Notes on Camp

Things I don't like.

2010-05-31T20:09:00.000-07:00

Here is a list of things I particularly don't enjoy, in case you were ever curious.

1. Lima beans.

2. The ambiguity of dating someone new (not to be confused with the excitement of dating someone new).

3. This whole Lady Gaga bullshit.

4. Yellow-y light incandescent bulbs.

5. Large or weird-looking bugs.

6. Pit stains.

7. People looking at me when I don't feel like being looked at.

8. When I overcook my bowl of peas in the microwave.

9. Sitcoms where the fat husband has the hot wife. As well as sitcoms, in general.

10. My own complete inability to put my clothing away in a drawer.

11. People who respond to an either/or question with "yes". I.E., Me: "Do you want to go to the store before or after dinner?" My mother: "Yes."

12. Insufficiently sharp pencils.

13. Places that sell women's shoes, but only carry up to size 10.

14. A lot of things about contemporary politics and the state of the world today that would take a very long list indeed to describe in full.

15. Doing the dishes, unless I'm in a great mood and there's music on.

16. The feeling that the future holds many unforeseen and unfortunate events.

17. Finding dirty clothes intermingling with the clean clothes.

18. Moths in the house.

19. People who don't at some point ask "how are you?" after you have asked them that same question.

20. Not knowing when a text message conversation has officially ended.

21. Owning things that are supposed to be dry-cleaned, but not being able to afford dry-cleaning.

22. White people who think Japan is "fascinating," yet hold a slew of very stereotypical views on that same subject. Non-white people are also sometimes guilty of this offense.

23. The incredibly large amount of disorganized papers I possess.

24. Provolone cheese.

25. People who don't like tomatoes.

26. Blisters on the back of the heel.

27. Tripping on the cracks in the sidewalk.

28. Tripping on the cracks in the sidewalk, while someone is watching.

29. Hearing that an actor I liked signed that Roman Polanski petition.

30. Being unemployable.

31. Loneliness.

32. People who are really proud that they're meat eaters.

33. Knowing that my car will inevitably break down in a fantastic manner.

34. All the good shows getting canceled.

35. Losing touch with friends in faraway places.

36. Just about everything that has to do with menstruation.

37. Never, ever seeming to know where my keys are.

38. How in general adulthood seems to be about denying yourself small pleasures in service of a "future" plan or goal that might never come to fruition.

That seems like enough for now.

Failure!

2010-05-28T21:39:00.001-07:00

Man. To avoid the continued blues tonight, I asked around five different people (consequently, just about the entire number of people I know in Los Angeles) if they'd like to hang out tonight, and all five were busy or had other plans or didn't get back to me. So now I have a continued version of the blues, going on from earlier today when I went to the ol' doctor's office and found out that my heart is acting weird. Not necessarily acting bad, but acting weird, doing some random thing that normal hearts do not do. I am, understandably, concerned.

This was my second EKG, by the by; the first one came about because a medication I was on raised my heart rate through the roof. Most likely, a different medication is now making my heart add in extra beats where no extra beats are needed. I won't find that out for sure, though, until I see a cardiologist next week. That is a scary person to need to see at 26.

Besides that, I have been presented with a new way to deal with all my myriad stresses and anxieties and bouts of good old-fashioned sadness. That way is to enter a program on campus that takes up 20-some hours of one's week with therapy of different sorts. It is really quite intense to think of going from 1, maybe 2 hours of dealing with one's problems in a clinical setting per week, to over 20 of those same hours. Hours talking with a doctor, with a therapist, in a group of similarly (or differently) mentally messy people. I feel very weird and, of course, apprehensive about going into this program, but at the same time my options feel pretty slim. I'm not "performing" in school, poorly or otherwise; just lately not doing any sort of school thing at all, which of course places me as an ideal candidate to be booted out of the university and onto my ass. Since I don't want that to happen, I have to be able to show the university that I'm making all good faith efforts to get back on my feet. On my brain's feet. Whatever. And this is apparently the best way to do that, to get back to a place where I'm doing work and feeling like a human being and not constantly down on myself.

On second thought, I don't think I have ever fully been to that place. So, you know, the idea of a "healthy" me is quite appealing but at the same time feels like a pipe dream. It's a place I'm in some way totally unfamiliar with. I've been anxious and nervous and self-deprecating as long as I've even had a personality.

So. Who is the Amy who knows what she is capable of, who goes out and does things, who is brave in the face of the world? Who is the Amy who doesn't worry about things that haven't happened yet? How am I going to become that lady?

Stress!

2010-05-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

Things I am currently worried about:
1 - Paying rent in July.
2 - Moving for August 1st.
3 - Who will I be living with in this new apartment?
4 - Where will I be living?
5 - How will I possibly pay to move into a new place?
6 - Will I still be in grad school any more at that point?
7 - How will my brain get better if I am spending all my time doing low-paying jobs?
8 - Am I even qualified to do a job that pays more than nothing?
9 - When will the boy I like contact me again?
10 - Am I "trying too hard" to pursue someone when I am not "supposed" to do that?
11 - Am I wasting my brain, or is my brain wasting me?
12 - Why do I keep worrying so much about things?

I suppose this is an incomplete list.

introspective intuitive motherfucker.

2010-04-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

I've met two people in the last two days who told me that they were happy with their lives and thus ready and unafraid to die. Makes me feel like a coward, but what sort of omen is this?

One of the same people asked me what my MBTI is, which is INFJ, which suits me so much it kind of freaks me out. He pointed out that less than 1% of the population shared the same personality type, and thus less than half of a percent of women, which made me feel a bit odd. The point being, that in a clinical or statistical sense, great swaths of the population will never be as introspective as I have to endure being every day. He pointed out something about online dating and dating in general, that most people will end up settling with dating the best person they find after a set period of searching. Which is so true for most people, yet so not true for nearly everyone I know personally, that it kind of shocked me. And left me thinking about what other habits I'm burdened with that others might find themselves completely free of. Empathizing with everyone all the time, even people I don't like. Giving my incredibly meager monies to Greenpeace and Children International (the latter, I won't be able to stop until that kid fucking turns 18, or I'll have to loathe myself forever). And especially, especially, seeking out and idealizing the sad and damaged people around me, seeing myself in them, wanting to comfort them and thus comfort myself of our collective existential dread.

What am I supposed to do with this weird package of traits?

Getting rid of the sweet things.

2010-03-12T19:12:00.000-08:00

A lot of nonsense has been happening with my brainspace and bodyspace. I have a new psych and a new therapist, as well as some new medicine, which I just started taking two days ago. It's kind of a trip, starting over. I am in search of my brain's reset button, I feel like, as I am getting worse and worse at making myself do things that need doing. For awhile I have been sort of secretly convinced that I will fail out of grad school, for instance, and in a way have been conducting myself as though that were already a foregone conclusion. The new therapist etc is a step in the opposite direction, trying to direct my energies towards staying. Trying to rally my poor little broken brainspace.
In a weird move, while I am trying to do all this, I have focused in a lot on my weight and physical health. Three years of SSRIs have made me a plusher person than I was before, let's say. Maybe more than 20 lbs plusher. I'd like to reverse this trend, but it will be difficult...I've started counting the ol' calories though, and I bought a scale for the first time in many years. Oh what a wretched thing, to own a scale!
My biggest goal here is to stop sweetening my coffees and teas, drinking alcohol as much as I love to drink alcohol, and avoiding any kind of carbonation situation. This is terrible, because I am passionately in love with sugary sweet things...almost as much as I am in love with salty things. But, one step at a time. I want very much to feel like I can grab onto some part of my life that seems uncontrollable and establish some order to it. So this is where I am starting.

Correspondance.

2010-02-15T21:25:00.000-08:00

I really miss knowing and talking to people, and I always wish that more people were around for me to know and talk to and befriend, but for some reason in general the people I've liked best in my life are unavailable to me. I feel as if I only know maybe 5 people left in the entire world, which is sort of hurtful and sad, like my existence is being erased. Many times, I've written emails to one friend or another who I cared a lot about and who happened to be particularly poor at responding to emails, begging for details about their life, to have those emails go unanswered. I understand why, but I don't understand why. It's as if I've spent my entire childhood, adolescence, and nascent adulthood trying to convince myself I have friends.

I am particularly lonesome for a lot of things I can't describe. If I were a better, more organized person, I would be reading school books instead of writing this letter to no one. Much, I guess, as my friends read their books or do their work instead of writing letters to me. I am drinking an alcoholic drink from France that is called "pastis". It is a pale delicious yellow color like cloudy lemon juice, but tastes of black licorice.

Silly little things.

2010-02-06T13:24:00.000-08:00

Logged into amazon to track a shipment, and found the same 4 things being recommended to me over and over again: Mad Men, diabetic compression socks (bought once as a christmas gift for my aunt), books about Shinto, books about Alain Badiou. Nothing else, just those four things, over and over again. This is what I am, according to consumerism!

Right at this moment in time, I am trying to make myself do the work to complete my MA. This should not be very hard; I have to refine/rewrite three papers, then give these three papers to three professors who seem kindly disposed towards me. Not bad, but I do not seem to want to do it. Instead, I seem to want to sit at my computer all day, laughing at funny things on the internet, taking time out to play videogames on the Wii that a friend has lent me. My startling lack of productivity makes me feel as though I need to live with a real adult, a parental type, who can give me instructions (or orders, really) on when to do things, and how to do them correctly.

Whoops, now I have the hiccups. Anyway.
I think I really miss, on a subconscious level, that feeling of living with someone in a collaborative environment. One in which you do the dishes regardless of who dirtied what, in which you eat meals together, in which you have conversations about how your life is going that last longer than five minutes. That would be nice, yes? Then the person you share your space with would also be someone who looks out for you, and vice versa. Living in the normal roommate situation is not nearly as homelike.
This definitely struck me as I was having trouble falling asleep last night (I have trouble falling asleep every night, as it turns out), and I was looking at the walls in my room and feeling a sort of disgust for them. As though it was so disheartening to still be within those walls. But, after a year and a half living in this apartment, shouldn't that bedroom and those walls feel homelike to me? Shouldn't I be comforted by them? I certainly don't have any ideas about where I'd rather be sleeping.

Maybe it's just that the walls are still a very hideous beige, that I dream of repainting. And that the room is a mess, with my clean clothes still heaped up in either a laundry basket or within/on top of the suitcase I brought home with me from my trip to Florida, nearly a month and half ago. Whoops, again!

Another humorous thing is that within the last month or so, more than one person has told me that I have labored/weird breathing, either while asleep or awake. Now I get to try to go to the doctor and figure out what all that is about, because I don't have any real idea, although it is true that I am easily winded and often sleepy. I already take pills to make my brain chemicals work, to fall asleep at night, to supplement my body with the vitamins I am worried it is not getting from my food, and I even take a pill that is supposed to keep my skin from breaking out so badly that I have to refuse to leave the house. Oh and I spent years in painful orthodontia, have worse vision than a bat and no sonar to augment it, had surgery on my right eye last year and need to have some kind of laser treatment on the left, have kind of a fucked-up spine that needs a chiropractor's touch, and my hair has some unfortunately-placed cowlicks. What else could possibly be wrong with my body! Apparently, even more things.

The sun isn't out today either. Boo to that! Maybe quarter to two is a good time to start drinking?

ice floes.

2010-01-11T13:56:00.000-08:00

Only three days after (confusing, intense) breakup, my body feels useless, pockmarked, stubbly. I feel entirely unwilling to haul this body out into the world. My stomach is also acting up, which I suppose adds to the feeling.
I am both sad and grumpy, an excellent combination of course. It is always a great idea to sit around and be self-pitying, right?

I have more to say but I feel too stupid to say any of it just now.

2009-11-19T15:12:00.001-08:00

It turns out I can focus on things if I make myself read them out loud to myself! This is progress, for sure. I feel all satisfied and shit right now.

Heaven knows I'm miserable now.

2009-11-16T23:10:00.000-08:00

But I do not know why. The short days and the fact that I sleep til noon? That probably has a hand in it.
Tonight I definitely have spent a lot of time feeling like it was time to cry, even though it was not. Then it would go away for a little, and then come back. I do not have any concrete reason to be unhappy at right this minute, and yet!
Maybe I'm less happy when I'm cold? Right now I am definitely also cold, even though I am inside, wearing a sweatshirt, and sitting on my feet.
I'm not sure what's going on, because I spent two hours today talking with a friend over coffee, and then had a surprise phone call from another friend who spent some time laughing at funny things I said. I thought more social interaction is what I needed to keep the sads away, but that does not appear to be the case.

So today, I did some sit-ups, and then I read most of the wikipedia entry on major depressive disorder. To see if there were some things in there that I hadn't already heard about. Now, I am thinking about T3 (a drug for those with hypothyroidism that also helps with depression, as well as part of the Terminator franchise of movies), atypical anti-psychotics, and light therapy. All things I can bring up with my doctor this week I suppose! Or maybe we can just sit down and talk about the Terminator franchise instead, for a refreshing change of pace.

Maybe my doctor will give me one of those little headsets that shines light into your eyes. I saw someone wearing one of those on an episode of "Northern Exposure", during my childhood.

Anyway, I'm pretty depressed right now! It's too bad, because I'd really prefer to be a whole range of other emotions. So, now you know that.

Meeting people is easy.

2009-11-11T16:04:00.000-08:00

In unfortunate news, I may very well go on three first dates this week. I have already gone on one, which at least went "okay". I do not know if it went any better than okay, because I am an awkward beast and not particularly great at reading strangers. I can say that it wasn't a failure in that my jokes were often laughed at, and at the end of the evening my date and I were on decent enough terms to say that we'd had a good time and to hug. So, you know, I can at least say that no one was repulsed by me last night. Hooray!

Now I have to play the "will there or will there not be a second date" game with that one. I would rather vomit for the next hour straight than wonder whether or not someone's going to call. I was not made to play the "girl" role in these sorts of scenarios. I don't even know if that's still appealing or not, to play aloof, to be the girl who only responds to every other text someone sends her. Certainly there are a lot of people who believe in playing games with availability, dating multiple people at once, hedging their bets. I probably should figure out how to add a little of that into my life, because I generally want to jump into getting to know someone with both feet. I like the freedom to be enthusiastic about another person, but in the wrong context that can come across as annoying, or even creepy. I do not want to be that kind of lady either.

But the lineup of 3 dates over less than 7 days was nothing I chose, just sort of the way things worked out. Tomorrow is a coffee date with a boy I know I will not end up dating for one very simple reason: this boy is not yet divorced. Separated, for nearly a year I guess, but not actually divorced. Guess who does not ever, ever, ever want to be involved with someone who is married, even if that person is just married on paper? This lady, this one right here.

Date number 3 is with a nice-seeming dude who makes odd music and works on installing museum exhibits, and who I know almost nothing about. Pursuant to that, I have no real expectations for this date, but at least this one is not motherfucking married. Jesus H. Christ, what the hell.

I also just received an email from a boy I was kind of "in love with" while I lived in Japan, asking when I'll be returning to that country. That this boy was not single for most of the time I knew him, but is single now, adds a whole extra exciting layer of aw;eoriuawaorjw;fjehrltwerifuwaedfget to things.

Being a lady is...

2009-11-08T18:55:00.000-08:00

I am really enjoying this St. Vincent album, a few months behind the curve I suppose, but that's about my speed right now. Two nights ago, I put it on while a male friend was at my home. He told me he liked the album as well, and then mentioned how attractive the artist is. Google has confirmed this is the case.
I sometimes wish that the female musicians, writers, bloggers etc that I liked did not all seem to be thinner and prettier than the average lady. Is that somehow a misogynist thing to say? I sort of feel disappointed to see that all the women who's being celebrated for being talented, even in the sort of "indie" realm I operate in, are also very pretty in the face and skinny in the body. Where's my lady Thom Yorke? That man's uncomfortable visage just sort of adds to his music.
Maybe I just have to learn to be cool with "hot girls who are also talented", instead of "appreciative yet also jealous of" these people. Yet in a weird way I feel like in desiring to date men, I am not only up against the ladies around me, but also these hipster-ideal artists of various stripes. I even almost didn't share the (witty, off-beat, excellent) writings of Edith Zimmerman with my friends, even though I like them quite a bit, for fear of being somehow compared to her in terms of my own wit and cuteness. That lady has some extreme cute-face.

I dearly wish I could view my own gender in a more rational way.

2009-11-07T20:28:00.001-08:00

I am feeling pretty bad tonight for no particular reason. If you are feeling similarly, I bet reading this will cheer you up a little: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cats_with_fraudulent_diplomas

Retract.

2009-11-04T17:58:00.001-08:00

I thought better of that last one.

Today I have been sick.

2009-10-19T22:59:00.001-07:00

I've had a lot of strange sick-person dreams, including one where I had to escape my evil weird family to chase after the love of my life (?) who was in another country...this involved riding a big motorcycle and going to a wedding but hiding in the closet and all sorts of really strange nonsense.
This was after a dream in which Conan O'Brien was telling dirty jokes as I carried around a sick man who was somehow both homosexual and my lover.
Then, the third dream was that I was going into a library over and over again, but could never tell whether or not the library was open due to the poor lighting and heavy oak trees surrounding the building. I half woke up convinced I was supposed to start writing a comic strip about a young librarian who worked there, and a boy who starts to study to become a wizard in order to win her love.

...Which is not the worst idea for a comic. But it's not like I can draw or anything.

Ah, mi bici.

2009-10-02T19:25:00.001-07:00

After a long time being on two legs, being on two wheels is a little terrifying. My new bike is definitely a fixer-upper, a project to keep me occupied when I need a distraction from school. The bike is an old 70s taiwanese import, a little heavy but I can manage to shoulder it and get it up the stairs to my apartment. The brakes are not quite up to my standards though, and there's some rust...I want to strip it, repaint the frame, update some of the rustier components and put on a new headset/handlebars (I loved my old bike's bull horns). Fun! I have never done any of this before, but I want to embrace a wrenchier side of myself.
I still want to repaint/redo my living room too. So maybe my fall will be filled with all sorts of improvements. I'm even planning on starting yoga, at school, because I could probably stand to stretch out a little.
And then there's the possibility of Vietnam in two months as well...I haven't decided if I'm going for sure, or bought the tickets, but I like the idea of it all. What's his name says we can go to Halong Bay, or maybe to Laos, or to Cambodia and Angkor Wat...

Things that are currently empty.

2009-09-15T22:01:00.000-07:00

1) My bank account.
2) My brain.

Correspondence.

2009-08-14T16:08:00.000-07:00

I just received a little email from my adviser, after months of being incommunicado, and something about his style of address always makes me relaxed and calm. Such a sweet and old-fashioned man, for someone who is probably not over 40.

I haven't been writing anything in this space, my blog-space, so here are some excerpts from messages I have written (and received).

"Hi Alex,
I've never seen "The OC" either. Maybe I'm just being contrary, but I hate all those shows that try to glorify and sex up the experience of high school on principle. My high school experience was dumb and ache-y and dramatic and silly and sad, and a lot of it consisted of sitting with a friend in some kind of cheap diner setup eating fried fish sandwiches or 2am breakfast combos, and everyone had bad skin and couldn't smile for pictures and drove cars that cost in total less than one thousand dollars. I resent the implication that it could have gone any other way, or that it should have."

"Man... your whole paragraph on "Academia and Fulfillment": I just sat there nodding my head, "uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh." It is hard to explain, but I know what you mean completely. Besides a few idiosyncracies, my early-20s experience is matching up pretty well to what it might have otherwise been in academia. So, I guess, G-d bless to you weathering the breakdown."

"venice is pretty amazing it may be my favorite place in CA so far. I like that it unashamedly lives up to the cliches, when my dad came out here to visit me he really wanted to fo to Venice beach to see if it was like on TV, with the rollerblading girls in bikinis, the skateboarders, graffiti, and muscle beach. he was not disappointed.

and oh the sunglass vendors! it´s the only place that i can find clip on´s that fit my frames. i need to go back and get another pair, i lost my last on a tequilla and rum filled ¨adventure¨. I´m only a little ashamed to admit it but i secretly would like some of the ¨kanye glasses¨"

"Roots! I need more of them. In actuality, I have been sort of dating a boy for the last few months (not "serious", actual dating) who is leaving LA for a 6-month stint in Vietnam at the end of this month. I've always known he was going, since he bought the ticket before I met him, but I thought for some reason that that knowledge would keep me from getting attached to him. Alas, it did not. And here goes another root, about to get pulled up.
Your statement made me think of him particularly because he spends so much time talking about how he doesn't want to ever get married or have kids that I am sure he'll have both within the next 5 to 10 years. And I have sort of realized that I do want such things as well. For one, kids are awesome, and for another, I think finding a partner and then making a family with them would be probably an amazing and transformative experience. Of course, I generally try to keep these thoughts to myself."

"you are back in the US, so I should ask you: what's your phone number, benjamin?"

"I can't help but think henry miller was just kind of a hack! A friend of mine has Opus Pistorumon on his bookshelf and he challenged me to open it randomly to a page and start reading, in order to show that there was nothing but sex on every page. I did open it to a bland passage somehow anyway, but the point being that Miller just wrote a lot of smut over and over again still stands, I think.
Of course I guess boys like smut, and literary boys must like literary smut."

"We explored the city a bit, as well. I wish I could describe to you the sort of magic I see in this place sometimes. We traveled past closed shops, and the neon lights and signs in the windows mixed the most eclectic set of colors I can imagine. We drove past what would be mansions if they were transported to Beverly Hills, but because they're near the 10, they're "slums"... or are they? The Los Angeles I grew up in did not contain this sort of intrigue. Echo Park, where I live now, where I'd never have come close to when I lived here for 21 consecutive years, is full of this magic. Yes, it's a little dirty and seems a little dangerous, but it also seems to have this really interesting spark of hope to it, as well. As you may know, this area used to be completely gang infested, but now it's strange - you can walk around at 1 or 2 AM outside without feeling like you're in danger. The best I can liken it to is, at the end of Armageddon, or any disaster movie, when people come out of where they were hiding and have that look on their faces like "Is it over?" That's hope, mang."

New roommate hunt continues.

2009-07-26T12:38:00.000-07:00

I have definitely three, and possibly four different women coming over to see my apartment today in order to decide if they'd like to live here. This is after seeing three people yesterday who all kind of sucked (too young, not interesting, didn't seem like they'd be able to pay the rent on time...all sorts of issues!), and then three other people last week. Since I only have about 5 days left to get someone to agree to move in here, I'm kind of scared, but this newest batch of people seems really good. All are around my age, in grad school or have been in grad school, and are friendly and whatnot over email. One is even a vegetarian, hey! Maybe I won't have to move out in semi-disgrace on July 31st to become a beach bum after all.

Also, my eye still looks a little funny, but not overwhelmingly so. I managed to go back to work like people do last week, and while not working for two weeks has me kind of freaked out, as long as I don't have to move I definitely have enough of a cash buffer to get me through August safe and serene. In a weird way, even though things are going kind of badly, I feel mostly awesome on a day to day basis. I'm even slowly cleaning and organizing my room in a logical manner. Insanity!

I will miss the goofy and sweet presence of my current roommate in this place, though. Even if she did put too much importance on the cleaning or non-cleaning of dishes.

Men I love.

2009-07-19T11:48:00.001-07:00

An incomplete list.

Conan!, Devendra, Albert Camus, one W. Benjamin, one Jon Stewart, my advisor, oh god my old advisor in undergrad, F.Pritchard, Fred Neil, of course George, Ira Glass, the young Ginsberg, James Dean, Paul Newman, mister P. Drew, Brad Neely, mssrs. Bret and Jemaine, Steve Carrell, Zach Galifinakis (whose name I can spell and say correctly), Michael Ian Black, Pessoa, dear sad d.a. levy, Robert De Niro even though he frequently makes a mockery of my love, Richard Lawson, Alex Balk, Choire Sicha, and a host of other internet personalities such as Rain Noe, but wait there's more, Frank O'Hara, Groucho Marx, Jean Cocteau, some weird idea I have of french male intellectuals in general, Michel Foucault, Kevin Barnes, the man who is June Panic, Lou Barlow (even though he used to write dumb songs about getting stoned), Michael Caine, John Oliver, Arthur Lee, John Fante in regards to that one book of course, Chris Onstad except for a few key moments, and many many more.

Men I don't love even though maybe I should: Bukowski, Morrissey (except sometimes), Paul McCartney, well maybe I do still love Robert Plant.

I was just sort of overcome, while sitting to my morning coffee, with the fact that there are and have been many great dudes out there, and they have made my life a much happier life than it would have been else-wise.

On the other side of the road.

2009-07-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

So, on Wednesday I wore a silly gown and funny booties and then some medicines dripped into my blood stream til I fell asleep. While I slept, a few doctors watched and a few participated in sewing a plastic band to the outside of my eyeball, in a place where I can't see it. Then I woke up and shook around and complained like a baby until my body felt right again, and I was allowed to go home.

Now I am in that home, wearing sunglasses indoors, which I will have to do for a few weeks. At some point in the next few weeks my current roommate will presumably move out, and a new one will hopefully move in. My eye, which is now red and angry, will slowly return to its normal state. In the meantime, I will try to grow comfortable with my shadowy vision.

song of the summer.

2009-06-29T14:41:00.001-07:00

2009-06-21T20:42:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow, I am going to yell at my doctor.

Things I have recently come to discover I don't like.

2009-06-12T15:47:00.000-07:00

One of my awesome procrastination websites is "Helsinki Looks", at hel-looks.com. It is all a bunch of pictures of people on the street in Helsinki, with a little bit of info about where they bought their clothes and what their personal style is. For some reason I like this kind of thing, the kind of thing where I can look at people who wear interesting clothes in maybe different ways from what I have considered in the past. It is incredibly frivolous, of course, but then most procrastination is.
However, from looking at all these pictures of people (so many, many people!), I've realized that I do not like:
-Animal prints, in any kind, ever.
-Really elaborate punk styles.
-Men who have really skinny legs that make me think they actually have no flesh on their bones under those tight jeans.
-White girls dressing up in those Lolita styles from Japan.
-Or really, white girls dressing up in any way that they got from a weird subculture in Japan.
-People whose mode of dressing themselves is to put as much multicolored crap on their bodies as is humanly possible (most of these people are like, 15 though, so it is rude of me to hate on them).

Other things I don't like today, that aren't related to clothing:
-The fact that I am definitely getting sick.
-The fact that I am terrible at focusing on my writing, even when I really want to get said writing done and like my topic.
-The terrible mopey depresso weather we've been having. What the fuck is up, sunshine?
-Great, someone just pointed out that I even sound sick today. I don't like that none either.
-Seriously, why can I not write for more than 2 minutes at a time? Isn't that clearly just ridiculous?
-My eyes hurt.
-Wah, wah, wah.

So, there you have it! I am sorry that I put these words onto the internet, and that you had to read them.

Discovery.

2009-06-07T12:46:00.000-07:00

On my third day in a row of not going to campus, I suddenly discover that I have energy again, want to dance around or play with my dumbbells, and generally do not feel like a waste of space. For the first time in quite a few weeks, it feels like!
Needless to say, I can't wait until this week is over, and my summer legitimately begins.

Right now then, I am trying to come up with two papers. One is going to be a lot of fun, I think (in my way of saying fun). It's about using the "interview", or not using it, as a narrative technique in constructing histories of counter-cultural events. The events in question are Paris May '68, the Tlatelolco Massacre, and AMPO 1960 in Japan. And I'm looking at three different texts, one for each of these events, and their conscious use of the interview format in creating certain types of stories about these different histories. And thinking about how something like the interview can be used to subvert or challenge a more structured narrative, and what the limitations of the format are, etc. Fun? Yes, it is actually a lot of fun, at least conceptually.

The other paper is a crappy thing I never really got a handle on from last quarter, but need to finish this week anyway. It's a short kind of thing, 10 pages on a short story plus some theoretical aspect. I should be able to do it in two days? After I finish the paper I actually like to think about...yes, I can do this, I do believe.

Afterward I get to embrace a little freedom. And reply to a lot of emails.

Some days, I am Seeräuber Jenny.

2009-05-23T15:44:00.000-07:00

Mormons ruin yet another thing.

2009-05-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I know that the Burmese military junta would have found some other excuse to put Aung San Suu Kyi back in jail or extend her house arrest, even if that stupid fucking guy hadn't swam to her house. But still! What the fuck were you thinking, asshole?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/may/18/burma-suu-kyi-trial

So, once again, she is on trial. Because I am an optimist idiot, I had thought in fall 2007 that the mass protests of the monks would have finally pushed the military government out. Obviously, that hasn't happened. And, like so many other incredibly depressing instances of deprivation and oppression in the world (and in this country), I feel like a lame sad moron because all I can do is sit around, signing online petitions, waiting to see what comes next.

In totally stupid and unimportant "news", I have found this weekend that wearing my glasses while watching Tina Fey on 30 Rock makes me feel even more like Liz Lemon is a lot like future me will be. Please make sure I don't have any lettuce in my hair today, world.

When I think that I'm over you, I'm overpowered.

2009-05-15T12:19:00.001-07:00

Two things are happening.
One, one of my students has the swine flu. I find this hilarious. If I start vomiting and losing fluids and shit, we will know the cause. If this happens and I get quarantined for a week at home, like my student, please leave me some soup/tamiflu on the stoop. I'll come out to get it after you've retreated to safe distance.

The other: tomorrow night, I have a date to go drink downtown with a boy who has been flirting with me by telling me, repeatedly, that he's not my type and we probably don't have anything in common. This is probably true, because he's a 30 year old waiter/actor who just got out of a long-term relationship, makes rap music on the side, doesn't think he's that smart, and a whole host of other things. He's into his car! I have never even imagined dating someone who's really into their fucking car.

And yet I'm going on this date anyway. To answer your question, yes, he's really fucking attractive. And, you know, also seems like a sweet guy despite all the warning signs. I'm kind of excited about the potential for this to be one big crazy mistake, I tell you what.

...

2009-05-13T21:50:00.001-07:00

http://www.mtv.com/videos/movie-trailers/380369/mega-shark-vs-giant-octopus.jhtml

What? Let me ask that again...what???

You should read all of this, because it's pretty great.

2009-05-11T12:44:00.000-07:00

BN knows what's up. You don't have to read the question, what's really important is his response.

http://www.blognigger.com/2008/12/ask-blognigger-lexapro.html

There's a good follow-up here too, if you want more: http://streetbonersandtvcarnage.com/blog/ask-blognigger-i-hate-myself-and-i-want-to-die/

I think all of this is pretty important, of course, because there have been a lot of times either I've worried or people I know have worried both about being unhappy forever, and about taking drugs that will "change" them and that they'll have to rely on. When I think about the idea of taking pills every day for the rest of my life, it seems pretty bad, until I think about the idea of being a miserable sad shit for the rest of my life. Somehow that puts a lot of things in perspective.

To live should be to enjoy things, be happy, to love good people and do good work. And there are a hundred million things that can go wrong with that, but if one of them's the weird chemicals in your brain and you can fix it, why not fix it?

Telling facts about my adolescence.

2009-05-10T22:28:00.000-07:00

Apropos of nothing (or, okay, of Choire Sicha saying words), I was reminded of being at a sushi restaurant with my immediate family in the summer of 2002, hearing my stepfather order a "9-1-1 Roll" as a "9/11 Roll".

he still hasn't shut up!

2009-05-10T19:52:00.000-07:00

a: omg I am on the phone with some internet dood
a: it is terrible
y: HAHA
a: listening to him go on
a: jesus boy shut it
y: AHAHA
y: well when you get of of the phone, watch those videos
a: yes ma'am I am looking forward to it
y: tell the boy to shut it
a: it is impossible
y: be like 'oh shit my phone is about to die, i gotta go!'
a: when I can't get him to even stop taaaaalking
a: haha
a: I wish I was bolder
a: and could pull that off
y: haha
y: tell him you have to go, you have another call
a: jesus god he's talking on and on about his old relationships
a: we haven't even met yet
y: haha
y: can't he hear you typing?
a: not over the sound of his own voice?
y: hahaha

Eureka!

2009-05-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

The Albertson's by my house has Vernors! Who would have thought the sweet gingery concoction would pass my lips ere I lived so far west of the Mississippi...
I bought a six-pack, and am on my second of the evening. The first was too warm, but the second is just lovely, all comfortable green and gold can and memories of my grandparents and slow little sips that time I had scarlet fever as a child.

"The windless sea of 21st century progress".

2009-05-05T14:52:00.000-07:00

For no discernible reason, today feels like it might be the day I lose it. I left the house in dirty/unappealing clothes, missed Korean class, rode a bus to school that was uncharacteristically filled with the dying and decrepit, sat through visitor-less office hours, ate disgusting vegetable enchiladas, and am now sitting in an empty classroom next to the classroom in which my class is held in. The class will begin in 5 minutes. I need to get up and walk next door in the next five minutes. I feel very hot and a little nauseous and I would like to go home now, please.

This weekend, I learned who Clinton Jencks was.

2009-05-04T23:40:00.000-07:00

me: and I guess it's just crazy too to realize how strong unions used to be in america
that locals would have classes, social events, etc
and to think how weird it is that unions have become this sort of strange force...seen as corrupt and bloated in certain sectors
I dunno!
it's so much I just didn't know about
Inkoo: yeah
i learned about neoliberalism in my sovereignty class last quarter
and now i can't stop thinking about how it's affected like probably every aspect of my life
since we are children of the 80s
and 90s
and how now that neoliberalism and capitalism has barfed and shit all over itself, we might have a fresh start
me: it's true!
I hope that is what happens
time to go red again
I mean, why the fuck not?
Inkoo: because it's unholy!
jesus loves capitalism
that's clearly why he wanted all the rich men to have a monopoly on the eyes of needles
Sent at 11:38 PM on Monday
me: hahaha
oh that statement makes me happy

Inkoo is busy. You may be interrupting.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go read a great deal more about anti-communism's destruction of the labor movement, the civil rights era sit-ins, a big excerpt from Negroes with Guns, and probably some shit about Berkeley in there for good measure! American history, ladies and gentlemen!

Yes.

2009-05-03T01:16:00.000-07:00

Something I learned today.

2009-05-02T14:53:00.000-07:00

It's hard to be liked by boys who are also poets, because then they will write poetry about you. Or, worse, as in today, write poetry that certainly seems to be about you, then claim that it isn't...

Something I learned last night is that everyone, even people who don't like stand-up comedy, find Louis C.K. talking about white privilege excellent. And it is!

In related news, on Gawker a day or two ago Alex Pareene posted this little news tidbit about New York's first black AND first blind governor, David Paterson, being sued by someone who claimed he was fired for being white. After making fun of the dude, Pareene ended the article by reminding everyone that "reverse racism" does not, in fact, exist. And that made me happy.
Then I read the comments to the post, in which a lot of white people claimed that "reverse racism" does in fact exist, even trying to read into Pareene's very explicit statement that he did in fact think you can discriminate against the whites. And then I was glad, that I am no longer in college, and thus no longer have to hang out with stupid white people.

Luckily, faith in humanity was restored when someone quipped "Today as everyday, I cried big tears for all the injustices white men suffer."

Now, back to the books! Also, Pareene, if you ever don't have that girlfriend you have, I'd like to make out with you?

2009-05-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

I also wanted to mention that this morning, I found a text from my youngest sister asking me simply "Donald or Daffy Duck?". I responded "Daffy", and a few hours later was told that "That is correct".
She is about to turn seventeen. In a way this conversation heartens me, because she's quite pretty, and I would like boys to stay away from her for as long as possible.

Flushed.

2009-04-30T23:10:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, after an extended bout with poverty, I will have money in my bank account again. To celebrate this fact, I spent 10 of my last 15 dollars on thai curry and rice for dinner, and then looked at some shirts online until the fact that all the models wearing said shirts were only visible from the bridge of their nose downward started to freak me out. Why aren't the models allowed to show their eyes?
I also have noted that the "new" "style" for "skirts" is that they be short and pulled up to right under the boob area. So, you know, I'm looking forward to having my eyes raped repeatedly from whenever the weather starts to stay above 70 degrees until oh, late November or so. Meanwhile, I will continue my plans to create a hybrid nun's habit/mechanic's jumpsuit so that I can see myself into the post-swine flu zombie apocalypse in comfort and style, while revealing as little of my flesh as possible so as to not unduly tempt the undead. Plus, wimples!

But hey, I didn't intend to write about clothes or anything even vaguely related to that tonight. I have actually been carrying around an inner blogging narrative all day today, which is quite sad, especially since I've been awake since 5:30am. Teaching at 8am requires me to get up earlier and earlier, in order to do whatever grading or lesson planning is left over from the night before, or just to stare uncomprehendingly at my alarm clock until I can make myself get out of bed. I hate it vehemently until about the time when I get coffee in my hand and then leave the apartment, and then I always feel won over by the surprise thrill of being awake early in the morning. There's something about being proudly stoic that gives me a little rush, as I walk down the street fully dressed and cognizant at 7am, before all save one shop (a restaurant/cafe place) in my neighborhood have opened. The morning is usually cloudy, and never warm, deliveries are made and the sidewalks are hosed off, and it suits me well.

I don't feel well-suited to my element, or my environment, all that often, and so those moments are particularly sweet. These early mornings, or when I sit in my advisor's office, or when I've written something or said something at school that hits the mark -- then I have that realization, "ohhh, so I am alive after all, aren't I?". Like the first time you breathe in winter air in the morning, and the cold goes up in your nose and then down to your lungs, your eyes open wider or maybe you close them tight, and just...ahhhhhh. Everything around you exists acutely, the edges could slip and cut you in half like a paper doll.

This reminds me of an image I once came up with for an imaginary movie I wanted to make while I lived in Japan. A woman would sit in a folding chair, with bay windows behind her covered in gauzey white drapes. She'd wear a black dress with a high neck and a wide skirt that reached the floor, and she'd sit in a wide stance with her knees far apart. And draped across her would be the body of a boy, alive but perhaps unconscious or somehow asleep, heavy like the body of Jesus in the Pieta. Then she'd draw a bow across his body like a cello.
I thought of this scene for no reason, and then I wanted to make a film that would have this image in it, so that it could exist somewhere outside of my mind. The concept for it went on and on, but I never wrote any of it down, because it was so far out of my element and something in me feels ridiculous for pretending I have more artistic capability or integrity than a goat. Yet I don't quite want to relinquish the ideas either.

In completely unrelated news, the "lingerie" on the urban outfitters website is so goofy and trashy it makes me want to go find someone to dress up for. Mesh, lace, and ribbons? Well, why the hell not!

The Women.

2009-04-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

Banal observation time. Today, the weather is perhaps too beautiful. Crisp enough to make walking outside feel exciting, but the sun is still shining, compounding my regret that I am currently in a basement office writing a paper, and that I won't be finished with class for another four and a half hours. I can't wait until my schedule isn't so campus-oriented; today would be perfect for drinking coffee and reading on the balcony.
This reminds me that, as soon as I get paid, I can perhaps finally attempt to grow a few delicious things out on that little space. Tomatoes and basil seem easy enough, as long as I can convince the roommate to stop feeding squirrels until the weather gets cold again. I don't find those little fuckers nearly as cute as she does; definitely not cute enough to forfeit the possibility of delicious fresh tomatoes.
I would like some chemist to find a way to reproduce the scent a tomato stem has right after you've pulled the fruit off of the vine...it could be my "signature scent". Right now, I smell like skin, and maybe a little tinge of soap.

Non-banal observations next. I've been thinking and talking a good bit the last few days about women and being "emotional", or as our society has deemed it, "being a crazy bitch". In general, I think we've come about three or four feet forward since the days of being diagnosed with hysteria, although the language of the discussion has changed. Women, during relationships with men (especially while beginning them), are all I think afraid of coming off as "crazy"; ie, too attached, too interested, too irrational, too emotional. Controlling these emotions becomes an obsession, and while the object of our affection might be spared from experiencing how we "really" feel, the internalized debate over what can and can't be said/done/etc is definitely something of a hazard to the woman herself -- not to mention all her friends who have to hear about it endlessly. All the non-crushing have to step in as a sort of judicial panel: "Yes, it's okay to call him now." "No, I don't think that's a weird reaction to have." "No, don't text him once until he texts you twice." And so on, so on, so on...

But to what end? Looking back, I don't think I've ever regretted not "controlling" myself more. In general, exercising restraint has resulted in a sort of prolonging of an inevitable rupture; for instance, getting upset about not hearing from someone often results in trying to "keep cool", suppressing the feelings, and waiting it out. But that has never worked out in my favor. Sure, other girls will say that I did the right thing, but in the end, all it means is waiting an extra week or so before figuring out that Boy X is acting like a dickhead, that nothing I can do is going to fix said dickheadedness, and that I stressed myself out needlessly for said week instead of getting started on moving on.

And the few times I've just done crazy shit (punching that guy), I've never felt a moment's regret about it (except wishing that I could punch better). Why hold back the tears and the yelling and whatever else? Those are your emotions, man, get them out. Repressing them will just end up either a) putting you in therapy, or b) making you into an emotionally fucked-up asshole. Who I will then date? Yeah, probably that's the next step in that progression.

I'd go on, but someone gave me a liter of free diet coke, and I now have to pee out all that fucking aspartame...

The internet is a surveillance state.

2009-04-23T23:29:00.000-07:00

One thing I feel goony about is all the times when I get into a jag of listening to one song over and over. Before the internet(!), I could escape from sharing the fact that I'd listened to one song ten times in a row because that was my own private life, goddamnit, and no one was looking over my shoulder as I set up my discman to repeat one song over and over again. But now, since I have the last.fm music logger thing (which I have actually had for four years now, dear god), I feel sort of extra nerdy about my occasional song obsessions, as well as any time I listen to something particularly cheesy. No one needs to know about that week in 2007 when I thought "Last Dance With Mary Jane" was a really good song. And yet!

And yet, I would feel pretty upset if one day the last.fm website were to disappear, and those years of my internet listening habits were no longer recorded. Especially as now it can even process the stuff I listen to on my beat-up ol' iPod, which I think is still a new-ish development. There I am in all that strange data, revealing to the world that the last 6 years or so of searching for music off the beaten track has done nothing to sever my dependence on listening to the Beatles.

It also makes me feel strange, and not so great in the end, that most everything I listen to exists only in the computerized world. Of course, if I had to rely on only being able to listen to music I had bought in a physical store, I would be royally fucked, since my dumb overeducated white poor person lifestyle doesn't leave a lot of extra monies for media purchases. Last weekend I bought a used novel for $5, and as of current writing I have $40 in my bank account for the rest of the month, so I feel pretty stupid about spending that $5 on words instead of food. Of course, the less money I have, the more I am drifting towards the truly idealized life of the scholar, which generally seems to require that one own clothes with holes in them (done) and be somewhat skeletal. Mind over body, and so forth!

In related news: I am pretty hungry. Luckily I have a lot of unliked clothing to try to sell to Buffalo Exchange, and I also can make an okay meal out of a can of beans and a can of tomatoes?

I have also noticed lately that when I run into a particularly pretty, well-dressed female acquaintance of mine on campus (I teach in the building her department is housed in, so I run into her about once a week or so), I find myself getting really cranky about the fact that she somehow manages to finance an ever-changing wardrobe on a TA's salary. And, you know, is all pretty and shit. This crankiness makes me feel bad of course, because what did she ever do besides suck less at life than I do?, but there it remains! Go away, overwhelming consumerist impulses, get the fuck outta here.

2009-04-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

Every time I log into facebook, it is an affirmation of the fact that by and large, the people I have known are idiots. There's just no getting around it.

Psychedelicatessen.

2009-04-15T22:28:00.000-07:00

Samson is sending up a gigantic new shoot, in that weird too-bright color of baby plants, and the leaves are even starting to unravel off the stalk. Which is comforting, as before it looked like aggressive flora genitalia sticking up out of the moss. I am proud of the plant's progress, although it's not like I contributed anything to it besides semi-regular watering.

...And although I started writing this with the best of intentions, suddenly I am too sleepy to really want to continue. Things happened today, too -- I saw Slavoj Zizek wear yet another dirty t-shirt and talk about the future of capitalism, I heard Louis-Georges Tin talk about the construction of "heterosexuality", I ate more than one meal consisting of beans and tortillas. I rode a slow bus home, and passed some kind of crime scene, while an acquaintance sitting behind me said something about seeing a dead girl's body. I saw a picture of a misguided and angry middle-aged woman wearing a sunhat with teabags hanging off the brim.

All these things and more, and more. I'd like now to sleep, but then the dishes won't get done, or the laundry. Or the reading of various important things, the waking up by 6am, the going to teach something or other again, and so it goes. The week is over in two more days, and christ, how much haven't I done yet. I want to make a coccoon out of pillows and blankets and things that make me feel warm, and sleepy, and softly removed from time.

As a postscript, here's a goal I can get behind:

I am halfway through this and I like it.

2009-04-14T01:38:00.000-07:00

Suburban monastery death poem: http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/levy-l1.htm

(Finished it now, and it is indeed all good to me...better than my history seminar reading, although relevant to it, since it's a class on the '60s. d.a. levy can be my new dead imaginary friend. and he says:

note:

peace & awareness are
like two small birds
trying to leave the planet
because they are tired of dying

im not advocating anything

......which I can agree with as well).

Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow.

2009-04-13T12:39:00.000-07:00

About a month ago, herr doktor put me on a higher dosage of my main anti-depressant med and started phasing me off of the other one. Turns out, after about a year and a half on those medicinals, I was still experiencing the symptoms of major depression. Which I guess I would have figured out on my own, if I hadn't been feeling so depressed?

To be more serious, I just sort of chalked a big mess of things up to being exhausted by school and in need of a break. And, you know, laziness. I have always been pretty sure that I am just an inherently lazy person.

Except! Things are getting a little different in Amy-town these last few days. Although I can't say my mood has changed (indeed, I have felt pretty sub-human the last week/weekend), suddenly I'm doing things. I have exercised in a substantial manner for the last three days -- something that almost never happens. I've been all throwing dumbbells up and dancing around and sweating til my hair starts to stick together and my chest has turned pink. And, you know, I kind of like it.

And then yesterday, while sitting at the bus stop, I wrote three short (unfinished) poems -- something I haven't done in probably two years, if not longer. The last one was excrement, but the first two weren't so terrible. The first one I'll stick here I guess (Lilly, you still read my blog, don't you?)

Walking home in pairs

the comedian said
"'Every living thing dies alone' --
Well, it isn't true,
Sometimes a relative stays
in the room
after they pull the plug."

I might be wrong about everything, and so I

And so I'd better have a baby
as soon as I turn thirty --
one with all the right
chromosomes,
one that will grow up
healthy,
one that can learn how to
feel guilt.

So, there's that nonsense. The other two were about sex and about getting stared at while waiting for the bus, respectively. Not like I know anything about those topics, of course...

Yesterday, I sat with a friend and ate a calzone and talked about a topic I've thought often about. This ties in a bit with the weird fact of my exercising -- anyway, being a person who lives in america, I feel pretty weird about my body a lot of the time. There's all the intimacy stuff of course (curse the day I found out that men have opinions on whether or not you have an ugly vagina...), but in a more day to day way I also often feel just rather oversized and unnecessary. At no time did I feel this more acutely than when I lived in Japan. And I'm sure it's because I'm already really fucking sensitive (in the bad way), but while I was there I felt from time to time as if I'd ceased to be a woman completely. I was taller than the men, I weighed as much as nearly two women, my hair was about three inches long and I didn't really do a great job of things like wearing makeup. I don't much wear skirts either, or like wearing dresses, or (this is sad, but true) always feel comfortable having my shoulders exposed in public. Not exactly feminine, although in the US I feel like I get by all right.
Not in Japan, though. This was sort of compounded by the fact that I couldn't buy clothes that were made for most Japanese women anyway. I bought men's jeans at Uniqlo and spent long, long periods of time hoping to find a place where I could buy shoes. Shirts I did okay with, but I could never get into the weird tunic-over-turtleneck thing that was going on while I lived there, so I certainly didn't appear "stylish". I coped a little by ceasing to get my hair cut, and by the time the year ended I could put it up in a standard ponytail. And I started buying earrings almost obsessively. But I still felt, at best, asexual, foreign, out of place.
And I feel like if that feeling had gone on, I could have easily "given in" and just embraced my weird almost-masculinity. Start wearing 60s throwback mod boots and army jackets, give myself spiky hair, I could've done that. And when I think about going back for a long period of time, I get a little scared -- how will I deal with it the next time? Grow my hair out long in defense, drop 30 lbs, what? It's painful to imagine.
The biggest element of diffence is, in a nutshell, that in America men will hit on me and in Japan they do not. It just isn't the way it works. And so much of my gendered sense of self, clearly, comes from this idea of reinforcement. I'm a lady because I look like these other ladies, because men see me as a lady, and so on. It is extremely weird to think of how easily all that can become loosened, and makes me wonder what "gendered" idea of myself I would hold onto in a vacuum.

This sort of ties into my thing about exercising in that I question whether I do it because I want strength or because I want to lose weight. To be honest, I want them both, because right now I feel like I look like shit and I know I couldn't lift something heavy or run a mile to save my life. But what of that will actually keep me moving?

This thought leads me on to talking about reinforcement again (ie, I rarely feel bad about my body when I have someone that desires me, but when I'm alone with just my head to judge it I feel like I'm a pile of shit shoved into a human-shaped bag), but surely I must quit writing. I have a doctor's visit to keep.

Postscript: The reason, of course, that I wanted to write all these rather mundane observations down was that I had believed in the past, at least, that I was tough enough to basically feel the same about myself in any context. Especially since I've been such a good hermit for most of my life. The Buddhists would tell me that my self does not exist anyway, so why bother, but of course I am concerned with this whole idea anyway.

Contradictions, contradictions.

2009-04-10T19:59:00.000-07:00

Today has spanned perhaps too wide a spectrum of emotions for me. Let me tell you all about it!

Before writing my previous entry (emotion: terrible embarrassment), I overslept and missed attending the lecture I am currently TAing for (emotion: guilt). Lately I find myself sleeping like the most unpleasant parts of my subconscious have me in a headlock; the dreams are terrible and I'm too exhausted to wake up from them. Last night/this morning, I dreamt I was being hunted down by various hitmen, who'd get a million dollars if they managed to kill me. For some reason, I was also some kind of hitman, or at least really familiar with firearms, because whenever one found me I managed to avoid being killed and take them out instead. I even remembered to switch the safety off.
The panic of all this "action" lingered on after I woke up.

While I was being shot at/hiding from being shot at, my mother threatened to commit suicide (emotion: anger). I also had to take several buses/trains for no apparent reason (more panic), and rescue one of my sister's childhood friends from a large cult religion (which my mother had also joined) based on the idea that the world was about to experience a second biblical flood. Emotion here, of course, more anger. God, do I ever hate anything involving cults, or my mother.

Upon waking at long last (the dream went on from here, by the way, but I know how impossible it is to make a dream ever, ever sound interesting), I took a shower, which was at least rather pleasant. The morning coffee was also good, until I discovered captain moustachio douchebag's photo on the internets. And then, bus ride (frustration), class (moments of feeling smart again), and finally, the contradiction that made me feel like writing something today.

I volunteered last week to meet with a prospective student for our department, and after class I and a colleague met up with her. I've done this once before, and today I was surprised again to see myself becoming effusive about my advisor, classes, fellow students and all the rest of it. After all, as anyone who has read this blog or ever spoken to me knows, my experiences in grad school have been pretty tumultuous. I'm always broke, I have trouble with my workload, I don't always like teaching very much, LA frustrates me, and on it goes. And yet I still felt like it was my job to personally convince this girl to come study here anyway. I imagine patriotism feels something like this.

I even stuck around after our assigned meeting time to make sure the girl managed to get on her shuttle back to the airport, all the while talking about how our dissertation program is better than the ones they have at other schools, and on and on. Why do this? I have no idea if this school is the right fit for other people, since I've never done graduate work anywhere else. It feels, now that I'm home, as if I was being disingenious. At the same time, I was doing a great job of convincing myself that I was happy to be where I am.

Then, I got on the bus to go home, as I do every day. From somewhere behind me, I heard a girl say a terrible thing; worse, a terrible thing I would never have to hear if I did not live in LA. She said, "There's an Ed Hardy store at the Beverly Center. We can go there and buy whatever you want". That one really made me feel sad, there's just no way around it.

And now I'm home on Friday night, and I must say I feel at the end very melancholy. My roommate invited me out to karaoke, but I only like to sing around people I know well. But of course, I also hate sitting alone on weekend nights, feeling like a loser who should have made plans or have more friends.
Hopefully, the cure for this is listening to Al Green's "Tired of Being Alone" ten times in a row. You and me both, Reverend.

Fucking hell.

2009-04-10T11:37:00.001-07:00

It only took a few months of the site's existence, and someone I dated is now up on"I bang the worst dudes" ( sorry-mom.com ). At least I did not, in fact, bang him...

2009-03-29T16:10:00.000-07:00

My current "net worth" is $1.02. Self-loathing, commence!

"Forgetting a child".

2009-03-12T07:04:00.001-07:00

Alex Balk referred to this as "a brutal but worthwhile read". It is both those things: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/27/AR2009022701549_pf.html

In other news, it is 7am and I have been awake for an hour. I slept in a button-up shirt and cardigan (ie, the clothes I wore yesterday), with the lights on in my room, but luckily with the foresight at some point to remove my restrictive, no-stretch jeans. Momentarily I am going to go to the grocery store and buy breakfast foods and beer (for a party! not for morning drinking, I swear). Silly, silly life.

Lost in a moment.

2009-02-21T23:46:00.000-08:00

Currently...

2009-02-16T21:38:00.001-08:00

I am drinking caffeine and listening to Josh Weller. Talking about crying-time music, my goodness. At least his hair is one of the most pleasing things in this whole wide world.

These links are important.

2009-02-16T19:04:00.000-08:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/feb/13/california-prisons-early-release-economy

http://gawker.com/5154567/stray-black-cats-roam-london-selling-video-games

Sitting next to Samson.

2009-02-15T22:19:00.000-08:00

Samson is my LA plant. He's a "luck tree", in a very nice sort of stone urn thing, and I bought him at a plant shop two blocks away from my apartment. His leaves are deep and shiny, and he has a little nesting of dead spray-painted moss covering up the dirt in his bowl. I like him. He cheers me up.

Also cheering me up is some red wine, and the "go fug yourself" website. I am not sure why I need cheering, but I do. I have met new people the last three days in a row, with maybe some success, and probably some failures as well. It has me a little worn out, to say the least, and I need some sort of brain-refresher...something that will let me stop thinking about these encounters, and what might happen next.

Two of the meetings were with people I've emailed a bit with over the internets, from the ok cupid site. And one of them I got along with very well -- and his brother, and his brother's girlfriend, all of whom I met in the space of two hours and then ended up spending Friday night hanging out with. The three of them together had a great vibe going on, very smart and jokey and mellow. Basically, I would like them all to adopt me -- it's the kind of feeling I haven't had since maybe the old days of TNA, when I had those brief moments of being with people who all knew and liked each other and were just straight-up class-A people. I am sorry that I was always such a drunky loser who wanted to go home by like 12:30 during our old nights out. I'd give a lot to have those nights back. I want bar friends back.

And now I'm anxious, because man, so far my meeting people off the internet game has been pretty shitty. I've been on a few dates, been dumped or ignored by a few dudes who weren't worth my time, had a few meals with strangers. None of it's really stuck, as of yet -- it's easy to forget someone that exists primarily in email form. And I really want these people to be my friends. Maybe, in particular, I miss the sort of practical feeling of being around midwesterners. There's something that feels more solid about it, like hey, these people are probably not at their core completely ridiculous. I dare you to say the same thing about the general human product of southern California.

Maybe my longtime friend depression is kicking in too now. There's a lot that's wrong with having a crazy mental disease, of course. But occasionally I feel like it keeps me less frivilous, encourages introspection, reminds me of my past. It's something inextricable from me, no matter what meds I'm on -- although of course the meds change the feel of the game, let me be the one in charge of it. My brain is a weird dance of chemicals pushing through a goopy mass of tissue. So it goes, so it goes.

The last person I met this weekend was very shy. So am I, sometimes, but I just kept trying to make conversation anyway. So it goes. There were some others in the middle, but none of them stood out.

A grand quote.

2009-01-27T23:46:00.001-08:00

"Once, in 1946, while still an adolescent, I was to sign my name on the other side of the sky during a fantastic "realistico-imaginary" journey. That day, as I lay stretched upon the beach of Nice, I began to feel hatred for birds which flew back and forth across my blue, cloudless sky, because they tried to bore holes in my greatest and most beautiful work.

Birds must be eliminated."
-Yves Klein

2009-01-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

新年明けましておめでとう！

I hope your new year's eve was less exciting, but at least as fun, as mine was!

2008-11-25T08:59:00.000-08:00

For my birthday, I'd like some new jeans and shoes, and to bump into Jon Hamm while he's walking his dog around the neighborhood. Please, someone help arrange this.

To every season, turn turn turn.

2008-11-23T21:44:00.001-08:00

It is almost my birthday. I really wish it were not. I am spending too much time sifting through okcupid trying to find a decent boy to go out with, and looking at pictures of a friend's towheaded baby girl is making my ovaries act funny. I am getting older.

Covetous

2008-11-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

I want this so badly.

2008-11-09T13:25:00.000-08:00

her: so you know, totally not ready to devote myself to 5-6 hrs of reading student papers
that dumb kid in the taco bell yesterday, he still hasn't turned in his paper
me: hahaha
that kid clearly blows
her: like, what are you doing
if your paper is 5 days late, and it is only 3-4 pages, you should not be at taco bell
3-4 pgs!
you know
maybe he doesn't give a shit because this class is no longer a requirement for graduation
me: maybe that kid just loves tacos
her: hahaha
me: two opposing views of the world!

November is the longest month.

2008-11-02T19:49:00.001-08:00

This last week has been all about body-pain (cramps, headaches, bizarre intestinal discomfort, etc).
However, tonight is all about nostalgia, and a little bit of the blues. My cupboard holds a new one-lb bag of untoasted yerba mate, and the smell reminds me of summer '06 and the year that followed it. I bought a hefty bag of sucanat to go with it, and I've cleaned out a pot for the roasting, but I haven't quite managed to make anything happen yet. Today I also haven't ever managed to get dressed, going so far as to shower and then put my pyjamas back on. My feet are cold, and on my coffee table there sits a tiny display of gourds and one ear of blue corn. It is November.

Even Los Angeles feels like autumn now. It's time to learn things, time to avoid going outside for fear of the cold, time to dress in multitudinous scarves, time to listen to the saddest of the sad singer-songwriters. Phil Och's religious revolutionary music is good for this now. Okkeril River seems conceived of only to make me weepy. I wish, again, I lived somewhere with deciduous trees, but there are still dead leaves falling off of plants here if you know where to find them.

I haven't been writing anything for quite awhile, and I'm not sure why. The last two or three months have felt long, hot and sweaty and difficult. First there was my weird heart-crushing experience in August, then the trip home to Florida and to Brooklyn. Then I became a teacher, which has been both tedious and strange. I rarely wake up in time to sit in on my students' lecture. I put off grading until the last minute. On Friday, I wrote my first recommendation letter, with copious help from a friend. Then we went to the post office to mail it, and I drove for the first time in about two years. I entered the wrong side of the post office's parking lot, parked terribly, and my friend and I were both called "cuntbags" by an angry old man who saw my parking job. White spittle flew out of his mouth when he harassed us, the first time I have ever seem such a thing happen. I yelled at him that he'd probably be dead in two years anyway, probably the worst comeback of all time.

Cibo Matto's "White Pepper Ice Cream" is on now, and my Japanese accent decoding skills have grown so poor, I heard 'white paper ice cream' instead. I am still studying Korean, and now I can't tell the two languages apart in my mind -- fragments of phrases just float around each other. "Deh-mun-eh" sounds too much like "demo ne". My little paperbacks of Ogawa Yoko need to be read and theorized-upon. An open pdf of Horkheimer's "The Authoritarian State" sits between iTunes and SoulSeek. I need that tea, to make the synapses fire a little faster in my mind. Horkheimer, then Korean vocabulary, then essays on Horyu-ji. I can do these things.

And of course, Tuesday is looming high and heavy over me. Super Tuesday! I will ride my bike a few blocks to someone's house near Griffith Park, hopefully just in time for the polls to open at 7am. I will vote in this big crazy history-making election for a super-cool smart man from Hawaii and Kansas and Chicago to be our next president. I will vote against 'saving marriage', and for public transportation, and for who knows what else -- there are so many initiatives in California to take part in. And then I will ride my bike down to Sunset, hopefully not getting hit by any cars, and get on a bus and go to campus and sit back while I make my undergrads present on early modern Japanese literature. I will drink large cups of coffee. I will come home tired, hopefully before 7, and watch election results come in via the tin-foiled antenna on the TV. I will probably drink bourbon, hopefully in celebration. If no one is sitting with me, I will type furiously in chat windows and email windows. But hopefully, I won't be sitting alone.

And that's all I have to say about that?

And that's how I feel about that.

2008-09-07T08:41:00.001-07:00

Purgatories.

2008-09-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

Lately, I have been forgetting that I am any sort of a writer, or that I have any kind of desire or obligation to fill up these little white boxes from time to time. I think it's getting me down a little, though of course that could also be a host of other things. So, let me try a little harder.

I'm at my parents' house now, which is perhaps my definition of the modern 'purgatory'. Nothing to do here, most days no real reason to get dressed before 5pm if I bother to get dressed at all. Can't leave the house on my own, and rarely have any idea where I'd like to go if I did leave. Yesterday I smacked through the ennui long enough to put on a bathing suit and go out to the back pool, only to see a large dead spider waiting for me under the water at the bottom of the stairs. In the deep end, a small (living) frog floated along atop the pool thermometer. I went inside, and took a shower.

Seven more days here, and I can't think of any way to make them not like the last seven. I feel most awake when I'm in the shower, enough to make plans and get back a little of my 'take charge' attitude (read books, practice japanese or korean, write that paper, call the landlord), but none of my books are waterproofed, and the feeling usually dissipates by the time I wrap a towel around my head and leave the bathroom. The real world just feels a little too far away.

And yet, I have plenty of work to do. Late paper to write, two languages to relearn, finances with which to wrestle. Silly, silly important things. I can't hope to get them all done through 6ish weekday afternoons in Brooklyn while I wait for friends to come home from work. Maybe about half, though. I have heard there are some very nice cafes in some of those Brooklyn neighborhoods.

I have, instead of stuff, managed a lot of naps with the new kitten. This kitten has no name, because no one in my family can agree on one. This perhaps makes him even more adorable. I went to my kid sister's open house and met all her teachers. Some of them may have thought I was her mother, until our own mother came in. Two were spastic in the way only high school teachers are, and four of them are probably good educators. Two were coaches pulled to fill in as teachers of classes they had never taught before, due to budget cuts. One was just vaguely annoying. There was another teacher-like person (computers?) we passed in the hall that I would have talked to/flirted with, if I did that kind of thing (I do not). Get me out of my house, ironic mutton chops. I am dying here.

I sort of wish my family lived closer, so I didn't have to go through feeling that my real life was being displaced every time I go to visit them. Or I could be smarter, and stay for less time...

Anyway! I hope when the fall semester starts, I'll feel like my life is picking up momentum again. I have the syllabus for the class I'm TAing (Intro to Japanese Civilization) in my inbox now. TA orientation and first classes will be all through my first week back. I haven't finalized my class selection, but I am getting there. I will have a best friend in the city I live in again, finally. I might have an immediate visitor from Ann Arbor as well, so long as the timing is right and the sublettor-roomie isn't sleeping in the living room when I get back. Maybe I will even have faith in boys again? I am really working on this. Of course, it'd help if the other team would meet me halfway.

A lot of things are almost done.

2008-08-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

I am leaving Los Angeles soon, and I am glad.

Not leaving for good, of course. As of a few weeks ago, I am officially on the lease for this apartment, which is a nice place with a balcony and in a neighborhood where I would easily expect to pay about $300 per month more than I do now in rent money. My landlord is sort of a flake and I will probably never have air conditioning, but those are small(ish) offenses. The living room has soft white paper lamps in various shapes and paintings, done by a friend of mine or by my roommate. Maybe I will make something to put on the walls as well. I am comfortable here.

But, oh, this summer, and oh, Los Angeles. It has been so long, and so all the same. A hundred hours logged sitting on the bus, or more. Another hundred plus logged sitting in class, discovering that I couldn't learn with my mind turned off. A lot of missed deadlines, piling up. The same meals. That mozarella sandwich on campus that cost $6 and nearly had me vomiting on the sunny pavement. And always, everyone I know being so far apart.

I miss the insularity of the 'Center', which kept us all involved in each other's lives, even though it was also often dreary and bleak. I think I miss everything as soon as it stops happening, until the next thing comes and washes it out. This analogy is certainly applicable to my dating life, when I have one. I never know if I appear complicated or simple when I first meet 'the other'. I don't know which description of myself would be more appropriate, either. Certainly my emotions are simple; the way my mind works is not.

So, I will give up these dry hot times and go to Florida, for the rain and my family. I will definitely eat chocolate-covered dried cherries, annoy my cat, and float in the pool. I will almost certainly get a sunburn. I will not drink my parents' beer, because it is cheap and terrible, and if I start drinking at home I'll see the next sister soon following suit; what sort of example would that make me? When all three of us are home, we all revert to a dynamic that was set in place as soon as there were three of us at all. I think I get stuck at about 15; the two of them at 10 and 7 seems about right. They fight in the car and threaten to spit in each other's hair. Later, we will all climb into the same bed with the cats, say nothing for awhile, spread our bodies out at weird angles. It is always much more comforting to do this with the girls than when my mother comes in to hug me in the morning. I have never been able to feel her hold onto me without feeling that I'm suffocating. It's a neat emotional analogy, as well, but of course a very real physical reaction too.

After that, I will go to New York, and spend my days sitting in cafes in Brooklyn with my beat-up darling laptop. The nights will hopefully all be spent drinking. Sobriety and friendlessness are not doing me any favors, and I have to have some kind of summer vacation, even if it happens in September. If my dating life keeps being idiotic, maybe making eyes at drunk Brooklynites will calm me. Maybe I'll get high for the first time in a year and make fun of people one of my best friends and I both dislike, which is the best schaudenfreude-y time I can have. One day I will go back to my high school reunion, or someone else will, to find that all the people I never liked are now fat. Thanks for the genes, mom, if not the hugs -- at least I don't have obesity waiting in the wings for me. I get enough curveballs as it is.

I don't even like skateboarding.

2008-08-15T19:41:00.001-07:00

So why is this so fucking hot?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6uwukoIN-U&NR=1

In other news...

2008-08-04T22:07:00.001-07:00

I continue not to write, and my parents continue to both find new ways to destroy themselves and our family while knowledge of past errors slowly unearths itself. I am very lonely right now.

안년하새요!

2008-07-27T20:37:00.000-07:00

Oh my god, typing in Korean is so hard. Also, I bet I spelled that wrong. This language hates the shit out of me.

Anyway! So, update time, internet world. Right now, I am studying vocabulary words for my 10th vocabulary quiz in korean (roughly two per week, oy vey), after having finished about half the class (and about 1/100th of the homework). This week, on the menu are words such as "eye" and "gloves", and verbs or verb-like adjectives like "to be warm" and "to congratulate". Did you know that in this language, adjectives conjugate like verbs do, but for some reason aren't verbs and therefore seperate grammatical rules apply to them? Shoot me, please, I beg you.

The tide's always turning.

2008-07-07T00:16:00.001-07:00

After two and a half weeks of enjoyable society back in the ol' US of A, the universe conspired to fill my life with suck today. As if being $63 in the hole on my bank account for a week wasn't enough brutal enough. Thanks life, no really, I can't get enough of this shit.
First, I spent nearly 3 hours on the bus today, going from one side of this overly-wide city to the other. The return leg of the trip was particularly bad, as the bus was more crammed full than I have ever seen it. Almost "last train out of Shibuya" bad, and that is not an image I invoke lightly. Next to me for much of the trip was an elderly drunk man, who had waited at the same stop as I had. Before getting on the bus, he asked me what bus was coming, what city were we in, and if I knew of any rehab facilities in the area. On the bus, a sharp turn caused the giant can of Foster's hidden in his pocket to spill out on the feet of the people around him. A small amount of that beer landed on the top of my foot.
Behind me was a man who could not stop singing to himself, R&B style but without any discernable lyrics. Occasionally, he'd give the singing a break in order to proclaim on how full the bus was. A girl near him had been unlucky enough to secure his focus as well, and he asked her if she and her friends were going out to a club tonight. He would be at the club, til closing. On his neck was a tattoo that read "Scheezy".
I did not stab the man with the tattoo that read "Scheezy", but I wanted to.
The bus ride might not have been so bad if I had had a nice afternoon before it, but that was not the case. Instead I had spent 3 hours eating a friend's party food and realizing that I strongly disliked everyone at the party except the host. BDSM professionals and their boyfriends, it turns out, are just the kids from high school who shopped at hot topic and tongue-kissed backstage during drama class, plus seven or eight years. And I don't have much to add to conversations about corset colors or "what happened at the dungeon last night".

IMPORTANT NOTE: Things I never want to see, #1: Bruises on your ass, from your boyfriend spanking you the night before. Everyone I know or will ever know, please take note of this.

Once I got home, I tried to take a nap, but was kept awake by two people in a neighboring apartment. A father and son, to be exact, who were arguing and belittling each other over a video game. The son sounded like he's about 8 years old. Once, I heard the father tell the kid that he was "terrible" at the video game, because the father was winning and it was the first time he had played. Yes, that actually happened. Is that enough evidence for me to call in Child Services?
Now it is late and the day is a waste. My Korean homework is unfinished, my nails are unpainted, and I am out of lemonade. The rest of the weekend was lovely, but all that will have to wait for another day.

Native soil.

2008-06-20T09:38:00.002-07:00

Back. Back! I have rematriculated my American-ness, everyone. It is totally weird.
Right now, I am lying belly-first on the carpet of my new bedroom, which is furniture-less and scattered with open suitcases vomiting out my clothing and sundries. The temperature is about 80 degrees, but promises to hit at least 94 before the day is over. Yesterday, I went outside and sweated in a tank top and skirt, and fretted over possibly getting my first sunburn of the year. Luckily, my fancy new american face lotion comes with spf 15.

Leaving Japan was sad, sweaty, and painful -- the last two caused mostly by me hauling heavy-ass luggage and boxes and shit all over the city. I mailed what felt like 100 lbs of books over the ocean to my new digs, which should arrive here in about 3 more weeks. I went over my weight and luggage limit on my flight, and had to pay accordingly. I threw away bagfuls of unsorted trash in the night, and left two sacks of old clothes and sheets and a slightly moldy futon for my landlady to toss for me on the appropriate day. I spent over a week having last and second-to-last meals with almost everyone I'd ever met during my time in Japan. I gave away a bag of macadamia nuts I'd received as omiyage to my landlady's mother, the day she came to get the keys to my apartment and bid me farewell. Secret: I hate macadamia nuts.

And then I flew across the Pacific in a bright shiny airplane that boasted free wine and terrible vegetarian meal service. Truly the crappiest food I have eaten in a long time; I have no idea why people automatically assume that vegetarians hate food with seasoning, fat, or taste. Case in point: both my dinner and breakfast came with a small side salad which boasted absolutely no dressing whatsoever. In its place, a slice of lemon mocked me openly. There was not even any salt. I should write them a letter.
Also, no one in the world considers mushy rice and mushy vegetables a breakfast food. Come on, people. At least find a way to whip up some (vegan?) pancakes. So far the only palatable airline food I have had in my international travels was from United. They also boasted the most liberal free liquor policy.

But, now I live in a 'young, hip' neighborhood of Los Angeles, and my food plight has been rectified many times over. The taco stands have vegetarian options. A bulk food mart is less than two blocks from my apartment. I hear tell there is a Trader Joe's round these parts, and I plan to plunder it within the next day or two. Food, delightful food, free for the taking (after you pay for it).

Of course, all is not perfectly well, as I have to start learning my 3rd language a mere 3 days from now. I have not bought the textbooks, so I really hope the bookstore on campus is open before 8:30 am next Monday. Because that's when my class starts. My class, which goes for 4 hours a day and happens 5 days a week. I mean, I know I hate myself, but this is really taking it to extremes.

Lastly, I have a new roommate, which so far has been a good experience. She is slight and dainty and Australian. This morning we talked over coffee about our mutual dislike of Scarlett Johansson. That remains a surefire way into my good graces.

If you're down he'll pick you up, Dr, Robert.

2008-06-06T22:40:00.000-07:00

Let's get substantive around here.
School is over. I don't really believe it, but it's true. A large group of my favorite people in Japan are returning to the States in the next few days. I myself will return to LA on the 17th, which seems like a joke or a sort of very realistic dream I haven't fully shaken yet. But no, it's the truth. I made my ticket reservation yesterday. I'll be flying Korean Air, which almost definitely means free alcohol.
After about 4 weeks of thinking about nothing else, I found an apartment and a roommate back in LA as well. My new roommate is a film editor from Australia, and the new apartment is in Los Feliz. I will be (apparently) 100s of miles away from school, but I think I can make the bus riding work for me in exchange for having such a nice place to call home. I plan on getting a bicycle immediately after I move in. Hopefully, it will have a basket on the front or back for my groceries, and will be a bright blue or green. I am also planning, for some reason, to buy long chino shorts as a summer wardrobe and to wear them with docksiders without socks. Sort of a weird late 50s New England summer, but on the wrong coast and happening to probably the wrong person. Aesthetically though, it is incredibly appealing.
In my new apartment I will have my own bathroom and not too much rent to pay. In my old apartment, which is where I am lying right now, it is a little too hot except when a strong wind comes in through the big windows. I like it to be a little cold when I am home, so I can be under the blanket and feel like I'm hibernating, but this sunshine is a portent of the sweltering Japanese summer I am escaping. At least in LA, I can afford to pay for the electricity to run the air conditioner. Here, my electricity bills ran about $90 per month when I had to run the heat, and I only ran it when I was at home in the evenings and when I slept. Japan is not made for poor me.
Graduation. It was strange. I stood in a room full of people I knew and received a diploma and people clapped. I took pictures of the people I liked, first with a digital camera, then with my Diana+. I plan to finish off the last of the second roll of film tonight, and then get it developed so I can finally see what kind of magic this camera makes. I bought bags of Jelly Bellys from the candy store in the mall next to school, and gave them to my three favorite teachers. I think they were surprised, because I don't come across as the thoughtful type.
On Wednesday, I gave my final presentation, in front of my classmates and my landlady and her mother, as well as random Japanese businesspeople who had an interest in what our school does. I was very nervous in the beginning and couldn't always read my essay particularly well, because I was directing my eyes almost straight down so I could rest the paper on the podium and use it to lean on. Later, my advisor told me it had sounded smooth at the end, and a fellow student told me my voice 'flowed like water'. This is much higher praise than I would have expected. I am glad my voice only sounded shaky to me.
I did do a little better at hiding my nervousness than a few people (one person had a beautiful presentation, but her neck and chest broke out in hives as she spoke), but I was less practiced than many others, so I feel like it was sort of a C+ performance on my part. Also, I didn't make a Powerpoint to go along with the speech, not realizing that without one I would have to stand in front of two gigantic bright blue screens. I haven't used Powerpoint since I was in high school, but perhaps I had better learn. It gives the listeners something else to look at besides me, anyway, which has to be a good thing?
At the presentation, I wore a black sweater and skirt with plum-colored tights. I need to buy some more colorful footwear before I go 'home'. It lets me dress like a girl without worrying that anyone is thinking about how pale and bruise-y my legs are.
Now, the wind is blowing a little bit stronger, so I think it might be an excellent time to take a small nap.

Something to do before I die.

2008-05-21T06:26:00.000-07:00

I have a lot of places I want to go, of course, and hopefully I will be able somehow to see all of them before I get too old to ride a yak in Mongolia or start drinking retsina at lunchtime in Greece. Obviously, I should have picked a more lucrative career; but at least I still have many more years before I get tied down in a steady job.

The newest addition to the list is staying in a glass igloo in Finland, where I could lay back and watch the Nothern lights from bed. Even if that bed is covered in a frankly cheesy zebra-stripe fleece.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/gallery/2007/dec/07/hotels.top10?picture=331479808

It would make a pretty excellent honeymoon kind of trip, yeah? Much better than going to Hawaii.

This is excellent.

2008-05-14T02:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.claytoncubitt.com/commissioned/galleries.php?gid=28

"Lagos Calling", a photo series mixing British punk/skinhead and African fashions.

Makes me shake like a soul machine.

2008-05-07T10:20:00.000-07:00

Earthquakes, please stop happening. I want to be asleep, not wondering whether or not I ought to be bracing myself in the doorframe of my bathroom.

When she saw the funny side...

2008-04-27T00:52:00.000-07:00

I have a cockroach problem, sort of, in my apartment. Sweet!

About a week ago, I saw a cockroach once, then twice, running around my kitchen. The second time, I saw the cockroach disappear into the corner under one of the cabinets. On closer inspection, it turned out there was a big fucking hole down under there. Needless to say, I was unhappy.

Not knowing what to do, I wrote an email to my landlady, and moved my desklamp into the kitchen, training the light on the hole. I left the lamp like that, night and day, for two days, until my landlady could come and look at the problem. I also bought a shit ton of house cleaners and bug killer, since in my eyes everything in my kitchen (and probably the rest of the apartment, this isn't a big place) was now dirty and infected with bugs. Not just any bug either, but the biggest and most disgusting bug that was ever likely to invade my home. And I waited.

My landlady came, looked at the hole for 20 seconds, then told me to go buy some tape. She then asked me if I could move out of my apartment by early July (my lease and my visa here don't run out until the first of September), because she had someone else who might want to move in here then. And then she left.

After she left, I fumed, and sprayed more bug spray around the house. The next day, I taped up the hole. Soon after, I found a cockroach dying in my bathroom. Awesome. I sprayed it with more bug killer, then covered it with a scoop of laundry detergent, and swept it and the detergent into my dustpan. I threw the contents of the dustpan out onto the street in front of my apartment.

Today, I have been sitting around the house cleaning and waiting for my landlady to show my apartment. 15 minutes after she was supposed to be here, she calls to tell me she is canceling the appointment because the guy is taking another apartment. When I tell her I still need to talk about the bug issue, she tells me she has other business now and hangs up on me. Again, awesome!

I am so glad I don't pay this woman her rent on time. Maybe I will go on rent-paying strike until she fixes the wall.

On happier notes, it's Golden Week, so I can do fuckall for the next 9 days or so and that is just fine. Also, last night, after having a short conversation about the 1994 movie version of "Little Women" (holy shit, Winona Ryder is painful to watch in that thing), I re-remembered my love of Gabriel Byrne and in particular his performance in "Miller's Crossing". Afterwards, I had a long night of dreams in which a young Mr. Byrne was my boyfriend. If only my dreams were like that more often, instead of their more usual form, where I am fighting with my parents or have to save my sisters from the apocalypse. Come on, psyche, cut me some slack here.

I am in love...

2008-04-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

With this project.

http://colorwar2008.com/submissions/youngnow

http://youtube.com/watch?v=oRAEm0JPV4E&feature=related

Get that dirt off your shoulder.

2008-04-19T21:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/20/uselections2008.hillaryclinton :

Clinton accused Obama of doing too much complaining after he spent most of the ABC debate on the defensive over his political and religious links and his comments that small-town Pennsylvanians are bitter and cling to guns and religion. But he recovered on Friday in North Carolina by using hip-hop moves taken from rap mogul Jay-Z that had a crowd - liberally peppered with white women, supposedly Hillary's grassroots - on their feet cheering.

Drawing shrieks of laughter from a crowd in Raleigh, as he dived south briefly from Pennsylvania for an event ahead of the North Carolina primary on 6 May, Obama joked about the debate. He bit his lip, gave one of his wide, electric grins, and mimed a hand stabbing with a dagger, saying: 'Hillary looked in her element. Y'know, that's her right, to twist the knife a little bit.'

Then he mimed brushing dirt off each shoulder, a move that Jay-Z, one of his musical heroes, uses to dismiss the negative sentiments of anyone ill-disposed towards him or what he stands for. The crowd went wild and commentators declared it a seminal moment in the campaign, combining his charisma, feel for popular culture, youth and resilience.

Clinton had earlier declared: 'I'm with Harry Truman on this - if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen ... just speaking for myself, I am very comfortable in the kitchen.'

Obama was effectively saying: 'I am, too - name your kitchen'.

Noooo!

2008-04-18T22:11:00.001-07:00

Wahaha fuck I missed tickets going on sale for Radiohead's LA shows! Wahhhhh nooo.

2008-04-12T23:50:00.000-07:00

I seem to be slowing down with the blogging again, but lately it's been hard to find the good few clear minutes I need to write down what I've been up to and how I've been feeling. Usually, if I get those moments at all, it's at a time when I really ought to be doing something else, like homework (such as right now). Still at the same time, I feel odd to think of vast amounts of my life passing undocumented.

So, what has happened lately? I have eaten a lot of indian food, both at restaurants and home-made, in the last two weeks. I went to Tokyo and saw a woman I met two years ago at the University of Chicago present her dissertation research findings, and I told her a little bit about what my experience of grad school had been like. I tried and failed to bake pumpkin bread in a microwave/oven hybrid at the house of some friends. I slept on floors, and had strange dreams. I drank coffee without any sugar or cream. I saw a great deal of art. I missed more school than I feel comfortable with, with no pronounced negative effects (yet). I saw many, many cherry blossoms, and then days of rain washed them away. I smelled a cherry-blossom impersonator flower, that smelled like anise. I got angry at the Chinese government and made untenable plans to go to Nagano to raise a Tibetan flag as the torch passed. I drank organic wine from Chile. I swept my floors, many times, and ran my shoes through the washing machine. I bought hair-ties for the first time in a year, and started to use them every day. So, you know, I was alive.

Helter skelter!

2008-03-27T09:27:00.000-07:00

Boys are the number one ruiner of cool lady friends you used to be able to just chill and shoot the shit with. Case in point: Today, after a friend told me a little bit about the new boy she is dating, I got this message unsolicited: "I believe you will meet someone nice soon, too".

Don't say things like this, people. It is just rude, and rub-in-your-facey. I mean, I am happy for you and all, though I know I will never be able to hang out with you again because I don't want to hear about how happy you are now (as a prelude to what an asshole this guy is, which I will get to hear about as soon as six weeks later), but really, I am happy. Everyone deserves to have some time in happy-butterfly-stomach lovey-dovey land. But seriously: Don't ruin my goodwill by comparing your new happiness to my single (and thus, apparently terrible) life. If you must know, I am pretty freaking awesome all the time, regardless of whether or not I am dating. SO THERE.

Success!

2008-03-18T05:43:00.001-07:00

The stupid job I didn't think I would ever end up having has finally come through, and I have my first lesson this Saturday -- woohoo, dollars! Actually, woohoo to the yen, currently worth more than the dollar, and to being paid in the currency of the country I work in! Now if I could only get about 10 more students...

So long ago, was it in a dream?

2008-03-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

I am awake at 1:30 am, eating hash browns and eggs and worrying about the immediate future. For, although it is no surprise that I have no money, it is something of a surprise that the value of the dollar has dropped nearly 25% in the time since I first came to Japan and right now. For me, with all my money still sitting in an American bank and being converted to yen when I withdraw it, this means in a very real way that everything in this country has steadily become more expensive for me since last July, even though all the prices have stayed the same. This is pretty terrible news when you consider that I am already poor and terrible with money anyway. So now, I am so worried, that I almost didn't make the food I am eating now, because these are my last hash browns and who knows how much they will cost when I go to buy them again! Insanity reigns.

If I could stop worrying about money for 15 minutes (I can't), I would be able to say that things are actually going quite well. I have put medicine back in my body and my body is happy again, the weather is growing warm and mild, and yesterday I even enjoyed the experience of seeing a parade. A parade! I met up with two of my classmates in Harajuku, and we watched the annual St. Paddy's day parade -- and I can't think of more fun I have had at seeing a parade so far. Usually, "parade" evokes a very strong mental image for me -- it is cold outside and early on a sunday morning, I am with a group of other children (cousins and the kids of family friends), and we are standing next to the curb of a road a few blocks from my childhood home. The adults are all standing behind us, drinking irish coffee and making jokes that aren't appropriate for children. Soon, the parade will begin, and we kids will fight the other kids and each other to dig out the most Tootsie Rolls from the dried leaves gathered in the gutter. It will be a point of honor to gather the most candy, and I will snatch a Dum-dum away from one of my sisters' outstretched hands with absolutely no remorse.

Luckily, yesterday's parade was nothing like that. Though the irish coffee might have been nice.

Instead, I was surprised by the professionalism and dedication the parade-planners put out for this most un-Japanese of holidays. There were no floats or anything of that nature, but there were many groups of different people doing traditional Irish dances or playing music (often, the entire group doing such was Japanese), people with Irish purebred dogs brought them out to be showed off, a heavily-tattooed Asian man in a kilt and green mohawk played bagpipes, children threw and caught batons, and several marching bands played. Though perhaps someone should tell the Japanese marching bands that there is not much Irish about the theme to "Star Wars". There was even a section of people representing the Bretons, dressed in a French-y manner of black-and-white stripted shirts and berets, out showing off their Celtic pride. And! The parade leader was dressed like a rainbow-kissed leprechaun, and I believe he was actually Irish. I took approximately 264 pictures of all of this, which I will get up on my Flickr as soon as the next time I remember to do it rolls around.

Sidenote: I like how red wine makes me feel like I'm eating something savory, like cheese, even when I am having it by itself. As I am now, having finished all my eggs and hash browns.

So, that is it for now? I also saw a lot more of the coolness of Harajuku that exists a little farther off from the station -- interesting speciality shops, cute cafes, all the things I think about when I think "big city life". And near the station, I saw the coolest group of dressed-up attention-seekers ever -- a big group of dancing rockabillies, done up to a T with leather pants, poodle skirts, greased-up hair, the works. They danced like crazy, posed for pictures playing air guitar, and were just generally totally awesome. The only part that was a disappointment was that no one went in and joined them, except for one girl who seemed too embarrassed to get into the show once she was out there. They're out every Sunday, so I want to go back and join in one day soon -- maybe I will even wear a skirt that I can shake out while I dance. How many chances like that am I going to get, after all?

Come on!

2008-03-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I woke up at 4pm and stayed awake for the next 12 hours. To make sure that that wouldn't happen again, I set three alarms before I went to sleep -- for 9:30, 10:30, and 11 -- sure that one of them would jolt me from my sleep and allow me to return to the land of the living.

Guess who was wrong! The same person who woke up at 2pm today, that's who. Though I suppose technically it is a small improvement. Maybe today I can stay awake only til 2am, and manage to wake up tomorrow at noon. Fuck!

Holy mother of hell!

2008-03-11T06:25:00.000-07:00

Things that are really terrible = being in withdrawal from Effexor. Things that need to burn in eternal damnation = whoever flagged my meds at customs and refuses to send them to me.

Now I know what all that shaking was about yesterday. Besides the shaking I also have weird headaches that won't go away with painkillers, a very angry gastrointestinal system, and an amount of energy so low it makes normal-me look like a marathoner. Holy god in heaven, someone help me.

Seven and Seven is.

2008-03-09T23:45:00.000-07:00

It is vacation time, and I am at school. I am at school, and freely updating my journal from school, because there is only one other person here but me and it is no longer a big deal that someone see me writing in this thing. So there it is and there we are.
I have sort of done some work today, my first weekday of my spring break, which makes this the most productive spring break of all time, ever (not counting last year's when I had no choice but to finish writing my final paper that had been due the week before). My accomplishments so far may be meager but I plan to feel good about them anyway, because well, how often is it exactly that I am more studious than the average student here? Truth be told I could work my fingers to the bone 8 hours a day for the next two weeks, and when school started again, I would still be woefully behind everyone else. Overachieving fuckers! (Not really).
Part of today's work was an hour of talking with the school's one intern. Since I had never spoken to him before, and had no plan going into the speaking practice of what I should do exactly, the whole experience was completely terrible. It looked and smelled like a bad first date, without the distraction of drinking or food. Once I did manage to get up and leave to get coffee, but I just felt guilty leaving the kid to sit around and wait for me to come back. God though, what was I thinking when I agreed to do this. I didn't realize that the kid would not ask me any direct questions (though I should have realized that), and I probably came across as completely asshattingly rude for asking him direct questions about what he studies and what he wants to do in the future. I suppose it was good speaking practice for me at least due to the fact that all I did was talk for an hour to fill up the silence.
The previous two days, I didn't do too much, and it was pretty great. I went with a friend to see a great and completely creepy exhibit on "Goth" at the local art museum, which I had been meaning to see since it opened 3 months earlier. Some of the art was creepy and terrible, not terrible-bad but terrible emotionally, as I suppose was its intent. Only one of the exhibits was actually just bad (a video installation whose main screen showed a piece of meat frying on an electric fence -- come on people, try harder). And one part, a huge exhibit by the Mexican artist Dr. Lakra, was so great it was obsession-inspiring. Dr. Lakra is a tattoo artist by trade, but also an artist who uses the tattoo style in his work. And man, is it fantastic. Dr. Lakra primarily does tattoo-style drawings over old ads and prints from the 40s and 50s, and the result is by turns creepy, fascinating, and offputting. But the exhibit here showed the products of his 2-month residency in Japan, and they were completely amazing. I wish any of it was on the internet so I could show it to you; it is good enough that I want to go back again before the exhibit ends and take a more serious look at everything. I especially love that Dr. Lakra took old Meiji-era prints, works of art in their own right (and not cheap), and made them his own works. The feel of the erotic-grotesque that's so overt in his work is already present in these old Japanese prints, I would say, so it's really a perfectly conceived match. Even if, or especially because, it pissed off some of the museum curators.
I would like to write more but it appears I am starting to shiver and shake, for what reason I can't figure out. I have eaten today, and had coffee, and I don't think I am cold -- but there it is. The human body is ever a mystery, eh?

Dappin'.

2008-02-27T04:42:00.000-08:00

Right now, I am sitting with saran wrap wrapped around my head, amidst the ruins of my kingdom (i.e., my messy apartment). My hair is supposedly absorbing a new color, called "Maron Gurasse"; what that is in English I have no idea (melon glace?). At any rate, the picture on the box is of a white girl, much like I am, with pretty golden-brown hair. I am hoping I end up in similar straits when I take this saran wrap off my head.
I am also listening to the most recent album by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, after only hearing about great they were for about the last two and a half years. So, Y, if you are reading this, I finally thought about them while I was on a downloading spree, and now they are signing/playing to me as I type! And it only took, you know, forever.
Lately I have remembered that music is fantastic in all its forms, at that has truly made my life more joyous than it had been for awhile. It is very strange how a simple thing like remembering to open my iTunes when I sit down to my computer, rather than listening to weird machine noises/people in the neighborhood, affects my entire well-being. At least, times when I have felt down for awhile are almost always times when I also do not listen to any music.
A great thing indeed that I have been listening to constantly the last few days is Neil Young's "Live from Massey Hall 1971", which is truly a magic recording. I am actually not usually a big fan of live recordings, but this one is so perfect I think I would hate to hear the more 'produced' versions of the songs -- the crowd howling and clapping seems so integral to the music. And really, although I always knew that Neil Young was out there, I never knew how many of his songs ("Ohio", "The Needle and the Damage Done") I had already heard and loved, but not connected to him. So, mister wild Canada man, I owe you an apology, as well as apparently a lifetime of fandom after this week.
Oh crap, time to wash my head! Be right back, blog!

Okay! That's done. Now I need to wait 5 minutes for my eyebrows to become a slightly darker color. Even though it is silly and only lasts for like 2 days, I like the eyebrow-dyeing thing the best -- dramatic! Of course, I also always fear I will somehow dye my entire brow-area and have to go to school/work/into 'society' looking like a damned clown-fool. But that hasn't happened (yet).
So, of course, school is still happening -- I was briefly really diligent about it, but then started slipping again, but may still manage to redeem myself? Time will tell. After next week, we will be on a glorious two-week spring vacation, in which I plan to both work and be lazy in equal amounts. I am planning to go on day trips to museums in Tokyo, maybe go once to an onsen, and sleep several times for 12 hours straight. Maybe some cooking adventures, some apartment cleaning, etc thrown in there. Hopefully at least one karaoke/dancing trip, somehow, with more than one interesting person -- my hopes, they are high.
On my immediate plate, though, is writing a lot of different things: revising a speech, writing a presentation for Friday, finishing a very important grant application I meant to do last weekend, god only knows what else. Reading a story. Studying kanji. Reviewing the textbook work I never bother to do, even though knowing grammar and expressions is very important. Things like all of that. Which I will do, I will. As long as I keep listening to music and feeling happy, I can accomplish these measures, easy!

Optimism is good times, I need to work with this more often. It is a little (very) difficult to be sort of as slipshod with le emotions as I am. This is sort of worse now because I am sort of almost totally out of medication and waiting for more, which isn't yet on its way, due to the fact that I kept forgetting to ever call back to LA and get it sent to me. Which, let's face it, is terrible -- having drugs is very important. And when I have been on them pretty steadily I definitely do feel more consistently not-depressed, even if that isn't the same as happy/capable. It is, at least, a better starting point than what nature gave me, ya know? Every time I forget to take the meds regularly, I re-remember this, whereas when I am taking them smoothly I of course forget that I need them at all. Not my favorite catch-22, I can tell you that.

Now, for real, back to workkk. Except first, I must say, I saw the cutest thing at the subway station today: maybe fifteen or more first-grade girls, wearing private school uniforms and bright yellow hats/backpacks, all running down the stairs to be sure to make the next train. When they made it down to the platform in time, they hugged and told each other earnestly "Yatta! Omedetou!" (We did it! Congratulations!). I laughed out loud, and earned myself an odd look from a 10-year-old boy standing near me. Life!

Kowai, kowai!

2008-02-25T05:22:00.000-08:00

I have a really large list of fears. This can't be surprising to anyone.
Most of them are probably normal for the section of the population I belong to, ie the neurotics and depressives: dying young, dying really old after an unexciting life, organ cancers, brain tumors, being touched by a spider (the bigger, the scarier), my own incapacity to love/be loved, the concept of eternity, nuclear war, all other kinds of war, failing out of grad school, going batshit crazy, turning out to not be smart or creative after all, my parents dying (well, maybe not my stepmom), going blind and/or deaf, paralysis, conversing in Japanese with people I want to like me, bad things happening to my sisters, falling from a high place, rape/assault, being found out as the fraud I am somehow sure I am, and getting fat. Just for starters.

However, for the next 6 months, I am adding one new fear: the huge fear that somehow I will be in
Japan during the American part of Radiohead's world tour, and in America for the Japan leg. Please, please, let this never come true.

According to this link (http://www.radiohead.com/tourdates/), there will be 4 shows at some point or other in California. I will go to all/any of these, even if it is mid-afternoon August in San Diego and the tickets cost $200. And I have to fly there, or something. I will do it.

Queries.

2008-02-19T06:14:00.000-08:00

I remember a few years back, once describing a band's sound as "like the Beach Boys mixed with Jesus and Mary Chain", but for the life of me, I can't remember why or what that band was.
So, we should totally start that band, right?

Also, are you still mad at me, internet? Be honest, I can take it.

Things!

2008-02-14T12:33:00.000-08:00

Yes, things have been happening! I got a job that should start soon, a friend of many years had a baby, I cleaned my entire house, I played freeze tag in Chinatown, and I ate an entire bag of fun-size Kit Kat bars. Life is looking good, except for the part of life that has me awake at 5:30 in the morning writing a movie scene in Japanese. That part, I could probably do without.

Also, there is this! I feel the same way.
http://barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com/

Winter, for real.

2008-02-03T01:16:00.001-08:00

Today it snowed for the second time this winter, and for the first time it stuck to the ground. I am unreasonably cheery about this, because snow is lovely, but also because I haven't had to go outside today for any reason. Tomorrow morning, I think, will be a different story, since I am pretty sure none of my shoes make a good promise of being waterproof. At least I have gloves, which I bought because they looked like candy and only cost $3. Just in case you think it is impossible to find deals here.
Life has been very boring, unless you find homework or drinking wine out of the bottle while watching movies interesting. I am lucky that I have all the "Arrested Development" DVDs with me here, or I think I would be going a little more crazy than normal. Hearing english, as well as my kind of humor, is very comforting. I also highly recommend laughing at people more messed up than you are, even if they are fictional, as a good depression remedy. It is just too bad there are only these 50 episodes to watch...
In other news, since I am one broke-ass bitch, I have finally started to apply for jobs. This is really hard to make myself do, since I am pretty wiped out in general during the weeks from school and going to work after that sounds really, really shitty. But, then again, so does avoiding the school's managerial staff for the next 4 months because I don't have their tution money, or moving to a smaller and crappier apartment to save on my rent. I have been trying very hard to do things like keep the heat down and carry home-made lunches to school, but that is not going to make up an extra month's rent. Also, I would like to say personally to the American Dollar: Fuck you, man. Fuck you.

Some of the jobs leads I have sound great, like proofreading or babysitting. Others are the terrible-sounding grind of English tutoring. the mill that chews up and spits out all this country's available foreign twenty-somethings. Even if I just end up doing that, though, I will be happy enough having a steady income again for the first time in a year and a half, as well as any kind of social interaction beyond what happens in school. But cross your fingers for me that I get one of the two jobs I listed, or both: I really am good with kids, you know.

Haha, yessss.

2008-01-28T15:10:00.000-08:00

Seen on a random livejournal icon:

"Feminazi: Because a woman who doesn't laugh at a sexist joke is about to invade Poland".

Oh lordy.

2008-01-26T07:19:00.000-08:00

I have just watched, for the first time, "The 40-year-old Virign", while simultaneously drinking most of a bottle of 'organic' white wine. And I have to say, the inherent cuteness of this movie is overwhelming.

Also, am I the only one who wanted to cry when Andy started to sell off all his toys? Even though the entire thing is fictional, I hope he kept the "Iron Man" that he got in 2nd grade. And opened it himself.

It reminds me of this quote, from Eliza Skinner's website www.elizaskinner.net (the subject is "What Women Want) :

Surprises. Who doesn’t like surprises? Not like “birthday roast” or “cancer” surprises, obviously, but smaller benign surprises are magical. I have a friend who wistfully told me about how his mother used to surprise him with a new action figure left on his bed from time to time, for no reason other than to make him happy. He told me this 15 years after it happened. Surprises leave a special indelible imprint. Cost - $0 and up

Let's all cry and hug now.

Nihon seikatsu.

2008-01-25T17:53:00.000-08:00

One thing that's pretty nice about living in Japan is, if you speak Japanese to them, the Jehovah's Witnesses here will tell you how happy you make them and leave the whole "religion" thing alone.

Make it work.

2008-01-24T05:33:00.000-08:00

Oh hell, I am back at school. Am I ever.

Leaving Japan was nice, but somehow also uncomfortable. I spent about 10 days at my parents' house in Florida, hanging around and waking uncharacteristically every day at about 8am. I drank about 4 cups of coffee a day and never got much of anything done; went to the beach, sunburned my shins, and gave my feet an ice-bath in the Atlantic. My sisters and I dyed my hair a color that reminds me of cherry Coke (even though, now that I think about it, I am pretty sure cherry Coke in a glass looks the same as the regular stuff). It was long enough, all together, to be a real vacation, and going back to interrupted sleep and the Japanese language has been a little kick to the gut. A little one, really, but still there.

But at the same time being home was wrong. Or wrong-ish. I was unused to how easy it was to communicate, and felt a little weird and indignant at the America-ness of America. Once or twice, I would do something like say "Nanto itte mo..." while I was thinking about a question. Riding back on an airport limo bus from Narita, going along the sparsely-trafficked highways in land that looked just like the Midwest, I felt...like I was as much home there as anywhere else. I think I have forgotten what it's like to be in a place that suits me well.

However, where-ever that place is, I know now that it is not anywhere near a Sam's Club. Have you ever been in one of these abominations? In the middle of all the exercise equipment and giant-screen TVs and 10lbs packages of peanut butter, the one I went to in Florida actually had a teeth-whitening station. Not even like, a small one, either! There were six fucking dentists' chairs there. What the hell, people? Who really thinks that stopping in for a discount teeth whitening, where people of god only knows what certification shine weird beams at your mouth -- a part of body, may I remind you, that is very damned close to your brain? Anyone who gets new luggage, 100 disposable razors, bulk frozen chicken wings, and a dental procedure, all at the same location -- you are officially on my list of People I Hate Irrationally.

I have been thinking about that list for a good part of today, actually -- it should be imaginary, but in fact it is not. I will definitely be putting it up here soon. It takes the burn off of a bad day of scholasticizing, I can tell you that.

Your magic is real.

2007-12-28T08:23:00.000-08:00

1:30am is not the best time to start writing a blog entry, but I have been long remiss in updating here; and, since I have spent the entire day in the apartment doing various lazy things, I have had plenty of time to think today.
First off, school is over, over, OVER, until January 15th. Sweet freedom, she is mine. I took an easy final on the 20th and then went to an advisor meeting and the end of the semester school party on the 21st. I am still in a weird state vis a vis most of the people at school, so finding people to talk at parties etc is a little strange, but I have found that I often end up gravitating towards the kids (playing with trucks > talking to people my age?), and the other people who do the same thing make good company. In particular, I was impressed with one guy who spent most of the party playing with someone else's two year old, even going as far as to sit with the toddler on his lap during our school's violin virtuoso's performance. Toddlers, it turns out, are not so appreciative of classical music, but the image of the wee little child sitting wide-eyed, with the boy-student's skinny body bent around him -- it sticks with me.
Before that was a great deal of sitting around in the apartment with dear visiting friend IK, introducing her to chu-hi while she introduced me to the first season of "Veronica Mars". After the last day of school was more of the same, but added to it numerous day trips to Tokyo (plus one to lovely odd touristy Kamakura). I have now been to quite a few more places in the nearby metropolis than I had before -- I probably doubled my time spent there, if not more, in four days of touristing. It was cold, definitely cold, and sometimes expensive and sometimes painful and sometimes boring. Other times, of course, it was wonderful. Particularly great was one evening when the two of us, plus a friend of mine, ended up in a small grill place in Ueno. Behind a main bar, a plethora of fresh ingredients surrounded a grill made of heated iron tubes, over which two chefs were at their work. Although Japan is usually hell on the vegetarian, we were able to order many delicious vegetables one at a time, eating our fill and drinking hot sake. We were sitting right inside the restaurant next to the door, so every time it opened we'd get another wintery chill before going back to stuffing ourselves on grilled potatoes, eggplant, asparagus, japanese mushrooms. I take back what I've said (out loud, and in my mind) about hating the food here.
I also finally went to Harajuku. I wish I had more time to explore all its weird little by-ways, where it seems a hundred tiny cafes and art galleries and independent clothing shops flourish, just a stone's throw away from the goth kid shop-havens.
And of course, I was in Japan for Christmas. Which was weird. Without family and presents, of course, it felt essentially like any other day, to the point where it is almost as if it hasn't happened yet. I went to a Christmas Eve party, I made a nice dinner on Christmas Day, but I don't yet feel ready to start having holiday traditions of my own while my family does their (our) thing on the other side of the planet.
Luckily, except for the price of the plane ticket, I will be going home for a week and a half after New Year's Day. I feel pretty irresponsible about going home on the one hand, because I can't afford it by any stretch of the imagination. But, at the same time, my sisters are getting older and I don't have the best idea of how they're doing right now. And my mom was going to all try and be brave about not having me home, but I felt guilty anyway. So I hope this makes up for whatever bad-daughter karma I need to counteract.
It seems like sleep is upon me. Lately, I have been having strange dreams, particularly about my(male, scholastic) nemesis, but I suppose interesting dreams help make up for days spent in pyjamas watching video clips from The Office, right?
Right.

Here I go, here I go, here I go again!

2007-12-10T05:44:00.001-08:00

http://youtube.com/watch?v=UKaVBVikysw

Well, let me bring you back to the subjecttttt.

Alone Again Or.

2007-12-03T06:57:00.000-08:00

I am, as of a few hours ago, once again living on my own. As of yet, I have not really ventured over to the other side of the apartment; there are a lot of nice things over there, like a real desk and an extra couch and a place to sleep that isn't also a couch, but they don't quite feel like they belong to me.
Besides that bit of sentimentality, I pretty much ditched out of doing the "goodbye" thing. This morning as I was getting ready for school, I found out that my roommate wouldn't still be in the city when class ended, as I had originally thought. I said I'd be willing to go to Tokyo to meet him for a farewell dinner, but my heart wasn't really in it. Instead, after school, I sent him a text message to see what his progress was, then coughed myself into a sleep (I've been sick the last few days) that lasted past the point where he'd still have his cell phone; since it's a rental, he had to return it once he finally got to the airport. I did get a reply text, and I will probably write some sort of email before I go to sleep tonight, but right now all I really want is to not hear from or about him for awhile. At least a week, and possibly much longer.
The reason for that is, of course, that the random trouble with my classmate dating my roommate came to a head last weekend. On my birthday, even. I should sit you down sometime and recite the parade of crap my last four or five birthdays have been. It was last year's birthday letdown that brought this blog into being, after all.
Birthday number 24, which consequently feels far older than 23, seemed to go fairly well. I had lunch with seven other people, at least four of whom I was not expecting to show up for the event, and afterwards went to study with two of my classmates. I bought special 'birthday' coffee and a new pair of earrings, and although I didn't get a lot of homework done, it was more productivity than I usually manage on a Sunday. Little did I know, however, that while I was off wandering about the city searching for things I could buy for myself, my roommate and the girl were having a pow-wow about my various evils. Which, to be fair, I guess I am sort of evil, some of the time, maybe. I did tell my roommate that there was a good chance this girl was emotionally messy/crazy, after all, and that is not a terribly nice thing to say. In my defense, however, I was totally right: anyone over the age of 15 who thinks that Facebook is a good venue for expressing anger is at least a little cracked.
This whole "Amy-sucks-let's-badmouth-her-together" party had, of course, some negative consequences for me. Now, for instance, I am on tiptoes when walking around school, lest I have some awkward run-in in the bathroom or near the fridge with my 'nemesis'. One of her close friends also seems to not like me anymore, which is too bad, because I thought he was a pretty decent guy. I am also sort of nervous about being badmouthed to more people. I don't exactly know how to run an anti-smear campaign. I feel like I should start bringing homemade snacks to school and leaving them in the kitchenette area, just to be on the safe side.
Another wonderful side to this story is that my roommate didn't tell me himself that he had decided he disliked me. Instead, I heard about it 3rd-hand, via text, something like six days after the fact. I was home at the time after having stayed in sick, and my roommate was sitting at his computer. After I read the text and double-checked by calling the sender, I reacted by starting to throw everything of my roommate's I could reach out of the apartment. This ended up just being his shoes, as they were closest to the door. I threw a shoe, looked to see if my roommate had noticed, then threw another shoe or two. My apartment is on the second floor, and I threw eight shoes, so you think he would have heard or seen something. But, no. Talk about the internet degrading the quality of human relationships.
After the failure of my shoe assault, I yelled at him to get out of my house and never talk to me again, but it turns out that that only works if the person is prone to listening to you when you tell them things. This particular boy is not, so instead he stayed in his seat, and we ended up "talking about it". Nothing really kills the joy of a righteous indignation like having to explain yourself.
In the end, he didn't leave, at least not for three more days (which brings us to today). He also promised to try to fix things between me and my classmate, at least to the point where I don't have to fear getting shanked in the school bathroom. He hasn't done that yet, of course, and the mode was downgraded from a face-to-face meeting to an email he promises to send, but.... At this point, would you expect any better?

If there is one positive outcome out of this whole nonsense, it would have to be that I am finding myself much more drawn to boys who seem both nice and as if they have their shit together, rather than the usual "please fix me" types I seem to gravitate towards. It's about fucking time, right?

Over and over and over, again.

2007-11-30T07:44:00.000-08:00

The girl at school my roommate was dating now dislikes me so much she deleted me as a friend from both myspace AND facebook. This is serious, kids. Don't even think about laughing at something like that.

Explosion!

2007-11-17T19:15:00.000-08:00

A lot of things have happened in the last few days. Most of them have involved a lot of words coming out of my mouth, often angry words, directed at my roommate. In the course of two days, we may have talked for 6 hours or more about the state of our relationship. The end result is that I will soon be living alone again. This is amicable but not simple or necessarily easy, and I do not know what will become of us in the future. I do know that I am ready to be farther away from his life, though. Very ready indeed.
At first in fact I felt incredibly guilty about asking him to leave, even though he had anticipated it. I felt all mawkish, made breakfast and acted nice, even somehow found myself saying that in the future maybe he could move back in. That was pretty foolish of me, because right now, as he is lying in a sleepy heap in his corner of the apartment, back this morning from staying over at my classmate's apartment, I really just want this entire thing over with.

I was deep in a dream and didn't know it.

2007-11-03T06:12:00.000-07:00

Two evenings ago, I got back from my first trip to Kyoto ever, during my school's fall break. At the time, as I was walking around the temples and experiencing the city, I kept thinking of how I would need to portray this all later on in my blog. And yet, now here I am, back at the computer but with my memories of the trip muddled enough that I have no real idea what to say, nor how to make it interesting enough to be actually worth reading.
I will try that, I think, tomorrow, and skip forward now to just talking a bit about what's on my mind.

What is stuck in my head most strongly now is that today seems like a day of realizing adulthood, however little I might feel ready to do so. On the one hand, I am still very specifically me, with all of my childishness and un-togetherness that keeps me from feeling as confident and real as I hope my adult self will be. Yet externally, things are shifting, and I can't get around that.

The first notice of this was that my dear old friend in Kyoto, whose floor I slept on this week, turned 30 yesterday. 30 is kind of an arbitrary signifier and all, and our generation has decided 40 is the new 30 blah blah blah. I am ignoring all that slacker generation bullshit for a moment, because holy god, a close friend of mine is 30. And not a friend who was 28 when I met him, either. When we first became friends, I was 17 and in my first semester of undergrad, nine-eleven had just occurred, there was no war on Iraq, there was no invasion of Afghanistan, and I was not allowed into any bars, ever. When it got cold I wore a big black turtleneck sweater I had had for many years that didn't quite fit and made me look like a beatnik. But I also often got caught in the rain dressed poorly in such outfits as in tights and a denim skirt and foam-soled mary janes, shoes that fit so badly I lost both my pinky toenails that year. I do not think I owned an umbrella or knew where to buy one. Once, I tried to make Rice-a-roni in the mircrowave, then tried to eat the uncooked rice and chicken-flavory broth when my cooking experiment failed. I do not know how I managed to live through that year.
My friend was not in the same straits precisely, as he was 23 and had already had experiences with living on his own for some time. Yet looking back it is also strange to think of him as I knew him then, dressed in vintage sweaters and constantly nervously playing with his lip ring, starting college for the second time and trying to get on the path to adulthood. I wanted to be more like him, have opinions on lots of music, wear v-neck grandpa-style sweaters, drink coffee and beer and all the rest of it. I don't know if I realized it then exactly, but I do remember trying to buy similar sweaters and feeling excited and special when he would pass me filled-out punch cards from the coffee shop he worked at so I could get free drinks. Making a friend at all that year, but especially a cool older friend who made fun of my age but would still hang out with me anyway, was a triumph that probably remained unmatched until I made the next big social step and started dating. And though now I have flown the coop twice, to LA and Japan, and though I can now dress myself and feed myself with a relative amount of ease, I still feel a strong connection to that first year of 'freedom', before I had any idea of what was to come after it.

The second notice of my reality of adulthood is marriage, and how even though there is more distance between me and being married than there is between me and the moon, it is an institution I can not get around encountering. My closest friend here in Yokohama, or perhaps a better way to name her would be my confidant/big sister lady, is totally married. And has been, again, since I was about 17 and wandering around in the rain in brown tights and black shoes. Her husband can't be with her for this year in Japan, so I met him last night for the first time, but I felt a bit as if I already knew him. I had heard bits and pieces about him already, of course, but the real reason was that he has almost the same exact voice as the boyfriend of a close friend back home. While I talked to him, it was hard to not point this fact out, even though I knew it would come across as irrelevant and maybe a little creepy. Yet, there it was, the voice of someone I knew coming out of someone I didn't, and as I listened I felt very far from home indeed.
I think until I was talking to her husband, however, I hadn't fully realized that she was married.
That the whole ridiculous backbreaking anxiety-ridden quest to beat loneliness and find a partner had been over for her. Yet, there it was: this man was her husband and she and he had sat down and decided that they were going to be with each other, faithfully, even while they were still young enough to be out partying and working crappy part-time jobs and hating their parents. I think the biggest surprise in all of this isn't the reality of love or faithfulness, but that people I know and have befriended had the ability to make that kind of decision. That is an Adult Thing, and you cannot get around it.

So here I am. I have become something of an adult, and maybe it did not happen until this year, but I am beginning to feel like it happened. Now is a time when I can stop saying that I might, for instance, abandon grad school and go try some other life, to avoid the weird feeling I get from telling people I am going to be a professor. Because, well, I am. I decided that. Think of how many other things I must have the power to decide as well.

Observation.

2007-10-02T06:23:00.000-07:00

Today on the train, on the way to school, I listened to Belle and Sebastian's "The State I Am In" and got emotional (in the good way). Hours later, still thinking about the song, I came to the conclusion that the song is a subtle remake of Leonard Cohen's "One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong".
It could be, right?

Remiss.

2007-09-30T06:29:00.000-07:00

Ignore me! IGNORE ME!

...Onto other things. This is the first weekend since school really started that Monday hasn't been a national holiday, so at the moment I am trying to slog through my homework on time instead of letting everything slip until the five minutes before class actually starts. I am pretty terrible at this, it seems, since right now it's about 10:30pm and, even though I have been awake nearly 12 hours, and have not today left the apartment, I am still nowhere near done. Then again I am pretty sure the last five years of my higher education have gone exactly like this.

Autumn seems to have finally got its hold on Japan. The last two days have been cool and rainy, which, even though not most people's definition of "good weather", makes me happy after my season-less year in Los Angeles. I've been able to stop turning on the air conditioning (saving me some ￥), and a few nights ago I was leaving the window open while I slept. Even with the occasional truck sounds and loud drunks/loud early risers, nothing beats a cool breeze coming in while you're lying in bed.

I think my lifestyle has started to even out along with the season. As opposed to weekends past, which consisted of spending too much money on karaoke and drinking (and getting emotional, thank you for that beer), this weekend was a great deal more pleasant. Friday night, two guys from school came over to shoot the shit with me and my roommate. We ate peanuts and drank beer and attempted to turn a rug-beater and a trashcan into a giant bubble wand, but only succeeded in using up all my dish soap. Saturday the roommate and I spent a majority of the day in a gigantic electronics store trying to figure out a work-around for his broken laptop, then met up with a friend of mine from the summer for dinner and general hanging-outs. Somehow this hanging out also resulted in all of us going to Uniqlo and indulging in their super, super cheap clothing. Which makes for a pretty good outing actually, all things considered.

And then now, a lazy Sunday. I made french fries in my toaster oven (surprisingly delicious) and made broiled nasu (eggplant) and hiya-yakko for dinner. The roommate went out to get a beer with a friend, then came home and did odd things, such as backwards somersaults, for my amusement. The two of us get on better than I would have expected before he came to live with me, which I think is a significant part of the reason I'm happier in Japan this autumn than I was in the fall. It also makes me feel rather adult, learning how to live with a man.

Now it appears he's fallen asleep in his loft while reading the English language classifieds. Time to turn the lights down.