Puppeh Log

Sometimes my mother gets angry whilst driving. She'll be complacently steering her Prius and a '95 toyota will do something naughty. And maybe she'll throw out the s word, or the f word if she's really frustrated.

Me, as being the oldest and deeply emotionally indulged child, will usually pick sarcastically and continually at her ourbursts until she reaches a completely reasonable conclusion after a good half an hour of back and forth. "JUST LET ME BE MAD"

I feel like this will be a theme in the close relationships I have throughout my life. I have often participated in that chicken dance of remaining calm when all I want to do is rip my own molar out. Today, a biker (NOTONTHEBIKEPATH) brushed very closely by me. I got scared and almost made myself fall down. For a moment, I was completely powerless to my indignant rage. I had to consciously restrain myself from the physical manifestation of my mother's f word. Which would have been shoving his road biking ass over.

I have had this Mexican stand off with my mother, friends, once or twice my sister, boyfriend (although I am sure he didn't notice or care as long as I wasn't physically beating him.) It is never healthy, it's sadistic, backwards, it incapacitates you, it doesn't accomplish much unless your relationship revovles around frivolity, one-upping, and vodka (I'm not knocking that, it actually sounds really fun) but still, i indulge. The emotional constipation of refusing to be angry, refusing to lose, refusing to admit you were wrong, that it doesn't matter, or yes, maybe those jeans do make you look fat.

So thus far in my third decade of life, I have learned one (amoung others, i swearz) very important thing. Although it has been said paitence is a virture, I have to stress that modesty, true honest, respectful blushing modesty is one of the most attractive attributes in the world. in the whole, wide world.

My junior year of high school I was in pre-calculas. Let it be known, my expiriences with "numbers" and "figures" have never been positive (haha). To me math is limitless headaches, chills, sweats, bruises, weakened immune systems, nausea and constipation. The academic aids virus. Herpes. Dysentary. Bad things. I always thought Isosceles was a wizard until geometry. I think people who speak math are absolutely glorious, clean people who posess a magical brain power that is both inspiring and frightening. And they can read. Aliens.

Anyway, somehow I had dragged my way through geometry and algebra 2. But pre-cal was starting to unravel my AP child fascade. I wasn't good at math, I was just motivated and terrified. Our teacher was a brilliant and eccentric man, who it was rumored, owned a yacht, Jaguar, and many degrees and accolades. Ray Chayo. It was like saying Mufassa; it had that kind of reverberation. I have to grin looking back at the nervous dread I felt just walking upstairs to his classroom.

Ray Chayo was a creative man, and his alter ego manifested itself in various extra credit assignments. However these assignments weren't simply tedious worksheets designed to put off those with poor work ethics, shoe-in college applications, or, er, lives, they were contests. My teetering, delicate, on-life-support B threatened to flat line at any moment, and holding an extra credit contest was like throwing a steak to the starving. My equally enthused, but far more talanted classmate and dear friend Peter (he graduated from Cal in 3) agreed. We were definetly going to win, nobody wanted this like us. Nobody.

There were two contests, one centered around the class and the other was an individual competition centered around the mathematical concept of logarithims. My Chayo explained that participants were to find a small, carry-able log and make it into something clever and innovative. ART. WORDS. PUNS. I was ecstatic, here was a place where I could finally shine, instead of avoiding eye contact. The right side of my brain trembled in anticipation. We can do this.

This was one of the only times in my life in which i was diabolical. I often try to be diabolical, but my harebrained revenge or conspiracy schemes usually lose their potencey after an hour or platter of bbq chicken wings. How can you be angry when there are chicken wings? Once I pounded a confession out of my boyfriend over a past escapade he had. His forced and trembling anecdote was excatly what I didn't want to hear, and I almost wept I was so turned off. But then I opened my mini fridge and furiously knawed on the left over chicken wings we brought home after an early dinner. Unsurprisingly, I felt better.

But anyway, junior year, with my mini log in hand, I was diabolical as shit. I turned the wooden cylinder over in my hands, sweating over how to make it so hilarious and adorable that Chayo would be hard pressed NOT to love and prize me.

I finally decided on "puppy log," and in an homage to my own personal canine friends, this puppeh log was going to be a poodle. Armed with felt, mini boas, socks, pillow stuffing, red ribbon (for tiny bows above the ears) and about five hours of my night when i should have been doing, ohh I don't know, PRE CALCUAUS, I transformed nature's phallic joke into the cutest fucking poodle ever. Puppy log. Bam. No One could resist.

And oh, if you think I was cocky as a fifth grader (c. previous blog) the day I brought my puppy log to school took the cake. I was brimming with artistic genius. I carried the thing in a small shopping back, as to preserve its structure. People would ask me "Hey, Sonia, what's your log," and if felt I couldn't trust them, I would say I didn't make one. I felt this was an appropriate time to use discretion, so much was at stake.

When I got to Chayo's class, I gingerly took the puppy log out of its bag, and placed it on the counter with the rest of the logs. I looked over them derrisively, a clown, a clarinet, a man log...pah! Nice try, fouth period. I went back to my seat to gaze at puppy log from a different vantage point. Unfortunately, from where I sat, puppy log kind of looked like a misshapen cotton ball. I should have heeded this omen but I dismissed it, knowing Chayo would recognize my craftmanship and delightful play on words.

I joined my friend Peter at our usual spot of freak outs and shit talking to rehash our logs. He had run out of time, forgetting that the logs were due today. To salvage his situation, he quickly constructed a black top hat out of contruction paper, glued it on top of a long skinny log, and christened it "Lincoln log." While I appreciated his quick thinking, I didn't honestly assess Peter's lincoln log as a threat to my prize, I was more concerned with the clown one which had a big red nose and colorful outfit.

The bell rang, and Chayo accumulated our attention in his quiet way. He went through all of the logs, asking each student to call out their creation's name. Then we had class. I was put off, I wanted validation and confirmation NOW. Chayo explained he would evaluate them and let us know who won later that week. Then he went to the board and began mumbling brilliantly. I was irreversibly dissapointed, and spent the rest of the period signing my name in cursive and drawing poodles.

When Chayo did eventually announce the winner, it wasn't me. Grinning softly, he held up Peter's top hatted log and murmured"Lincoln log," shaking his head with pleasure.

...This was an interesting feeling. I wasn't just dissapointed, I felt hugely humiliated. It's not as if I sat at the head of the classroom, dunce cap on puppy log's and my head with the entire class chucking crumpled up homeworks at us, the humilitaion was inside. I couldn't believe I had waltzed around school, carrying a fucking dog log in a Nordstrom shopping bag like Paris Hilton. The icing on the cake came sixth period. I was a staffer for Yearbook, and the 30 odd kids all had our sixth period to complete the gigantic book. One of the few male editors, P.j. James, found my poor puppy log, for he (the puppy stick) hath no longer a carrying case.

"Ha, look at this," decreid P.j, clad in his faded Ambercrombie jeans and zip sweatshirt. "It's a little doggy." He then lowered poor puppy log to his croch, and humped it.

I remember coming out of the computer room to see stupid P.j. raping my loser puppy log. My first thought was WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING, but since he was a senior, handsome, and my dumb editor I didn't want to be the girl who overreacted. The same emotional standoff I do nowadays with my mother or sister, I had with P.j. I could feel myself getting angry and tears beginning to form behind my eyeballs, but I couldn't let go. I couldn't tell the retard to put the damn thing down, that he was a jerk, and had just commited bestiality. Black marabu feathers flew from P.j.'s crotch as his faux orgasm completed. Amid fake or hesitant laughted from my classmates and ironically enough, myself, he shucked the devirginized log onto the table. It landed with a clunk; it was after all, wood.

I still regret not standing up for puppy log that day, but the lesson came twofold. I went into the log contest like a bull fighter, I dismissed the creativity of my friend, I laughed inwardly at the efforts of my classmates, I shuttled my project around like it was some gift to humanity. I built up this nutty platform of achivement and brilliance, because, what, I thought I did good?

Well I did do good, the thing was damn adorable. But I lost any credit when the only validation I would allow is that of another person: that seductive other, the cafeteria applause, going to a cool party. Any Hilary Duff film pre 2006 will tell you alll that doesn't matter. What bumms me out is I only created something because I thought it would win, not because it was something I actually wanted to do. And I try, desperatley, to do things I want to do, reguardless of if it will get me Mr Chayo's or Hilary Duff's or anyone else's approval.

I guess that is how I think of modesty, doing things because you think they are awesome, with as much lack of a reguard as you can muster in a world of heavy influence. People will most likely tell you the things you do are stupid, or they might think you're the coolest person ever. But if, innately, you know what you do day-to-day is mostly awesome, then nobody know's nothin!... and nobody gets butt raped.

(Puppy log survived his trauma, and now resides on top of my sisters dresser in a nice little basket. She swooped him up after I told her what he'd been through. He is very content.)

War HUH What is it good for?

When I was in fourth grade I entered my first poetry contest. The competition, Reflections, was nation wide and it included categories such as art, video, and musical score. Each year Reflections had a theme that the responding entries should capture. The year of my first poetic entry was "What if..."

I was a big Shel Silverstein fan back then. I read his poetry like it was kid crack, which is what Silversteins poetry is I think. Child cocaine. It always made me feel giddy and crazy, I wanted to play outside and "feel the world." And it wasn't a normal desire, like the day -to-day terrozing of a cult-de-sac with the rest of the neighborhood kids. It was a blatant, I-read-about-a-girl-who-ate-a-whale-and-now-I-want-to-frolick-in-the-overgrown-grass-of-my-front-yard sort of yearning. And i hate the word frolick. Whitman is great, but Silverstein knew how to put the desire of natural imagination in children as well as adults.

So thus inspired by A Light in the Attic's spindly drawings and kooky phrases, I came up with the piece "Robotic Tot," which i thought fit the What if theme quite nicely (what if...there was a robotic thought. nice linear transition) I wrote about this fanatastic baby girl machine who never cried, never messed, and was a cheerful sparkling child. The only downside was when you picked her up she was hollow, there was no cherub flesh to kiss, no flimsy little hand to grip. A whimsical, adorable poem with a nice little backdrop of social commentary about the current and future dependence on technology and what that is doing to our "humanity." ...Well the first part anyway.

I remember painstakingly writing the poem out on lined paper for my final product. Next to it I drew a terrifying conceptual drawing of my mind's image of the robotic tot. What I envisioned as a sweet, baby robot thing came out like Linda Blair and the plastic baby head spider from Toy Story had a love child. I am not one for follow through or editing, I thought, eh, good enough.

The entries were collected and posted in my elementary school's tiled hallway. It took me about an eon to find my little white half sheet. I remember passing it often to re-read and brush my fingers across my brilliance. Oooh, that's good, I would secretly complement myself. I waited with great expectation for the winners to be announced.

I guess Reflections was kind of a big deal. The whole school assembled and the first place winner of the poetry contest would get to read his or her poem to the entire school. From a podium. with a microphone. I waited expectantly in the audience, next to my classmates and teachers, my stomach twisting with nerves as I went though various surprised reactions. Finally, after droning on about the fourth and third place holders, second place went to some third grader. Didn't care. Then the first place winner was announced. And it...was not me. It was Molly Mcgonagle.

Molly Mcgonagle was a tomboy. She had short brown hair, three brothers and freckels across her nose. We were friends, and she'd always vouch for me in sports, which was very nice of her. I liked Molly very much, but at the "What if..." winner's ceremony, I hated her. I continued to hate her through the applause, through her sheepish walk to the stage. I seethed through our principal's congratulatory and laudable minispeech, through Molly's slow and smiling acceptance of her trophy award. I continue to stew until some minion ran accross the stage and handed Molly her poem. It was a beautifully caligraphed piece, monted on a giant piece of azure constriction paper. A hand-drawn globe accompanied her scribings, completed with faintly etched continents and the longitude latitude lines. Damn. The paper was so huge, that Molly had to keep turing it to her to read. It presented a slight dilemma for her as she wanted to face the poem/art out to the audience but could't read it at the same time. She ended up flattening the thing against the small podium face, dragging it across the microphone as she did. Inwardly, I snickered.

The poem was about the world, and peace. What if...the world had peace. Something like that. Half of me was outraged, and half of me felt like a dunce, idiot, stupid, naive, soft, sissy kid. Her poem kind of sucked. Molly wasn't a writer, she was really good at tether ball. I was the weird, frizzy haird creative type. I wrote about infinite possibilties, rainbows, youth, man v.s. machines and she wrote about fucking world peace. Boy were you wrong Shel Silverstein. The same old same old pageant girl answer had won a contest based around creating something that is totally imaginative and impossible. Yet as she fumbled through her trite and cliched prose, I knew it wasn't her fault. I later looked at the other winner's pieces: What if... nobody got extinct. What if...the indians were our friends.What if...my mother loved me. and I got it. The judges of this "contest" weren't looking for innovation or originality, they were there for the sob story! the policial statement! the historical reference!

I was dissillusioned but felt wildly dangerous over my findings. I plotted, which is unusual for a fourth grader, to write the grandest, most ridiculous historically accurate sob story with a political undercurrent that had ever been written. A year later, the theme for Reflections was announced: Suddenly I turn around.

For about two weeks I was flummoxed. I thought about writing on the dependence of women on cosemetics and over priced fashion, but nixed it due its limited audience. What is most affecting? What's the worst thing that has ever happened to the human race? Then my fifth grade, American history influenced mind answered. It said: War.

Which War? I asked myself. Why choose when there were so many? I didn't want to overload the judges with stanzas, so I picked four: Revolutionary, Civil, WWII, and Vietnam (I felt it had been long enough) There was one more stanza, with which I brought my message home. I can't remember the poem excatly but I do remember a few lines:

Suddenly I turn around,
the Third Reich is drawing near
We fight and die to liberate Europe
The Germans are our fear

OR

Suddenly I turn around
Bullets fly in between the trees
Horrible napalm is floating down
ever, ever so slowly

And the last stanza:

Suddenly I turn around
The earth is bare and lonely
We've got to love and care for each other...
Don't you see?

My mother thought that was bold, ending my poem with a slightly admonishing, hypothetical question, but I knew it was gold. I was wild from last years rejection, cocky as a bull, with a take no prisoners attitude. Taking a cue from Molly, I mounted my handwritten-in-cursive poem on a red piece of construction paper, thinking red was a good stand-in for blood. Then I drew small black cartoon bombs, with their wick things emminating red and orange marker sparks. My mom said they looked cute. Cute!?! I was mildly infuriated and slightly set back. What if cute cost me the seriousness of first place? I thought about it, and decided I would have to depend on my words and not so much their presentation. Plus I was exhausted. Like I said, I am not so big on editing.

Im going to just fast track you, darling reader, to the winner's assmebly. I was on pins and needles walking to the auditorium. I hadn't thought about my poem in the same way I fawned over Robotic Tot. My desire to win was vengeful and hard this time. I went in there prepared, and like the soldiers in my poem, I would come out victorious. Just like America....Minus 'nam.

I walked in, and saw my parents beaming on folding chairs in the front row. This meant I had placed. But it didn't matter, I was after first. My normal, non crazy, unstinted self was surprised at my lack of excitment. But deep down I knew it was first or nothing. I had been exploited, now it was time to exploit.

And then I won. I think the crazed look left my eyes. I smiled graciously all the way up to the podium, and read without messing up too badly. I didn't really look out at the audience, my mother later told me, but I was nervous. Even though I had accomplished what I wanted, my knees shook as I stood in front of the school. Once my plotter's buzz wore off, I wasn't so tough. And the quiet, Shel Silvertein reading fifth grader liked it.

My poem won at the city and district level. When it failed to win the state, I wasn't as pissed as I thought I would be. I think deep down I knew the cartoon bombs were going to come back to haunt me. If only the state judges would've grasped my irony.

The Pursuit of unHappiness

Hallo Welt!

It's been a short while since I've indulged my scribing self on this minature soapbox. Last night my dearest and only younger sister put together my ikea desk chair like a doting boyfriend. I always tell her she is the favored daughter beacuse she knows how to do everything. So now I have a wonderful little desk ANd chair from which to type away on my shitty laptop.

Unfortunatley I have been at a slight loss about what to blog aboot. It's not like I have a shortage of thought process, like the other day I saw a girl i moderately dislike longboarding to class on campus. I wanted to text my sister something like blah blah blah is longboarding to class and looks fat. And then I was going to make a hilairous joke immediately after, saying something like "[blah blah blah looks fat]...says the gal who just finished a bag of harvest cheddar sunchips in three minutes!"

It was probably more like ten minutes, but...anyway since I had made a self deprecating quip, it negated (to me, in my mind at least) the harshness of my bitchy ass text message. I felt better, more clever. And then I thought, hm, is self deprecation the get-out-of-guilt-free-card for shit talking? Hey, that'd make a cute and silly blog.

However, I never sent the text message because I was too lazy to get my phone out of my book bag, so that whole scenario never happened. But, see! STUFF COMES TO ME ALL THE TIME.

The problem ala mode is: I usually try to write about the things that make me unhappy. Everything unhappy, at least in my poor and under-developed voice, is infinetly more interesting and usually funnier. So what does one crazy-haired, pseudo blogger do when I can no longer conjure up something that pisses me off or humiliates me enough to put it out there for my large (cough) group of dedicated and sexy readers to adore or sneer at?



I...die



But honestly, I can't imagine detailing the way my boyfriend gently loosens the grip of our hand hold so that our palms don't become clammy...and it being interesting or relevant. I also think it's redundant to explain why I get excited when I bound up the stairs in my huge college-y cliffside house, hearing the chatter, laughter, and bong rip from upstairs. Or the things my mother begins to divulge at our truly passionate dinner in a deliciously cheesy restaurant.

Im terrified happiness makes one complacent. The one thing that is comforting is that happiness always seems to be relatively unstable. The way the world seems to work is you get built up, only to take a vaudville fall. I am anticipating mine.

So until I do something embarassing, my word document entitled "the grievances of long distance" starts to overflow, or i finally eat my words, I guess I will just drone on about blogger's bloc.

Upstairs my roommates are playing shewolf. haha.

I hang my head and cry

Tomorrow I am interviewing long-time LGBT activist Jerry Sloan for my final story (on the Lavender Library, you know you're all twiching in your pants), as my stint at Sac Press comes to it's rainbowed, climactic end. I'm pretty nervous, even as i type a script in a silly Word document, all the way down to "Thanks so much for taking time out of your day to talk with me, I really appreciate it."

I've been feeling impressively dirty as of late, most likely because since I don't have to waltz around the office, i dont feel the need to put on clothes, or shower. I drove halfway to trader joes before i realized i didn't bring shoes. There's a part in Capote's Bfast at Tiffany's where Holly, in a period of mourning her deceased brother, "forgets herself." She runs to the market in a trench and nothing underneath. I always thought, how did the narrator know? But in my case, I am assuming the WASPS buying organic breadcrumbs and Fage (pronounced FAH-YEH) greek yogurt may have taken notice.

In the final days of my current post-hygenic summer, I have also been sleeping fitfully. My inability to fall asleep until 4 am (my roommates will attest that this is kind of nothing new) has left the early hours of the morning open to thinking. But my favorite kind of thinking. The self-indulgent, sublime, problematic kind.

I met quite a few different people this summer, people I did not expect to meet. I know the masses of CA don't always associate our capitol with the radiant futuristic energy of a stigma-ed metropolis, but the riverside city, has been a nice, schorching hot place to have my ass sloppily put in line.

And then I re-met the people that I have always known. Important people who get pushed gently and arrogantly curbside when one takes to "finding themselves," as if yourself can be found in a 30 pack of natty light or that extra spiffy American Apparel purchase. It's been gratifying to marinate in the dichotomy that is my hometown's summer society. It's an odd and precocious group that you witness gathering at the bars, since my class turned 21. How can you not love a group, clad in their best cutoffs and Steve Madden wedges, drinking 2 for 5 margaritas in between chainsmoking marlboro 27s? I can't help but to fervently adore the uncomfortable sweat that pools in the small of my back because we sit outside in the 90 degree nighttime air. Don't act like you've forgotten, or that that kind of back sweat alludes you. You remember. Pledging faith to Leahry, Nietsche, or whatever revolution has learned you doesn't make you immune. I know you know, says the bouncer at the bar. Welcome home.


I love college. I love being surrounded by innovative, talented, wonderful people. I love the closeness to distinguished academic minds. I love how my roommate and I walk her dog all the way to the "oval office" at the edge of campus that has a great view of the ocean, and speculate which important brain occupies it. But this summer has taught me not to dismiss the reason I went to college. Because in some way, significant or not, unconscious or aware, willingly or drag-me-by-my-hair; home moves me.


And because I know home moves me, I move on.

In Defense of the Genre

Oh my, how i have neglected you, blog. You and my eights of hundreds of followers. How many readership jokes can a blogger make? (5 so far) If a blogger posts but nobody reads it did he really post at all? Im just 'tadicting all over the place today.

I am a little miffed, because my cell phone is betweened my high-back couch and the wall. I had it open, and was using it to fling a bug (who probably dragged itself into my mother's house on account of the stifling temperatures) off the arm of said couch, and lost control of the fling. Not only did i miss the bug, but my phone flew up in the air and into the smallest place possible. GRR, like G.R.R.

Here's my thought process: I just instated a ring which says the name of who is calling. riiing (standard) then it says in a secretorial female voice Call from: mom. It repeats this twice. I figure if it is someone important I will hear it, and the necessity of answering the call of someone important will propel me to move the couch, or at least thrust my arm. On a side note I made my editors' numbers holy shit fuck fuck and shit holy fuck fuck (creative, i know) which has been completely anti-climatic because they never call me.

I'm a little nervous because i DON'T know where the bug went.

Covered the SacAnime convention today with my friend and fellow intern Anthony Bento, who is a bad ass photog.

We both were a little taken aback at how voyeuristic we felt. Outsiders, non fans, there to discern and report about this gathering of people devoted to a subject we knew nothing about. I felt bad. I truly wished i were better versed in manga or...shit I don't even know what I should be better versed in.

I think Anthony said how the entire expirience felt intimate, and those participating vulnerable.
to us. I did, I felt hawkish. i tried to slyly write things down instead of the self important note taking I usually do.

I sat in on a disscussion panel where voice actors fielded questions from a 200 plus audience. I watched a 13 year old kid with purple felt cat ears ductaped to his head writhe excitedly in his seat and scream "RUKIA" (along withthe rest of the audience) when a voice actor coulnd't recall the name of the a female anime character he had a crush on.

I wouldn't say I enjoyed the anime convention, but I will say I have a strange affection for it. It is definetly another world, but also one that should be given just as much respect as fashion, art, foodie culture, surfing, sports, hell anything inspires subculture. I always have to slap myself on the ass whenever I am initially weirded out or snarly and skeptical about something. Just because it doesn't fit into an initial understanding of hobbies (let me take a brief paratheses to denote how ridiculous it is to have a self constructed notion of how people should be PASSIONATE, as in if they are not PASSIONATE in a way i understand, i will be uncomfortable in the way they are PASSIONATE. w.t.f.) does not mean that their pursuit if thing they love is any less relevent to their happiness than me being happily satistfied drooling after a christian louboutin pump. Or reading a bitch's fashion blog about her drooling over a cl pump, or chatting excitedly on a forum about me and fashion bitch drooling over a shoe.

And who's to say when the time came, and Andre Leon Talley was stumbling over the designer's name at a press conference, I (if for some reason i was there) wouldn't stand up and shriek "LOUBOUTIN."

The Hypo-reaction

I have been brainstorming how to start this entry, and i had a couple of idearz. One was:

You know those moments when you remember something you said or did and just cringe?

Then i thought, wow. That would be a impressively douchy "lede">>>as is said in the editorial world PAHA.

Which got me on the train of thinking about hypothetical questions in general, especially that sucker that i may have employed had i left my snark filter in the shower (i just showered, fyi) and OMJWG(oh my jehovas witness' God) hypo questions suuuckkkk.

A hypothetical question (h.q. from this point onward, to lessen the annoyance of repetition) is, by my grade school definition, a question that is not meant to be answered. Then i was like, okay, well what is a question? And to be honest, i was too lazy to drum out an answer, so i dic.com'ed it. And for our intents and purposes of talking shitte on the h.q., i learned that:


ques⋅tion 
–noun

a sentence in an interrogative form, addressed to someone in order to get information in reply.


Then i thought, well im on the website, why not go crazy. ALSO learning:


hy·po·thet·i·cal question/"hI-p&-'the-ti-k&l/ : a question directed to an expert witness (as a physician) that is based on the existence of facts offered in evidence and the answer to which is an opinion to be considered in light of the evidence NOTE: Modern rules of evidence have lessened the need for a hypothetical question setting forth all of the facts to be assumed in answering the question. An expert witness may state an opinion based on data or facts considered reliable in his or her field even if not already disclosed or not admissible as evidence.


What?
oh.


Okay, well, the hq i am thinking of is the one slipped into the middle of a T.S. Eliot essay, "If life is meaningless, then what is death?" or "Have you ever wondered if there was more to life, other than being really, really, ridiculously good looking? " or "So I'm rappelling down Mount Vesuvius when suddenly I slip, and I start to fall. Just falling, ahh ahh, I'll never forget the terror. When suddenly I realize "Holy shit, Hansel, haven't you been smoking Peyote for six straight days, and couldn't some of this maybe be in your head?"

H.q.s are such a vapid, narcissistic excuse for a sentence that could be used to deftly drive the point that all the other previous painstakingly constructed sentences were waiting for. It's like each hopeful, sweating little guy is there, holding his place firmly in the paragraph, waiting for that concluding bit that will make all his multiple, semi-coloned dependent clauses worth it. Whispering feverishly to the brain power that holds his fate in their trembling, overcaffinated fingers...

Oh! Don't muck it up (supporting evidence is English?)

And then, much to the dismay of the poor bastard the "writer" takes a deep inhale of something with tobacco , exhaling an ohhhh, I've got it now, and, believe it or not, at the same time, extolling, with his sudden surge of genius, something akin to the meaningless nature of:

"Did you ever see that "Twilight Zone" where the guy signed a contract and they cut out his tongue and put it in a jar and it wouldn't die, it just grew and pulsated and gave birth to baby tongues?"

NO! i didn't see that one Garth! Because what you're saying or rather NOT SAYING has nothing to do with all the hard work you did the seven sentences before that. Also, its cocky! I'm not going to telll you what i mean, I am just going to let you simmer on that sexy thought-provoking thing i just said...while i go look in the mirror, perhaps ask my reflection the same thing....brb...self...what is Love? Also its lazy! Instead of taking the head hurting time to correctly identify just what should be articulated as the final point, I'm going to throw you a curve ball. Just try and figure out what i mean now, bitch.

NO! we are not your bitches, we are the readers. We are the people YOU are trying to WIN OVER, not piss off. This is not literary I spy, no one is going to play a game because you are too a)stupid b)lazy c)cocky to force your pudgy yet weirdly thin self to write coherently.

So "writers," paper do-ers, readers, philosophical conversationalists, (the only genre of people i shall exclude are those who are 'medicating') bloggers, speakers, PEOPLE OF THE WORLD think twice to thrice times before whipping out an hq. They suck, and your argument or entire being really, will suck so much less if you steer as clear of these affronts to intelligence as fervently as you can.

The Nanny

Launch was fly! i was stressed aboot half the time (fecking sally, not doing her thing) but still, it was viel Spass!


Highlights:

-meeting Trixie and a pretty blonde who told me about daily candy, which sounds fantasically cool. They were like Sacto needs one! I was like, I can't hear you, the blaring electro is taking up my eardrum space!

-Seeing Velvet Leafs darling collection, there was a long sleeved brown hether minidress with a keyhole and cream bow detail that was immaculate. and pretty.

-Talking to fellow fran drescher hair fan/big hair adoree, Nicole Kniss of Van Der Neer. Her funked up kiddie/Alice in wanderlust inspo-ed stuff was a trip down the rabbits butthole that i truly enjoyed. Plus she likes big hair.

-Dancing, more like flinging myself around to ward off any crotches heading towards my backside, to LA Riots and Wallpaper.

-These guys:




-Looking like this:


I can't help it if I'm pretty/slightly angry. The lovely blonde in the back, throwin up the L sign, was on of Van Der Neer' Models (capital M) slash full time catwalk occupier.

As much fun as I managed to have, driving home I felt a familar pang of uncomfortable. I realized, as a usually do when i am on facebook, how much i truly miss those who reside currently in SB or will come September. As i unloaded my tired and sweaty butt into bed at 5 a.m. I allllmosst called a dear freund and released a shitstorm of nostalgia. Guess who saved the day? Not Sally, she sucks for anything personal. This honor of self restraining Sonia goes to none other than Fran Fine.

I am no stranger to the comedy of errors that is The Nanny. Ask those whom i miss so tremendously in SB, I violently defend that Jew's wardrobe and hair like she was an actual person. As my obsession developed, I began to love not only the nanny, but the woman behind her. I read found her bio and read proudly aloud to the rommates how she battled uterine cancer, releasing, upon its defeat, the book "Cancer Schmanzer." I also, to snorted laughter at my insistence to educate everyone on Fran's life, told them how she has been robbed and raped in her LA apartment. womp womp womp.

I am not sure if anyone memorized the Nick at Night schedule like my insomniac self has, but at 3 am there begins an extensive session of Nanny re-runs. As i sat two feet from the television eating nutella out of the jar and drinking milk out of the carton like a heathen, I watched Fran wear tights with shorts and bizarre 60's mod hair; I felt better.

"Who would have guessed that the girl we've described,Was just exactly what the doctor prescribed?"

Hey Sister, Soul Fister.

Last quarter at my seaside school I took a Pacific Literature course. We read a book about Samoan girlhood, Where We Once Belonged. The authoress, Sia Figel, douses poor Western readers with lots of Samoan words. It was frustrating for many of my classmates; they said things like She is doing it on purpose, It makes me not want to read it, and I'm a bitch. There was a dictionary in the back, and sometimes to understand what the funk was going on, you'd have to leaf through it, return to your spot, and fit the newly defined phrase into your understanding.

Tiring? Yes.
The same shit that any culture had to do once the big bad Western man stepped in to civilize their brown heathen asses? JAVOLL!

Anyway from such a book, I learned that agaga was/is the Samoan word for soul.

And I couldn't help but wonder (holla miss bradshaw) if Lady Gaga is privy to this fact.

Launching Sally

Hi kittens!

So a little less philosophizing and a little more event updation. Not that, like, I am on the Sacto map, But i figure its good practice for when my how-to bj tape releases. la la la.

So Saturday! is tommorrow. And if you are in the 916 arena and care to partake in some certain high waisted, pouty bored, fist pumping hipster harkening 'tivities of festival like proportion, you should swing by the Greens Hotel for Vhcle (only one vowel) Magazine's Launch.

Tickets are an unglorious $20 or for VIP $25 (woof) but there is a shitteload of stuff going on. Fashions from the lovely minds of Van Der Neer, Velvet Leaf, Bows and Arrows, and Cuffs will be vending and showing off while sound makers such as LA Riots, The Robot and jj, Dances With White Girls, Love Like Fire (im already getting sweaty and excited) get groovy and stone-faced, producing madly fun noises. 

Das event spans form 6 p.m. to 2 a.m. (phunk the sacto curfew!) and then there is a wide eyed after party for another two hours. i love the euro rave time tables. Makes you believe we really can all come together. as one. 

On top of it all, the scenery (ahem architecture whatever) is supposed to be spectacular. At the very least, interesting. 

So OMRS (oh my richard simmons) you should get down to the greens and watch me walk around, looking lost, "reporting." Nah, I will do an excellent job. Mostly because I have newly created an alter ego, specifically for interviews or event coverage. I had to mold her up after a few saggy performances in interrogations and "discerning the vibe." Sally Fearless (uch uncreative, i know) is a bad ass. One listen to Earth Wind & Fire's Serpentine Fire, then a flash quick dose of some silly remix then some affirmations in my rearview mirror (You are a good reporter, you are a good reporter) and I'm (halfway) transformed. Ready to ask the questions. Take the notes. Ride my guerilla journalism education all the way to a error free story. gulp.

Aesthetically,  I see her a cross between Wonder Woman, Anna Karina, and Beyonce. Di-VA.

So lots of people should show to Launch, watch the fancy trussed up 20 yr olds prance around and myself as Sally Fearless stalk them. 

Which Wilderness is which?

I was not born into the wilderness.

I screamed my first semi loud roar to the world inside a linolium tiled building, with a scrub encased nurse to take me to another table, another pair of hands, to cut my ties to the wild.

I was raised in a brick house, with cheerios and central heating.

I was moved to a stucco house, with blazing summers and dry winters.

I have been loved and praised, I have graduated, I have handed in nights of miserable, breached thought and meaningless, hopeless prose.

I have rested inside of big airy rooms, with slow turning fans and heavy breathing partners.

I have never killed for my own survival, I have never foraged for a solitary meal.

I have never sustained another individual, I have never changed my own tire.

I have never bled for myself, I have never hurt for another.

SO.

I am not sure excatly what is the most meanigful way go about writing stories,talking to people, or (for the larger perspective, mm) LIVE. I hear myself speak on my digital recorder; the sound of my own, slowly articulating voice makes me cringe with hestitation. Hesitation over my own deliberate process; Am I a hack, Or am I really trying?

Prettily enough, I have met the fomer sayers who believe, albeit ungraciously, I am a hack. I sometimes believe it myself. It is only in brief, fleeting moments of mature and diligent reflection that I am thankful such voices exist. Without the loud, tulmutuos roar of accusation (self and non self)I would be stagnant in my principles. I would be too stationary. I am uninvested in the "simple life." Buying organic is about as close as I will get to Into the Wild. However I believe I've found such wilderness in the consistent, blinding self reflections, or the richochets of others'. What is the wilderness if not a check and balance for this life? I find solace in the shade of a tree, but i am challanged to grow while walking concrete groves and diving reluctantly into converstation with individuals smarter and quicker, who have louder voices and longer hair. My wilderness is not a comfort, and its not organic. It is constructed; but it humbles me always.

Nature may provide you with one truth, but my wild forces me to acknowledge there is small truth but my own, and that is faulty. I think i may prefer the ambiguious existence over one as a prolific mountaineer. Perhaps it stems from an obsession with leather, red soled shoes and pillows. Or perhaps i would rather be humbled and loved by rather than lonely and omnisicent.

And here, i defer to those far more brilliant than I.

I know Whitman finds whats good in das hood in nature, but i always thought the infamous first stanza of Song of Myself applied directly to me. I guess thats the point.

"I celebrate myself, and sing myself,

And what I assume you shall assume,

For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you. "

--Walt Whitman, Song of Myself

A Tiny, Insignificant itch

My mother has an acronym for me when i leave for an evening outing. I am notorious for leaving a cheerily lit house, bascially screaming with unwarrented hospitality and no peace of mind for the mistress. It's sort of newly coined, but when I whirlwind around the house, mascara and reeking perfume announcing gala intentions, she'll throw out a few "LLA, Sonia, please"

LLA: Lights, Lock, Alarm. I think she should add a C for curling iron because i often leave it on.

Most of the time she can tell I'm not really listening. She will see the glazed look in my eye which is more indicative of me visualizing how my ratty brown belt would look or if black heels would be too much, rather than repeating the instruction in my head.

"What are you supposed to remember?"

Maybe something more cinchy depending on drinks. Beer will not look good in that skirt, its hard to sit down in. what if the bar is demin flooded. hm. God. late.

"Lights alarm LOCK! i wont forget." already forgotten.

But i did remember that night, about 2 weeks ago. I remember teetering to the hallway and switching off the light, closing the door to my moms room, grabbing my purse and finally, finally making to the kitchen, one step closer to the car, the bar, being on time-ish.

And then one solitary lamp light in the entertainment room. One little fucking switch left unturned. Who even uses that light? Who the FUCK uses that lamp? When was the last time that lamp was even on. What even is a lamp. Dumb, dumb dumb. The entire house is on tracklighting, and we have a gaddamn LAMP IN THE CORNER OF THE ROOM.

Smoldering, i make my way over to the lamp, lean over, and twist its tiny insignificant switch until it blinks off.

I pushed the right button to set the alarm. I dead bolted the door and left the house.

Today I watched my mother sit on a chair in my room and tell me about her friends. I have nice light when i open my curtains and dont sleep till 2, we sat on in clean whitly lit space and she spoke softly and nicely. I was feeling like a bad character in a book. She told me how proud she was when i remember LLA.

"Really?"

"Sure," she said, "I'm very proud you remembered."


My mother said many more important and insightful things this afternoon. Great advice I wish i could pour into mason jars and stack in my closet. And maybe its narcisissm, but i am very proud that i remembered LLA. Because i didn't before, I just left everything on. And not because I wanted the house to be robbed or squatted in. Because i am careless, because i dont like turning the hallway light off, it creeps me out. Beacsue i dont really think about it. beacuse Im focusing on hair height instead of securing my mother's domain. But I am trying to remember LLA. I say it aloud and exhuberantly back to my mother, beaming and satisfied i've remembered. I take delicious comfort in knowing i did it right, that one time. I want to do it again. I want to always remember LLA. I have good confidence that I will from this point on.

I have to commend the acronym, it was almost like an olive branch of nagging, our little bridge by which our various bitchings could cross. Through her acronym I saw how easy it all was. Through the acronym she saw I wasn't hopeless.

Sometimes, you take a beating. And it never feels great, but in the wake of such uncomfortable feeling, I was surprised when LLA popped into my conscience. Its probably not my greatest accomplishment, but It means something to me, and to the woman with the acronym.

The Journalistic Instict

I'm not sure I'm cut out for journalism.

I know I'm still learning and figuring all the things that need to be figured out, but I wasn't shot out into the world with a great understanding of passive voice or a knack for getting the "truth" out of someone.

First of all, i don't even know what the truth is. Most of the time it seems the justification in making someone look like a dick. Sometimes i find myself editing quotations so the speaker sounds smarter. Maybe some would say "You're Lying!" but i like to think I'm just presenting what they really meant to say, how they really meant to say it. Again the chorus. "You're Lying!" No! I'm just presenting my world; a world where everyone speaks eloquently and politely on all sides of matters. There is no recognition of race. The world isn't melting. Jesus has actually returned twice. Also, there has been genetic engineering of livestock in an effort to reduce carbon admissions during transportation. In other words, pigs fly.

Sigh. The other interns at SP are great. I read one gals blog and she was ruminating on how alive she felt after a day at Sac Press. How she walked out of the office with seven story ideas pitched and felt solidly grounded to her purpose in life: fashion journalism.

Great. Do you know how I feel after my big four hour day? Pissed, usually. Im always sweating because I still haven't figured out how to dress professionally and casually with reguards to Sacramento's sweltering temperatures. Nervous, too because I'm normally late for the lightrail and I'm scared I'll miss it. The other day i was really late, and took off at a dead sprint toward the train, monorail whatever. I could feel it just about to leave, but i still had to validate my ticket. I have about ten of them in my wallet, my father works for the state so he gave me a bunch of free ones. There is honestly one of the most adorable elderly ladies ive ever seen trying to get a ticket from the machine I have to use. She turns to me, poor thing, and asks if i understand how to work the machine. She only has enough money for the senior discounted ticket. (God retelling this is making me sad and kind of hate myself)

I haven't really stopped semi spritning yet, and i skidd around her in my heels, breathing heavily. She looks up like i can help her, but i have another plan in mind. See my plan was to give her one of my tickets, so we wouldnt miss the train, but i had to validate them both first. i guess my adrenaline didn't allow me to explain or something, but instead of acting like a rational, non crazy white girl who has never taken public transit in her life, i box out the tiny old lady, huffing and puffing shoving my tickets in the slot and swearing loudly when i put them in the wrong way. Then i wordlessly hand her one and start jogging after the now moving monorail yelling "WAIT, STOP, NO... FUCK!"

The lady has caught up with linda blair and puts her hand in the crook of my elbow and says "Damn girl, dont worry, he'll stop. He'll stop." She walks quietly past me and gets on the fucking train.

Or another time this Vanilla Ice looking character complete with wifebeater, chain, FUBU jeans, rivercats cap, and Nikes gets on at Watt Manlove sits a seat down from me. I'm trying to read but the monorail is on speed and making me nauseous. I close my eyes and rest my head against the class. Vanilla is listening to his iPod. You can really hear what people are listening to on the monorail. I've gritted my teeth through one too many rounds of Poker Face.

When he first gets on its some metal, screaming noise. But as we continue, jerkily, i hear a familiar beat. It's fucking Elton John. Crocodile Rock. I remember when rock was yo-u-ung. Me and Suuuuuuuuzy had so much fu-u-n. Holding hands and something stones? With my old gold Chevy and a place of my own!

It was awesome. This is the kind of shit i thing about, post Sac Press. I don't envision myself asking the hard quetsions of some important dignitary, manuevering my words around polite discourse to get the cold, hard, unforgiving truth. I think abount vanilla and his elton john. I think about what a dumbass i am and how cool that old lady was. I think about my friends and sister, and how much i want to see them later on, and hear about their jobs, what their/he's writing, and boyfriend anecdotes. I think about my friends in Santa Barbara and how much i miss them. Occasionally i think about writing, but its usually in prep for a blog.

I don't know how i feel about that, haha.

Pretty Woman

Disclaimer: this is a long one :)

I was born with a red birthmark that manifested itself slightly off kilter from the direct center of my forehead. To me, in my bang-less and sightless infancy, it served as a reminder of how strenuous it was to enter into life in this world, but nothing more. It imprinted itself as a bright beacon of infant survival; I came screaming out of my mother’s womb and all I got was this lousy birthmark? Or rather, for my mother, I survived thirty-seven hours of epidural free labor and all I got was this lousy birthmark? Nonetheless throughout my childhood, it did not fade, and unlike other of my less than desirable physical attributes, I was aware of its existence very early on.

People would ask me what happened to my forehead. Had I been hurt? Or scraped? Did mom or dad drop you on your head? I was an otherwise normal looking child; therefore, the lesion on my head must be attributed to a force outside of my own control, by fault of someone or something else. Their inquisitions awakened me early on to the fact that the oval shaped scar should not be there by virtue of my own birth, but rather that some unfortunate circumstance should have put it there. It was a first taste of ugliness, and it took a peculiar but not, as I would come to learn, innovative flavor. It forced me to consider that if an unmarked face represented a child who had not experienced misfortune, which I had not, then why did I have it? Why was there the desire to create a reason beyond that of it just existed for that red spot? Why did my birthmark speak volumes for me? I wonder now if I always had bangs for this reason. I actually cannot recall a time when I was without bangs.

Omitting my birthmark, which never appeared to me as something that was innately ugly, but more of a mistake of sorts, I was fairly ignorant of any standards of beauty but my own. That assumption qualifies the kind of childhood I had; one where my face and body were just right, where there was no attempt at being beautiful. I just was. When I was six years old, fueled by my mother and allowed by my father’s military career, we moved to Honolulu, Hawaii. My mother was joyous; she had grown up on Oahu and had never left the island until her union of marriage with my German father. Despite her strong ties to the culture not to mention her Hawaiian blood; my mother was very Caucasian looking. My grandfather was, albeit a handsome man, decidedly white looking as well. His grandfather had been an Englishman, his father half white half Hawaiian and an alcoholic, and his mother Hawaiian and Portuguese. He grew in the form of a dark-haired, strong-jawed, firm-build, blue-eyed mix, a breathing metaphor for the slow takeover of the island’s native people. While Hawaiian blood pulsed in his veins, he viewed the world through blue eyes. Although his living experience was far less glamorous than that of his father, rather echoing the hardships of his mother’s, he was often looked upon as haole.

Therefore his family, my family, though having a more technical right to claim ethnic legitimacy than some of the locals and living in a culture financed by white people but perpetrated by defensive and skeptical keepers of this constructed sacred blood, suffered prejudices for their fairer skin, taller builds, and lighter hair. It was within the battle weary embrace of my family, my grounded, composed beloved family, that I was a local girl. My sister and I both were, freckled bushy-haired me and blue-eyed, blonde-haired Sasha, with bulky neon white tennis shoes and boxy European backpacks in a sea of long black hair and rubber slippers; we were unapologetically white looking. It rarely occurred to me, however, this separation of what I looked like and what I identified with. I am sure there were signs; looking back though dirtier lenses I remember once being held back in a hula class. My Filipino, Portuguese, and other ethnic classmates had advanced to the next level, while me and the other military girl, Bridget Mahoney, had stayed behind. It was fine with me; as long as I had Bridget there, I had a friend. But when her parents stepped in and talked to our teacher, Mrs. Paishon, Bridget was moved up with the rest of my age group. I was alone with younger and clumsier girls, none of whom I knew, and dancing with baby dolls. When you did the dances with baby dolls—Sasha and I cradled fair skinned long haired dolls with lavish ruffled costumes from Germany while our classmates had muumuu-encased, black-haired models—you knew you were a beginner.

My grandmother would pick me up from class every afternoon, and finally the stress of being alone, bored, and still doing the doll dance prompted me to give a tearful report of hula class. My grandmother ascertained Bridget had been pulled up with the rest of the girls, so next class she and Mrs. Paishon chatted. My grandmother had big hair, Rose Gold lips, perfect skin, high shoes, and called me honey girl. She was my ideal and hairstylist. The following week I was back with my friends, doll free, and doing dances with poi balls and the uli uli. My Puerto Rican grandmother had brought me back to local girl life. She never told my mother.

So for three years I lived beautiful, with my identity protected and enforced by those who were still explaining theirs, contently pretty among Asian, Hawaiian, Filipino, Portuguese, and the scattered white kids in my class. However, bliss had a time frame, and my father was relocated to Virginia, and after that to Folsom, California. Not widely known for its ethnic makeup, Folsom was still a beautiful place to live. It was growing, clean, safe, and white. The prisoners did our recycling. We all played soccer. I grew older there, and we stayed.

In Folsom, I discovered my whiteness. Despite being privy to the all new insecurities and ambiguities that middle school and high school has to offer, there was still no battle of blood that there had been in Hawaii. But after fitting in so seamlessly in Folsom, I knew now, returning annually to Hawaii to visit, that I was not local. I rejected the memories and reminisces of my family and friends, hiding behind a teenager’s snarl, and looking pointedly at them through Maybelline eyes saying, aren’t I white? I’ve been white this whole damn time and no one said anything.

The rejection of the local girl and re-entry to white world opened up Pandora’s make-up box. There were so many things I could now fix. Sandra Lee Bartky’s Focault, Femininity, and Modernization of the Patriarchal Power provides the captions to a scrapbook of these aesthetic alterations: “The women in the photographs make themselves small and narrow, harmless; they seem tense”. In seventh grade a boy looked up my skirt since we sat facing each other from across the room. He corralled the rest of the boys to share his view, and soon my teacher had to stop the class. He explained that he saw no other course of action when my legs were spread the way they were. My knees always touch. “Hot wax is sometimes poured onto the mustache and cheeks and ripped away when it is cooled”. In eighth grade I started waxing my upper lip when Andy Rudy told me I had a mustache. “Under the current ‘tyranny of slenderness’ women are forbidden to become large or massive; they must take up as little space as possible.” In the eleventh grade, I didn’t play off-season volleyball and focused on academics. Senior year, when I had a running schedule and gym membership lined up after season, I would refer to the previous year as “when I was fat.” Here the fatal distinction was ever so faintly made: what was wrong was ugly and the fixed self was by default the logical antithesis. It began as a game of catch up; I didn’t “find out” what things were wrong with me until they were wrong, and then I hurried to fix them, perplexed and later angry at why I couldn’t just see it in the first place. However, my sight improved, and soon I was premeditating attractiveness and altering myself accordingly. Here was finally success when I could manipulate my physical self to, at first, avoid being told I was wrong/ugly/hairy/fat, but then later, under the most destructive veil of self improvement and ironic empowerment, to make myself prettier. In John Berger’s Ways Of Seeing, the concept of the split self is explained, “A woman must continually watch herself; she is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself”. I was now a woman, apparently; I had succeeded, after much effort, to internalize the gaze of Andy and all his brothers.

Coming to this realization, it looks as if I bastardized my time in Folsom as this breeding ground of socialization. It is not as if one blade of grass in Folsom holds ten times more possibility for female subjectivity than that of a blade of grass in Berkeley, but the specificity of the circumstance (white, suburban, upper/middle class) together with the vulnerable teenage years, together with the juxtaposition and eventual sullen rejection of my last beauty experience as identifying myself so completely as a local girl, infused to culminate in my rather ferocious and defensive internalization. In Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, her main character Claudia recalls this “fantasy” of powerfulness, for I did feel powerful. I did feel the manic flulidity of assuredness when I learned a new way prevent the wrong, the ugly. “We substituted good grammar for intellect; we switched habits to simulate maturity; we rearranged lies and called it truth, seeing in the new patterns of an old idea the evelation of the World”. Claudia encapsulates my experience, the painstaking, tiring, persistent way in which I learned how to survey so well.

In reviewing my life script with the antihero of beauty, I finally pay particular attention to the time in my life I tried to forget, or justify with an obscenely ironic “didn’t know better.” When I was the local girl, I never knew better in my life. I see this now as the metaphor for beauty, for my beauty: to be local is to be beautiful; to be haole is to be unbeautiful. Therefore, in a world that said I was haole, not only had the constructions of race and look not penetrated my psyche, but I believed, with every beat of my little German (freckles), Puerto Rican (hairy arms), Hawaiian (full lips), Portuguese (mustache), English (yellow teeth), Scottish (frizzy hair), and Irish (brown eyes) heart, that I was local. I then spent the better part of my teenage years learning how to forget that I ever identified with being local and “relearning” that I was haole. I thought I saw this truth in my rejection of ethnicity. But isn’t that the trap? I came into the world, birth-marked, beautiful, and like Claudia, delighted in my “dirtiness.” Then in my quest for reality, all this learning happened. I learned I was white. I learned about the mistake in retail that is Abercrombie and Fitch. I learned the difference between a size eight and a size four. I learned to love the swinging layers of Dana Maesta’s straight blonde hair. I learned what a metabolism was, and that, at seventeen, I had a “slow” one. I learned which tanning salons didn’t ask for ID. I learned what diets did. I learned to love these things, to lust, aspire, and comfort myself with these images, to exist secretively but comfortably inside the womb-like security of the thought that one day, when I try, buy, cry, dye, and fry enough, I will be beautiful: “…knowing, even as I learned, that the change was adjustment without improvement” --Miss Toni Morrison.

I used to look back on the local girl and wince with shame at how deluded I must have been. Now, when I can catch her, I stare my surveyor self in the face and shame her for how she killed the local girl. That internal eye did away with an important memory of the unlearned self, and it has been an honest re-education if forgetting. Through various authors' written evidence of beauty’s constructed power, detailed accounts of its manifestations, independent axis, inter-workings, and victims, I was able to locate a new consciousness that viewed my real life doings as examples of the academic texts, causing my heart to break at the cruelties I inflicted on myself and, by default of perpetuating standards, others. I have read literature, watched film, and listened to lectures to be able to break down my past and remember the local girl, but uneasiness remains because even though I wish now to once again be her, I am not. I remain learned. The question all the girls are asking is what now? Once during a discussion of The Bluest Eye and a Hooks’ article, I said, in regards to finding the opposite of a standard beautiful or being able to find a standardless beauty, “But it’s so hard.” My professor acknowledged the difficulties I was speaking of and said, “But it is possible. Remember Claudia gives us hope. That it is possible to unlearn.” I knew that she was referring to Claudia’s murdering streak of white baby dolls, or her inability to love Shirley Temple and resentment of cleanliness. I wrote in my notebook try to remember. After ten weeks and reluctant, sometimes pained self confessions, I have remembered. I know the time; I can recall the feelings: the love, the lightness, and the satisfaction. Therefore, I must try my hardest to work on my formal anti-education in beauty because I know how lucky I am to have a memory and even more so, access to the venues from which it was born. Perhaps we must all be a little masochistic, self-righteous, over analytical, determined, and gutted open in our quest for self acceptance. This debilitating but precious opportunity is not available for all, so if we have the chance to unlearn, we must take it, even if it sends us spiraling.

Why my blog is called Dead Pants

A kind of long time ago I got a phone call from my father. From Germany. He was there to take care of my grandmother, while my aunt and uncle went on vacation.

He talked about Berlin, missing my 21st birthday, and taking care of a loved one with Alzheimers. Before we hung up he said,

"Oh, and Tote Hosen? That means dead pants."

I had already known what that meant, obviously, as it has been the name of my silly little blog since January. The day i heard the phrase tote hosen was a little less than a year ago. My sister, father and i were visiting his family in Germany; his sister Rose, my grandmother, or Oma (as you say in das native tongue), cousin Olaf, and Uncle Wolfgang. Hallo Deutschland!

The whole family had left the farm (My aunt and uncle live on a beautiful 200 yr old farm that they renovated in a town 45 min from Berlin. Grandsee. It's lovely) to travel to the Baltic sea, a big vacation spot for the Euro kind. Apparently royalty use to voyage very far to bath in its waters. There are practically no waves, which confused and bored my sister and I, given our east and west coast only expiriences with huge salty bodies of water.

The night of Tote Hosen we had just come back from a concert held in the town's center. It was a gospel choir. If you have ever heard a middle-aged german woman sing "Go Tell It On the Mountain" then you will understand the intensity of sister's and my expirience. It was no help that our prone-to-hilarity father was bobbing jerkily to the music, grinning under the hood of his windbreaker, saying shit like "AMEN!" and "HALLELUJAH." Or that Oma would scrunch her face into various horror stricked expressions inspired by the genuine surprise and disgust at some of the harmonies. Or that my father was wearing army cargo pants and a fanny pack with a steel strap to prevent robbery. Could have been a number of things.

I dont think this stuff is normally funny. Honestly if i were a german, attending a nice, local Gospel Choir performance, and i look over and see two snorting and shaking american women in matching windbreakers (thanks dad), a middle-aged man shouting encouragement (also wearing the same windbreaker), and a sweet, elderly grandmother using faces normally reserved for indegestion, I probably wouldn't laugh. I would probably wonder who are these crazy people, ruining the acoustics of "Kum Bay Yah?"

We survived, despite the random sprinkling of rain, and started to walk back to our darling cottage, all wet and dirty. I was walking with my aunt, and in a fantastic mood. My moods in germany swerved violently the entire trip. I was twenty and wanted to get drunk and meet germans. Sasha was 17 and having nightmares and missing her bf. My father was the strange and unexpected hero of the trip, translating, defending us against our spoiled and lazy reputations, and buying us mass amounts of chocolate. I'm not sure what it is about Germany that knocks me into an arena of insecurity. I feel always defensive. I'm on guard against a comment about my education, lack of job, why i don't have a boyfriend, or poor college GPA. They always ask me about myself, and I usually like talking about myself to people i love, but in this case I end up sounding like an cheeseball interviewee. And if you have read my previous post, im a fucking terrible interviewee. I guess it sounds like every other family script you read. But the Germans, more than most people i know/like/respect/or hate, have me quivering in my seat, but with angry eyes.

They are either very delicate and steely, or bumbling and horrible. My aunt will say things like "Are you menstrating?" and i will say yes! how did you know? "Your skin is breaking out." Once she too a picture of our eyes and uploaded it to her computer . She had a corresponding eye chart and took a critical view of our digitally enlarged pupils. I was diagnosed with future uterine cancer. Sash was fertile and had strong bones. It sounds strange, and like the situation could be edged in a silver lining of comedy. But all i remember is standing in the lavender scented room, nodding ceremoniously as i contemplated chemo.

Or my cousin will say at the dinner table "Sonia just wants to drink vodka and make out with the tour guide" or to my father "Did you know she smokes" or "What's up Homie" as i shoot pain and imminent death at him through my eyeballs. Sometimes i would feel monumentously guilty and sad and want to lay my head on his shoulder and tell him how cool he was, how much i adored the way he phrased his thoughts about obama and my mother, or how talented of a musician he is. But there is a barrier of uncomfortable between us. So instead i sit next to him on the couch, and ask him to teach me a chord on the guitar. It's a pathetic move, and one that I would not make with any other member of my family, but the only move i dare make with the Germans.

But I clearly remember the night after the concert. We walked back to our cottage, I was happy to be there, breathing huge and deep breaths with my aunt, talking about the seasons, vacationing, relaxation, the stars. My aunt is a petite woman with short silvery hair and clear green eyes. She has a small pretty mouth and delicate features. She wears scarfs, tiny shoes, big sunglasses, and sweaters. She often smells like lavender. When she walks she takes long, sure strides and sometimes folds her arm in yours, or clasps her hands together. I feel like an orge next to her, inadequate, overdressed, flashy, and loud.

She looked back at my sister and father, who were laughing and falling on one another. She whipped her head back to me.

My father booms in English, "Rose, what is it [the baltic] like in the fall"

She dips her head with thought, and clasps her lips lightly. I like watching my aunt ruminate on a question, its quite pretty. She thinks physically and carefully sometimes, and the words that ring out are softly spoken and articulate.

"Well, it's not as busy. Everyone that stays here in summer is at home. The people that vacation go to the Alps." She looks out to the dead ocean, the small hills of sand."It's Tote Hosen."

Whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaatt. I immediately lurch at the phrase. "What does that mean Aunt Rose?!"

"Tote Hosen?"

"Yes!"

"Mmm well, dead pants, like its dead in your pants. Nothing's going on."

I laugh and laugh and smile away, delighted. She looks at me bemused, but fondly. She laughs lightly as well. My father looks back at my sister, content.

We all make it back to the cabin, me rolling around the phrase lovingly in my head, holding tightly to my aunt's small arm, breathing the lavender deeply in.

You're living in a Fairytale

A Professor i had once ended her lecture emphasizing the importance of imaginative activity. She gave an example of the hiring process at a large and successful company. For the first six months on the job, the powers that be give you nothing but blank paper and a basketball hoop. To sit. To think. To do nothing, but dream about everything. The earliest artifacts dug up and dusted off that indicated the human capacity for greatness were not wheels or manuscripts. They were toys.

It is interesting, being an English major and feeling afraid all the time. Jokey and rarely defensive, "Well i guess i could always become a teacher." I wrote an essay for a Brit Lit class that made me feel silly. The assignment was to write an epic or mock epic poem of thirty lines, and then in an adjoining paper explain why you poem fit the conventions. I wrote a mock epic on Snow White, when the hunter doesnt kill her, with the justification that a whimsical fairytale having such massive readership (being ingrained in childhood and forever knowing the story) is epic in itself. So even though there is no armoring, sheild decriptions, or invocation of the muse, Snow White the fairytale provides the exact purpose epic poetry in that it is remembered because of its magic, rather than conventions.

My Conclusion:

Retelling Snow White in epic form is an opportunity to further understanding about the cornerstones of literary tradition. Although the story itself is not steeped in grandiose action or national consequence, it retains the ability to inspire the abnormal, rebellious, and very human process of imaginative activity in the earliest minds. A quality that is fast becoming marginalized in this current day of recession and crisis, but is nonetheless at the very foundation of human creation.

...I guess what i was trying to get at is the point my professor made. To put stake and serious time/dedication into something like an English degree, surfing dream, art exhibit, clothing line, acoustic song, autobigraphy, the perfect dessert is to essentially disobey. It is a shaky but defiant middle finger to the post grad timeline, the respectable adulthood, secure future. These things have been reduced to hobbies, or whimsical projects. They dont connote livlihood. So to live one's life pursuing any passion that is not lucrative or reassuring enough for the boomers to rest easy, is something that takes courage, chutzpah, Mut. Then again, this defiance, this pursuit of the extra-ordinary could be our downfall....meh, Phunk that, i think it's man's most shining attribute.

alright Milton, tell us whats up:

Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe.
Paradise Lost. Book i. Line 1.

...

I didnt get an A. He said my poem was beautifully written, but he failed to see why is was epic.

Dropping like Flies

In massage, my teacher often refers to the time when the client being worked on "drops". Its fairly self explanatory, considereing word context, but brielfy, a background. The Nervous System (one of the 11 body systems i have my final on monday) has two parts: The CNS and PNS. Central is brain and spinal cord and peripheral is automatic and somatic. The somatic deals with nerve fibers that send information to the CNS and help project skeletal muscle or something. uninteresing. BUT the autonomic controls the smooth muscles and the glands (involving other systemes like digestive and endocrine[hormones]) and IT has two branches, well three but two only interesting to my topic sentence. Hailing back to seventh grade bio, there is the sympathetic nervous system "fight or flight" and the parasympathetic nervous system "relaxation response". they are the opposites of one another, and in an effort to keep your attention, parasympathetic is the response that decreses heart rate, restores body resources, returns body to a non alarm state. The post coital cigarette. Hot sand after icy water. Your "happy place" The best place to be.

So, when a client "drops," he or she is going there, to the parasympathetic. All the massage trainees throw around that verb like our mama never told us to, because its really cool to get someone to that state. You feel almost maternal, especially when you flip them over, and their jaw is slacked, facial muscles all droopy. You pull their arm out from under the sheet to massage it and its like a dead weight. Sometimes i want to lean over and pet them i am so grateful. But that is a)creepy and b)severely unprofessional. So i just continue with my protocol, trying not to breath too loudly.

It's funny that it is refered to as dropping. Dropping usually means something bad; dropping out, dropping the ball, dropped on your head as a child. Shit, now i've said it so many times its starting to sound weird. The thing about dropping is that no one can drop you but yourself. Even in massage, sometimes even the guy oftn referred to as "Hands".....(pause for the RIDICULOUSNESS) can't get a client there because the body's own response is ultimately determined by itself.

To drop something, you have to let go. I guess its not always a bad thing. In fact, dropping sounds healthy. It sounds like a purge, a way to renew oneself and clear out the system. You can't carry the extremities of everything in life: spacey expectations, obsessive self image, impossible standards, devastating heartache, hateful grudges, anger, pessimism, Narcissism, unrealistic day dreams. I highly believe that you can tell when something is weighing you down. Somewhere in between your third and fourth chakra you know what you need to rid yourself of; and of course it's hard, it developed because you needed it to.

For instance, if you have read my previous post on Anger, i am definetly holding on to some sort of melodramatic emotion. It is completely self serving, completely ineffective in "getting even" or proving my point. In fact, the hatred i feel eclipses all notion of rationality and clearly defined logic on why i feel this way in the first place that if someone were to ask me my original complaint i would probably just sputter on about how much i hate the bastard.

Somedays, I can envision what it would be like to let go. I see me, in white, graceful and having a great hair day. I envision an exhale, a gradual return of static, parasympathetic emotion. a cool healing, a peaceful relationship with myself and the little woodland creatures around me. Im in field, hair blowing, zen as shit.

Dropping could be misconstued as sacrificing something that maybe gets you up in the morning. But you wouldnt have to let it go if you could carry it, but now it's TOO damn HEAVY. You have to leave it be. This is a good drop. Drop the hurt, drop my ridiculous hate, drop rejection, drop my snarls, my drunk dials, my hissy fits and hair pulling. Drop my pride.

I think it is well to drop things. Go nuts. Drop as much as you can without losing yourself.

Haha massage is crazy.

The Running (wo)Man

I just got back from a run and am sitting, sweaty, on my bed. There is no other space for me to sit I am afraid. Running is terrible and masochistic. I heard somewhere that it is bad from your knees, ipso facto bad for your body, and I feel that justification rotting in the back of my mind every time I fall into a slump of inactivity. Which happens often and cyclically.

My mother once ran a 5k, or 10k im not really sure. It was when she and my father lived in Alameta in an apartment before they moved to nj. I don’t think I was born yet. Childless, poor, and so cool. Anyway my mother is, and I know every person says this, but she really is infinetly interesting. People unrelated to her would say that as well, so even though I am biased by blood I still think this anecdote is worth reading. Your parents are the best things to look at when you are looking at yourself and I often day dream about my mother, especially her youth and her sisters when they wore pastels and high wasted jeans and sweated seasonless summers out on Oahu.

So my mother was signed up for this mini marathon (Excuse my inspecific run-ology I don’t use the word marathon literally; what I mean is that it was a reasonable length that would require some training, at least some cardiovascular preparation). I don’t think she trained, if at all minimally, but my mother is a pretty athletic person and likes to sweat. Who cares! Young beautiful, in love, probably tan, she could do anything. So unprepared, she ran the full amount of miles that I do not know. She was so exhausted that upon dragging herself home and pulling out a carton of ice cream, fell dead asleep on the couch.

My mother has this mantra, and when she speaks of it to me, she always laughs and says her sisters are shaking their heads. She believes, wholly, that she could do just about anything, if she really wanted too. We smile on the phone with one another and list off activities. Go to space. Write a book. Run a marathon. Buy expensive stupid clothes. We fall about at the clichéd and sillyness of these challenges we describe, but beneath our laughter I wait as my mother weighs the process of work and motivation required for each possibility. And then I hear the break, “Well, I mean…” and I almost have to reel myself in because I feel absoluetely radiant. She knows, undeterred by just about everything and everyone else, that her desire will grant her a completion.

My mother is a teacher , a fighter, a lady lunching. She is unassuming and quickly absorbing. She has brown eyes and short hair. But her belief sets her free. Who else knows you better than yourself. I have known my mother for 2o years. And I do not expect to know the vast reserves of strength the moving timeless potential . I feel like she is Wonka’s Factory or the Midsummer Woods. Sublime, mysterious, unexplained, unexplored. I do not wish to try and comprehend these things that she has or is. Why would I dare? But knowing they exist, that they course through her veins and being daily, that she could split a sea after we watch La Cage aux Folles and eat pizza, pull a rabbit from a hat after opening the wine, and then turn said wine into water because I am too young for vintage Merlot, is exciting and reassuring enough. It comforts me when I feel unoriginal. It placates me when I feel frustrated. It makes me happy when I am dull.

Come to think of it, it must have been a triathalon. Smile.

Shit's a drag

Last night i went to my first drag show. I dont think i had ever seen a drag queen in person, just on television and in the movies. My friends and i got ready with a feather bolero and vodka lemonades as we quoted Priscilla QUeen of le Desert and tripped our way to campbell hall.

We got there early, and fast walked so that we could sit in the front row. it was slightly manic, the desire to be as close as possible to the gay men. I hate saving seats, it makes me nervous, but i felt deserved of the seats we retained because we got there so early. i watched the community trickle in. Professors and gays, a bunch of lesbos, a few drag queens in the audience, the coffeehouse girl who is currently in rehab. 

Im sorry, i have to pause briefly to remark, out of the story's context, about the horrible electro that my neighbors are raging to. I feel so boorish. ho hum. horrible. As long as i am talking about horror, i am also imagining my ex whatever at said electro party, fists pumping, horible red acid wash girl jeans from urban turquoise studded belt with monstrous buckle and possible fake hot pink wayfarers and chiodis shirt. shudder. hatred.

I hope i am on the rag soon, bc i have not felt so much disdain and abhorence for things that used to interest me. Some trash can lid bass infused downbeat makes me want to pierce my eyelids and i find myself uncomforted by france gall or beachhouse. Instead of xui xui of whatever the FUCK their name is being interesting it sounds like noise. or a cat taking a shit made out of crystal. i want something awful and campy, sublime is almost good again for the first time since seventh grade. Gypsy kings, makaha sons, moonight sonata, my fathers bavarian radio station, anything besides what i have already heard the aa hoodied razor haired silly silly group stomping around to. some alive, sweaty, chubby brunette guy singing the blues. flamenco guitar.  my best friends band from high school. someone with a first name and a last name. barbara streisand being strangled. Not a badass. reggae. 

I will have to get back to the drag queen later. right now im too preoccupied. MIA is playing.

You might have to say, "Im So Angry"

Lately I have been harboring a hatred.

In the process of being a Mature and Well Rounded young woman, i usually define my progressions of growth by my ability to let go of anger and be at peace with something or someone. But this time, with this specific person, i fervently and adoringly have abandoned this pervious notion of goodwill and bullshit for something that has been far more useful.

"Moving on" is too fluid, its too clean and wavey. It cannot be used to anything, it is a neutral state of being and a careless one. Good for things that actually matter. Good for times when stability is the best answer. But when you live in a college town, racked with instability and ridiculousness, moving on doesn't fit in. It doesn't quite do the job. it doesn't give you that sweet, perverse satisfaction.

Meanwhile hatred can be gleaned and harnessed. It can be carefully nurtured until it is as beautiful and edgeless as a pearl. It is a much more interesting way to pass the time, daydreaming gruesome scenarios of acid shits and monumental failure than a potentially happy ending that in all likelihood will never happen. A favorite authorial phrase, "Her features, once beautiful were now ugly, twisted with hate..." is such a lie. Such a quick insertion of myth to discourage the feminine reader from feeling excatly what she should if she wants to remain beautiful. fuck that. I have never seen a woman so beautiful as one that set her x boyfriends guitar on fire and danced blithely around it. Who were the hateful women: Ann, Marie, Cleopatra, Edie, Sara Palin. You may not like them, but no one can deny their appeal. God Bless the woman who fuels on hate.

With my newfound and surprisingly ongoing hatred, i have never been more productive. I have learned to control it, and enlist it when i want to feel powerful or strong. I know how to trigger it. I can rile myself to a state of happiness, diligence, snarkyness, bad-ass/ness...most things. It has become my all purpose emotion. Except for wallowing. One thing my hatred cannot do for me anymore is to allow me to wallow. Which sometimes i miss, bc a nice documentary and vodka tonic are two of my favorite things.

My hatred takes me running, its blow dries my hair nicely, sometimes even straightens it. It puts out my cigarette, it writes my papers and electrifies my readings, it talks to boys. It wears my best dress out. It is my newest and most interesting companion i have had in a while. It lets me know just when it feels badly, in the most exciting ways.

At the end of the day, when this is all a big joke, i will still remember the good times my hatred and i had together. When i eventually let it go, it wont be without a slight regret. But for now, while it is still intact, I couldn't be more enthused at the prospect of seeing red tonight.

Lo-uh-ving Yoo-oo

I've had a strange weekend.

Stranger yet, nothing was really that out of the ordinary.

I've also been pulling out the ex files. never a good sign. i vaguely remember that show, though. i remember it had slogans like The Truth is Out There, Trust No One, and my favorite I Want to Believe. its almost too ridiculous a refernce point, the close phonetic nature of ex and x, the horribly despondent connatations when applied to a failed relationship, and not a show about investigeting the paranormal.

perhaps relationships are un-normal things then; I dont think we are particularly cut out for whole and utter devotion to another homo, um, sapaien.

Love seems like a general reaction to things that are supposed to happen in your life. Losing your virginity on prom night, watching someone kneel infront of you with a shiny stone, wanting to have children, wanting a nice house with a nice person, cooking for two, laughing at a joke, apple pie, r&b songs, watching someone drive, losing, winning, eating, sex. It does not really seem to happen corporally, naturally, and of its own accord. I think we watch romantic comedies for the same reason we watch horror films, beacuse the perfect fit of two overly attractive individiuals is just as much a myth as Godzilla or a wind that makes people kill themselves. yes, kill themselves.


It is so hard to pin when and how you are going to feel...anything. Often times i see people in the midst of it, and i just see reaction, a big fat six month reaction that will eventually tire itself out once everything does not become a novelty anymore. Love is just a word for minor and fairly justifiable infatuation. Infatuation over sex, empathy, hair, ego, compainionship, mind fuck. all these great things that we are lucky to be able to react too.

Im not saying its a bad thing. In fact i think it is great to react often, and as passionately as you can. I just feel that saying i do, for ever and ever or expecting your love to trump all other facets of timeless life is probably an unwise choice.

that said, i have glady opened the ex files and lay in bed some nights dozing off to sleep in some stupid and embarrassigly kitchy alter scenario. and so badly, somedays do I Want To Believe

Enough

Lately i have been thinking a lot about self sufficiency. And when to call it quits.

Sometimes the greastest distance is that which you create yourself. its difficult to know if this distance is independence or self preservation. Its diffcult to even know when to protect yourself and when to feel something. Worst of all, the things that blindside you are often the ones leaving the pinkest scars.

You love someone or something for a reason. That reason is strong enough . It is strong enough to reconsider boundaries. To rework events. To renew perspective. It is strong enough to leave you shivering and all fucked up. It is strong enough to drive you drunk and up the wall.

Some reasons are enough.

But sometimes, they are the very things that make you sigh and then say, enough is enough

Kill me, Say Anything

I can't help it, i love listening to Say Anything. It feels like a guilty pleasure, something i should not enjoy. I wouldnt say i actually love the band himself, i dont really know much about them, their music isnt something i "identify" with, you cant really move to it, unless its the spastic dying remnants of hair metal head banging. oh shiver, the motion that comes coupled with a follow up bodily twist, jerking over from the waste up. woof.

i dont know what it is. their lyrics maybe. the snarky, lippy, grandly dramatic proclamations of self efficiency, sexual sarcasm, hyperbole? in my various litertaure classes i usually try to classify what gender i think will suceed in the class the most. last quarter it was british lit 1900-present,, and we read conrad, t.s. eliot, beckett, coetzee, forester, fucking james joyce. mostly small paperbacks with their various huge self aggradizing themes. Big old declarations of life, death, time, torture, and fate. The paralysis of spirtuality. The meaningless of life in a living death. Boys love that shit. i think, i mean i think they can get off specifically on the lack of neccessary specifical-ity that is required to pontificate on these various themes. its all gore and no restrictions. Mostly what you say sounds sound, and you can go bigger and better and newer, you are relatively limitless in your jecturing.

i, as identifying with the portion of population that has a vagina, dont love that shit. of course i appreciate, admire, and enjoy it, but it doesnt get me half as excited. what gets me all excited is something im too tired and preoccupied to discuss: but briefly,,, something about why there's always a window over the kitchen sink.

so anyway, say anything. i dont think i will ever stop listening. i love it. i dont think i fully understand, but it makes me laugh and feel cool. and i get it sometimes.

Dream Gallery

I am about to eat an entire bag of candy. It is alright, its the week of the dead. calories and indegestion are hand in pencil cramped hand. There is something stirring about academia on this week. I feel manically happy and then like my gut is about to be ripped out. its so much dread, then a joker laugh.

But it cannot be helped, dear reader, the times you get inspired. and even though it is seethingly inconvient, and i often have said inspiration when i also have three post-its full of tasks to complete, it is worth it to my indulgent, rippling self to scribe a few paragraphs worth.

ahem, ahem..... perhaps be paitent with me here, tonight.

I have a dream about this girl.

She is a beautiful woman. She is blindingly lovely some days. Sometimes you want to hold her face with your teeth so you have a piece of it. of beauty. but you couldnt bite down, you couldnt think of a taste. You'd just hold her perfect head in your insignificant jaws and it would be a great gift.

I have often felt unreal when in her presence. sometimes i fiercely want to be cradeled in her comforts, worn thinly inside a tshirt. have a telephone without her on the other end, tell it explicitly how much i am in awe, in passion, in disgusted reverance. walk side by side with a real live fence inbetween us, so i could feel a physical barrier. Throw a ball and a hankerchief over. Watch the spectacle. Be in love, and on a fence.

She is a talanted painter. she picks up the oils and smears them expertely. i see my jaw, a fist. i see the most beloved parts of myself, shinier and newer. She hangs them up and draws upon them perfectly. She shows your friends the gallery. You are so beloved, it says. They didnt know you were such a multifaceted person. i love you, i love you i love you i love you

She is a dream

In my dream she is also muted. It is not sudden, it is almost expected. You are coldly beautiful now. She opens her mouth and snakes and cockaroaches spill out. Multitudes. They are brown and the same looking, they wriggle and fly around dejectedly. On the other side of the fence, the grass is greener. she steps to the right and a purple flower blooms. a wasp twitches on its petals.

The gallery is on fire. Her paintings are intact, miraculously, but my face is charred. The canvas is there, but its image distorted. i pulled one off the wall, with fumbling and impossible motions tried to restore it. But it was just dust. i had to leave the others to burn.

This time i ran back to the fence. I scream to her, terrified. She looks at me, standing straight as a pole, her body magnificent and pale, upright on emerald grass. To her left, the flower is dead. Her clothes look stupid. Her hands are palms forward. In my dream i see her, guts out, heart halved, limbs askew; neck breaking, back bent, souless, nothing new. It is a war scene. It is the most terrifying thing i can picture. a branded child, fingerless Johnny, voodoo dolls, poison ivy, infant coffins, blue eyed Pecola..... But Again i see her as i really see her: pale, sturdy and alive, still-faced. Milky white, tears leave her eyes like the betrayal they are to her, but have never been to me. i can only watch them hit the ground. i can only watch her hair being pulled by the wind. each strand gets it own gust, flutters subtely, before it rests. even in muted horror, the quiet absolute terror of home, she is beautiful.

I go back to the gallery, exhausted. I forget about the snakes and remember a flower, her smile, her hands. i lay down on the floor and cover myself with the ashy remnants of what used to be my face. I sleep for as long as i can bear to.

I dont know how long she stands on the other side of the fence. When i wake up she is painting above me, and my friends are rebuilding the gallery. She looks down and smiles like i have brought her great happiness. Above the racket i can hear the wasps humming.