Things I don't like.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

I thought better of that last one.

Today I have been sick.

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.

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.

1) My bank account.
2) My brain.

Correspondence.

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.

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.

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.