeable. Check it...

4.) Watched a saltine eating contest. Those are the best.

5.) Read the short romance stories by two anonymous and brilliantly talented friends, written for each other, about each other.
Here are some highlights (printed without author permission):

From one story "Unconquerable: A Viking's Love Story"

--She tried to hit him with her other hand but he grabbed it with light ease as well. “So we’re going to do this the hard way,” he whispered as he pinned her to the desk, locking her legs between his. She quickly had to submit to his demanding force. His chest lay against hers and she became all too aware of how close his lips were to hers.

--His tussled hair dripped down against his face. His wet clothes clung to his body, shadowing his muscles at each crease.

From the other story. Untitled....

-- What the fuck had he done to her? She was not the type to sit by and let some guy make her an unfeeling, human skid mark on the underwear of the world.

--Funny that whenever he felt like it wouldn’t matter if he slept throughout the rest of his existence, the universe presented him with a new, irresistible reason to wake up.

I'm friends with goddamn geniuses.

I'm

pregnant.


You're the father.

*

There is a certain unique and strange delight about walking down an empty street alone. There is an off-focus light cast by the moon, and the streetlights are part of the spotlight apparatus on a bare stage set up for you to walk through. You get a feeling of being listened to, so you talk aloud, softly, to see how it sounds.

-Sylvia Plath

(outside my window)

Come on!

Today my professor for a GE literature class went ahead and blurted this in the middle of class (about a classic novel I've been wanting to read)
"I'm not giving anything away - so I can tell you how she murders her daughter. She pulls her head back and takes a saw to her throat."

Then he proceeds to read us the last page of The Things They Carried - once again reassuring us he wasn't giving anything away.
This is such a literary faux-pas I don't even know what to say. I wanted to plug my ears, but then I would have been that girl. I don't consider myself a book snob by any means, but he was being fucking ridiculous. Come on!

On a happier note I re-fell in Love with the comic "A Softer World"
Go here:
http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=373
It'll make you happy,
happy with dark humor and sexual undertones..

She sells sea shells

I took a walk on the beach today after work.
As I was matching my footsteps into the prints of a large dog I suddenly remembered the last time I'd been at that particular beach.

It had been a moody walk. One of those I'll take because I really need nobody in the world to know where I am at that exact moment. (Although I once played hooky in HS for this very reason and then Casey & Lindsay ditched school as well- to find me. It didn't take them very long to find me in Barnes & Noble. Fuck me...even my rebellion/depression is predictable)

So anyway, it had been one of those walks.
I was most likely moping, scowling at happy couples and giggling children, asking myself why I'd chosen a beach for social-escape in the first place.
Then as I was searching for seashells I saw one of the whitest seashells ever. It was so white. I stopped walking and stared down at it. It was one of those little shells that spirals up to a tip. The shell was sitting upright, basically pointed right at me, and I felt instantly happier. This perfect seashell had been waiting for me.

I leaned over to pluck the miracle shell from the moist sand and then squisgh my fingers mooshed right through it. I had pinched my fingertips through a seagull turd.

Despite my disgust and disappointment I still managed to marvel at the metaphor. When something in life looks perfect and feels special - it's usually a pile of shit.

So today I steered clear of any and all seashells. Someday I'll start looking again..

As if

I didn't already love Jason Segel enough.
He's such a funny, intelligent, nerd.
Listen. You won't regret it.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102232289&ps=cprs

this interview makes me want to dry hump the "images" portion of his google results......wait what?

God?

Last February I got oral surgery for gum recession.
The surgeons front desk had a small glass bowl full of chapstick, glossy labels advertising the business. I took one before walking into surgery.
After the darkest hour of my physical life I snagged one more tube of chapstick on my way out - as a statement.
Both of them had their labels soon ripped off. I wanted no chance of giving them extra business..

The recovery was long. They'd told me it would be a quick recovery!
The recovery was very painful. They'd told me I might have some mild discomfort.

I went in a week later to have the stitches taken out and I snagged another tube of chapstick as my passive way of saying "up yours baldy!"

At the final 3-month checkup I acquired not one, but three more tubes of their fancy advertising chapstick. (That that Dr. QuickrecoveryMilddiscomfort) Labels were torn off and thrown away.

I recently ran out of my last revenge-gloss. I'd grown fond of the light vanilla scent and I felt a little panicked at the thought of finding a new chapstick. This morning I had a teeth cleaning. My dentists office happens to be right next door to the oral surgeons.

I'd constructed roughly three different conversations/scenarios that would be my excuse for going into the surgeons office.
1.) Hello I was wondering if you guys could give me a flyer on teeth whitening? This coffee has got me on a short leash harhar...
2.) I'm here for my 10am appointment. What I don't have one? Oh I forgot I'm next door today whoops silly me harhar...
3.) I'm fucking obsessed with your free chapstick give me more!

I walked in the door and saw the small glass bowl brimming with chapsticks. A man sat waiting for an appointment.
I stood at the counter, the bowl within inches of my folded hands. The receptionist was in the corner talking to the scanner. I was about to say something, but then she chuckled at herself and kept pressing buttons. Like a flash I snagged a tube of chapstick and slid it in my sweatshirt sleeve. HarHar!
I know for a fact the man waiting behind me saw every move I made. But I didn't care. I felt exhilarated.

Without waiting for the receptionist to turn around I left the office and went to get my teeth cleaned.

It's times like those I gaze up at the heavens and whisper a suspicious, thank you?

I Wish

Amidst the stress of finals and the fever of my sickness this week I came to a realization -
if a genie granted me three wishes I am fairly confident one of those wishes would be to dance like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mVEGfH4s5g

It was a blurry morning as I faded in and out of sweaty, sick, sleep, that I sat up straight in bed and decided this. I'm pretty sure a lot of my problems would be solved if I could dance like that.

Don't ask me what my other two wishes would be. Those are top secret.

Springtime is curling its warm body around our little coastal town lately. I feel like we barely got to spend time with winter. I already miss fog and rain. How am I supposed to be my usual depressive & cynical self when the sun is out?
My windows are open and there's a light breeze. Small purple petals from the dangling wisteria are falling like snow.
I guess spring isn't all that bad...

Courtesy Of

Miss Sara Madelyn
circa 2002
As mentioned in #4 of my 10 Things post.

Sara has only improved since these very early adventures with photoshop. Her imagination is a wild animal incapable of being tamed.

I miss you.

Oh and Happy St Patricks Day to you all! Nothing quite like driving around a college town at 10am and seeing dozens of drunken students dressed in green. Oh finals week -

1 Funny Thing

&
1 non-Funny thing.
You choose which is which.

--- One of the cats left a lump of shit on my window sill. I'm trying to decipher the message he intended.



--- While at work today my student asked me to draw Spiderman. As I was drawing I told him in High School I'd had a Spiderman backpack. Puzzled, he looked up and said, "But I thought people in High School didn't wear cartoon backpacks anymore." I shrugged and told him I just liked the movie.
He paused before leaning forward, looking suspiciously into my eyes, and saying, "Maybe you were in the special day class -"
Touché my child..touché..


Currently Listening to:
"Time Running"
by Tegan & Sara

A Bum I know

Today I was walking across the street at school towards the bus stop. A very disheveled man sat on the bench in front of me, most likely a vagrant, so my narrow-mind whispered sit somewhere else. So I did.

After I sat down and surveyed the man a little more I suddenly realized it was my fiction professor from last year. I remember now that he was always pretty absentminded and dusty looking. His fuzzy grey curls, thin-rimmed glasses that magically darken in sunlight, stuttery mannerisms, and soft tan clogs that he doesn't put on all the way but instead walks around crushing the heels under his socked feet.
He was talking on his phone, about semi-colons haha. When he hung up I walked over and sat down next to him prompting him to declare "I've been meaning to call you!" I emailed him last Sept about writing and we've been playing this oh-hey game ever since.

Through the course of the conversation somehow I gave him my # (he never had in the first place like he'd assumed) and we're going to go "get drinks" at some point next week to talk about writing. Does he mean alcohol or coffee? Day or night?

I also found out that he'd been laid off, rehired, and reminds me utterly of Larry David.

I also found out that he went to Grad School with Michael Chabon and they were "oh yeah good friends but then..oh wait here's my bus. Is this your bus? Oh okay well then we'll have something to talk about when we grab drinks..."

Michael. fucking. Chabon. I get to hear first hand accounts, intimate stories, of Michael Chabon pre-pulitzer prize. Fuck. Yeah. Contain your jealousy..

I Saw

a whale today! A wild whale!
The first few times the water sprayed I thought it was a wave crashing against the rock. But then the rock kept moving positions. Then I realized it was a whaallle!! A whiiittewhaaaale! At one point it poked its giant nose above the waves before spinning back below & curling its tail.
I gasped and pointed even though I was standing on the rocks all alone.

Also I turned in my senior project today...what what? Twenty pages of original poetry, sir. Done.

The Best

Missed Connection I Ever Read
(Thank you again Maggie for sending this to me years ago. It still makes me laugh..)


sassy 4 eyes gal on the 6 Parnassus last night -
34 (haight ashbury)
Date: 2007-04-05, 12:47PM

last night after work...
you, sitting in the first seat behind the driver, looking retro in your cat eye glasses, faux vintage red leather jacket and matching lipstick. you were gossiping happily on your cell phone.
me? i was wondering why you didn't shut the fuck up and give your seat to the elderly lady who limped down the aisle in front of you.
hope to see you again.

10 Things

Ten Things I Can See Right Now:

1.) My unmade bed
2.) The light-up Big Bird lamp I got at Good Will
3.) The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath sitting atop Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events "Book One"
4.) A small photo of Brad Pitt's oil-slicked&bare chest from Fight Club that Sara photoshopped Harry Potters (way too young) face on
5.) The blinds to my window
6.) The 4slats in my blinds that Scout destroyed in an attempt to see the birds outside
7.) My bedside clock which still hasn't been adjusted for the time change
8.) A bag of change. Lots and lots of change
9.) The dried bouquet I caught at Laura&Charlies wedding (expect my wedding invitation any day now...)
10.) A plastic crawdad floating in real water

I always

hate going to professors office hours.
Feels way too much like therapy. Sitting in a chair, facing an adult who asks personal details about you, and comments on them. It's even more uncomfortable when the teacher is reading your poetry out loud to you, vocalizing intimate lines about your nipples and orgasms..ehhh....
see you in class tomorrow prof!

Always feel like I should be handed a prescription slip or a bill for $200 by the end of the session.

Poem forthe Day

The Divorcee and Gin
By Kim Addonizio

I love the frosted pints you come in,
and the tall bottles with their uniformed men;
the bars where you're poured chilled
into the shallow glasses, the taste of drowned olives,
and the scrawled benches where I see you
passed impatiently from one mouth
to another, the bag twisted night around
your neck, the hand that holds you
shaking a little from its need
which is the true source of desire; God, I love
what you do to me at night when we're alone,
how you wait for me to take you into me
until I'm so confused with you I can't
stand up anymore. I know you want me
helpless, each cell whimpering, and I give
you that, letting you have me just the way
you like it. And when you're finished
you turn your face to the wall while I curl
around you again, and enter another morning
with aspirin and the useless ache
that comes from loving, too well,
those who, under the guise of pleasure,
destroy everything they touch.

I am

lonely.
horny.
nostalgic.
&
unfulfilled creatively.


Which I suppose describes 80% of the human population

Baloney

Been struggling through a book about Buddhism for my China class.
Getting mindfucked by sentences like this,

-- The power of organized religion to provide sovereign states with a bulwark of moral legitimacy while simultaneously assuaging the desperate piety of the disempowered swiftly reasserted itself - usually by subsuming the rebellious ideas into the canons of a revised orthodoxy.

How many of you out there honestly think I'll be finishing this book before writing the report? Anyone?
The writer is a whore for adjectives and flowery verbs. A stupid, sweaty, male escort to unnecessary literary add-ons.

I bought "Tension Tamer" tea today. I think it may be working? Placebo effect...hello?
I also got a caffeinated one called "Morning Thunder." Now I can't wait for monday morning!

Happy March by the way! Thank the lordy-lord that February is over huh..
Mental hugs to you all


Currently Listening to:
"My Name is Trouble"
by Nightmare of You

A Charade

Want a glimpse into a tiny window of my day?

At one point I was parked at the rear of a grocery store parking lot. Windows open, chair tilted, The Feast of Love by Charles Baxter propped on the steering wheel, and a large tree shading the car.
In the car with me are three, caged, unhappy cats.

A woman parked next to me and got out of her car, prompting the felines to begin their vocal orchestra once again. The woman looked. I smiled and said hello.

Our house was having its annual walk-through. We aren't supposed to have pets....let the charade begin..

Quote ofthe Day

Stories that seemed endless, the sun pressing against
The windows of the cafe & glinting off the stalled traffic

Just beyond them, this could take a while;
***
I pass the letter I wrote to you over the sleeping cat & beyond
the iron grillwork, into the irretrievable.

- Larry Levis

Butterfly Thumbnails

Today I rushed to the bus and plopped down in a seat. I quickly clued in on the man who sat in front of me. He had glasses and the collar peeping from his sweater was plaid. Hellooo
There was a book yawning open in his lap so I stealthily leaned over to see what it was (I always try to see what people are reading on the bus. sometimes I'll attempt a conversation if I've read the book as well, but this rarely goes well).
The pages were glossy and filled with brightly colored thumbnails of butterfly wings. Of course I quietly gasped.
This was about the time he lifted his hand to scratch his face and a gold wedding band winked back at me. Goddamnit.


Leaves

Miles high wind nudges her bark
covered ant scampered ladder back
& forth, back & forth. She breathes
in the rain cloud she sees squatting,
waterlogged, on the top of
a distant roiling hill.

Blades wait far below, jade, pointed
upward, their individual edges
blurred together from her distance.
The nestle of leaves rubbing bodies
against each other rattles around her.
She wraps a hand tighter around
the slim flakey trunk and moves her
feet. Scrapes further out on a branch.

Wind nudges the swollen cloud closer.
The rain pities its way down
pops, a laugh, as each drop slaps
the leaves. It’s pattering sharp
giggles that bubble all around her
speeding up as the cloud yawns
its mouth open wider & wider.

Like a suffocated owl, damp
feathers smothered in the winds
moist breath, she steps back from
the branch & tries to hug the weak
trunk. Her wide darkmoon eyes search
for you, forgetting you’d climbed
back down yesterday.

Sober One Day. (am I faking it?)

We make our own gravity to give weight to things.
-Ani Difranco

What did I ever use the internet for before facebook? I have no idea what to do with it now. I’ve found myself refreshing missed connections or perezhilton a lot….because these are so much better for my emotional health than fb. Once an addict always an addict eh?

I was smacked with this really intense fear today at work. A mom told me something and I roared with laughter. Then my brain shrieked, “that wasn’t funny!” And I stopped. I hadn’t even realized I’d faked the laughter, it’d just exploded out of me, tilted face, squinted eyes, the whole package.
It’s really scary to recognize my ability to fool even myself.
How often am I faking it? Am I faking life? The funny thing about continually melting in and out of depression and anxiety is the line between functioning & non-functioning is blurred. I can’t tell if I’m really having good days or if I just know I should be having a good day.

I tried to write a poem today in my fish class titled Leaves about a girl who’d climbed to the top of a tree, but it’s proved much more difficult than I’d anticipated.

Hope your day is beautiful.

Lists. On a Lazy Sunday...

Things I Need To Do Today
1. Apply to schools
2. Clean house for inspection
3. Homework
4. Take a shower
5. Not wallow

Things I Have Done Today
1. Realized app deadlines have already passed for half my schools
2. Thrown clothes and papers around the floor looking for my earbuds
3. Driven to three bookstores. Looked for 4 books. Come home empty-handed. Goddamn chainstores suck
4. Not showered...yet?
5. Wallowed. Excessively. The self-indulgent kind that makes you feel utterly selfish.


Sundays are the estranged half-uncle of the weekdays.
--He comes around more often than you'd like, makes you feel uncomfortable and overly aware of how little success you've had in the past week, scratches his face while chuckling--
"Still sitting on your ass I see...well at least that bag of Doritos found a comfortable home in your waistline."
or
"Maybe you could write the kleenex corporation? Have 'em sponsor you? Could call yourself Team Wallow."

Fucking Uncle Sunday.

woa!

I guess I should have said "every other annual posting"

Emotional hoo-ha

Well..I suppose it's time for my semi-annual posting.

Don't have much to say except I've had a tsunami of emotions slamming around inside me for a few weeks now. (*coughLindsaycough*) Why did you have to go & be such a good person and go to Namibia for two years? Huh?
I'm looking forward to life quieting down again for a while.
Although then it's easier to hear all the bullshit in my skull.

I'm still not into this whole "blog" thing so I guess I'm done with this post for now.
Maybe I'll be back again a little sooner than last time. Since I have a fan now...
(hi lindsay)