honey on the brain

something i've wanted to say

2012-01-28T09:25:00.000-08:00

Pseudophyseter

All dreams...serve the purpose of prolonging sleep instead of waking up. The dream is the guardian of sleep and not its disturber...Thus the wish to sleep (which the conscious ego is concentrated upon...) must in every case be reckoned as one of the motives for the formation of dreams, and every successful dream is a fulfillment of that wish.

--- Freud, from The Interpretation of Dreams, 4:233-34 as modified by Cathy Caruth in Unclaimed Experience p.98

In Cathy Caruth's dissection of Freud's conclusions on sleep / dreams she necessarily deals with Jacques Lacan's response to this same originating psychoanalytic text; for Lacan speaks further of the human need for sleep and postures that it is not only, as Freud says, a continual wish for unconscious dreaming. For

(t)he question that arises, and which indeed all Freud's previous indications allow us here to reproduce, is -- What is it that wakes the sleeper? Is it not, in the dream, another reality?

--- Lacan, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis, again quoted by Caruth

Lacan diverts our course and instead leads us to ask not why one needs to sleep, nor even why we dream, but rather why must we ever awake? To think of this seriously means to begin to forget any barriers between conscious and unconscious thought. And what becomes of my ethical existence? Which reality more fully demands my allegiance? I might conclude that the body belongs in both hemispheres, that my feeling of my body as a sieve in dreams and as a skeleton in waking hours are both correct, that when I lose my "I" it makes sense that it would make sense to do so.

Is it that the wish for sleep fails if I survive my dreams? I have begun to feel that I might need to take responsibility for my dream-actions, especially if I am to believe that my "I" has a double-existence and that my eyes never really close, the shift of an eyelid giving way to an iris that contains the cosmos. And if I dream because of death, because my understanding of mortality founders in both realities (un-or-otherwise) and sets me to wishing to know utterly my own end and yours too, then I dream only of life - a sort of living death which gives all my existences purpose in the pursuit thereof.

Capreolus Polyceros

Hitler slept, too. He and Nietzsche dreamed and lived their deaths one thousand times over. In many ways I cry at the thought of Shakespeare in medias res, or of Benjamin's somnambulism which lead to his suicide (to lose in a game of one-upsmanship with the threat of premature physical death, when others want your life to stave off their own) or of Orwell (maybe he never slept), Plato's shadows, Galileo's galaxies (and not just the ones in his head).

Hitler slept, too...

avec amour, à partir d'un appartement à Paris

2012-01-27T04:29:00.000-08:00

Claudia of the paris apartment featured me in her most recent blog post, her small tribute to "new and old blog friends."

Super humbling, considering I've followed her for almost as long as I've had this iteration of honey on the brain. Tellement excellent!

And since this is a short, wayward post, I'll include a set of the photographs which Tanya took this last Saturday. "She shoots too," as this model often says.

heard on the G

2012-01-25T10:43:00.000-08:00

1: "Yo I'ma fight 'm, shit, the fuck, nigga yuppie. Fuck."
2: "Shit makes me mad, my nigga. Fuckin' yuppie all the way from Kansas, sittin' real pretty. (imitation 'whitey' voice) Daddy bought you a loft, did he nigger? Yuppie nigga."
1: " Fuckin' yuppie I don't care I binna jail. Shit. Shit makes me real mad son. Tryina say some faggot shit about pockets? Knew he was a faggot all wearin' his yuppie ass jacket and all blond 'n shit."
2: "We'da killed 'm. Sliced 'm up, nigga. Been on the news, oh! Son we be lookin' real fuckin' bad up on the news, (radio announcer voice) 'Two Hispanics killed a white boy today, they found him in pieces!' (audible laughter) We'da killed dat nigga den cut him up, sliced 'm I don't give a fuck."
1: "Killed 'm!" (audible laughter)

Two Hispanic boys, not any older than me. Their response to a young white man who asked that they pick up the soiled napkins they'd tossed under the seat - death threats for boogers.

Caesar

2012-01-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

This past weekend, and the days leading up to it, made for wonderful connections. Megan visited for dinner and conversation and brought a bottle of port and seemed delightfully comfortable here in the railroad apartment, with Nick and myself. I met this woman in a coffee shop as she studied Barthes (for pleasure?) and, sitting next to her, how could I not say something - I felt an urge to interrupt her if only to say that I, too, had been reading Mythologies and bits of S/Z and had she been smitten like I had by "Soap Powders and Detergents" or "Red Wine"? At that moment I'd been decoding two articles about experience and silence for A.B.'s class and, quite pleasantly, Megan expressed her own interest in my reading! I would come to discover her aptitude for both sketchwork and photography and soon love her honesty and calm demeanor; and so I made her and Nick stuffed butternut squash with wild rice, raisins, pumpkin seeds, and agave nectar and the three of us ate as we talked, drank as we laughed. This seems trite but Benjamin says the most important things are the simplest and can only be fully understood as great when one says so just as simply.

And then Tanya D. stopped in for a few hours on Saturday afternoon. One of those muse-meets-ingenue situations which had me buzzing with excitement and gratitude. She's so petite and was adorably dressed, all bundled in cotton and knits, her multiple bags and cases constructing a cocoon about her. She and her Bronica, she and her suggestive brows. But I found her open and attentive and interested in what I said, I of course returning the courtesy tenfold and noticeably smitten (I didn't care a lick about this). Since Nick's a doll he prepared whole wheat chocolate-chip pancakes for the three of us - Adirondack 100% pure maple syrup on top - and we talked about her two dogs and our two cats and what it means to live with trauma and, comically, about swingers and people having children who should never have children. To feel common with someone like her animates me. I live!, I might have thought. She and I live!, I might have added in silence.

She's got this wicked photographic eye (just like Megan, although each possesses her own optics) and took some shots of me, me and Nick, of the light in our bedroom and the zero-light in the living room. We talked all the while. My mind didn't go fuzzy but it seemed foggier, not heavy but light. Maybe unsaturated. Synaesthetic. I was reminded of what I love most about my current life and what I mean to do with it.

----- ----- ----- ----- -----

Between the acting of a dreadful thing

And the first motion, all the interim is

Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream:

The genius and the mortal instruments

Are then in council; and the state of man,

Like to a little kingdom, suffers then

The nature of an insurrection.

Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II Scene I

why?

2012-01-21T15:09:00.000-08:00

zero tolerance

2012-01-18T07:11:00.000-08:00

Here I am again at Maybelle's Café, watching an ugly little boy march around gurgling maw-mee maw-mee in his high end better-than-Ugg-boots. He has one of those startlingly adult faces: full lips, age lines, serious eyebrows. His full head of hair has me forgetting that he's definitely only two or three, only just a toddler.

He and his uninterested mother are gone now.

It's a nice walk from my apartment to this spot, where I feel I've already earned my status as a regular. During the last few weeks of the fall semester I was in here every day working on papers and trying my damnedest not to eavesdrop on conversations happening less than two feet away from me, on both sides of my table and throughout the tiny space of the eating/drinking area. Just the other evening a man, drinking coffee by himself, interrupted a married couple as they talked about something to do with having and raising children, he having none of his own but obviously an expert on the subject. He never once asked them a question. It was all I, I, I. Nicholas wrote me an upside down note on his napkin in the hopes of voicing his frustration with such unchecked me-ism. I could only laugh, and not silently. The bitch in me adores any opportunity to publicly criticize a stranger when they've no reason to expect any such open judgments. You do this, too. If not I suggest you try it. It's comparable to talking about children as if they're deaf and dumb, as if your hand doesn't rest on their head as you tell your friends from Book Club that he or she is insufferable, that you just want to leave him or her behind when you do any number of grown-up errands. These are also not assumptions but facts.

Might I also complain about dishonesty and avoidance? No no, I have no mental space to deal with such behavior, not from my third grade students, not from my "adult" friends, not from anyone including myself. I don't care a lick if said persons are acquaintances or supposed close friends of mine; it is simply that I see no reason to keep such company, to allow any preoccupation with such foolish behavior. Even as I'm writing this I'm grinding my teeth. My poor jaw.

channeling Winona Ryder

2012-01-16T08:27:00.000-08:00

Within the last week we've watched Reality Bites and Girl, Interrupted, the latter viewing having occurred last night and left us sighing in disappointment, myself moreso considering my intimate involvement with Kaysen's original text and the subject matter charging it. One of my three final papers was spent dissecting my own close reading of this memoir. My only purpose it now seems was to identify the voice(s) of madwomen and declare whether or not they can be heard, if they are translatable and how closely their speech resonates as beastly or monstrous. All conclusions led back to the author herself, a feminine body and writing so utterly transformed by the regulatory and violent nature of diagnosis; and I found that if any hard-fast answers were to be had that they were elusive and beyond the scope of this one essay. I would be leaving out more than what I could include. The space allowed for a cataloguing of voices but necessarily blocked a discussion of their timbre, significance beyond the singular event of embodiment and individual use, their weakness or strength in numbers, or what any of this might mean for my own burgeoning theories about eating disorders and women and literature and writing and desire and Benjamin, Foucault, Butler, Beauvoir, Derrida, maybe even Caruth, absolutely Rushdie.

But after all I'm still sitting here thinking of Winona Ryder and just how fucking cute she is when she slouches or when she's in a striped sailor's tee with longsleeves and pink lips all pouty and suggestive. Winona's one of those women born to wear a boy cut and exude a sex that only seems innocent or accessible. I look at her and forget her semi-horrible performances because, well, her lips. Because her lips, because her doe-eyes. Coz. Even when her portrayal of a woman with borderline and suicidal and eating-disordered tendencies falls so short of the mark that I cringe to think how it only perpetuates the long held stock-character that is the frail, unknowing Madwoman - sick, crazy, inconsequential - even then I do not judge her as harshly as I should for misrepresenting me and for not doing something greater, more revolutionary, with that role. I do and I don't.

Maybe I'm just content with knowing that I'll be the one to succeed where she and so many others have foundered.

we are the walrus or something like that

1

2012-01-12T15:08:00.000-08:00

beyond what I call
my lips
exists an art,
one I pursue without direction.
it reminds me of rain or
well,
just rain.
it reminds me of rain and then of snow
and then of the cigarettes
I've never smoked,
all billowy
and white
with grey streaks that
oscillate.

my lips
exist in the space that is this art's
and I might call it
something
if I found a word.

quetzalcoatl

2012-01-09T08:44:00.000-08:00

I guess there isn't any "right" way to reconvene. I haven't even been sitting here for long and already I've worked up anxiety about my words, their order and resonance. A reminder of my own logophilia? Lll lll lll lll. Making love with the sounds.

Upon everything else I've not been nearly as productive as I told myself I'd be - Walter B. remains largely unread, stuffed in my knapsack; our new apartment wants for a plump kitchen stool, reading chairs, rugs, various found items to be used as coathooks and storage; this delayed posting; a lag in written correspondence in the process of being righted; and various written projects for work and school that deserve all my attention but received only a fraction of it. I keep telling myself it's all because my brain won't work right now, it's so fatigued and overfull, and that this extended winter recess makes things seem more easygoing and less timely. My tired mind needs rest. This is my current indulgence.

How am I to deal with all that's happened since the end of the summer, when I locked this journal away? What of my wedding, bodily modifications, my unease and intense happiness? What do I expunge and what do I withhold?

For now I'm comfortable with unanswered questions. Graduate school fosters my curiosity at the cost of the sublime and all that's inexplicable and important. I've not made any New Year's resolutions and won't, but two-thousand-twelve already seems strange -- different in a petrifying way, the best way.

oh no

2011-09-15T06:56:00.000-07:00

Officially placing the blog under "hiatus", even though it was quite obvious without me having to say a damn thing. Thank: graduate school, freelance work, impending tutoring, writing my memoir, and trying to find time to live in-between.

I will be back.

finally

2011-08-22T17:45:00.000-07:00

Everybody takes pictures of themselves, and it really makes sense: vanity is like strong morning coffee, like a compliment from a stranger, like secretive pleasure, good luck. In this particular photo of myself, however, I hope you notice I am not the subject, but only a fixture in my new room in Brooklyn, catty-corner from my Beatles' hologram and the two bikes standing below. From eight this morning until roughly five this afternoon I cleaned cleaned cleaned. Down on my knees, crud under my nails and in my hair, AFOS and Black Sabbath and Simon & Garfunkel whining through the two Bose speakers I have inherited because they are here, my roomate's, and for communal use.

All that's left are some old-timey photos that I'll affix to the walls (I cleaned those too) with sticky-tack. Some I stuck to the fridge with magnets. My favorite: 1977, Daytona Beach, Spring Break, my father at twenty-two and full-bearded and all smiley, looking out from a dollar Polaroid, behind fake, rubbery bars.

Now that I'm here, I fully recognize that it will take a while to acclimate, I mean I arrived on Saturday night at 10:30 PM and the first floor smelled like piss, and all of the ugly, idiotic graffiti (some is beautiful), and I thought to myself, why should I have to accept someone's garbage in the hallway as a part of city life? Maybe the black and rotted banana peels, but the half-eaten sloppy joe? The soiled diapers? Yes, the baby shit and the dog shit and the fast food wrappers. The smell of the trash itself is a dream when compared with the thought of people leaving it for others to vomit over, in the middle of the street or any number of sidewalks, in or out of trashbags.

BUT,
there are so many runners dogs good bars vegan spots things going on. And my man is here, and yesterday I was an extra in a film, and vegan doughnuts too, right around the corner practically. Graduate school starts soon. I am heading to the Upper East Side with my resume in the hopes of landing a part-time gig. There's enough money in my checking account for next month's rent and groceries, and then some. Omar and Burrito love chasing and eating the flies in the apartment.

honey

2011-08-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

darling darling darling, lick lick lick

oversaturation (A ROOM FULL OF BOOKS)

2011-08-04T09:07:00.000-07:00

Our fifth day in Ohio for the in-between waiting and I've only just gotten back to this, although I've thought of it often and have had many things to write.

The U-haul was not big enough for what we had in the Chicago apartment, but it was all we could afford; and the SUV was also deceptively small, so many of our things, my green antique fixture and his white chucks and our blankets, storage bins, that wonky oversized alarm clock and plates, food (all of it, all of it), clothes that we thought okay to abandon immediately. Even that ten-pound free weight, given as a gift from a regular at the bookstore, back when I was a barista and bookseller and sick girl, was left. But not the books, none of those. They went into the boxes first and foremost and usurped a fourth of the space of the five-by-eight trailer and we will not part with them, not with any of the pulp novels either, most especially not Crichton.

In light of this most recent and, for the most part, unplanned purging, we have decided to continue the process, making it our own, making it deliberate. We do not want anything "extra" and of course that is subject to interpretation but what we mean is that we only want to keep what keeps us alive and what we need: clothing (in minimal amounts), food and kitchen accessories, a computer, and books. Books books books, je veux que mon livre me le donner, three-dimensional wallpaper with a thousand smells and fonts to be felt and slept with - mother give me books and I will forsake it all for satanic verses and siren songs and I will leave the skeleton world outside while I am here, locked in, dizzy from the dust on the shelves, my hair growing past the edge of the dais in knots.

Darwin and Gaiman's personal libraries are included. Mmm honey to have visited Charles and to have said, Hello old friend, might I have a look-see in your personal li-bray-ree? And he would lead me into his study, ultra-organized but never stale, and we would both be following his serious face and the thought-wrinkles on his forehead chiseled there by restless, deep study.

BOOKS DVDs LPs CLOTHING DISHWARE

2011-07-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

Boxes swallowed every decorative thing in this apartment.

We have already run out of packaging tape.

The Smiths all day long.

Part of me wishes to discard almost everything, burn my clothing and donate my shoes, give away my compact discs and sunglasses and arrive in the city midway through August with a few shirts and toothpaste and my daddio at my side with his vinyl and acrylics.

Oh honey I dream of University in the fall in the hooded-jacket weather.

good bye Chicago

2011-07-25T07:49:00.001-07:00

Only one more week in this apartment. It seems serendipitous for the hot water to have turned itself off, but last night’s shower was so cold it made me YUCK. The maintenance man will absolutely have to answer his phone today coz both levers bring forth cold liquid and I am uninterested in suffering through bath time.

I am sure the kittens will miss this place more than me and Nick combined; they each have a ’spot’, have gotten in the habit of checking each open window in a sight-seeing pattern that I doubt they ever really forsook, except if a bird perched on one particular sill, which I remember happening only once, and they just sat and stared at the robin for an hour because it did not move and I couldn’t tell if it saw them as well, or even perceived the still forms watching it from behind the pane.

Of course the rent is so-low and each room has multiple windows and it’s a quiet neighborhood, which seems to have been tucked away and neverminded, and I have enjoyed sleeping well without the scream of car horns and trains and teenage no-goods throwing parties in the alley.

And Bleeding Heart Bakery two blocks down the road with their vegan Take-A-Hike scone, cakeballs, cupcakes; the Chicago Diner with its Radical Seitan Reubens, vegan desserts (CARROT CAKE) and also which is where Spex gave me my engagement ring; and Victory ’s Banner, which I suppose we will miss the absolute most, their vegan french toast and wonderful wraps and the cutest little waitress in the whole damn town - we have spent much time and money at this place, almost every Sunday that we could, and we will definitely go this week for one last cup of coffee.

More than anything I just want to be in New York City and meet all the mad, crazy blokes which make the place interesting and perilous. My graduate studies await. I want to be out of the Midwest an’ I wanna have multiple excuses to wear platform pumps and pink lip stain. To live in that city, with my husband (come October), will be rippin’ roarin’ kickin’. Good riddance, Chicago - you were a cheap date but that’s the only compliment I’ll afford.

for PERSPECTIVE

2011-07-22T13:53:00.000-07:00

O K

2011-07-20T05:22:00.000-07:00

I woke up too early this morning. The bedroom seemed too hot, so I laid on the livingroom couch but could not get back to sleep, distracted by the kittens darting across the wood floor, scraping the planks as they galloped from one end of the room to the other. After trying the bedroom once more I resolved to stay awake, if only to prevent myself from feeling defeated by the trapped heat and my waking brain.

If I know anything about myself it is that my disorder seems particularly active in these early-morning hours, first teasing me about my apparent and instant hunger when I 'should not be' eating anything until after eight AM (I have been up since five-fifteen and still have not eaten a thing, although I truly did not want anything and still sort-of don't, I swear), then egging me on to the point of endlessly kneading the skin and 'fat' on my stomach and hips and ass. Even as I type this, I pinch. Moving outward from my belly-button I grab and pull and hope to feel each fatty cell as it sits mockingly atop my abdomen, which is toned but somewhat hidden; another excuse for holding a grudge against myself. And another, for I can feel the hard, flat surface of my hips extending all the way 'round to my lower back, a most beautiful aspect of my physiognomy compromised by soft, malleable skin. None of it should even exist, something gurgles, so you must conclude you are doing something wrong (it says), all of those carbohydrates and treats you afford yourself, grosse vache, chose méprisable.

Do I listen? How can I avoid it? As a necessary aspect of my recovery I must acknowledge every bit of innerspeak regardless of its origin and, if I do not do this, then I could again begin to believe in what my disordered mind spits at me, simply because it is a voice different than my own that I do not trust and therefore so believable in its slander, because of its harshness and tongue thick with bile. But it is because I am able to sit and write and explain to you about my relationship with my own anomalous thoughts (which, might I remind you, have to do with neurons and trauma and absolutely everything else) that I know I have killed a part of myself which crusades against myself, although its propaganda still rings clear as a bell, but it is just ghosts, only specters mournful of their own death because they had wished to murder me instead.

I freely employ such metaphors here because they are sensical in the context of such grand, sublime things. If I did not explain them in such a way, non-disordered people might never grasp the full meaning of my illness, and I would not have as much fun writing about it. Alice says it best:

Presently she began again. "I wonder if I shall fall right through the earth! How funny it'll seem to come out among the people that walk with their heads downwards! The antipathies, I think-" (she was rather glad there was no one listening, this time, as it didn't sound at all the right word) "-but I shall have to ask them what the name of the country is, you know. Please, Ma'am, is this New Zealand? Or Australia?" (and she tried to curtsey as she spoke- fancy, curtseying as you're falling through the air! Do you think you could manage it?) "And what an ignorant little girl she'll think me for asking! No, it'll never do to ask: perhaps I shall see it written up somewhere."

Yes. I prefer to consider my illness as an infinite rabbit-hole leading to everywhere, a fixture in a dream I dream every night that haunts me like white rabbits and red queens during the daytime. Simply put: I am so well that I can make fun of how unwell I used to be - and write fairytales about nasty thoughts, lies, and everything else that might see me sick again.

I am Alice, a decade later.

deffly hellews

2011-07-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

When I first moved to Chicago January of this year, I bundled up all the books I thought I could handle, still leaving several behind. For months I have regretted abandoning Roddy Doyle, Uzodinma Iwaela, numerous anthologies purchased during undergrad, who knows what else. But I purposefully avoided packing the entirety of the Harry Potter series, firstly because seven long, big books would have been horrible to transport and, second, because I still felt partially embarrassed for loving them as much as when I first read The Sorcerer's Stone and wondered what anyone might think seeing them on my shelves alongside Rushdie and Wright.

But fuck such childish vanity! What, with all of this buzz about the last HP film (oh I can not wait to see it, I will cry, and I will not be the only one) I am reminded of why I enjoyed the series in the first place, what made and makes J.K. Rowling an author to be enjoyed and not to be chided for her apparent lack of literary weightiness or over-simple style: that it seems so young and old all at once. Cosmic themes, if we are to talk of universality, are the backdrop for the forever-young Harry, Hermione, and Ron, like love and coming-of-age and that Peter-Pan-Syndrome we all feel, and feel the more intensely the older we grow. As for dragons, warlocks, casting spells, hidden-but-present otherworlds, elves, and separable GOOD and EVIL, I love all of these things because they are part of a dream that I can relive and do whenever I read Rowling's books, and Coleridge's and Tolkien's, the Grimms', even Crichton's and especially Atwood's and Barrie's.

I like them because they will never grow old and I envy their immortality and can always find myself in any of the thousands of hidden corridors at Hogwarts, leaning against a column in my weeks-old robes and eating Botts' chocolate frogs. Of course I release one out of every three.

Suzie Q

2011-07-13T14:49:00.000-07:00

whining,

moaning,

crooning,

jiving,

just thinking of cruising wild-haired, headed out West to Bog knows where, shirtless and unafraid of my naked tanned skin

McGinley

not aware and the least worried of all outer, inner, make-believe things. Too often now my fingers feel tempted to pinch the skin other than their own, down below and around them, to gauge something un-gaugeable (as it figures) and make me frown and fret. I believe in and feel an undiscovered West, still and always, my only honest escape from measurement, from death and well, what else is there to fear?

That beautiful music will be playing. Songs about beasts. To remind me of my native days full of fake Southeastern Indian tattoos and stickers that I would put on my body and letters, sealed-with-a-feather, fake and plastic like the rest. Oh mm it even sounds delicious from way away in the future. Instead of leaving my mind in the past I rather like having it here in front of me so I can play with it and poke at it. I always want to see everything.

I like to play-pretend that the little blond, curly-haired girl in pictures that I used to be is only asleep in the very next room. She, like me, always infatuated with the color of her bloody knees - how that pale white-yellow showed through the brown of the blood!

Only sometimes I remember certain forgotten things, maybe that I never knew I knew. But it always feels good. The past reveals itself in fragments; I see a grasshopper eating a tiger lily and think of a stick bug on white paneling, the wind blows hair in my face and I can see a painting of my grandfather with his Driggs Skylark, a little boy squints at me or because of the sun and my skin is wet and it is night

underwater,
below sea level,
hidden,
never alone.

27

2011-07-09T21:18:00.000-07:00

HEROIC V.2

2011-07-08T15:48:00.000-07:00

Even though I have been crying all day (because I have been crying all day) I will take a photo of myself and post it here.

My eyes are pink and not from lack of sleep. They feel absent, not there, and my eyeballs itch. To have worn make-up today would have been frustrating for the inevitable running of my mascara and smearing of my eyeliner and then it would have been all too obvious and more difficult to hide, my coworkers only guessing at the downturn of my mood and what it meant, and so I left my face naked save the regular metal ornaments, although my septum stayed hidden as well. My morning mind was too full to remember lunch, and I still have not eaten. Nicky drove to get the pizza.

There is wonder in this situation but I struggle to understand why it has to be both bad AND good, why it can not just be one or the other, I would say black and NOT white - but my love of the binary and appreciation for my own resilience would have me relax and rewind and remember why happiness is always defined by gloom, and should be therefore appreciated for its complexity and worth. I want to rage against myself for feeling the remotest sense of contentment but I do not because it means I am adaptable and dynamic and LUMINOUS despite it all.

Even though I have been crying all day (because I have been crying all day) I have found a happy photo of myself and will post it here.

I have been adopted by the Morrs and greatly anticipate taking on their last name, Nicholas' last name, my last name. A mother, father, two sisters, mutt, and husband all my own and I'm all theirs and how about that?

How about that. I have fallen in love with an entire family. I have fallen in love with one man and am loved by him and his as much as Astrophil loved Stella, that sort of love WITHOUT conditions, a trust that is critical but never hesitant, and I am the happiest girl in the world because I give and am given so much affection - l o v e in its most honest form.

This is a love letter to me and Nick and Mama & Papa and Beef and Erin, Sully (my adoptive father) and Uncle Mark, all of my friends, and Burrito and Omar and Jasmine and me. Me.

Me.

a few things

2011-07-03T20:43:00.000-07:00

Macpherson

Christina, Rolling Stone

---------------------------------------------------------------

Vargas

Christina, Rolling Stone

les idiots

2011-07-02T09:27:00.000-07:00

Jimmy the Idiot Boy, Spümcø mascot, also seen on Ren & Stimpy

My second-to-last Saturday at the Chicago office and John, talking at the back of my head, spews on about Star Trek: The Next Generation, Jews in space, and developmentally-disabled aliens. He means very well and (I'm still convinced) would write an unintentionally hilarious online journal, if he so chooses. My coworkers turn up their fat noses whenever he says something clever, dismissing his wit as idiocy, most likely because of their preoccupation with fast food and a narcissism based upon nothing but hard-headed ignorance, laziness, and delusion. In a few words: "I'm cool, you're not, where's my Droid X so I can play 'Angry Birds'?" Saturdays are usually the best, though, since it's just me, John, and only one of the aforementioned infants, so I don't feel as inclined to thought-violence and/or puking.

It should be said that I would prefer my days pencil-pushing to have been mostly humdrum, without incident, because I would always chose to be paid for hours of boredom over hours of smothering, colloquial inanity. Plus, I'm proud for having successfully kept my mouth shut except when directly addressed or offended. Nobody here talks to me anymore save John and Erik and I credit my own unwillingness to entertain the others' hate-mongering to their eventual silence. Sad, though. to witness the extent of their immersion in a fool's paradise. All at once I pity and loathe them; as vulgar as they are inadequate and, therefore, lamentable. Although I gotta admit I find pleasure in the knowledge that my life will flourish while theirs will inevitably fail to be anything but basic dribble.

Am I a bitch for saying so? No and yes. I only submit to the latter because I'm fully aware of the general public's standpoint that opinionated, too-smart-for-their-own-good little girls should be seen and not heard, much less allowed to speak openly about others in unflattering ways --- aware of it, yeah, and simultaneously able to dissect this politically-correct viewpoint as fearful bullshit, nothing more than a weak means to a diplomatic end, an attempt to avoid any constructive, critical discourse. Coz intelligent conversation and debate requires participants to perceive the flaws in their own ideologies, and the type of people of which I speak fear true self-realization more than anything. This attitude begets bigotry. Bigotry begets violence against TRUTH, and that I cannot have.

HEROIC

2011-07-01T08:32:00.000-07:00

My mother never told me nothing.

The forecast says thunderstorms and I still ride my bike to work. Sky's black, black, black says the view from the office windows.

No money in the bank, two new beach towels, and a missing pair of sunglasses.

I've a mind full of Muppets, sand, Spex, peanut-butter, green, thoughts not-yet-recorded, 1970s drug overlords, brogue, DISCOURSE, and New York City. How obvious.

Only hot water in my coffee mug.

Did you know I am in love?

yesterday

2011-06-22T05:49:00.000-07:00

Not one thing about yesterday seemed to flow; every thing stood out as an island of its own volition, all sides waterlogged and inaccessible. Me without the heart to dig a wobbly SOS in the forearms of those lonely beaches, just content (content?) to lay naked on hot sand without anything in my hands. Maybe I dreamed of American psychos.

Whatever they were/it was I might have wished to be away and alone, and did. Many aspects of my current life, including (but not limited to) my job, debt, adult responsibilities, and lack of money, would seek to destroy the order I have so deliberately constructed and sometimes I worry I will be overwhelmed and fall to disorder again. As I admitted before, though, nothing compares to the current bliss that is my life with Nicholas and I am unwilling to concede to any force, whether internal or external, that would threaten this alignment. It just so happens that I am still prone to feeling bad for myself. My human aspect ensures that I fall prey to like personality flaws but I always work to overcome it. Success is slow to come, but definite.

In other words: at the end of the day Spex and Rex hid from a storm in a wine bar a few blocks from their apartment, and half-price drinks made for more than an hour of unwind-down-time. Their evening walk was also successful because they found a neighborhood naughtybits store they never knew existed and, when they went inside, they interrupted a dick symposium and were very satisfied, and the most in love, more than ever.

1928

2011-06-20T18:00:00.000-07:00

A beautiful thing: the slow but definite smothering of disordered thinking. It isn't even that, probably. I would call it super-adaptability. Nick might say it's something's got to do with decay but not in the way you're thinking: in the way that rotted-out tree trunks give way to seedlings. I often think of how miserable I was a little more than a year ago and picture me with my skin falling off, hissing and popping as it slumps into piles on the floor. My hair's falling out and my eyes are glued shut.

Sometimes I do get sad about how poorly I treated my mind and body, and for such an extended period of time. Some people do it for years, decades even; I remember Carol from inpatient, the seventy-something woman who was small of stature, voice, and presence, but so charming, very childlike and needy, but hard-headed and unwilling to ask anyone for help. Don't even remember how many times she said she'd been in rehabilitation centers like Renfrew. But I would look at her and think of how nice she was and wonder why she'd chosen to do this to herself or, more importantly, what had fucked her life up like mine had been. Did I deserve to be ill moreso than she did? This was a completely superficial observation but I remain convinced that she and I were different on an elemental level, she being the victim and I being, well, the culprit-turned-casualty.

Leo DaVinci

Blaming myself won't ever fully cease, I don't suppose, and that's frustrating too, along with feeling gypped of almost three years of life and development and let's not forget the entirety of my undergraduate career, oh I could have been so-much-fucking-cooler by now, much more intelligent and beautiful and level-headed and intriguing. Maybe I'm off on that last bit because my psychosis makes for one rip-roarin' conversation piece. Unintentionally didactic. Horrifying.

Damn mirrors altogether because that is the one thing I could/can/will never hide away from. Averting one's eyes is not enough; fake or real images of anything remain caught between the frontal lobe and frontal bone, reflective although absorbent. Break your medicine cabinet into hundreds of pieces but a face will still be shown in each and every single one of them even if the physical eye cannot catch it. The mind imagines it to be there already, it expects what it will see before its owner's gaze meets the glass. Really mirrors don't tell us anything because our brain is too busy exercising a strict and biased interpretation of the information it is given by the eyes. One reality to another.

Short Cuts, or why a girl can't just cut it and work it

2011-06-20T12:43:00.000-07:00

Long hair will not ever be a fad, but it does seem to be particularly in-fashion as of late. I myself have been letting mine grow since I bzz-bzz buzzed it last October and cannot wait for the day I can braid it once more, wear it atop my head like a miniature top-hat, slick and curl and tie it. But there must be something said for cropped hair-dos; nothing can beat em when they are done well - and that is why I write this post.

Also, please forgive for the lack of certain punctuation, as I may have accidentally frazzled the keyboard when I cleaned it yesterday. No more quotation marks, apostrophes, or deletions for the time being...

So: not everyone is meant to have short hair. This may be an unnecessary statement, since it can be said that everyone is not meant to have every hair style that ever was or is or will be. But I have seen several young women sporting barely-there-hair and, in general, I applaud them for exercising their right to androgyny. But shaving your head is simply not enough; short hair can go into disrepair and look just as horrible as perpetual long-haired bed head. It needs to be washed, brushed, combed, teased, and sometimes (only sometimes) will it do what it wants and appear ready-to-wear.

I have taken the liberty of compiling some photos of girls who pull of the look, all from The Sartorialist, Face Hunter, and Jak + Jil Blog, respectively:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From models to Kate Lanphear to Miranda July to every-day gals, these are some of the best styled crops - varying length, attitude, type, color, and look. I am particularly fond of the first and last photo sets; my most favorite haircut for men AND women happens to be the high and tight and long on top. What do you think?

look, we're dead

2011-06-18T10:18:00.000-07:00

Skeleton Dance, 1929

At dinner the other evening my mother reminded me of my skin's olive tone. We sat, all four of us facing one another, in an atrium-like room at the Ritz-Carlton. She so matter-of-factly made the comment and I found myself suddenly out of the conversation, feeling asleep and only aware of the floating dots behind my eyelids -

- I'm doing worse when days don't end quickly enough. Sleep means anything but relief from exhaustion and seems useful as an escape and I hate that. That time could be easily filled with reading or writing my book or just sitting with Nick at the dining room table (like we did last night) and talking about any-fing, which we both well enjoy, and just thinking of it now my lips purse into a smile. I sit here and spew about the manifold stresses in my life "not getting to me" but they so obviously do. Would you believe that I am realizing this as I type to the interverse?

Reversal: to be UN-dead, decidedly aware and motivated, taking things at a manageable pace without becoming a drooling hippie-sloth uninterested in complex fings, although I've always hated the Rubiks cube.

Also, while I'm not really writing about anything in particular it might be appropriate to plug one of my most favorite bloggers: Rachel Rabbit White. She is unabashed and proudly discusses topics ranging from auto-eroticism to "fat shaming"; and, on an entirely more personal level, I am drawn to her because she suffers from similar neuroses (re: eating disorder, fear of imperfection) and approaches web-logging seriously, and makes a living out of it. Squee, an internet idol worthy of accolades! The point: I am alive and should act like it; Rachel does, and I hope you do.

so forgetful?

2011-06-16T08:57:00.000-07:00

Setting numerous alarms for myself has become a necessity. Why I'm so forgetful, I don't know; I conjecture it has something to do with increased levels of stress regarding finances, moving, graduate school, wedding planning, or maybe nothing at all. Recently I've been late for doctor's and dress-fitting appointments. Just today, my forgetfulness almost got the better of me! I had a phone interview at 10:00 AM with the editor of NYU Today, as I had previously applied for an editorial assistantship via work study. The initial alarm I set for yesterday morning, a full day ahead of the interview itself. In retrospect it was wise of me to set a second reminder for ten minutes before the actual phone call, as I HAD forgotten, regardless of my previous efforts. It makes little sense.

My mother and her two sisters are in Chicago for a miniature shopping visit and, as a result, I've had the privilege of eating at the Ritz-Carlton, shopping Michigan Avenue, and enduring the neurosis that defines the three sisters' relationship amongst themselves and with me. So interesting that age begets clarification, revealing things I may not have wanted to know (but should) and solidifying my status as an individual, a black-sheep, a creep, an adult, a child. They gush about me, asking what they might do to help in the planning of my bridal shower and wedding; they even ask my opinion on dresses and seem interested in hearing about my adventures in veganism and monogamy. There are some things, however, that they can't overlook, and their eyes give them away.

I had even considered tucking my little septum as to avoid any unnecessary tension, but I didn't. That's something significant, coz I never EVER second-guess my own body modification (re: my Self) and hardly ever entertain thoughts of diluting my appearance to "please" someone else, much less a family member. A bit disconcerting. What can I say? I care what my mother and aunts think of me. Not enough to hide in shame because of my own difference, but enough to feel regretful for I-don't-know-what. It's surprising to admit that I still need to work hard at securing my identity for members of my immediate family, who seem to mistrust/revile my evolution to this point, nevermind its intelligibility or significance or level of interest or fuck-all. Are you listening? Here, I sound like a frustrated pre-teen without rhyme or reason for "rebelling", which is what my parents might call my lifestyle - a persistent rebellion against __________.

Nope. I'm smarter and better than that. No matter what anyone does or says, the necessity and utility of studied rebellion can't be retracted or defiled. MY BODY IS A TEMPLE, she says, and means it.

"it"

2011-06-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

Because I love eye candy as much as the next girl. . .and just coz.

Yolandi

Alice

Queen B

Brigitte

Chloe

Dree

Georgia May

Kirsten

Lara

Natalie

Raquel

Rosario

Rose

Shannyn

Milla

I suppose you could say these are my "girls of the moment", although I might persist that they'll be my "forever girls" with eventual and continuing additions. It's a relatively short list when considering the abundance of beauty in this scene but I am glad to say it was not particularly easy compiling the entire list. Some girls (like Chloe and Milla) were no-brainers but the others required a more deliberate approach.

Several friends who read my last post let me know their reaction(s); tickles me to receive such reinforcement and support not only for the upkeep of this e-log but also for my honesty, health, intellect, and status as an evolving woman who might always seem too acutely aware of her own neuroses for her own good. So, onward.

again / enough

2011-06-10T09:29:00.000-07:00

Obsessing over the width and shape of my ribcage. I can see them in the mirror, through my skin, in various types of light whether vibrant or dull, and according to the history of my disorder I would think that'd be enough, but again I trick myself. Thoughts come of their own volition. They say things like "the ribs are there but not visibly enough" or "you have to bend too far to even see them, and why only three or five?" and, well, I have to listen don't I? At the very least I can't ignore them. Accepting these floating suggestions as TRUTH would require an entirely different level of self-loathing and I overcame that shit ages ago but they still exist; perhaps they ruminate at the top of my spine perched like osprey in anticipation of a kill. Only the osprey does not know it hunts itself, it sees itself cowering in the wheatgrass and still lusts for that dive.

In my logical mind there is no question as to whether or not I'm healthy, because I am - this is the most fit I've ever been and also the happiest, mostly because of Nick, and also because of myself and our kittens and graduate school and veganism, and biking, all among several other things, typewriter included. I cherish my life and body as I should. It's just that, sometimes, like today and perhaps a few days running, shit feels heavy again. I look at photos of girls with enviable bodies and supplant my own, pinch the skin which covers my lower stomach and back and hate that it even exists, and remember the repulsion I've so often felt for food. Old photographs provide reasons for the extension of my shame (looking at the same pictures warrants positive reactions when I look at them in a different mood); suddenly I am not active enough. I should laugh at most of this because I know it to be ridiculous, and I often do, but somehow I still regress momentarily, like a child again - underdeveloped and helpless and soft-headed.

I can say everything and nothing about the violence I feel toward my Self and I've been writing about it (sometimes furiously) in the journal Nick gave me, wherein I am writing a framework for my fakie-memoir, only it won't be fake at all and that is why I named it so; it means something. Terrible terrible and important. Aside from everything else I suppose times like these afford more material for my narrative, which I often feel is too difficult to commit to paper, but it is necessary, real, and important, and it helps. Some times I sit cross-legged on the floor in adoration of my illness and simultaneously marvel at my ability to continually overcome it.

the idiosyncrasies of, ah!, oh, love --

2011-05-19T15:57:00.000-07:00

three
days,

alone with Nicholas doing things that people do. We enjoy films very much, it seems; along with bike-riding in the city and food.

I remember I used to dream about having days like these.

And he can bury his nose in a cup of coffee, listening to records, as I sweep the floor looking ragged, but things feel more comfortable than they did a month ago.

Didn't ever believe I'd be strong enough for someone else, either, much less his actual counterpart. Comes down to't, nothing compares. We get rid of shit, stuff disappears, and a void can't be spoken of.

three
days,

alone with Nicholas in our apartment and
out of our apartment, always
in one another's space
and
the better
for it.

aina ambar

2011-05-16T12:51:00.000-07:00

"holy fate"

Just a post of pictures. An ongoing preoccupation with Tolkien and fantasy writing, upheavals of nostalgia, and the desire to bury my nose in The Silmarillion has led to an infrequent re-visitation of some of my favorite Tolkien-inspired paintings.

Gladriel, Bros. Hildebrandt

The Oliphaunt, Inger Edelfeldt

Eowin et le Seigneur des Nazguls, John Howe

Mordor, Pauline Baynes

Ulmo, Roger Garland

It does not surprise me that I'd prefer to live in this world. Beautiful creatures.

ten milligrams

2011-05-04T03:57:00.000-07:00

Her hair is growing. She longs to bunch it up in a tight-loose bun on the very top of her head. At least two more months.

As a child she never cared about it. Pictures of five-year-old-her in mary-janes and natural, abundant curls abound, and she's regretful because her hair's so unlike that now, not the color of corn but the color of mud. There's kink and wave, but no serious curl.

She cuts it because she can and because it is in so many ways thrilling. And although she is not unwise to high fashion and underground aesthetics, the high means so much more. With her approval negative pleasure rules her life in various ways and now that age creeps slowly but methodically in an upward trend more permanent and painful (erotic) modifications are her preference. At night she dreams about New Zealand and Maori tattooing traditions and wonders how long it might take to ink the entire right-side of her ribcage, and whether or not she could stand the free form needle for hours at a time, and how long it might take, because she secretly drools over the idea of prolonged, purposeful wounding.

Glorification of her body.

Physical enlightenment.

see or seem

2011-04-18T15:19:00.000-07:00

Today at work Erik and I were talking about some of our best-loved animators from our youth. Don Bluth, Maurice Sendak, and Hayao Miyazaki were pillars of that conversation, but when it came to thinking about Eyvind Earle, I died just a little.

Dreamland, underwater dreams, a concentrated romance with the natural world. The color seems synthetic at first for its vibrance and distracting variation but it isn't, because that's what the world looks like every time I close my eyes, when I remember what I love most about outside, when I remember times when "the grass felt purple for a while" (I am quoting myself). These colors speak to me because they are real.

TBAWY

2011-04-16T12:41:00.000-07:00

I spent the first part of the morning researching pinball arcades. Just five minutes ago we office-people started talking about Twilight Zone and my mind always goes to that episode where surgery is necessary to correct a blond bombshell's beautiful-in-our-universe face - as the bandages are removed we see flawless cheekbones and long, swanlike neck, small lips. Ugly to her surgeons and nurses, wrinkly-faced Shar Pei People - and yup, it's a binary.

Drinking cocktails at work always brings me a certain pleasure as it makes Saturday feel like everyone says Saturday should feel. People say it should be free, wild, drunken, lazy. The latter two I can do without most of the time but they are welcome on the occasion. As it so happens, my boss is a killer mixologist. An unused cubicle is once a week transformed into a makeshift bar, complete with ice pitcher and pile of basil leaves. I laugh at the intensification of my boss' Chicago accent. Sometimes he'll even refill my glass, all the while making fun of the fact that I once thought the word "lush" meant "unable to handle alcohol", laughing at me. Laughing at me.

The little kalanchoe plant on my desk, the one with the solitary bloom, seems more green than ever, but still without anymore blossoms to speak of. Too far away from sunlight. What can I do about that? Even if I switched its location from one side of my desk to the other it still wouldn't gather more light. It's okay. I'll take it with me when I leave Chicago. New York City might have something better to offer this little green thing. I'm dreaming of a wide windowsill, clean of blinds, white.

Do you know how it feels, to be so satisfied? Because the ghost of the book in your mind has become a fixture on your own shelf.

taupe

2011-04-15T08:56:00.000-07:00

chaos in my mind without the

you'd dig the books

she said as she laid her tongue on the plateau of her wrist, because the taste reminds her of blood in her mouth

she bit her tongue more than once

a left brow that will never be more than partially visible until a year or two from now

ring of rust

how much pleasure can one girl take?

too much

all things considered

2011-03-09T09:28:00.000-08:00

Getting warmer. Printemps seems close but it could never be close enough, I'd rather just skip the rain and windy-jacket-days so I could have a legitimate excuse to buy a few new pairs of jean shorts and wear my only pair of sandals like the good summer child I know I can be. I am very much looking forward to warmer months when my hair will begin to creep past my shoulders and my skin mellows from milk to honey. I enjoy the sporadic appearance of moles. In my mind they're still "beauty marks" and I feel all the more prettier the more I am speckled.

It is odd to think about the blond in my hair slipping like oil to the ends of the strands. My natural brown has all but taken over and only an inch of gold remains. I still dream of parting my hair down the middle.

Omar y Burrito adore perching on the lovechair in the corner of the room, where all the windows are; I have recently been drawing the blinds because they seem endlessly taken with the outside world and I feel somewhat remorseful that (unless they run away) they will never know what it's like have mud lodged between their fingery paws. I think I'd even let them eat some grass if they'd stay near to me. We don't have the heart to make them wear collars so I'm damn sure that we would never put them on a leash - I have only seen a few cats on leashes in my time but that was quite enough.

Nick and I always talk about Omar's athleticism and how he's going to be a dog-sized cat (one of the small ones of course, probably like a corgi but not as fat and stubby) and Burrito will remain forever kitten-sized, although her hair will get longer, especially around her cheeks, like a little lion's mane. She has some white on her stomach and armpits. Such a little sweetheart.

The nature of this post has quickly deteriorated into distracted musing so I will end it here.

inches

2011-03-07T04:28:00.000-08:00

Nick's asleep. It's just the kittens and me. Two bikes, larger-than-life-sized speakers, and several pairs of ruddy shoes also occupy this space, along with other things; but I feel distinctly alone.

The usual things don't seem to comfort me - not Baz Luhrman, not peanut butter, not even hints of morning sunshine (because it never shows itself these days) - and I'm left with ugly thoughts that have no root but also no reason to leave the confines of my skull.

Even as I type this all those destructive ruminations about skin and food and singularity hum hum hum, there's a leak in my left ear, my teeth part against their will, even my nostrils ooze. Metaphor hardly serves its purpose when the poet herself doubts its transcendence.

Seven minutes until half past the current hour and I will soon be leaving for a morning run, a cosmic blessing that comes before work, before the chaos of wakeful hours. It will be cold, I'm sure. I haven't checked the weather but I know two layers is not enough.

You know what? I am glad for this online journal. I am also glad for my husband-to-be and his honesty and love for me, and mine for him; and our life together. Something should be said about honeybees (Queen of the Sun), groceries, and graduate school as well, all of these things that have fallen by the wayside as I have continued to neglect this weblog but will not do so any longer.

I am finally awake.

vanishéd

2011-01-31T20:28:00.000-08:00

Still can't get enough of Crystal Castles. I'm going through a thing right now. I'd include M83, Cut Copy, and Delphic in this grouping as well. Thank you Robert Smith and Morrissey and Ian Curtis and Jarvis Cocker and

- snow rains down parallel lines intersecting and t-boning as FHB hums about an entire world that is a garden that is ours, naked branches beg you to cut them to the wick. Street lamp outside the window undulating light as a theremin played by an unsteady hand.

The skin still gets kneaded, the girl massages palmfuls of flesh and muscle; she hopes to create like the sculptors do but only disrupts her pre-existing frame. Little girls don't even care to match socks and she, the forever-child, wants so badly to straighten her skin as if it were out of order.

A long, paused blink, oh, the color seeps from her plane of sight as the eyes in her head pretend to find figures in the veins of her eyelids. The body won't let the mind forget.

Times like these she really badly wants her headphones, her broken headphones, the ones that find her wherever the music says she is, the broken ones. Listening to a song without them, the sound is lost on the air, the dust she can't even see fucking absorbs it so selfishly, those notes are for her eardrums only, far from the noise spewed by the furnace that's missing some screws and hasn't been dusted since the Industrial Age. That's the sort of noise blamed by kings for the collapse of their empires.

Who do you blame?

guerillaz

2011-01-25T19:25:00.000-08:00

Feeling so silly because I do not know where the trash receptacles for my apartment building are located. Stood in the middle of the backyard holding a fat trash bag. Only light was comin' from the street lamps and that's the mustard yellow kind; it's the burnt sepia kind.

Had I been successful at getting rid of the trash and recycling the recyclables (I decided not even to attempt to find those bins) I might have felt extremely accomplished, for I'd just cleaned the dishes and stovetop and resolved to rid the kitchen of those ugly bags sitting against the one bare wall closest the mud room. But it's already a quarter past nine and Nicholas should be returning from class within the hour. Not being able to stay up late enough to see him for more than an hour in the evenings frustrates the shit out of me, but I suppose that, since I've recently left my hostessing position at the sushi joint, I'll have completely free weekends (for now). Nothing to be gained from overworking oneself. "My life isn't goin'a be about work, dad - I refuse."

See, here it is - that heaviness settles on my eyelids and sleep sounds enticing in the very least. I'm typing this with one lid slightly cracked, my vision altered by spider-leggy lashes drooping lazily into my lane of sight.

Can't even stay awake to write a substantial post. And here I'd started out thinking that I might just be able to eke out something worthwhile in the halfhour before Nic's return - - yawn.

fembot

2011-01-21T16:43:00.000-08:00

||| you don't deserve to know you have no right to experience any sort of emotion much less as it relates to my own elation my own fucking joy, unbridled as it is and clean. something you know nothing about. you may have touched it before, perhaps you even felt like you came close to knowing what it means to be TRUE but you were wrong - kept in a self-made fog of your own delusions. you are the mother from "long day's journey into night" and you should not take that as a compliment. she was a drunk, remember? a liar ex-and-internally and terminally ill because of it going crazy because of it mindless because of it. but it's different too. it's different because i refuse to tip-toe around your madness as i have before in fear of losing you but what's to lose, what's to lose, nothing. nothing. it's strange innit? how humans are capable of CONVINCING themselves of a need when needs are instinctual, wants being related but owing so much more to sentience than to biology. s'one of those things where i used to need you (i developed a reliance upon you) and then when you left (some might call it "showin' your true colors") and then was bereft and then i played that whole convincing game that i just talked about but me then, me now. then-me and now-me could not be any more disparate so basically what i am saying: you will never ever know. |||

I'm not even going to ask for your pardon for what you've just read. These are past grievances which have absolutely nothing to do with my current state of bliss. Current, full-to-bursting, symbiotic. Nothing can take this away from me.

Nicholas is away working in the theatre and I'm listening to The Cardigans' "Erase/Rewind", quite seriously freezing in the corner office. All day I've thought about poppies and skeletons and anything having to do with marriage and my love for/of/in/with (fuck prepositions, they never did no good anyway) him and I'm physically tired, but not mentally or emotionally so. To think of October 15th means to forsake any other present worry.

Seafoam, white, black,
long-stem callas,
finger curls and Slavic Soul Party.

Damn, I must be the luckiest gal in the woild.

for You only

2011-01-19T03:56:00.000-08:00

Jacqueline is getting married in the fall.

Just like Eisley said it would be, her heart was caught in a landslide and now it feels
for You only
for You only

Impossible to dissect the feelings I'm having. There are your age-old ideas of romance and wedded bliss, but then there comes the singularity of this here relationship. Nicholas is surely one-of-a-kind and not in a kitschy, cheeseball sort of way but legitimately I have never ever encountered anyone the likes of him before in my twenty-three years of living. Quite a feat. And there's also much to be said about his intellect, his look and his sense of humor. Explanations that subvert language - therefore, none shall be included in this blog post. All that's important for you (the outsider-looking-inside...r) to know: he is an individual. To the death, he's an individual.

What about what I'm thinking of? All of those things my mother never told me about, like the electric joy of planning a wedding and what it means to be love-full; or how about choosing the colors. Did she know how tickled I'd become? That deciding upon seafoam green would make my week seem so elevated as to imitate "heaven"? Even just thinking about the style of my hair and how my bridesmaids will look lining the space behind my Nicholas - soft symmetry - even if they are stubborn and remain hidden the tears I will cry seem as palpable as jets from the showerhead this morning.

I am in love, and I am going to be married - October -- Brooklyn -- Lost Generation -- AMOUR.

wanna be your dog

2011-01-12T05:20:00.001-08:00

Almost a week in Chicago and the only complaint I've got is that the powers-that-be should somehow (with their science) add more hours to a single day. Reminds me of that one episode of Doug, where every day became Saturday. This is not what I want - just, perhaps, a 36-hr day. 28?

This will be my 3rd day of work at Flower Petal. Our office is on the 15th floor of a swank building downtown, literally moments from the lakeshore. From the time that the subway spits me out until the moment I reach 200 S Wacker's spinning glass doors I cannot seem to do anything but look upward and smile. Other people on the street must think me a child, or perhaps a lush - although I highly doubt such accusations would arise at 8:45 in the morning (but, then again, this IS Chicago, which really doesn't mean shit when it comes to making generalizations about drunks). People-watching on the buses and trains incites metaphorical hard-ons and I'm unsure if I'll ever tire of those millisecond glances with strangers, the ones where eyes meet like lonely magnets and divert themselves out of ________ (fear, curiosity, attraction, embarrassment, disgust). I won't, I won't.

But the job's a real humdinger, brilliantly structured as it is fun, and I might as well take on the pseudonym "Lady Luck" for having landed this position. Great things will come of it, I am convinced; and I owe it very much to a certain professor(FRIEND) who makes his life on the extended banks of the Ohio River, obsessing over Shakespeare and "O" and King Hrolf Kraki and the surrounding bloodshed, hot and limitless.

And what about the apartment, the other job, the neighborhood, the society, the boyfriend? My overall demeanor would indicate that "all's well", and it is; and I'm sure that you understand the jones I have for my living situation is genuine and surely not unfounded. It was only necessary for me to mention the majority of these things, mainly because it's standard procedure when writing about a new home. But the final item to be considered (the boyfriend) subverts all other considerations and launches to the head of Jacqueline's Importances. He's got dusty blue eyes and light brown hair to match, an effortless bigness which precedes his physical self before he enters a room, and again I am reminded of what it means to be in luck, a girl whose life has been embellished to the point of becoming haute couture. If my life were any one piece of clothing I own, it'd have to be the olive tweed Ralph Lauren riding jacket with the brass buttons. He'd be the lining, the buttonholes and the neckline.

He'd be
the thread
and
the cuffs.

everything's new

2010-12-29T04:18:00.000-08:00

Impossible to describe what it feels like to be someone's girl; stuck in place, surrounded by thick circumstance, reluctant to resign from the singularity of it all. Without thinking twice (without thinking, without needing to think any more, simply without) the question slipped ("am I ever gonna be your girl?") and it was not difficult to tell that we had both been wanting an answer to this. How should one account for the abundance or lack of time when making such important decisions? Feeling so strongly in one direction does not always bode well, but here deliberate thought preceded instinct - and admittedly worked hand-in-hand. It is wonderful to know and to feel all at once, especially when all considerations in one's personal orbit seem to align in a geometric fashion. Not that this indicates any sort of monotony or strict organization of reality; more like it calls upon the brilliance of fractals, their complexity and subsequent beauty, mystery. Something at which one stares but feels no need of dissecting. "It is what it is," I might say. Undeniable and correct, according to the both of us. It feels great to supplant logic with true emotion.

ebg, revisited

2010-12-25T08:29:00.000-08:00

A voodoo doll hangs from my neck. Throngs of booted musicians stomp around to the tape playing back in my mind. A headache the dullness of snow calls the thumb and forefinger of my left hand to the crest of my brow, kneading and rubbing until the skin turns pink. There's Johnny Depp in the background singing "don't be discouraged" - the pain behind my eyes spikes. Eyes closed. Right lid half-cracked. I don't need to see to type.

This morning my mother cried as she read my holiday letter, out loud, and then that warmth seemed to envelop my eyes as well. I had mentioned something about this being my final Xmas at home and she could not bear to read it. It was almost as if I was five again and mom was becoming emotional as she hung her own dead mother's ornaments on the tree. A beautiful thing carrying with it pain heavier than a hundred anvils. And all at once I felt compelled to say something about the insignificance of it all and I wanted this lie to be realized so badly that I put the idea out of mind as quickly as I had conceived of it. Any bitterness rotting in the pit of my chest struggles to be fully realized; there are softer emotions there and my inevitable duality nurtures indiscriminately. This furthers my belief that love and hatred are (essentially) the same concept, just manifested in distinct ways. I would not even suppose that it is correct to assign negative or positive connotations to either - it might be more appropriate to say that both indicate affection which, obviously, translates uniquely for you, for me. To say "I hate and love _____" might be more truthful than to simply give in to choosing one or the other. Both are compliments.

Apathy persists as the one true means for the realization of an archetypal Utopia.

Give me passion or give me death.

2010-11-25T07:46:00.000-08:00

Today's the day I need to be most thankful. That, or I just need to remind myself of the things I should be thankful for. Not that I'm an ungrateful little punk (although I am punkish), but I prefer to foster inward thankfulness. Coming out and saying it seems trite, and I'm sure millions have said it that way before. It's flat-out unnecessary. You should be able to look upon me and understand my appreciation from the very way my face lights upon a variety of subjects. My demeanor gives away my indebtedness. And anyway, who am I thanking? The cosmos? The peanut-butter manufacturer hundreds of miles away with greasy hands and hair forever the scent of peanut oil? I know I'm thanking someone, but perhaps it's not a "what" but a "who" or perhaps maybe even a "thing" or an "it" and I'd rather it be something rather than someone. Consider any number of my sarcastic remarks as proverbial thank-you notes not for the dim-witted.

In reality, when most people say "I am thankful for" I do believe they mean "I am really glad I have" or "I like". Not that there's anything wrong with it. I suppose I shall forever be jaded of any nationally-recognized holidays, especially those which purport historically-incorrect renditions of the interactions between native Americans and pilgrims. Nope, they didn't look like Precious Moments figurines. That twinkle in their eye was most likely the spark of a larcenist's fire, not some star come down from heaven to reside in some blonde-haired religious zealot's eye. Since "peace" is a social construct I might also suggest that kindergarten teachers post illustrations of anatomically-correct Sioux lamenting the systematic destruction of their land (the only "real" Americans feeling a sense of loss concerning American soil which they respected not as a possession to call their own, but as an unlimited resource which deserved their unquestioned homage).

Why the hell am I writing about this? This entry was supposed to be about more important things, like the end of student teaching and impending move to Chicago. I suppose my own discontent bubbles over without me realizing it sometimes. Truthfully I'd always rather talk about literature and queer theory, debauchery and education and destruction. All of this leads to new life, of course.

Rap, Rap, Rapping on My Door

2010-11-18T03:21:00.000-08:00

My dreams were full to bursting. Not one detail forgettable. Dan was there, in all his scare-haired glory, singing songs and smiling foolishly at me with every passing glance. His flannel and his Adidas sneaks. His faded blue jeans. Jen's voice hung in the air like DeBussy on a humid summer afternoon; the notes of her song landed on my head and did the waltz. Swooping, swaying. And no sad thought crossed my mind as I sought each of them out in this crowd of knaves drunk on anything but alcohol. As I sat on the couch observing them it never occurred that anything "mal" or "ill" or "sick" could ever ever happen and I perished the thought if it even made itself known (which it did not) and, sitting there, sinking lazily into the tweed cushions, I just returned their smiles and thought about the games we'd play that evening.

Kiss.

But then I remember seeking Danny out because he became lost; and whether or not it was purposeful I did not want to tell. None of it made sense. I could not assign his secretive behavior to anything but childlike distraction so I looked for him under the sink and behind the shower curtain. Between stacks of laundered towels and half-open bedroom doors I caught glances of him, smiling and running around, a whirling dervish who seemed to have forgotten his God-given purpose and just kept on spinning, spinning, spinning. From time to time he'd pause, come to me, and our foreheads would touch (heavily) and I'd ruffle his electrified locks as I asked him what he thought he was doing, and all he could do was smile. And all I could do was smile back.

We were in some sort of house. Well, obviously - but it wasn't a plain-old ranch style place, but more of a three-story, skinny, Victorian architecture with creaking planks on wall and floor. And we were not the only ones there, and everyone sported a costume, mostly animal-inspired, mostly handmade. I thought of The Wild Things and what Sendak might have thought had he been lounging in the battered navy-blue leather armchair tucked away in the corner of the family room. "A rumpus," he might have murmured to himself. But all he'd see would have been me and Dan and Jen and everyone else romping around the crooked house, speaking in languages of our own - just a group of children (some of us best friends) acting out the film reels of our secondary imaginations. He'd have loved it as much as I did.

(For Danny and Jenny, whom I love immensely much)

My Hand's Over My Mouth

2010-11-13T07:51:00.000-08:00

It's so damn hard to keep my mouth shut when it feels as though my tongue might bore a hole through the roof of my mouth. Silence is needless. When I think of someone being unable to just come out and say what they want when they want how they want I smile, but in an accusatory way, in a way which indicates an immediately identifiable and wrecked disgust. My capacity for loathing humbles me. I am the sharpened edges of a double-edged sword.

Darkness - darkness,darkness - set beside deep red lips masking a mouth humid with lust. To view the mouth as anything other than a completely beautiful and dangerous entity would be to deny its very necessity. With lips I kiss and condemn. They mark territory and betray me. But to run my fingers across mine own, to lick the chapped surface and taste them, ironlike and soft, affords a familiarity the likes of running my two hands along the peak of my hipbone and along my spinal chord.

Hooded Sweatshirt; Pouty Lips

2010-11-12T02:57:00.000-08:00

About time I devoted another post to the "lighter" side of my sensibilities. Some of the items categorized in this well-lit cabinet of my memory warehouse: guilty pleasures, peanut butter, gangsta rap, boys, live music. Of course I leave the door to this section forever unlocked and no dust will ever settle on the sill of this room's window for I'm always in there stirring the air, an unwelcome guest in my own Memory Storage Facility. "Unwelcome" because of my own studied criticism, a proclivity toward destruction of the self. But, as I and a dear friend have recently decided, I'm completely a SUB and possess a keen understanding of living life as a BASE individual (or creature, however you will), a girl who more closely resembles an Harpie but only in wit, not in looks, nor in demeanor. Not even necessarily in wit. What is it, then? Perhaps I should just come out and say it: proud to be Hyde, gladly subverting Jekyll.

So there's my explanation. For what? Several things. For this post in particular I was meaning to preface my entry with somewhat of a disclaimer, but it obviously turned into a showcase of my very own wanderlust of mind. Rambling in lieu of exposition. Lucky for me I've got infinite space to fill with all of my meandering thoughts and also that I've not got the decency to censor or try to calm them.

Asymmetry, how delicious. "I am anti-symmetric - I hate it." The "it" being symmetry, of course. Do not take this as me denying the fact of my "OCD tendencies" but, instead, take it as a clarification of what true organization means: visu-gasm. To see the post-its on my desk at school all huddled into one corner, stacked on top of one another with gross precision; and to alternate vertically and horizontally stacking handouts so as to prevent the inevitability of my losing something I'll need the very next period - satisfactory. My methods, however queer, temper those same self-criticisms mentioned up there.

Want to know something funny? I began this post with the intention of writing about daydream-visions of men (all you have to do is refer to this entry's lusty title). What happened? I'm sure you have an answer for me.

Mortar

2010-11-08T12:38:00.000-08:00

Save you from you

the details of this exposition have been purposefully marred

and the thought of color causes her to wince and she ties a bandanna snug against the part of her face where the nose gives way to the eye socket

chipped polish

and Reason precedes nothing, demystifies nothing.

So as you're sitting there swimming in your sweatpants and contemplating your personal war I'd like to remind you of what it means to be totally mine and for me to be irrevocably yours. I operate under a no-refund-after-purchase policy.

Explanations are for children

and egoists.

It's The Lord of the Flies All Over Again

2010-11-06T03:31:00.000-07:00

I do not NEED anyone.

There's this hostility fizzing and popping just below the crest of my collarbone and, and it, well it simply burns. I crack my knuckles to keep my hands busy. Wring my wrists until the veins which creep across the birdlike bones puff up like engorged leeches. Leave them swollen, watch the pulse slowly fade until - stiff as stone. The only music I want to play is Joy Division and Fabulous Muscles and maybe a little bit of Fleetwood, but really only hypothetically, really only if I did not feel so violent.

In the midst of this turbulent state I remind myself of the quickly-approaching move to Chicago and it seems not-as-bad, almost bearable that I have to be where I am for only a few months more, but it just doesn't cut it, no it doesn't even come close and so "Priest Poet and the Pig" and cusses, cusses cusses cusses. No less than seething as I bite down hard, bruising my own bottom lip, and fully aware of it too.

"fall into a spell way deeper than hell"

I claw at my own skin; I knead my own back. I am exacting in my punishment and can only guess that the object(s) of my negativity should receive the same. It has, for a good while now, been my opinion that I am simply prone to emotions of the highest intensity, almost ultra-violet in the midst of their fat blooms (behind my eyes), and that few others share this propensity toward the sharpest end of the spectrum of sentient existence - of of of to the and or, including but not excluding and mutually-destructive points of dying energy zipping back and forth in attempts to delay their own demise like water molecules resistant to steam, frightened by applied heat, running headlong into walls of surgical steel.

"iss okay iss okay iss okay iss okay iss okay iss okay (you can run n tell yr friends that I'm on)"

If you're not "uptown" then don't go "uptown"; the same applies to those individuals who believe it is permissible to be so god-damned absorbed with their SELVES that those other selves they encounter become secondary, of lesser import - if you're not "tolerable" then don't pretend to be "tolerable" in your own gross and overcompensatory state of unbridled self love. Simply throw-away. Nothing worthwhile.

It is still dark outside and I am all the happier because of it.

There's Something

2010-10-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

Phone calls, voice mail, picture messages from picture phones. I'll only send what you'll acknowledge, what you'll revisit. But really a physical letter needs to be written and I'll seal the envelope with an authentic Eastern Plains Native American sticker.

"All you do is hope. You're all fucking hopeless."

What does it mean to be bereft? I often associate this feeling with any time during the darkest hours of the evening, before midnight, when I'm alone in a bed stripped of its sheets with a solitary pillow and books standing guard, an open window with dust in the sill. Mine are the only two hands that grip the space between hipbone and rib. Caress and apply pressure. Wring the skin.

Passage of time does nothing to temper the body's withdrawal in absence of his ( - his) caress and the fingerprints seem to have left scars as if from cigarette burns. I swear I smell of ash. I am not unclean, but I am marked; an internal brand alters the very structure of my frame, and my heart throbs in staccato gasps as my lungs expand and deflate to fill and empty a chest cavity warped by some selfish lover's grip. But I find pleasure in this metamorphosis. I understand and feel its significance.

Perhaps I am too aware. I am too aware, no question. My eyes change from hazel to swamplike as day-and-night dreaming clouds the dome behind them. Self-manufactured fog.

Bird's the Word

2010-09-27T02:45:00.000-07:00

Especially tired this morning. Do not want to get in the shower at 6, do not want to straighten my hair. No mascara or Ralph. The bed's comfortable and the sheets are warm.

One more yawn and my head falls nearer the mattress.

Dogged

2010-09-25T06:01:00.000-07:00

Florence is right when she says that dog days are over and it pains the fuck out of this (still little) girl who's got metal on her face and science fiction daydreams in her head. She acts irresponsible and tries to cover her movements. Like tracking mud through untouched snow. So easily caught so very soon and all that's left for her to do: cry cry rip at the wall and beat up the figure in the mirror til all that's left are shards and exposed bones, porcelain in the morning light, blood-proof.

All that "love and longing" that I'm supposed to "leave behind", well, what do I do when that's all that's left? Even just the memory, just the thought of how it happened when it happened and how I felt when I felt so fucking close to him or him or her and then there's that "longing" and there's that "love" - chilled. It's not the same when I run my own hand over my own face. His fingers, not these.

Oh, it was only me.

Deerskin

2010-09-24T03:40:00.000-07:00

Right hand covers right eye as I'm dressed all in black, half-exposed skin dissected with silk and black deerskin leather.

I write with my eyes closed.

Over the hills, Far Away, there's a person and a place that speaks to me in a language I forgot years ago, although my brain whimpers in foreign dialects and I swear it murmurs something about I-don't-know-what and my hip radius - all circumventing time and place, reminding me of limitations as I roll my blanketed skull back and forth against the pillows of this couch. One minute gives way to three more, my father's clocks tracking the passage with voices the power of John Henry's rail-bending blows and, both lids shut, I swear my eyeballs tumble to the back of my neck and become lost like marbles swallowed up by some gutter in New York City.

The strangeness of feeling too tired to do something but wanting and having to do it interrupts nodding off with excellent precision (not accuracy) but I want I want want sleep so badly.

I indulge in REM.

No-Thing

2010-09-23T02:38:00.000-07:00

Nothing I can say to make up for my extended leave of absence from this. How many times must I remind myself that this online journal is actually important to me? That it has been a constant venue for emotional upheaval and intellectual stability? Nothing I say seems to lessen my disdain for the fact of my not having written in here for such extended periods of time. Even though I disparage the thought of starting my most recent entry with a treatise concerning my laziness and apparent 'lack of interest' in blogging on a regular basis, it has to be done; because I know that whoever reads this journal (besides the author herself, who has read and understood these words before they ever reach the backlit screen) might wonder what happens in the in-between. With a history of destructive and unhealthy behavior such as mine, I feel particularly indebted to myself and everyone-else in the way of affirming my quality of life (both metaphorical and actual). Enough.

5:24 on a Thursday morning and the cat stares motionless at my tired, waxy face. She purrs. I've come to the conclusion that she feels most neglected in the morningtime, after sleep gives pause to her masters' waking hours and she feels so alone that the notion of having to bear one more lightless minute incites a worry in her.

What about my current state? By 'state' I mean 'mood' or 'composure' or whatever you want to call it and I mean to be honest and straightforward and without fluff when I say that I am dazed and I am confused and I am resolute all at once. Concurrently I desire and dread the same object (or concept or person) and my obsession with binaries renders useless any sensible-thinking part of my brain. Who needs sensibility when escapism boasts all the metaphorical hard-ons and bottomless cubby-holes for hiding and discovery? Distinguishing between 'reality' and 'illusion' sometimes seems too arbitrary to me, but these moments are always fleeting and are violently interrupted by the realist / the humanist in me. Seek out complexity. Bury your head in the sand and see how long you last before your lungs tire of sand for air.

Writing in Cursive

2010-09-02T00:16:00.000-07:00

S'been a while. Can't give a real reason for the hiatus. It might have something to do with the beginning of student teaching (starts this Friday); or, perhaps it's all of these jumbled thoughts concerning ownership of my physical and intellectual form.

More to come. I'm at Joey's house.

Votre

2010-08-11T08:02:00.000-07:00

I have these two moles on the right side of my face that I love. It's doubtful whether anyone else has ever spotted them, but they're stand-outs to me (one below the right corner of my lip; the other at the base of my jaw, below my right ear). One of those things that go unnoticed. Sometimes I think of how nice it would be to meet someone who finds these marks without direction and then proceeds to ask whether or not I've ever realized I have them. "You've got these moles," he might say. "Did you know that? There are two of'em, along the curve of your jaw. Like a constellation."

The past few days have been particularly non-mentionable. Most of the time I feel lazy and unaccomplished, not to mention barren and alone. Some recent decisions haunt me, a thick fog which hovers at the edge of my bed. Desires fluctuate so rapidly that I can no longer tell what it is that I want. A clean-and-simple battle of body versus mind / instinct versus intellect and my bias dips into both of these opposing pools of thought. Regret, an idea most usually amorphous and undefinable, bursts through the clouded room and I come to understand the legitimacy of its rule over my better sensibilities. It sets the carpet on fire. Burning fumes.

But what is it exactly that I regret? I like to tell myself "nothing" but obviously this is far from the truth. Perhaps it's just that I still care so intensely much about everything and that (in turn) fucks me over (in dealing with others of sub-par to mediocre personality). I act too quickly, give in to my lust too readily and although I enjoy my recklessness I can not hide from my unyielding sense of respect and responsibility for my whole self. Living in lingo must feel something like this: burgeoning relationships, troublesome binaries, yes when yes means no, resistance, surrender, rationalizing mistakes. But we don't ever really know what our mistakes will be until we make them, yeah? That classical hindsight versus foresight argument. We all wish we could exchange one for the other at any given time, but who is to say which holds more value? I would be nothing if I knew my future, nor would I become anything if I was incapable of scrutinizing the past.

Moral: always exercise your F.U.C.K. but be prepared to accept the consequences.

the orchids

2010-08-02T06:30:00.000-07:00

"you're too dramatic / I don't understand it"

Spending copious amounts of time familiarizing myself with male models, fresh eyecandy for the love-worn soul (what am I talking about?). I know it's just that I have this insatiable appetite for a beauté dans la forme tant mâle que femelle - I want it I need it all.

And I've really been thinking about what this obsession means in terms of "the big picture"; namely, my own vanity's blossoming from single idea to full-blown philosophy. I found this way of dissecting the lines and curvature of a face - calculating angles, interpreting aesthetics - pre-Raphaelite or Greco-Roman? Quite obviously my admiration for the female form denies a focus on superficiality, but a man's body, that's something to contemplate.

Perhaps it means something that I find myself at a miniature loss-for-words, even though (in my mind) I feel such an urge to word-vomit all over my keyboard, to exhaust each and every metaphor that I've discovered between lines of poetry and parted lips. Oh-la.

Like You Want It

2010-07-28T04:13:00.000-07:00

Life as a blonde seems particularly light. "It looks better," my uncle sputtered. A low-end compliment if I do say so, but most others have appreciated my recent transformation from dark to dim(mer) and I can't say that I regret the change. Just last night I found myself explaining to a customer the evolution I wish my hair to endure and I confessed that I had to wait until after I completed student teaching to shave one side of my head, because such "freakish" style choices wouldn't bode well for my burgeoning career as a (respected? let us hope) educator. He laughed. Freakish? Such a choice of words. Not odd, but so telling. We should all pause for a tic and thank Ms. Alice Dellal for being the final catalyst in my decision to wreck my hair. Destruction with a purpose.

And what about my two-week hiatus? I feel shame for not having written letters in so long, especially to a handful of people who deserve two or three a week - and there are a few other important "to-dos" idling on the proverbial backburner that have seemed to help stave off any attempt I've made to write. Want to do so every damn day, but look where that's gotten me. The difference between desiring and doing. And I sit here and remind myself that I work and I do other things related to not-computers and still I feel cheated. Just like when I say (to myself and people that really do fucking matter) that the letters are coming; my time will free-up soon; I don't know when I'm coming to visit but I know for sure that I plan on doing so.

Stagnation - the death of productivity. So perhaps I will attempt to make a pact with myself, starting today: I will work my eight-to-twelve shift and prepare for the planned hike/picnic at Mohican State Park as if it were the most important trip I've taken in a good long while; and I will finish the letters I've already started when I return, make phone calls that I've avoided for no reason at all, and read all of that unopened mail that should have been viddied upon reception. Not going to make promises (although many might argue a pact and a promise are essentially the same thing) but I am going to make progress.

Bated Breath:

2010-07-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

monday

post-monday

post-post

!!!!!

Kissing Somebody

2010-07-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

Red-orange blanket,
sleeping dog,
upright plastic waterbottle in the middle of the living room carpet,
grey low-top Chucks.

What I like about some boys I despise about others. It's all about specifics: time, place, mood. I like'm punk and I like'm clean-cut but never both and never consistently one or the other. It might occur every once in a great while that I come across someone who possesses qualities that defy definition, but he hardly ever shows his face and I tend to become extremely impatient looking for men like him. We will be friends, and he will hand me compliments left and right, but part of his game includes pinpointing my flaws and weaknesses, using them as a means for separating the two of us. He adores my sense of style but hates the way I give equal attention to "everyone"; he's made assumptions about the nature of my sexuality but still asserts his debauched interests. As if I were an object to claim, a territory begging to be owned and dissected. Most often I find the idea of sharing joint custody of my own self absolutely horrifying, let alone the prospect of relinquishing full control over thoughts and behaviors. I always prefer to "do" for myself and that self only, giving of my being only when I feel absolutely inclined to do so. Selfish and overprotective.

I'll kiss just about any cute boy, though. Just because.
(not really)

Nothin' But the Truth

2010-07-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

Cannot wait to move to Chicago. Felt at home, vital, inspired. Sort of like when a bride-to-be tries on that perfect dress, she cries, and an automatic attachment occurs. She knows it's the one.

Elkhart, IN

2010-06-30T04:44:00.001-07:00

This is the first station which hearkens back to a time when riding trains was truly still novelty: brick walls, handpainted sign, wooden benches. Perhaps the cloudless morning atmosphere adds that last bit of needed nostalgia. All I know is that my boarding experience was much closer to ghetto than Green Gables (I suppose Cleveland must always seek to maintain its tough reputation) and that the train's innards were so Eternal Sunshine and not Hogwarts as I'd wished. Less magic, more velcro.

As of now we are less than two hours from connecting with Union Station. I've found moderate success in my attempts to sleep-away the majority of this seven-hour ride, regardless of the plastic seating and miniature pillow. Midnight seems miles from here. I don't think seven AM has felt this new since that first morning in my freshman dorm at Marietta.

Hello, South Bend.

Sweet Talk

2010-06-28T05:23:00.000-07:00

The approaching trip to Chicago seems to overshadow any other considerations that I might have at this point in time. For instance, I seem to have completely forgotten about writing thank-yous for graduation. I also plan on neglecting to read the last hundred pages of Jurassic Park, although I so desperately want to begin reading Mein Kampf. But, I think, that won't take me long at all, and I've got more exciting things to consider: rooftop parties, backpacking in an unfamiliar city, riding a train for the first time (these items obviously do not appear in any particular order), reuniting with longlost friends, meeting new and interesting people, and some other things I can't remember. I have not yet considered the ramifications of daydreaming about what my trip to the Windy City might bring me, but, for now, I feel comfortable allowing subconscious desires to slap graffiti on the walls of my skull. Closed eyes like hidden projectors.

But, for now, Thom Yorke sings backwards and rain falls silently just past the pane of my bedroom window. As "Eighteen" comes up on shuffle I remember how much I love music about youth and youth and young lust. A perpetual state of desire and development. "We think about you all the time," he says, "we think about you with eyelids closed." Again I'm reminded of dreamscapes as they stand in opposition to fantasies made reality by chance and determination. If I want something badly enough it will happen. If I want someone badly enough they will respond. I'd prefer reciprocation, obviously, but this sort of symbiotic relationship does not seem to be nearly as probable when dealing with anything-other-than-physical-desires.

How have I come to this place? A pain in my chest reminds me I'm laying in my own bed. There's my door, my pile of playing cards, my Endless Summer poster. Funny how, when I close my eyes, it all dissipates into black and blue empty space.

Pretty Girls Make Graves / Graveyard Girl / Zombie Girlfriend

2010-06-21T07:33:00.000-07:00

Don't you sometimes feel that it'd actually be possible to stop the world, forsake gravity, and begin the melting process? I'm thinking of Q Lazzarus and Buffalo Bill and Dali, of "Quiet German Girls" and killers that were born that way. The summer of Sam and hot, wet summers filled with skin, neon, and lollipops. When the winds die down and you ain't got any spit left to give and all a girl can think of his Hvarf/Heim/Heima and Nag Champa incense. I used to take the stuff and stick it between the airvent and light light light until it took, watch as the slate-gray ash powdered the carpeting beneath the console; a few days of this and I'd have cultivated a dust as thick as manila sketch-paper.

To lick the salt-heavy sweat from my wrist. That taste. Like treats left for whitetail. You taste yourself and it's as if your own body secretes a nectar sweeter than maple syrup (the trees seem to weep into the buckets hung flush to the bark, full to bursting).

Mr. Brightside meets Mellon Collie and it all starts making (next to no) sense. Reconciling images of spineless jellyfish with those of Tufted Titmice and an unending sea of pine. Once the music hits you feel the pain of a thousand fractures and can't help but envision hopping around in puddles, not a single rainboot to your name, and here I am mudsoaked. Sitting Indian-style in knee-high grass, I've left my umbrella, and while I hang my head I feel each drop add weight to my tumbleweed hair that now almost reaches to the ground. I call this the place where There is No There.

This Is No / There Is No

2010-06-18T08:01:00.000-07:00

My heart is protected and sung by a multitude of reverberated bones, hallowed. Tucked away, entombed, yet so easily accessible that its very protection defies logic. Sometimes I just want to hold it in my hands, I want to let the dust collect on the pale pink surface. Let the wasps come. Have them fly in swarms so great as to mimic stormclouds and they'll see their rain floods nothing, their thunder presupposes a lightning which doesn't exist. My heart in my hands I will thrust it upward and beg for them to come, to see how their threats mean nothing, to show them the futility of violence when used against peaceful resistance. They'll see the honeybees and expect nothing more than a momentary stronghold. The wasp sees its own size and its own fury and speed and violence and perishes the thought of a lesser bee, much less the honeybee, halting its assault. A seemingly unprotected heart, welcoming anyone who might approach, regardless of intention: a temptation too great to resist. The bees are secondary to the wasps, merely a symptom of the heart's existence. Such underestimations ruin the most formidable of predators. Causes them to overlook the protective nature of the honeybee, the infallible nature of its loyalty to the hive.

The drove smothers the naked organ, coating my hands and forearms as cold overtakes me. Chilled to the bone. I wince at the crystallization of each rib. Doubt settles. Oversure, the wasps neglect the presence of their perceived lesser, and as the golden, viscus fluid begins to drip down my arms, the honeybees call themselves to attention. At the recognition of the wasp-covered core the bees, copper jewels no larger than my fingernail, pick each off one by one. Eye for an eye, sting for a sting. The hive in my head empties. Buzzing. The entire colony lights upon the blood hungry wasps. Eradication in its purest form. Slow, regretful, I return the heart to its chamber and lock the ribs in place, ushering in the insects which call this tomb their home and the weight of it all becomes apparent and -

- there's the buzz again. A secretion so thick it renders my vision goldenrod.

The Bees, The Bees, The Bees,

2010-06-14T08:01:00.000-07:00

A sign that I've continued to make progress: my refusal to turn to old coping mechanisms, my constant awareness of and critical eye for E.D. thoughts and behaviors. They creep. I see them coming, but they are familiar, they are tried-and-tested (even if for failure) and therefore they incite nostalgia. Nightmarish. Sublime. And although there are still moments when I feel frightened of retrogression, my logical mind interrupts. Numbers are arbitrary, it will remind me; numbers and days and types, all arbitrary when we consider the big picture. What exactly is this 'big picture' everyone speaks about?, I might ask, with no reply; for who the fuck really knows? No one. That photograph/collage/painting looks different to each individual. Mine might be a mural slapped against ruddy concrete, whereas yours might look like Gaugin and his boasts no more than chalkdust and uncooked pasta. Rubber cement as compared to oil paint. I am both composer and composition, subject and object, painter and painted.

First instance of true anxiety since I've been home and all I have to say is that I've learned and already regained focus. Just have to interrupt things earlier next time, need to shirk off that feeling of embarrassment (which is in and of itself completely ridiculous, so utterly eating-disordered) and always remember to trust in my gut instinct, which really has taken precedence over "mindful" discretion. I am no stranger to the perils of this alternate sphere; its danger is my conscience and its uncertainty my bedfellow. But rats can always be shooed from the attic. Parasites may always be equalized.

The Thing Expected.

2010-06-06T09:43:00.001-07:00

Thirty more minutes til work begins and I've just had to overcome some of those familiarly irrational thoughts, most of them propelled by residual hyper“criticism. In the end of it all, my mind could give two shits about whether or not its composition and functionality actually improve upon my biological fitness (Dennett on the brain). There has to be a relationship between rational and instinctual behavior - that would explain my apparent inability to truly tell the difference between going with my gut and consulting logic. Why do these two purportedly opposed actions feel the fucking same to me?

Will say that I've gotten comfortable with handling sickthoughts, no matter the degree of my repulsion toward them. Still scared, still impulsive. Rerouting thought-behavior patterns is more difficult than breaking the original habit, which falls as quickly as late-Autumn leaves. Perhaps it's just that I am actually wired to prefer adopting 'simpler' modes of living and doing -- I rail against this. Purpose derives from complexity, which (surprisingly enough) has nothing to do with indefinites or cultural dogmas. All about pain, all about pleasure, all about research and development and legitimacy.

Time rolls right by when you wish it'd just stop and stay a while.

Shirt & Underwear

2010-06-04T07:25:00.000-07:00

Too many conflicting ideas. Swimming in them. Trying to convince myself that it's better to feel overwhelmed by an abundance of risque options than to be overwhelmed by my own inability to follow through on the one and only option available. Recklessness is not only a choice, it's a necessity; but whether or not I follow through on any number of basal/ill-conceived/rash/impulsive/intense desires, well, that's not really a question. The farther I fall, the closer I come to truly knowing myself. Unreality transforms into infinite truth. Continued perpetuation of negative pleasure.

Give Me Your

2010-05-29T13:25:00.000-07:00

I pledge allegiance to no flag. My loyalty belongs to my intellect. If there were such a thing as a true human family, one, not several, not numerous, I'd support its cause, I'd rally for its progress, take up everyone else's burden(s) as my own. Work towards the latter never existing, although I would argue that it truly does "take shit to make bliss". Not ignorance. So until someone(s) or something(s) call my attention elsewhere, I reserve my energy and my passion for myself. Not for selfish means, just for self-cultivation in any sense of the term. What do you imagine? Include it in your interpretation of the latter. The more I progress, the better able I am to affect the lives of others. My success harbors theirs. We might begin to pull inspiration from the same sources. Cut our own hair. It deteriorates/compounds from then on.

The more I am stolen from, the higher my tolerance for disrespect. And when I say "tolerance" I mean "my own ability to accept and face the fact that many people act absolutely oblivious of intellect/decency/emotion" - like little shitheads. I'm through trying to "fix" my broken speech, too. Slang and verbosity and all. I thrive off of any and all binaries.

Earliest Bird.

2010-05-27T03:52:00.000-07:00

Another yawn and I'm annoyed at the resulting tear, complacent in the cubbyhole of my eye socket. Small. One more yawn and I remain convinced that it's too early, that I've a right to feel a certain rage at my mother for blow-drying her hair with the door wide open (as she always has and always will). My fault for sleeping on the couch. My fault for going to bed at a decent hour.

Huff, puff. Brodie rolls around on my father's leather armchair, wrought with laziness, too (perpetually) tired to do anything other than grunt and nap and stretch. I've seen downward-facing-dog in its elemental form so many times that, when my pet does it, it seems ten times more natural than when I attempt the pose myself. That's an inquiry with an obvious answer.

Only thing on television (yes, the tube, I've subjected myself to this sort of torture) is Family Matters. Spongebob's up next. So many reminders of why I never sit in front of this thing. Oh well, it's only for a little while longer. Just have to figure out whether or not I have enough energy to run before work. Wait, I just decided: yes. After breakfast. Wonder if there's milk.

Bon Matin.

2010-05-24T05:34:00.000-07:00

Don't think that I haven't realized how neglectful I've been of this shite. Not that I haven't wanted to write. Haven't lacked inspiration either. Just, I don't know, have been spending more time using my hands in three-dimensional ways (debauched ways, connective ways). Not an excuse. Of course I would love to have for you (for me) a new post every damn day, but, if I truly believed in this endeavor then I would make it happen. Nothin' thus far. So I refuse to allow myself to feel "guilty" for leaving a ten-plus-day gap between entries. If not solely for my own selfish motivations, then also for those who've been doin' shit in the "real world" with me. The one without computers.

Seems impossible to describe my body's transformations as of late. Well, to put it more literally, I wish you could all just come and have a look. Fuck. And listen to my rationale for my seeming neglect of last decade's moral standards. Am I turning into a heathen? Driven by impulse and desire, maddened by this fresh sense of purpose and being? No. Something tells me that this is in fact a legitimate metamorphosis, one which I've been working toward for the past howeverlong, and I'll be damned if anything should cheapen this for me. Not even myself. Not even all of those fake fake fake theological/political/biological constructs. Too strong for that. Too vital. Too much damn electricity.

So I'll remain true to the whims of my own mind and body, I'll exist for this temple and this one only, I'll sing MY body electric and fuck all the rest. Quite literally, but also figuratively. Life was meant to be shocking and brilliant, wasn't it? Isn't it? It is. Will be. Forged by my own two hands. I want to forever wrap my arms around the trunks of maple trees and lick the planar edges of the bark, searching for splinters, praying for insects. To always collapse in the middle of fields of grass and lay until my body believes it's in need of actual rest.

Everything, everything, everything neon.

What up, Charlotte?

2010-05-11T18:28:00.001-07:00

This is my first official blogpost via Blackberry. Not sure how I actually feel about this, but I have a little less than an hour to kill before boarding the flight which connects to Nashville; and, alas, there currently is no eye candy to distract me.

How could I ever adequately relate my love of people-watching? The variations in gait and expression; extended glances and second-long stares. The old man sitting in the row across from me just finished his little plastic cup of chocolate ice cream. He sits stroking the dome of his bald head, carefully circling his fingers around the glasses perched there. To my right, a set of twins: one little boy and girl. Their parents have chosen to keep their kids entertained with various electronic devices, she punching away at the latest Gameboy model and he bobbing his head to "Rude Boy" (a song, I think, he couldn't possibly understand - so why do I feel perturbed that he's listening?). He even seems to know some of the words. Watching those babylips mouth "come on rude boy, boy, is you big enough" just does not sit well. Dad sits one chair away, for mom left an empty spot when she left momentarily, probably to take a piss, or possibly to pick up a tall skinny decaf latte from the Starbucks right down the walkway. It also bothers me that the boy's music is audible for someone sitting six chairs away to hear and identify without too much difficulty. Now I'm just whining. Now, the cry of an eighties' electric guitar?

There seem to be more passengers traveling on this flight. I sort of enjoyed the small size of the last group. I sat at the window seat of 11C and nearly pissed myself with anticipation for liftoff. Cloud continents. Hovering above the second layer, a sphere void of concrete, slum, and war. We passed over several gigantic hills of white, milky peaks and valleys that put Appalachia to shame, and I couldn't help but imagine constructung a house on any one of those summits, a sort-of floating cabin made of fog.

And think, I haven't even gotten to the part where I pummel Sophie in a matter of an hour..

Jack Once Asked, "What Have I Done?"

2010-05-09T17:50:00.000-07:00

So today was college graduation. Thought I was gonna get emotional, tear up and ruin the eyes I'd spent fifteen minutes dressing up. Only almost happened once, during Michael's speech - and of course when C.W.'s parents were presented with a degree in remembrance of his life and honor of his death. Not a dry eye in the place. But, truly, I didn't feel sad in the least little bit. Don't regret admitting that. Why shouldn't I just be all kinds of ecstatic and anticipatory? That's how I'm choosing to interpret my reaction. Two hours of speeches, awards, and name-calling, and the lightning bolts of melancholy never made themselves known. Looking to my left and right and to the back of me, scanning the auditorium, I slowly realized that the idea of not seeing most of those people ever (ever) again didn't bother me so much as it intrigued me. How fucking amazing human relationships are, how fleeting and sometimes permanent and always wretched and lovely. Not a damn thing wrong with barely knowing someone for four years and feeling a great sense of loss; nothing negative to be said about instantly forgetting another whose presence filled most of my waking life on campus. (sh)It happens. Something about this interpersonal turbulence comforts me. Such things used to appear petrifying, so unthinkable and inhumane, that I perished the thought of losing anyone I'd ever laid eyes upon, for how could I categorize human beings by level of import? Obviously I've learned that this can be done, but not in such a superficial way. I inherently understand and know which individuals should be kept and which must be disregarded. That's one thing that's also really become apparent as I've completed my undergraduate education: the more people you know, the less you associate with, the more you isolate - but, conversely, the closer you come to figuring out the inner-workings of your own existence, the more you grow in love and symbiosis with those few people to whom you clutch so closely.

Commencement commentary aside, I have have HAVE to comment upon a very important epiphany that manifested itself within the past couple of days (namely a day and a half ago):

I AM DESIRABLE, my curves crash and fall, dusty eyes, lips to kill a cocky bastard, smile, cheekbones, bone structure; and I do not need ANY one person to validate this for me. Of course I don't mean to sound full of myself. Just growing more comfortable with who I am physically and spiritually and all that fuckin' jazz.!

model Tanya Dakin

10/6

2010-05-05T19:41:00.000-07:00

So I'm sitting here in Meli's room listening to some pop-indie-alt-rock shit and can't help but wonder why I'm wasting my time alone. I've yet again given in to feeling sorry for myself because of something someone else has said. But this time it makes sense, this time it's someone I value so fucking much. Someone with weight. And now I want to sit and marinate in this discontent so as to identify the very cogs and machinery which keep this ticker running on time.

Kevvy Bang Bang to the rescue ... more substantial post at a later time/date/wheneverthefuckIfeellikeit.

Collarbone

2010-05-03T04:44:00.000-07:00

Do you ever sometimes just take your fingers and press them against your naked collarbone? Do you run them back and forth, left shoulder to right, outward bend to flat blade? So palpable you feel you could remove the bone as quickly as you break the wishbone in half, cleancut, a morbid luck-charm which you hang above your vanity and look to for answers to questions it has never even thought of. To touch something and want it as a trophy, as a dreamcatcher which floats above your head at night, weightless, silent in its midnight watch over your dreams. Sticks, stones, bones, feathers, blood, skin, twine, jewels.

une, deux, trois

2010-04-29T06:59:00.000-07:00

Finally found a solution to that pesky piece-of-shit blind that's been unraveled to the floor for the entire time I've known it: old metal hanger with clamps. Had originally thought of hanging up some sort of artwork or magazine page or poster, but this makes the most sense - and provides for the most beauty. How come I hadn't seen it before? Not until this morning. Not until I bounced from the naked edge of my bed to the edge underneath the shrouded window, giggling at my sudden discovery, carefully folding the limp, strawlike material into even folds, ensuring full exposure. I don't even care that the window's dirty, that the bottom-right corner remains smothered in slobber, a present left by my mutt's wet and curious nose. She's actually lounging at the far end of the mattress, napping in the carolina blue of the naked world beyond the pane. Lazy.

The room feels cooler. Much softer. As if something more than dust and watermarks is outed by the fresh gaze of the morning light. I'm thinking solitude, I'm thinking calamity, I'm thinking clutter and emptiness. Never before have I appreciated more the shape and size of my room. Its angles and curves present themselves in unabashed form, dividing each and every space into planar shapes and otherworldly spheres. Worlds contained within worlds. How the dovetail provides an opportunity for infinity to leak in, while I sleep; and it creeps like a nocturnal spider into the corner of my partially-opened mouth, bringing death and the secrets of the earth to the threshold of my throat, the peephole to my ghostly self. My soul ensures that I remain an earth-bound ghost at least for as long as this physical form can maintain homeostasis. Cancer will most likely free me from this existence. Cancer. That all-encompassing cancellation of the body's ability to heal itself. The well-oiled machine rusts.

A light like this renders everything naked. Anything it touches, so completely saturated with the simultaneous absence and presence of all color, experiences spontaneous rebirth the likes of childhood fantasy. Even the chest of drawers seems to glow at the realization of its new life. The glass half-emptied of water appears full to spilling. Sinuous droplets streaming down the glossy form, sensual in their fall, following the course which gravity predestined them to take. My lips go dry at the very sight of them.

The Thief

2010-04-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

She takes the damp cloth, pressing it slowly against her lower lip, and pulls sideways. A coral streak cascades down her chin, mock war-paint. Like, in her youth, how she'd have cheeks stained with dandelion ink.

The harsh lines of her face comfort her as she notices her reflection. Sickeningly strong. Looking up between slaps of water, she watches the droplets flow like tiny streams in the riverbed of her complexion. They drop to the sink in short intervals. Hot to cold. Skin like melting wax.

Now she knows why he thinks she's so damn beautiful.

I Feel a Buzz Coming On

2010-04-13T02:24:00.000-07:00

When I woke up an hour ago I knew I sleep would evade me. Not even five hours. Perhaps my mind needed more space and time to get rid of excess information, to make sense of everything. Since when does that ever happen? Never. Not in a million years. But we, I, still try. We, I, go against nature and attempt to categorize the uncategorizable. To shape the unshapeable. What does this mean? That we're really all out-of-our-heads insane? Or simply that, at certain moments, our lust for knowing usurps our ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality? I like that thought. Of hypersensitive liminality, of magical realism (thanks, Rushdie). That state of mind which defies logic yet relies upon it to even exist. Obviously we create this space for ourselves, a sort of intergalactic cubbyhole of nothing and everything all at once. You understand. As you're reading this you're nodding your head in agreement, wondering why, if you find it so hard to understand, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Subconsciously, you commiserate. Take my hand.

But so often does this space become a source of fear rather than elation that most of us prefer to stay away from here. Within it exists all of our, yes, deep-and-dark secrets and wants and wishes and desires and inconsistencies, all smashing into one another like abnormally large molecules on the fast track to self-destruction. Body-to-wall. Warring sensitivities produce this tumultuous feeling of dispersion, a literal decay of our oneness of being - but it also has the ability to provide us with an ultimate sense of knowing (ourselves). By weathering the storm we come to know the beauty of the aftermath; and that is, most often, the most worthwhile thing. I think I remember 311 singing about a beautiful disaster, but I much prefer Keats and Kant and Coleridge when they talk about anything related to negative pleasure. The absolute prettiest feeling. Best. Coveted. Loathing and adoring something all at once, being so enraptured by an object or event or sensation that literally nothing else matters or seems as real. In this moment I crumble into my own hands, filtering through the cracks between my own fingers, falling upon the laces of my own sneakers. Dusting myself with myself. Simple and significant.

Although this aspect of my existence seems harrowing at times, I cannot deny that, when I am here, I am the most productive, I am the most enlightened, I am the most electrified. My entire body buzzes. Quite literally it hums, it clamors toward an almost unbearable pitch, audible to everyone and not a damn one (if that one does not listen for that exact note). We have all seen it: invisible tremors, warping and twisting of the body's frame in either ecstasy or repulsion, eyes both overfull and vacuous. And when we witness such vibrations our desperation to share in that moment takes our breath. Our tongues dry out as starfish in desert sand. We pine, we lust, we scheme.

Some things in life are tactile to the point of making one's skin melt right off the bone

(this is a good thing)

You're Pinky, Which Makes Me...the Brain?

2010-04-08T15:51:00.000-07:00

The Princess and the Frog wadn't half-bad. Truly enjoyed the colorschemes and underhandedly racist humor. No kidding. It was definitely PG-ified, which I also understood; but I appreciated Disney's attempt at a more American fairytale (at least in its literal origins - we all know that every Disney animated film has been undeniably "whitened"). But I didn't want to spend any time talking about things like that, things that don't matter.

Haven't felt this way in a long time. Oh and perhaps I should apologize...well, no, I won't apologize for the "negative" entry four days ago - was being honest and true to my actual feelings at the time. Worked through it. Had help, of course, but 'twas I who did it, really. And I can't say that I'm at all disappointed in my progress thus far. In fact I'm glowering in it (is this possible?). So, as a result of this continued upward trend, familiar feelings reintroduce themselves at scattered times, many within the last week. How was I to know that my happiness would eventually settle, become something that was completely in my control? That the actions of others had little to nothing to do with the movements of my mood? Well, I suppose I should have known (or accepted) this all along, but at least I'm finally gettin' to that point where all I need at the end of things is myself. Me me me, my my my, now now now (thanks J.S. Hook). Awash in acceptable selfishness. Not even that but can't find another word to match it at this point in time. Not when I've got hookah, smokerings, (black)berries, shadows, crushes, future(s), and many other wonderful things on-the-brain. Honey. Getting closer. Seeping, oozing, dripping from the cavern of my ear. A dull buzz at the base of my skull.

There are lots of things coming up, and I'm looking forward to them all. Perhaps the uncontrollable nature of life is what makes it truly beautiful, along with the pain - something I could have possibly overlooked if not for Modest Mouse. Let it happen, just float along (again! there's a theme here), let your soul become heaven-bound.

That's all for now. Nothing coherent. Nothing directed.

Just everything that is.

What You Might Call a Female Dog

2010-04-04T16:41:00.000-07:00

Lowest of the low. Sometimes I feel I deserve the things said to me. Other times I cringe at their utterance.

Too many times, especially in the past week or so, I've allowed others to take advantage of my easygoing nature; my fragile ego. Fuck Freud. He didn't know shit. And fuck anyone else who gives me this excuse: "guys just don't know what they're saying"/"guys are just assholes". Fuck, I hate it, I hate it hate hate. Seriously though those are just one-liners said in an attempt to make guys' behavior permissible, allowing it to seem almost unavoidable. Like it's their curse as a sex. They probably even buy into that, too (self-fulfilling prophecy) - which exacerbates the issue even further. Fuck no they have no fucking excuse, just like I have none to cry on the drop of a dime. Just like blondes have no excuse to always be stupid and asshole dudes have no excuse to ALWAYS be fucking getting the girl (who's usually an idiot anyway, or extremely misguided).

Are you listening to how upset I am? Walked right away from a perfectly fun game of sand volleyball in the park, crying, storming off like some wounded little girl - and no one said nothing. Stared, as if dumbfounded, like it was not their battle to fight; but isn't there something to be said about groupthink here? Erykah Badu might have something to say on the subject. But, hell, I'd never let someone talk to one of my friends like that, even if it was meant in jest (you have to go by tone of voice and context, and I have to say that this was just meant to be a cutting statement). "No, fuck you, asshole," I might have replied, "you're the fucking bitch for talking that way to a girl. Get the fuck over yourself. And you also might think of apologizing."

So sorry that my first post in almost a week comes from such a negative sphere of existence. Don't want these entries to sound negative, but I also must be true to my feelings. Recovery's still going well, but self-confidence still wavers. That's to be expected. Just wish I had a little more outside help.

Sophie, Mandy, Beth, anyone, where are you when I need you most?

Later February Ninth / March Twenty-Eighth

2010-03-28T07:24:00.000-07:00

AFTERNOON THOUGHTS:

many good meetings, and I am left a little drained. The family therapy session went extremely well, and as expected, in terms of my mother's reactions. There were a few glitches, but nothing insurmountable - next time it will just be better to have a plan-of-attack. Robin and I will work that out on Thursday.

so many things could be said about my completion of The Shining, but it's almost daunting to think of writing it all. So a few notes. The differences from the book to the film were noticeable yet pleasant. It's always best to tread the story before seeing its film version, but sometimes one must make do; and I am happy to report that I intend upon reading much more of King's work. He really is a wonderful, refreshing writer. And he does one helluva job building suspense ("that's how you let the beat build, bitch"). The next literary venture: Joyce's Dubliners. His style is also very distinguishable, and spending time with him will prove a unique experience indeed.

what is it that I might say about my mood today...determined and excited (found out I'll be moving up to IE tomorrow, and I might even get to see Mandy this weekend!). I miss my family and friends, and am a bit anxious about going home, but I refuse to alow any negativity to cheapen my sense of hope and accomplishment.

Notes: 1. ~~Kasey~~
           2. ~~Karissa~~
           3. ~~Claire~~
           4. ~~Jenna~~
           5. ~~Christine~~

So many things. Buzzing. Bees hard at work. An infatuation with the opposite sex has reintroduced itself in full force as of now, and I can't say that I don't mind feeling excited about no-strings-attached prospects. Sophie questioned my enthusiasm, wondering if I was being, er, what was her word? Reckless. If I wasn't just seeking out this attention because I still consider it an ultimate source for self-worth. I had to think, of course. I couldn't just tell her "no!" - but, at the same time, I knew that I had not felt bad about any of the feelings or desires that I experienced, and that I truly believe(d) all of these drives stem from pure selfishness. Want for fun. Physical connection. Something that has plagued me since the disastrous end of my first "serious" (my only "real"?) relationship (Sophie so adeptly pointed out that I had only been dating my eating disorder after that, so, fuck, man, that makes so much sense, and whadda dick). Because of someone else's abuse of my own love and self, both physical and intellectual, I became petrified of offering the same to anyone else; at least, not without a price. If a guy was truly interested in me, I believed that he would first notice my good looks (thinness?), then get to know me because good looks OBVIOUSLY equal brains and good-natured disposition. After he proved that he wanted all parts of me, thereby validating every aspect of my crumbling self, THEN he could have whatever he wanted. Funny thing about that: whereas I was mildly successful (for a time) holding off in the physicality department, I was never shy in giving away all of my spiritual, emotional, and intellectual being. Never. Not for a moment. He looked at me in the eye and he had it. Such shite. Utter bullshit.

This is how I know. Just one of the reasons I know why I want this because I truly DO want it. Because...well. I enjoy the idea of hanging out just for fun, of not fearing anything that happens, of allowing myself to be vulnerable without offering myself up as a virtual sacrifice to the phallus-god. Shit. I'm just excited. Real damn excited. Can you all dig this? Can you?

yr bone's got a little machine (exude sex)

February Ninth / March Twenty-Sixth

2010-03-26T16:06:00.000-07:00

THOUGHTS BEFORE SHARPS:

waking up to the sound of my own alarm was a bit different this morning. Was it unfamiliar? I have not truly used this clock since freshman year of college, and even then its utility (as an alarm) was short-lived. It's this neat, oversized desk clock, wrapped in shining silver metal and painted with large numbers and clearly visible second-lines. The two bells rest easily on the top curve of the machine; round like muffin-tops, they display a neat fisheye view of the entire room. What's that artists' name? The one who drew a reflection of himself inside a globe which he held in his hand? Something to do with initials M.C. ESCHER oh it came to me in the middle of the thought. But yes, these two muffin-cap domes seem to be something which would have interested Mr. Escher.

now I remember what I had dreamed - it was pecan pie, mom and dad, all of Jon's friends. Where was I? In a crowd of people, at a bar, in a home which might have been my own. I battled very much with the urge to binge; the pie mocked me, floating around in my head, engaging sensory recall (oh shit yes the pecans and the caramel I can taste it BUT I DO NOT WANT NO DO I NEED IT). Here again I was frustrated with my seeming inability to reconcile what I want to do and what E.D. tells me to do - what I need and what the part of me desires. It's all smokescreens, mirrors and fog machines. O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey into Night""comes to mind. The fog meant so much but was a detriment to all who were familiar. Feeling in a fog, yeah, that's it, almost suffocated in my own "paralysis".

Thinking of doing things. Bad things. Bad things that are deliciously good. And hedonistic. And I suppose that I'm happy because no thoughts of E.D., no challenges I can't overcome (or haven't). Can you guess?

Something Good (Still Departed)

2010-03-25T04:55:00.000-07:00

O sweet spontaneous
                earth how often have
                the
                doting

                          fingers of
                 prurient philosophers pinched
                and
                poked

                 thee
                 ,has the naughty thumb
                of science prodded
                 thy

                         beauty    .how
                oftn have religions taken
                thee upon their scraggy knees
                squeezing and

                buffeting thee that thou mightest conceive gods
                                (but
                true

                 to the incomparable
                couch of death thy
                rhythmic
                lover

                               thou answerest

                 them only with

                                                      spring)
- e.e.

A Small Departure.

2010-03-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

There's nothing I'd rather be doing than writing. Just going on and on, typing to the beat of various Icelandic lyrics, emptying my hive. Putting the worker bees to task. Calling upon the queen bee to birth thousands of word-children. The honey tastes sweetest when it compounds, when the echoes in my head reverberate as quick as foxes rushing from one den to another, slathering saccharine liquid from stem to lobe. Kinetic. Potential energy. Gold ready to be harvested.

Today I do not feel like saying anything coherent. Today I feel like writing you a story, one of witches and flowers that bloom in the winter. I want to write you about fingers that become kitetails, wild tendrils spanning toward the lid of the sky, twitching in the fog of the ozone. Changing colors, shifting shapes. Nag Champa hovers around her wrists, fixed to the cool earth as a handle to a coffee mug, and as she breathes the grass bows in reverence. Insects, exposed, lay prostrate before her whipping hair. She's so wild, they think, so attached and aloof, so here and there. Centrifugal. The grasshoppers cling to their selected blades, breathing in the sound of her heart, her thudding reveries, as she remains attentive to the flying things dancing out from her knuckle-joints. They're all shades of blue. The sky swallows them whole. Such rapid, easy consumption causes her to smile, however half-heartedly, because it seems too simple to ignore. Something brilliant in the smallness of it. Having to squint her eyes to see her own bodyparts, writ large, tracing invisible cursive across a three o-clock sky, cloudless and deep. Robin's egg. Seafoam.

She dreams to forget. She dreams to mold and shape reality, as-she-knows-it. They come to her like a flash flood, so unexpected but familiar that she cringes at the thought of the pleasure of it. The guilt. One eye closes and brings to him to her, him in the driver's seat of his parked car, her in the passenger; she sees he's crying and wonders how she ever forgot to remember that. Yellow light filters in, a gift of the streetlamps surrounding the dying couple. So he cries and she does not, she cannot cry for him, because she's already done that for herself because of him and it shocks her to know that he, too, has the ability to feel remorse. To live inside a melancholy so damaging it renders all things gray. Another eye closes, the vision changes: a dark dark room, full of people, full of sound. A show. And there's the beat (or is it my heart? Whose?) again, only this time it seems foreign, almost dangerous. She looks and cannot see. Only upright oil-slicks under fluorescent lights. No kites or blue skies here, just dust and just tension. Someone's brought a match.

Both eyes now, wide open, awake, back in the field. She's still there, the wind still holds up her kite-like bones, the grasshoppers have not yet seen enough of her. Some sort of song, she thinks, would fit this best, but no idea, not the slightest, perhaps the one with strings. Or that one, with noise noise noise. She also thinks that it's pointless to dream to forget if all her dreams do is force her to remember.

(for Sophie, for long lost love)

February Eighth, Later / March Nineteenth

2010-03-19T04:27:00.000-07:00

THOUGHTS BEFORE BED:

only briefly: feeling uncomfortable in my skin and continuing to pass judgment against myself. Nitpicking my body's current form and allowing negative thoughts to creep back in. I cannot have this. This is only temporary - you will eventually get to a place where you feel comfortable and proud of your body. There will be much work to do, but you are worth it and life is too fucking temporal. Beauty already exists within and without; it's only a matter of extracting it and make it known (to myself).

I will: run, write, work, love, create, exalt, meditate, improve, attain, overcome, satisfy - all in the name of me.

("YAY") tomorrow I find out when I'll be transferred to I.E. Family therapy also takes place, and I am anticipating both. Hopefully the success of today's goings-on will be repeated tomorrow. I am sure that the first day of my second week will be stellar. Keep my eyes on the prize. There's so much external motivation within these walls. Just look around and know how damn blessed you are. Some of these girls can't even be "trusted" to complete a meal on their own...some flat out refuse to do so. Others aren't even allowed to walk around on their own. How selfish and deluded I've been. Life is worth so much, more than being in a place like this. This opportunity will surely not be taken for granted. Tomorrow I should write more extensively about some of the girls in here with me. I'll save that for the morning.

Charcoal and Brodie hover around me as I sit on the couch, typing this. I've actually been writing away for the past, oh, hour or so, and it feels wonderful. Reassures me that I'll be able to write that novel someday (in the near future?). Just two days ago I sent out something like eight or nine letters! It's a wonderful feeling. Like little presents, little pieces of myself for someone else. I give them gladly. I receive so much in return.

But viewing my life as a blessing has been a necessary viewpoint in my continued recovery. It isn't like I'm just saying this to arbitrarily convince myself that it is, indeed, true; but I believe it, down to my marrow, into the antechamber, behind the lungs. And now I have yet another reminder of the fortune which this life brings to me: a tattoo. Got it yesterday. "THE BODY IS A TEMPLE" it says, my own design, inked by a friend. Not regretful in the least bit. If I ever question recovery, if I ever feel like symptoms will be my only comfort (although I can not ever foresee this happening), all I need to do is look in the mirror. Read the backwards lettering, turn it rightside out, remember.

February Eighth / March Sixteenth

2010-03-16T04:59:00.000-07:00

BRIEF THOUGHTS BEFORE BREAKFAST:

wacky tacky day. Man...some girls are truly annoying. That's something that I will just have to get over. It's almost as if I am (CUT OFF)

AFTERNOON THOUGHTS:

man, it's just not even worth it to be negative anymore. Here I was complaining about a silly twenty-dollar bill when I could have been doing journaling, finishing The Shining (only a hundred pages to go!), directing my thoughts and energies toward recovery. Precious time lost, spent worrying about arbitrary incidences, things far removed from my own situation. I need to wake up and smell the napalm. Shit is real serious, and I must continue to hone my concentration. Dedication must increase, not to plateau.

my sesh with Robin earlier today was absolutely wonderful. I feel like nothing I saw will deter her from wanting to help me, regardless of her "job title." We spoke about my inability to reconcile the LOGICAL and EMOTIONAL parts of my brain - that I disallow myself from any "lapses" in steadfastness and, when these indiscretions do occur, my propensity toward self-hatred and criticism increases tenfold. Providing a space for "allowances of emotional vulnerability" is necessary. Shit, even in a rehabilitation center I focus more on verbosity than common sense. Lord what I wouldn't sometimes give to sound simplistic. Not daft...anything but that.

I had planned on doing more writing this morning, but things got a little off track: and now I must compose a letter to myself at six years old...no room for corrections or editing. Wonder where this will end up.

The sunrise paints the sky in candy colors. Yummy pastels. The turbulence and melancholy of last night's dreams dissipates into the creamsicle scene. Trees as dipping rods. Obviously I do not have a response to this entry, or a real one at that - and, besides, I need to make my way to my grandmother's house for breakfast and letter-writing. It should be a productive morning. Let us all hope.

February Seventh the Afternoon / March Fifteenth

2010-03-15T04:18:00.000-07:00

COMMUNITY MEETING:

Carol's leaving...my eyes feel heavy.
Why this weight?
She means something significant.

Dear Jaquelyn,

    It has been so good to get to share some time here with you. I would enjoy staying in touch.

                                               All the best,

                                                       Carol Newton

AFTERNOON THOUGHTS:

been revolving thoughts around in my mind a little too much this afternoon. That's not too horrible, though, and the day has been nice. Alisha's husband got here around 3:30 and I finally met him "officially". Very nice, almost reticent, but all he wants is to be here for his girl. I love that. "Boss" let me know that, although she attempted to end things with her boyfriend (because she didn't want him to have to deal with this), he refused the suggestion; and there are several other examples similar to this one. Makes a girl feel hopeful. Funnily enough, the two girls who share Alisha's and my suite, Ariel and Caitlin, are self-proclaimed sex addicts. What a breath of fresh air. These girls are so every-man that it kills me. Why do we end up in a place like this?

Homesickness has definitely made itself known. It sucks that I will not be able to talk to my mom and dad until tomorrow. Hopefully I can put the phone tips that the girls shared with me into good use - like how to avoid the surcharges on your calling card. The money doesn't really matter thought, so I take no qualms in purchasing another sometime tomorrow. A cell phone would be very convenient at a time like this.

what is is rad is that I am becoming much more familiar with some of the girls. Today at lunch, Rachel, Connor and I developed a scheme to implement a "spirit week," starting Monday. These girls are much younger than I, but, since they are around my sister's age, I can't help but to feel some pull toward them. Of course, they are mature much too much far beyond their years, a state which bothers me. Shit, really, Rachel has suffered since she was ten years old (she is now eighteen), and little Alannah, oh, she's only fourteen. Robbed of a childhood...or, a proper one, at least. Everything about her comes in miniature - you just wanna put her in your pocket or onto a keychain to dangle and make you giggle and remind you of the coquettish nature of such a fine life. And now again I wonder what the others think of when they see me, how they interpret my actions and speech. Overall I do believe that I am going to emerge from this ordeal with many good friends.

Really, though - I ought to seriously consider taking up this psychic business. Most of my suspicions/predictions have come true, at least to a certain extent. Re: the latter "many good friends" comment - Sophie, Jenna, Caitlin, Alyssa, Sarah, Boss, Phoebe, Kate, Erin, Karissa, Kasey...none of them mere acquaintances. Friends. Good ones. Some, bests. That's serious. And what's there to be said about the younger girls? Alannah, Rachel, Connor, Alexandra, Bobbi? I need to send them letters or something. Want to know how they are doing outside of such a protective environment. Some of them shunned the help offered by the professionals; others took it in stride. Either way, I tried to be there for them, much like I am for Mel: like a concerned older sister. Protective. Here comes that word again. Someone has told me that I tend to "spread myself too thin" when it comes to fixing other people's problems. It ain't like I can disagree with her, but damn, I really need to reconsider my approach to this topic. Need to learn when to "cut all ties." Tribute to Sophie.

February Sixth, Seventh / March Fourteenth

2010-03-14T09:18:00.000-07:00

disclaimer: the beginning of this entry may be a bit jarring to some readers.

MORNING THOUGHTS:

"inspiration celebration" this morning was more interesting than I thought it would

(next day)

MORNING THOUGHTS:

Alec Baldwin. Had a dream that I fucked Alec Baldwin and he paid me with a ninety-five dollar bill afterward. The rest of the dream is hazy now: something about hiding out in someone's house, up on a slight incline. I am glad that I at least held on to the details of Mr. Baldwin's and my sexual interlude; the way he looked at me, like he knew so much more but still believed I had something to offer, like I was something more than a younger mistress. He desired me for my body, my face, and my nature. Outside of these considerations I know that he thought I'd just be a great fuck (he was right). When he looked and smiled I am sure I reciprocated the gesture. Something about him made me feel comfortable and anxious all at once. The realness of the dream still intrigues me. I felt the orgasm, experienced the weight of his body with mine, first recoiled and then lusted for the nakedness of our forms. Who cares about where we were or how we had come to meet? All that matters is that I am much closer to knowing what it feels like to be Meryl Streep, and that I had a good lay while I was stuck here.

about yesterday. I am sort of miffed that I didn't set aside more time to write in here. I thought that the day was going to be much more open due to the fact that the foot plus of snow restricted automobile use, leaving us with a shortage of staff and lack of previously organized activities. But there ended up being several things for me to do! Bracelet-making, movie-watching, a little bit of arts and crafts - even two (quick) phone calls to Mandy and Andrew. God it was so great to hear their voices and to remind them just how much I love and miss them. Mandy's reaction made my heart flutter. That girl, I swear.

there's this new girl on the block, Claire, that does nothing but incite gossip and trigger the girls that she sits with at meals. Thin and gaunt, somewhat waspish, she never seems to desire anything positive for herself. My difference from girls like this (and many other girls on top of that) still shocks me. I feel so ready, like this is just what I needed to pull myself up from the depths of depression and get moving once more. But almost all of the others harbor a notable sense of disbelief, a rank pessimism which overshadows all that they accomplish. It saddens me, but I also feel damned happy that I am at a strikingly different place, that my stay here will allow me to re-enter the world of the living, and that it will be my first and last. And I know I'm not fooling myself, either. Any thoughts which seek to keep me in this pathetic state all stem from the E.D., and the minute I identify such thoughts they are challenged and subverted. More than anything (or anyone?) I know that I am fully capable of overcoming this, especially with the resources which Renfrew provides. I am no longer scared that this will affect me for the rest of my life. The daily struggle is so worth the end result: health and happiness.

I miss mom, dad, and Mel. If only the stupid phone cards lasted for longer. I will buy another tomorrow, but I do wish I could phone them today. Especially Mel. It has to be so difficult and confusing having me here, but she also expressed her relief and hope - so, there, I do not have as much to worry about.

the desire for exercise is very strong, but I am not anxious or depressed because of my inability to do so. These are privileges which I must earn. I have to regain the respect of my own body and mind before I can participate in these activities. This has been one of the hardest things to accept, but I am finally reaching that point. Man, how beautiful it will feel t run again, to feel the release of endorphins and the one-set of hard earned fatigue. I am repairing the relationship between my mind and body, and this excites me.

Claire ended up being one of those girls who continually surprised and astounded me. No matter how hard I tried, I could not understand her motivations for anything. Strangely enough, she took a liking to me. It might have been because I took the time to speak with her when others shunned the thought, or perhaps it was because I was also from the Mid-West and knew how to play euchre (she being from Michigan, and me from Ohio). We played a couple of times and it was quite entertaining to say the least. I think Sophie especially loved it, if only for the insane shifts in mood that Claire would experience throughout the course of an entire match. Sometimes Sophie'd just let her head fall into her propped-up hand, rub listlessly, and look at me with half humor, half disdain. Interesting. Yeah. Funny though.

And I truly miss Sophie, so damn much. We write e-mails and it's fucking brilliant but I'd obviously prefer an extended visit (or stay?). Nashville calls my name. I wonder when I'll be able to make it there.

Benny, Jackie, Sophie.

February Fifth / March Thirteenth

2010-03-13T05:03:00.000-08:00

THOUGHTS BEFORE MORNING GROUP:

today I am just in a wonderful mood. Last night was weird (the "Ambien episode") and I do believe that I have a residual headache as a result, but it feels like nothing can get n my way. The letter I wrote for Mandy was a success, and I was also pleased with the way the front of the card turned out. But who to make the other card for? Actually, as I was asking the question I found the answer: mom, dad, and Mel. God I miss them.

met this new girl named Kate in purple team's group this morning. She's a runner as well, had on a pair of Sperry's like mine, and just seemed like a great girl in general. I look forward to getting to know her very well, because I feel as though we will be able to help one another out in so many ways. This is another exciting development.

[to darken boat shoes: Murphy's oil soap, canola oil]

Quite a short and positive entry. It's funny how all of these bring me back to the moment in time I've captured, launching me through black holes and dumping me smack dab where I already have been. I remember that Sarah S. was sitting next to me (to my right), and that Kate sat to my left. Actually, all three of us had our Sperry's on, and it was just such a little comfort to feel like, other than having this illness, I could have so much more in common with some of these women. And, strangely enough, Kate and I did end up contributing very much to one another's recoveries - watch out, Miss Cleo. Pretty soon I'll have my own psycho hotline.

To Get Through.

2010-03-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

strip the mind of darkness;

fill the mind with light.

February Fourth, the Evening

2010-03-12T04:36:00.000-08:00

THOUGHTS BEFORE EVENING GROUP:

today has been especially wonderful. Woke up with a positive attitude and have been successful with disallowing any negative thoughts from ruining this overall sense of calm.

there are a few girls here which do intimidate me. They have beautiful faces, great style, alluring personality - and, of course, I compare myself and think about their opinion of me. Do they believe that I have a real interest in fashion even though I am stuck in sweats? Do they know I would rather be in a high-waisted skirt, tights and heels than loose t-shirts and athletic shorts? Maybe. I do not feel the desire to explain this, but I also am dying to prove to all of them that, yes, sometimes I can look attractive; that I used to walk around in little less than nothing and didn't look half-bad? But that does not matter anymore. This i all trivial bullshit. There is no reason to allow myself to wallow, especially because I can not go back. The past is just that. Get the fuck over it.

was pretty productive today, especially this afternoon. Made some notes for people and have received positive feedback. Much room for improvement. Real connections are being made. The "new" people are pretty sweet, especially this girl Melissa, from New York. Got that accent and she's a real doll! Very talkative and lively.

time to start the meeting.

There's this girl I met in treatment who has become one of my closest friends. This, I believe, happened for many reasons, but I truly admire her willingness to see through my ability to rationalize even the most trivial of things. She will, for instance, point out inconsistencies in my logic, calling upon me to let go of every last bit of the parts of the eating disorder which I might still secretly desire (control, a certain state of physicality, separation from the "normals"). Of course I want to trash all of these thoughts and have been successful at challenging any that seek to call my motive for recovery into question; but I also cannot deny that these thoughts still ruminate at the base of my skull, sitting gathering a layer of filth, and that sometimes I dip my finger into the muck and wonder at its taste. But these moments, though I do not believe that they will ever truly be gone from my mind, are fleeting. I fight these with all of myself. My spirit lurches at the mere mention of these ideas. My toes curl and my breath stiffens. This is not for me, not at all, nor was it ever, nor will it be in the future.

February Fourth / March Eleventh

2010-03-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

MORNING THOUGHTS:

saw my weight this morning for the first time in a long time. Of course it was around what I expected, but that did not make it any easier to accept. I keep thinking about how I look compared to the other girls and it just keeps spiraling in my mind. I have had time to settle down and really contemplate the meaning of the number and I am pleased that I have calmed myself. This will not last - I will get back in shape eventually. My body has been abused and needs time and space to recover. All in time.

another nice sleep, undisturbed and restful. The Ambien seems to be doing the trick. However, I do not wish to stay on the drug if it becomes unnecessary. Hopefully the nurses will take me off in due course. The girl in the waiting room, I can't remember her name, was coloring Winnie-the-Pooh and had been awake since one this morning. I truly hope that she is able to sleep well tonight. No way do I want to feel that tried and restless all at once. She'll be in my thoughts today, no doubt.

for some reason I am not looking forward to breakfast. I find myself wanting to not eat, to maybe allow a momentary slippage in my attitude and progress. I am sure that this is my E.D. fighting back, lashing out. Amazing how it has the power to alter my seemingly positive and focused state of mind. No, though...just no. E.D. will not affect me in this way. I am only going to be here once and I plan (will) to get the most out of this recovery period. Damn, although I am sad about my situation, I am relieved to know that I still have the ability to challenge these thoughts and emotions. Only on the up and up from here. That's all that's going to happen. I will work harder than I ever have to overcome this...and I will succeed.

The initial shock of making the transition to "normalcy" has all but faded, and I am left with multiple reasons to smile. To live. It's brilliant waking up to a bird outside my window. Sometimes I even look forward to breakfast - well, actually, I do, more often than not. Mostly for the cup of coffee, but you get the point. Daily walks with Brodie are more than enjoyable, so much so that I'm very close to accepting the limiting exercise regimen that my current therapist has required. All in time. Glad I still feel that way. It's true and I'm not afraid to follow that adage every day, all of my waking hours.

Lahan.

For the first time in a while I have a feeling of comfort in my own skin, of truly loving the switch and flow of my curves, of simply being alright with the reflection I see in the mirror. So fucking nice. Such a relief. Today, for instance, I thought that I pulled off the "just rolled out of bed" look pretty well, especially for having left my hair down all night (and it's getting long, wouldn't you know?). This reflection lacks for substance, but I'm just sticking to whatever comes to mind. I am listening to 311 and remembering what it was about my younger self that I loved. Again, a smile.

The Second, in the Evening

2010-03-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

When I added the entry from February second, it was only from the morning; I had inadvertently forgotten to include the other two entries that I wrote from that afternoon and evening. Both will be included in this post. I shall respond afterward.

THOUGHTS FROM THE WAITING ROOM:

no one here walks around in just shorts. I had been wondering whether or not it was against the rules, but I don't think so. They hate the thought of bare, exposed thighs as much as I do. We would rather sweat through our layers than allow our legs/arms to see free air.

I see the anorexic girls and a part of me envies their ability to restrict so well. The fact that they starve and I binge makes me feel like more of a glutton and an out-of-control narcissist. But when I challenge these thoughts I can better see that eating disorders, no matter the form they assume, should never be envied. Mine is different from hers, and I should never wish to have one set of symptoms over another. I can sit here and wallow at my "fatness," pine to go for a run and not eat a damn things, but these are the thoughts which landed me here in the first place - and I never want to have to return. This state is just temporary...I must learn to regain respect for my health before I can return to doing the things that I love. How great will that day e? When I will run and feel the thrill of completing a mile, when I will go for picnics at Malabar, when going to a family get-together means pure enjoyment and relaxation.

One day I will no longer have the desire to binge or to restrict. One day I will get back to living and loving and giving back the time and love that has been lost. That day will be soon...I promise.

THOUGHTS BEFORE BED:

tired again tonight. Day two was successfully completed, and I look forward to working hard again tomorrow.

amidst this positivity remains thoughts of hatred and self-loathing. The mirror in our bedroom only serves to remind me of the weight I have gained and the disdain/disgust/repulsion I feel whenever I see myself. I cannot help but to turn sideways, to lift up my shirt, to pull my thighs apart. When I begin to scrutinize myself in this way it reminds me again of my reason for being here. I truly hate the fact that, when look upon my own reflection, I can seem to find nothing but flaws. I think about how my friends will react to my obvious weigh gain; what will be crossing their minds when they see me next. How will I even face my inadequacy? All of these thoughts reinforce my stay at Renfrew and keep me having to find new and effective ways to overcome them.

earlier today I wrote that all of this is temporary: my body at its current weight/shape, my E.D., my extreme lack of self-worth, even my time here. I will never recover if I choose to remain a victim of my own crimes against myself. Once I get over this hump, I will have the tools necessary to prevent a relapse. Exercise (running) will be a constant part of my daily routine, in a healthy way, and my shape will transform into something healthy, natural, and beautiful. The thing is that I know all of these things will happen, but only I can ensure that the E.D. and all of my negative feeling do not impede this necessary life change.

it was nice to speak with both dad and Mel today. I had totally forgotten about mom's trip to the Windy City; I am sad that she and I could not talk. Hopefully dad and Mel will get my package sent sometime real damn soon - this notebook has only seen two days at Renfrew and is already filling up.

God, I cannot wait to continue working on myself. I am very worthy of all the things which I currently desire for myself (and my family/friends). Soon enough, I will be fully convinced of that.

good night.

Shit. It's nice hearing myself reflected back, reading my own words and listening to that spectral narrator floating in my skull, one who sounds eerily like myself. Everything written in my journals represents my thirst for recovery, for health and for happiness. And even though I find new struggles every single day, sometimes by the hour, I am no longer afraid of facing them and potentially failing. Everything is a choice - the responsibility falls upon my shoulders, and mine alone. I can't tell you how euphoric it feels to truly understand one's own worth. My spirit, mind, and body are all equally beautiful, continually being cultivated by my environment and life experiences; and it's my job to make sure that I choose carefully which routes in life to explore.

Monk.

"February Second" Relived

2010-03-09T13:40:00.000-08:00

Here's the first transcribed entry from my time spent at Renfrew. There will still be no "reflection" as I have a lot to do this evening...but, please, feel free to respond either way. Here it goes.

MORNING THOUGHTS:

the day starts in 30 minutes. Alisha has gone down for her smoke break; her husband comes today for family therapy. She shared some of her history last night, how she got to this point. She seems genuine and should be taken at face value, which I appreciate very much. We will get along just fine.

yesterday was very tiring, but I cannot help but feel so blessed to be at Renfrew. The reception from staff and peers was unexpected but welcomed, of course. I find it interesting that many of the girls here have negative remarks to share about the nurses and counselors - are they as "mean" as the girls indicate? I feel that my positivity and openness to the program will certainly play in my favor. How was I to know that there would be so many who say that they were admitted against their will? My situation precludes any such feelings. I want and need to be here. Thank God for this.

snowed last night - refreshing to look out the windo and see a landscape dusted with snow, so white and clean. My bed is by the window, so I will be able to watch the wood as it makes its daily living.

weird to be here alone. No phone, computer, television; no family, no friends. Mom and dad really came through for me. I understand so much more about their personal histories, and cannot wait to get better for their sake (and my own). Not so lonely though: Alyssa is so similar to me it's queer, but she will be someone I come to know well (22, english major, James Joyce, bibliophile, and she likes the oldies...) Alisha is nice as well, and there are a few other girls: Mandy G, Sophie, Carol, Erin...this one woman, Rachel, seems to be in a dark place, but I am intrigued by her.

the room is cozy. I have already made it my own. I do wish that I would have brought more paper and literature with me, but I'll make do.

time to head down for breakfast.

je suis la jeune vie

2010-03-07T09:22:00.000-08:00

I've missed this. How much, I couldn't really tell you; but rest assured it's been much too long since I've been able to type furiously away at my keyboard, worn in places, to record my thoughts and daydreams. I wish I could retract all of that time lost to despair and self destruction, but what good does wishing do? Nothing. Well, I mean, when you wish for something that is absolutely impossible, that brings naught but bad shit into one's life. So, say it with me now: fuck what has happened, fuck mistakes - fuck right on into the future.

One month and one week passed in Philadelphia. I so desperately needed help to break the cycle of behaviors associated with my illness, and that's what I got plus more. There are so many things I could (should) write about Renfrew, but I'd have to go on for days, it seems; and nobody has that much time to write, let alone read (except, of course, any number of authors, e.g. Mister Stephen King). So, I have made an executive decision: I shall record down what I have written in my journal(s) in this online blog, adding sentiments related to post-rehab success (a.k.a. continued recovery). All of you should find this pretty interesting. I tried to keep up my journal daily, sometimes doubly so; and I am excited to share what I have recorded. Before we start, you should just know one thing: I AM LIKE NEW, je suis la jeune vie, I declare! And all of you shall know this so intensely much.

Also, one last precursor: since I've added a prelude to this entry, I won't be writing anything more about the first real-life journal entry. Kay? Kay.

(shit, forgot my notebook at grandma's. This will have to take place tomorrow. Hold your breath until then...)

The Rains Came.

2010-01-24T03:35:00.000-08:00

"If we can't have everything, true perfection is nothingness. Such a monstrous presumption to think that others could benefit from the squalid catalogue of your mistakes! And how do you benefit from stringing together the tattered pieces of your life? Your vague memories, the faces of people that you were never able to love?"

8-1/2, Fellini

Stir-Crazy.

2010-01-21T10:22:00.000-08:00

What does it mean to be content? Different things for different people, obviously; but I ask because I still have no idea how to ensure that I am doing my best to treat myself with respect and love and care, and all of those things on which all of those self-help books tell you to focus. Most people, including myself, pass these suggestions off as utter shite, bunk if you will. But you don't have to spend a lick of money to discover the full truth of these assertions - yeah. Yick. Well, it's the truth, and even someone as pessimistic and self-loathing (at times) as I can admit this.

Damn, and you know what? The thing of it all is that I always seem to revert to this negative state of mind. Lots of people proclaim that they themselves are their own worst critics, but I exemplify this claim, and am not necessarily proud of it. Here I am, twenty-two years old, and I still have not developed a solid sense of self, nor have I come to appreciate everything that my body does for me ("it will never fail you"). I am confident that all of this will come with time, but I am also frustrated that I have an inability to accept that I am worthy of all of these warm thoughts and feelings. We are all seeking perfection to some extent, but I am (perhaps) a bit too serious about these considerations.

Strip it down, that's what I need to do. Everything must be laid bare and simplified. First, though, I need to convince myself to quit sulking and re-enter into the light of day.

Side note: I have been thinking a lot about someone from my past, and it confuses the hell outta me. Well, you know; I only say that to pacify the turbulence of my subconscious. In reality, I know why he still crosses my mind, but it's a bit scary to admit. We'll see where all of this leads.

Leaving soon...