fat assness

have got my rodarte dresses on hold at the local target and am happy.

got some leggings from aa in the mail, but i will have to set them aside? they fit fine once they go on, but it's the going on. my hips are so wide relative to my waist it's hard to find any pants that fit. so i just wear black leggings everyday until they fall apart :(. 

everytime i think i feel skinnier i just go to aa and i get 'moted again. 

hmm hmm. i'm going to go finish this hat some more. and plaaay dragon aaaggeee.

The Predicament

So I'm terribly ashamed of being a procrastinator. 

Like I intended to work on my paper all Tuesday. Then Tuesday became Wednesday and I was all, "I'm going knock this shit DOWN!11" but then I didn't and passed out at midnight with a half-page outline. Then I woke up at 6am and frantically worked on it, didn't finish, showed up 40 minutes late to my 8am final, and I'm sitting in the library now. Blogging.

It's a 3 page paper about Stiglitz. Stiglitz! That man like the Gabriel of Globalization, whose hymns and proclamations I've sewn into my little earth-shaped heart. But alas it was an assignment, and I don't do those.

The thing is I know I'm good at writing papers, and I'm good at bullshitting bullshit Anthro finals, so it's just more incentive for me to procrastinate. So, cushioned by this arrogance, I breeze up to the last few hours and then stress the fuck out. I don't like this. Gaahhh. I need to stop.

I need to stop blogging, holy shit. 

But my mum just gave me this $75 gift card for Target and with the new Rodarte collection coming out next week omg. I know nowhere else to shout these exaltations, except here, this little hole in a tree. I shall cover it up with mud now, and fly free. Am I rhyming? hm.

also today I am 21. it is not so much a feeling of liberation and freedom so much as it is a feeling that I am growing older, and I have all these plans, and I won't be done with them, won't be really truly an adult, until I'm like... 27. Or 28. i want to join the Peace Corps, and I want to do a masters too. And then what? :( I shall stop making plans, and just get drunked up like other 21 year olds. 

ecrasez le.

moi je ne suis pas finit avec mes devoirs, mes essaies, mais je suis finit, absolument, avec cette vie des miserables, avec cette rue d'ennuie et nul. baise it baise it baise it.

I want to crush these words and sift each phoneme through my fingers like a falling rain of powder, straight into being. I am eight kinds of done with this shit. 13 pages before tomorrow night. Not including the annotated biblio. 

I'm not cut out for this. When I'm done with this degree I'm getting out of here. I'm learning my languages as best as I can and I'm quitting. I'll join the Peace Corps, I'll fly out of this world. I'll peel off my skin and emerge some new and finally satisfied thing. Something beautiful for once. 

Relatively Speaking.

I know I'm always talking about how my brain is dying, deteriorating, melting into the void, etc.


I'm sitting near two college students, one of whom just asked the other, "Hey, what's fornication mean?"

Face--->palm.

So I suppose maybe my brain is actually growing relative to the kids around me. I swear, this technoculture is getting out of hand. I saw two young boys in a family who each had an iPhone. Who needs a fucking iPhone when you're 9? I had fucking hot wheels, and a toy bulldozer I named Rosy. Kids these days! Weaned on this high-velocity, low content information bullshit. Where does the mind meander, yes in endless rivulets of possibility but only ankle-deep, only ever ankle-deep.

sigh.

with my palms on my eyelids i get that rainbow vision.

though i lose the clarity i gain beauty and wonder all up in my face, and your curious scent, tobacco and sweat and potatoes, the soil. your curious scent.

which is good because if i could see you now, the way you ought to be seen, i would want to walk. 

but oh, the bliss blindness brings.

how much of love is tongue-wrought and money-bought and safety-sought, how much of happiness is lost when we hold each other too close too fast. i wonder.

in the wood.

i want to crush this ominous wood and rummage through the rubble. i want to make a nest of those gnarled trees and in their solid arms i'd place this giant shapeless sadness. i'd put it to rest. i'd perch it on the obsidian face of Time by Prometheus and they both can dream on in those terrible undulating measures of pain and despair.

And I could finally walk away.


Johnnie and I were talking today about acting, and it made me miss it ever so much. I wonder if I have time in my schedule for it next year. MMmm.

I miss memo. Maybe I can see him on Friday. Every week is a busy, busy week for me. Make it stop. huummm.

one small boat on the crest of a towering wave.

Lately I seem to float through these bizarre moods, but no matter if I'm wrapped in euphoria or indifference or throbbing anger, I feel so spaced out. 

I can't seem to give a shit about anything or anybody.

I don't give a shit about the research I need to be doing, or coming to school or work on time. I don't care that I got all these obligations. I just don't care. 

 But. n'importe quoi. I need to be looking at internships and working out my schedule for next semester. I still have at least 3 semesters left. I'm thinking about taking only 4 classes next semester. This semester itself is flooring me. Saturday was my first day of real rest in a good three or four weeks. Besides hanging out with the I/ST girls I haven't seen anybody but Memo.

Or maybe I'm exaggerating. Yes, I've seen a few other people in there, but well. The meetings are but fleeting and insubstantial.

Another distinctly discomforting mood I've found myself in: crippling insecurity. There are some days I look in the mirror and just claw my face off. This morning I saw my haggard self and lay in Memo's bed just, disappointed and sad. 

Last night I went to a party with him. Maya is this real sweet lady. She teaches middle school, and this was an older crowd that came to her house. I don't often feel my age; I try to look past that kind of shit. But man. Man oh man, did I feel young. It wasn't so much the musick. I listen to Snoop Dogg and Salt n Pepa and all that mess. 

But maybe it was the slightly frumpy, decaying women in "sexy" costumes awkwardly gyrating with bud lites to Sean Paul's "Temperature". And the awkward older dudes. I mean, Memo's kind of an awkward older dude, too, but I like him.

So even this depressing prospect of going to a thirty-something crowd's halloween get-together got me all funked out before we left the house, and I put on my dead face with dread in my bones. And when we entered the place, it was practically empty. And dark. And quiet. Costumed people stood around slightly forlorn, embarrassed, and confused, as if they had just caught themselves wearing a homemade "Ceiling Fan" costume.

I mean. yeah.

So I felt pretty miserable until my second gigantic cup of cap'n coke. 

I don't really like getting drunk anymore, but I eventually came to the realization that I'd

better make the best of the situation or ruin Memo's evening, so I ended up taking a shot with 

everyone and having an okay time. 

I mostly ditched my friends and turned down other party invitations to spend the night in Memo's arms. 

And I didn't know, really, how much I liked him until this morning, when he woke up and was telling me, in the sweetest voice, about this dream he had where he was in a library with a lot of delicious fruit.

And oh, oh, my beating heart.  

i'm gone man. i'm solid gone.

Ahhh habiiiiiibbiiii I am done and gone and gone and done with all this thinking and thinking.

I don't know where I stand on this earth any longer. I feel like the inside of my brain is decaying. I feel like my body is dissolving into the ether. 

I want to say I used to be awake. I want to say I used to stand firm and touch the ground with eager hands. I wanted to say I drank in words like thirsty men, sucked the marrow from every last book, ate the glue from the binding just to taste the stories leaking there.

but i'm not. and i don't know where I'm going. sigh.

Oh Des Choix

Alors. Things have become so heartbreakingly normal, around here.

My only consolation is listening to KCRW in the mornings when I am late for another class. 

Sometimes, if I am lucky, the music shakes up a sweet, effervescent bubbling just below my lungs

and I float, mes amis. I float.

Have recently resolved not to buy any makeup until I've used up all my old ones. !

I went to MAC to buy a substantial number of items, and after that it's been hard to bat off 

the temptation to buy more.

It is, after all, MAC. Thank goodness the only thing I have from NARS is the 

Laguna/Orgasm stuff or I may just be in debt.

I have a lot of dreams, unwarranted, mind, about the other one. I normally never dream about 

boys I'm dating or who I like.

Granted I dream a lot about Memo, too. But the conversations, the feelings, the overwhelming 

sense of reality, never approaches the kinds of dreams I have about the other.

These feelings, though I fight, are so consumptive I break into pieces when he comes near me. 

I just want to be happy with one person, someone who is, enfin, right for me. 

That boy is not right for me. But oh! Should he lay his head across my lap once more 

I shall faint.

rest

we shall be given to restlessness and hard labour, and so prevail over lesser things, and step out stronger than by the way we came. sleep is for the weak, and procrastination only the slow gestation of marvellous things, like baby whales or well-written essays.

oh mr. sandman.

i feel terrible. i have only slept a handful of hours la nuit dernier. after the first hour, i had a nightmare, un vrai couchemar.

i dreamed i had been grazed by a bullet or shot in the top of my head. I had the feeling of utter heaviness and blackness. I could feel terrible difficulty and numbness in trying to turn myself over. Was I, thought I in that slow and sluggish manner, was I dead?

Was I dying?

I gasped upon waking, and the feeling of intense burning and wetness on my crown remained for a good many minutes. I lay there, awake, feeling this wetness even as I touched my own head and found it dry. It hurt, tender and burning, for so many minutes. The darkness in my room was like the darkness of some other place. There was a weight in my bones like my flesh had been packed with muddy coffee grounds. I felt like I was floating, and sick, weightless and yet sinking.

Was I really awake? My head still feels kind of weird and tingly.

I remember thinking, as I always do after these many, many nightmares, that I don't ever want to go back to sleep again. I wanted to call Memo. I wanted to be held. I wanted to know that I was alive and awake.

jesus i'm so tired. and so sick.

sinking slowly

Did yesterday happen? 

I need to stop smoking and drinking. It's making me rust. I am my worst person on these substances. It makes me lonely and depressed afterward.

Or at least it exacerbates my loneliness and depression. I didn't want to be at that kickback in the first place, and there I woke up. 

I didn't. Have. Any. Fun. I'm very... angry? Or sad, or something. I want to see someone, talk to someone, that isn't Memo, that isn't Catherine. I'm tired of everybody. I'm sick of people's faces. Their judging, their apathy. I'm fucking tired. I want to leave, without coming back. I'm done, goddammit. 

conundrum

sexisasmallpartofmyrelationshipsexisasmallpartofmyrelationship

sexisasmallpartofmyrelationshipsexisasmallpartofmyrelationship

sexisasmallpartofmyrelationshipsexisasmallpartofmyrelationship

sexisasmallpartofmyrelationshipsexisasmallpartofmyrelationship

sexisasmallpartofmyrelationshipsexisasmallpartofmyrelationship

sexisasmallpartofmyrelationshipsexisasmallpartofmyrelationship

the singing man in the deaf parade--

I sometimes feel like a raving lunatic, or an eccentric scientist or mad prophet, especially when I am trying to explain something wonderful to a host of friends who could not be moved to care or understand.

Sometimes when I am at the library, I feel thus. Or standing in front of a clothes display. Yarn shops, or the word "yarn" also evokes this high and lonely feeling. The intoxicating and unique mixture of several chords and a drumbeat, coagulated into a perfect jelly of song, provokes me into speaking tongues. 

And lo, the image of me traipsing out with invisible vapours in wonder and awe amongst the more solid and sane statues of my confused and pitying friends, how it comes.

Ours is a high and lonely destiny.

I'm going to write something down, and you read it and you say if it makes you feel kind of funny, the way it made me feel.

"And when I have become as young as the child that was born yesterday, then I shall take my rising again (for we are at earth's eastern rim) and once more tread the great dance."

- The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis

No, it probably won't. You'll need to have heard the rest of it all, have learned the whole of it. You'll have to have been briefed in that wondrous lexicon. I have been drinking steadily of the Chronicles of Narnia, one every day for the past few days. If I had not been working yesterday and been busy with the boyfriend before that, I would have finished the last two books already, but I've been slow.

I picked up The Voyage of the Dawn Treader this morning and just finished it this evening, after making beef curry for the boys in the family. The homely stew felt leaden in my mouth, as I read about boy kings and girl queens and talking mice and sailors supping on dazzling liquid light.

like clearing the fox den.

I am excited by neatness. On trips to Ikea, I am filled with a kind of intense joy to see things compartmentalised into sweet, stylish, and Swedish boxes and bookshelves, into underbed storage units. Like Kit and Nita fighting Entropy in the Young Wizards series, it is like watching the Devil get suckerpunched. Fuck you, Mess! In your place, pants! Serves you right, Errant Towel! Etcetera, etcetera.

But those of you who intimately know me will know that I am a notoriously messy person. It is not so much that I like mess or that I am incapable of cleaning, but my mind does not exist on quite the same plane as my body. I am always elsewhere. While I may be blogging on my bed in front of my Mac now, in Garden Grove, in the slightly chilly Southern California night, I am in Nazi-occupied France with the likes of Eli Roth and Brad Pitt. I do not notice the dust on my desk, nor the dirt on my sheets in the way angels in graveyards do not mind the lichen on their faces. They are not there to care.

But I admit sometimes it gets to be maddening, and the sight of the mess in my room throws in me into a mad kind of frenzy. I feel like there are ants all over my back. A rush of blood hits me square between the shoulders, right up into my head, and I clean everything out. I wipe clean the mirrors, dust the drawers. I organise my lingerie drawer into types of lace and colour. I throw out the trash and lo, I have made my peace.

It is the same with this blog, I guess. I come here when my mind goes crazy, when I have all the languages I have learned and all the songs I have sung all crash together like a cacophonous disaster in my skull. And all the long words tumble out like sequinned gymnasts, and all the big thoughts like marching elephants bespangled and proud. All the sad sentences and the small thoughts, the ponderous loon songs of self-abasement, like tiny clown-cars tooting round the ring. And the vain ideas, the lady shimmering bare-back on the white horse, why they come around too, all naked legs in the spotlight, all bejewelled breasts.

And it gets a little bit better. It makes the maddening crowd, the lions and tigers, the bears, it makes them all right. They do not so much snarl as snicker.

I get so many bad dreams I don't know what to do. I don't want to go to sleep, mother. Five more minutes. Five more minutes.

Listening to my brother's croaking song, for he feels like he can sing.

Have been filled with prose and prose and prose, ladies and gentlemen. Prose and prose and prose.

I am more restless by the day. Siiiigh.

Went last night to a Dodgers game with Memo and his friends. It was interesting, I was more amused by the people than I was by the game. I felt all yesterday as if I was in some strange dream. It feels gloomy and balmy by turns. The air is silvery gold, and my bones feel filled with mud.

It is 12:30, and I should be at his house at 3. I need to do laundry yet, and some knitting. 

I feel so curious! I feel like I'm dreaming, even now. 

My financial aid has come in, so I am a few hundred dollars less poor. I pick up my pay check this week, lads and ladies, and I am so glad of it. Money, money, money. A golden balm to blind the eyes.

Have been reading a lot. Finished two books in the last two days. Grazing through the Chronicles of Narnia like a hungry sheep.

Buttermilk Biscuit Bitching

Probably need friends who are less flaky and more tender.

Just sayin'.

Bought new sketchbook, drove all the way to Westminster Library only find that they are closed for the next seven days.

Also need some Ricola. MMMph

Vulcan Mind Meld Me

Volunteered at the OC Fair today, which was intense. Met a girl named Denise who goes to CSULB and is an I/ST major. It was wonderful to hang out with her. Had chocolate-covered bacon, deep fried twinkies, and a Martha Stewart Dog from Pink's. So good. Sooo soo good.

Apres, saw Cameron and watched Star Trek together. I'm crushing so hard on Zach Quinto's Spock. I mean, I was crushing heavy on him even as Sylar, but man has sex appeal as an ice-cold Vulcan mastermind. 

Roar. 

Lately have been feeling the itch of the acting bug stronger than ever. Was looking up classes at OCC and SCR, shuffling my feet before the ice-cold water. I just want to plunge into that mess, but I'm so scared! I don't.. I don't know what to do, or where to go, or who to speak to. Maybe I should talk to the theatre advisor at my school? *sigh* Or Mr. Martin.

Maybe I'll go to him. That seems like the best decision... I miss him, anyway. I want to make amends.... I wonder if he'll accept me back. I feel like I owe him an apology. For creating a rift, for messing things up. I miss him. He said he felt like I was his daughter.

How do you go and fuck something up like that? Something so wholesome and beautiful, "If I ever had a daughter it'd be you." I am the fatted calf, the prodigal son, the spitting image of the home's harbinger. 

Miss Memo a little bit. Miss working a little more.

but it did happen

Just finished Magnolia. Ahhh I like it so much. The sheer humanity of it! It was so tongue-in-cheek and funny, but at the same time so mouthwateringly, eyewateringly tender. MMPH.

I think Doubt has arrived but I haven't yet checked. To be sure, I think my gloves should have arrived by now but they haven't :( 

I have spoken before, ladies and gentlemen, on my struggle with desire. As a Buddhist, I ought to cleanse myself of wants and wants, but I find myself spending most of my time, instead of researching and learning and gaining knowledge, I find myself wanting things.

My mother told me that recently my old Buddhist mentor was in the newspaper. He was the chairman of a large Buddhist organisation, and lived in a small temple in Long Beach. I remember him vaguely from my childhood. I remember hopping around like a kangaroo, and him calling me his little kangaroo. I remember liking him immensely. When I think of him, I picture the Dalai Lama. They did not look dissimilar. 

He was in the papers recently, though he died before I could quite remember. The man--I suppose you would call him the undertaker, he had been the one to undress my dear old monk--had recounted a story of this undressing. He had peeled back those orange bedsheets, ladies and gentlemen, and had found the old monk's underwear patched, threadbare, darned in many places. Of the many, many donations my old mentor received in his lifetime as a Buddhist monk and a leader in the community, he took none of it for himself, not even for underwear. 

On seeing the shabby evidence of my poor monk's selflessness and virtue, the undertaker burst into tears. 

In the light of so much goodness, how is it men can still live so close to evil? Though great things are born all around them, like the nebulous winking of stars being born, like millions of larvae blossoming into life in the dark spring night as we touch our heads to sheets to sleep, we seem to see none of it. We take none of that goodness into our own lives, and continue to want, and hate, and kill, and ignore. 

I wonder if animals know good or evil, or if morality is a new disease meant to control the population. Whether just or unjust, someone seems to die for it anyway.

My point is, I really want a leather jacket. With a hood. And one without a hood, for work. I want one so bad.

And I want to shop at MAC. I want. I want. I cry myself to sleep on the inside, though all it looks like is slavering jowls, wild wolves wishing and wishing.

idle time

i idle like an engine purring gently with park in gear

i idle with the supine laze of a lioness gorged on fragile flesh

i idle like a cannonball grating metallic at the back of the throat

of a cannon aimed straight at your mother's broadside

i idle simply because i can

i idle the way tornadoes are begot in the electric silence

on a sweltering Kansas afternoon

i idle like the last two seconds before tomorrow rushes in

all mysterious and shit

such a lie. i simply am idle.

white lights

Cat's sitting on the better half of the bed.

the day is nearly over. Time runs faster in this room, I swear. I can't wait to work again. Figures I didn't need to attend the orientation after all, and Athena (hopefully!) will contact me on the morrow for my id and shit. Sigh. This thing is taking forever.

Contemplating dropping my Monday Wednesday class since it's like, 11-12. Would give me more opportunities to work, though lord knows I make enough money 2 days a week, I don't need to do more.. But... Sigh. We'll see.

In other news may get a new Siamese kitten.

My brain is just not into thinking lately. Even typing this shit is hard for me. I can't think straight for two seconds. Aggghh.

knit knit knit

All this knitting is making my head spin. MMMMMmm.

but when you said

but when you said she hated me

it stung like a slap

and

left 8 shades of bruised regret

blossoming on my astounded cheek

no surprise.

i woke up knowing

that though flies see

with many eyes

cling to any old thing

fly straight to the stars

they are maggot-born

and trash-bred

and even i would

smash them dead.

fuck that shit it's disgusting.

for being so anorgasmic i have a freakish sex drive. sheesh.

found random thing i wrote when i was very young.

"when they kiss, it is like an eclipse--slow but inevitably sure."

i like that sentence somehow. i wrote some fucked up things as a kid. geeeezzzz.

until we go the way of all flesh

My commie heart explodes with guilt.

You ever come across stuff, and once you touch them or hold them or place them upon your guilty crown you realise "this is gonna be with me until I die?" 

Hats, ladies and gentlemen. Since I've shorn off my locks, I've realised how much I loved them. 

What better invention was there for the human head? Fuck helmets, I want a bowler derby. 

I've been getting musicks nonstop for the past few days now. Insomnia begets progress. 

Mostly Nujabes stuff, and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

Also some misc. Lady Gaga shit, because I'm crushing hard.

I set my laptop to UK spelling sometime in Hong Kong because I was paranoid about spelling errors in class, but now I'm afraid I'll have to switch back and I can't recall how. Huh.

Thinking the Other Day

Was thinking the other day about this stuck up OC hipster crowd. 

I mean, it seems like if you wanna talk to somebody or do anything or get in anywhere you gotta know somebody first. And I don't get it. 

I used to get it, before I went to HK. Now, HK was my first experience being on my own and really, I mean really, socialising with people and experiencing all those various consequences and benefits. 

Little did I know that my jaunt to HK might well have been a jaunt to the moon. As on the moon, nothing in HK fell with quite the same gravity.  People seemed to talk to each other with little introduction, to bond, to connect, to kiss and to fuck and break up all in the same breath. As if none of the usual shit mattered.

And I wonder, as many do, why can't we bring that home? What's wrong with that? I was watching Transformers today, and it's such a typical "boy too lame to get into girl's pants" story. But I wonder if it's outdated in the here and now. I mean, are we still playing by those rules? Perhaps in Buttfuck, Wyoming, but here, really? 

Do we still chain ourselves to those same systems of consequences? Do we still judge each other by those same rudimentary and superficial guidelines? Must we still judge? 

What are we, animals?

People tell me all the time that race is a social construct. Sex is a social construct. Social classes, tribes, cliques, groups, socially constructed to divide, to unify, to group, to classify. Therefore null and void, therefore unimportant.

But we cannot extricate ourselves from these systems, from these myriad networks. We participate in them wholeheartedly, whether academic or wholly ignorant. To even participate in the argument is to subscribe to a network which believes that anyone who willingly participates in these "socially constructed" systems is a bigot or something.

Roberts criticised me for thinking that sterile hypothetical academic debates were useless. He told me to get out of politics then.

Well, maybe that's what's wrong with teaching kids politics in the first place. We study all kinds of perspectives and ideologies with which to view the world, as if it were a painting or a book.

But the 6 billion people on earth do not typically view the world from these viewpoints. They exist within social constructs, they live and breath sex and race and sexism and racism and hate and love and all that mess, all together. 

To try to place yourself somewhere outside of that is to study something else entirely, to devote yourself to serving the Utopian instead of the dystopian, the devolving, the degrading society in which we were born today.

To ignore that some people are actually alright with being ignorant is to be just as ignorant. To criticise the Crusades with bladed tongue is to be yourself some kind of Crusader. 

Sorry for the rant. In other news, gonna try and cop my girly's moves. She can dance so well. I dreamed about volcanoes last night and swore I felt the burn of those flying rocks like lava on my fingertips.

What does it mean when your dreams are more real than your reality? I was raped the other night in my head. It was just as traumatising. 

Where do these terrifying thoughts come from? Is there a dark place inside my consciousness that wishes to do me in? I have never been more hurt than by my own self.

Rapture

After about a week, I finally finished the first 20 rows of this bitch. This ain't some bitch's regular stockinette knit shit. It's got all kinds of directions in it, all kinds of holes, all kinds of shapes. This is the kind of stuff you look at while you're knitting and cry softly into the wool. 

I'm going to take a break from it and work on my beanie now. Two beanies perhaps. Even a turtle. A brainless fucking turtle.

In other news, my mother is still insane. It's a hot day, and the woman is obsessed with cooking a masterpiece for dinner tonight.

I'm a simple kind of person. I don't expect a lot of food, really. I like boiled spinach and some fish. I like roast garlic and a toast baguette. I eat some yoghurt for brekkie.

My mother tells me I'm putting on weight and then yells at me if I don't eat. She cooks for ten people at a time for a family of three very picky and light eaters. We end up throwing the food out every week. It's absolutely ridiculous. She throws tantrums if we don't eat, telling us we're wasting food, or that we eat out too much.

Truth is mum, when I'm out I really don't eat that much. Geez.

ermine furs adorn imperious

I've been knitting the same three inches of scarf for the past week. I keep on ripping out rows. It's always the little things I fuck up on. A yarnover here, a missed stitch there. 2 knit stitches instead of 3, so on. so on. It's a complicated checkerboard lace pattern, and I'm knitting with very fine dark blue yarn. If I can just focus it would be beautiful.

I saw my girly today. I can't wait to go out tomorrow night to Pistol. It will be my first time clubbing since Cassie's last night in HK. It will not be as mad, as drunken, as disappointing, but I shall enjoy it. 

Lately I have been thinking only of material things, and the thought is depressing. I think day in and day out about clothes and shoes and makeup and it frightens me. My head is empty, empty, empty.

Last night I saw Memo and find myself more and more comfortable with him, able to open up, talk about more than pleasantries, reveal the throbbing sadness and disappointment I always feel just below the surface, groundwater in the blistering sand. I don't know what exactly it is I want out of this besides sex and attention. Maybe that's it. It's such a new feeling. I've never been indifferent about dating anyone. I've always been head over heels. Since HK I've been seeing relationships and love in an entirely new light. I used to think that I couldn't have sex with someone if I wasn't in love. And then that whole thing with Roberts happened.

What had happened, I think, was that I had talked myself out of falling for him. These days I think I can talk myself into and out of anything. 

I believe what makes me a great actor is that in my life I am acting every single moment, that I possess no genuine feeling or emotion that motivates my actions or words. Yea, my words motivate my emotion. It's ludicrous and ludicrously complicated to describe. 

I often wonder if I wasn't really in love with Emmanuel; I wonder if he was just there at the right time and had fit relatively well into that vague man-shape I needed. If, by mistaking my lust and my neediness and my excitement, I created something like love, maybe even love itself, for him. 

If I quelled all the temptations, those numerous temptations, because I felt my increasing boredom was my own fault and not his. 

When I spoke to him I broke out in tears, but as soon as I hung up they would cease, I would be silent and empty. Was it real? It scares me to think on it. Was any of it real?

Am I real? I mean my personality and my words, my traits, my reactions, are they really and truly mine or am I like some preposterous mirror or parrot. 

Uggghhh. I have lost so many words since coming back. Right now, I've got such an anger inside I can't seem to find the words to describe it, and that maddens me further. I just want to punch somebody. I want to hit myself. I want to steep myself in violence and smoulder into smoke. 

 

notes on first kisses.

the first makeout session is always awkward, unless it is amazing. there are no in-betweens. unlike having sex with a new person for the first time, it will always feel like the first time you ever kissed a person. the fumbling, the groping, the maneuvering around the gear shift. are there any polite ways to conduct yourself during this nascent ritual, or will it always feel like you have braces on? with onion breath?

lame.

An observation, perhaps naive, but really wholly innocent, on women travellers: 

The girls I have met while backpacking in SE Asia fall into a few categories. 

There are the european girls, lithe and golden and tan, floating through the islands of Thailand and the rivers of Laos like angels. They are scantily clad, unimaginably beautiful, but in their eyes I think they are empty, naive. They are on holiday from Sweden, on easter break from London. 

we stand anchored to our vanity, eyes wide all jealous and shit.

and then there are the earthen women who trod in the mud of Asia and bloom like lotuses. They are fleshy and beautiful, their eyes shining with earnestness, overflowing with a simple kindness and love for the people here. they are brimming with stories, absolutely jubilant and joyful. 

i wonder, should i be like that when i return to america? should i be so bright-eyed and optimistic? 

brain is too scattered to contemplate all this. is destroyed. no words anymore. sigh sigh sigh.

SOMEONE someone someone please throw me up into the sky.

i swore when i first fell i dropped my cellphone and also my keys.

gotta get it back yo.

metaphorically speaking of course.

torrential downpour of thought driving me half insane. sitting here in the 圖書館 just doin chinese and going slowly surely mad, the way a feather falls. 

so much work to do. where did this insatiable hunger for fuckin around come from cuz man i been dickin around like no other. i am supposed to like school.

when did this become hard? the day i was disillusioned by this system. the day they labelled me a rebel and tossed me out the gates of studiousness forever.

the day i went jumped on the crazyhorse and never stopped riding.

weeeeee neurosis psychosis i am a small afraid thing wrapped beneath your beating wings. yes yes yes yes yes weeeeeeeeeee.

am perched on a precipice, surely.

no matter where i am i have this feeling like i just want to scream and scream and scour clean my filthy insides.

watching old red hot chili peppers shit and i'm missing cali like a motherfucker. i wanna drive in that cheap gold sunlight, buzz by those cheap ass buildings, cheap ass dirt and cheap ass trees, the superficiality of it all suddenly seeping into my bones like jumping in an ice cold bath. this is home bitch, this is home. 

man on a pallet man on a pallet man on a pallet in a monastery east of here woke up one day to find he had been lied to. there was no god nor clergy nor blessed water in that cold stone place only he and the rats and the rotted straw over which he lay. 

shorty let me tell you about my only vice it's got to do with lots of lovin and it ain't nothin nice

it ain't nothin nice

it aint nothin nice.

almost have the internet set up. yay yay yay yaaay.

been jonesing for good musick, good cigarettes, good people, a cloud of wondrous bliss, et al.

fail. fail. fail.

went for thai today with john and ted. ted is a local i like immensely, as he is quite chill, and john reminds me of my brother a little, as all gawky young men do. he's had two lung surgeries and a bevy of health problems, but he likes oblivion and odd musick. good in my book eh.

bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah bah.

mgmt is win.

help me i am failing mentally. i have no more mind left. i opened the door upstairs last night to find i had been robbed, and everything had been torn asunder. all the furniture lay in disarray, all my bedsheets took, the lamps broken, the photographs were all of strangers.

maybe i ought to read more.

just went out for a smoke with james. the cigarette becomes a timer for the amount of time i've got to spend with him before he disappears again. it sucks to come over here and to still be tied down to the land you came from.

though i suppose i ought to be too.

but i won't be. i won't be tied down anywhere. despite the nagging in my head and the hollow aching in my heart, i shan't. i won't.

bought a chain today. i just want to be a tough dyke, now don't i. look at the little asian girl.

who do i think i am. ellen degeneres.

lord and lord and lord and all the heaven You encompass where do i stand on this lonely planet. where do i stand.

who do i think i am. you tell me that because thinking is not what i have been doing lately. i have been drifting in the wind. i have been floating in the haze above kowloon like a spectre, like a mote of carbon dust.

wake up. wake up. wake up.

so had strange dream about the one back home. strangely satisfyingly and explicitly sexual in a way that woke me up all kinds of puzzled, like why in the world would make me dream that way? except maybe that i had some sheesha all curled up like a tongue in my lungs and it somehow evokes his memory in a curious fashion.

listening again to d. banhart. makes me all warm and fuzzled.

slower than slow here, as i've not even showered and it's 2:02 in the afternoon. everyone is already out with trista and i'm not particularly bothered about going. i'll shower and call them later. oh but what to wear hair and nails and all that jazzzzzz.

feeling oddly in a dream, as always but enhanced by the fact that i have uprooted myself completely from all that is real and all that is important in my life. i feel that nothing i do here is of real consequence, and so am freed.

i'm trying to remember emmanuel, all brown limbs and wild hair, all curled up against me like the way things used to be, that eternal feeling. i failed to remember it, and i sat there on my hard bed summoning up tears from my belly to water down that shameful emptiness.

que reste-t-il de nos amours?

an old picture, church bells, suitcase to a small town on a holiday last june. yes.

ahhhhhhhh i question the meaning of love. i question what it means to say you love someone, to say they complete you when it's so easy to drop it and run. when it's so easy to wake up feeling this kind of empty and this kind of free.

to feel this kind of small and meaningless. i'm a dust mote, i'm a gnat. i'm a human being with wants and wants and wants and nothing to need. and he and i, well we're just two lonely people, two great big empty maws with insatiable hunger.

fuck i used to be so innocent and i used to think that love contained the goodness in people but really it is the rumbling hunger of our hearts. it is the twang of need in the flitting feeling of our groins.

or is that lust. or is that love. or is love lust cushioned in the pity of god.

who knows anymore. i want smoke and i want pain. i want to stop and wake up for once. goddamn.

someday will probably look back in shame.

so am still alive, finally found way to get on the internet at least on the express terminals. apparently getting internet on my own laptop is tedious and laborous process. have no time for it at least until.... sunday? haa.

i don't even know what day it is. wednesday? wednesday. Monday night went to wondrous hotpot restaurant and stared in amusement as a hoard of foreigners clumsily grasped at their food with chopsticks and blankly pondered the strange eats. afterwards went to billy boozers, a local pub, where they served exasperatingly expensive alcohol but everyone got drunk anyway. met wonderful people. stayed out till 4. still managed to shower before passing out. last thought: who the fuck did i make friends with??

last night went to ridiculously expensive rice pot restaurant which was only so-so. wandered the night market which was interesting but nothing i've not seen before. what was curious was the farther along we went we started to see little dildo booths popping up, sparse at first but then multiplying until we couldn't go two booths without seeing uncomfortable images of anonymous asses clad in used thong underwear and gyrating, pulsating sex toys.

everyone else went to a club after i guess but the few stragglers i was with decided to hang out elsewhere, first going to bahama mama's for expensive fruity shit cocktails and then wandering victoria harbour looking at the wonderful sparkling skyline. we all realized then and there, aw fuck we live here.

tried to find billy boozers again but failed. took cab back to school where we found our crazy friend lily hanging with guy from texas isaac. i turned in early as was dead tired.

going to happy valley tonight. don't know if i'll enjoy it as i still am tired. tomorrow must drop off the old ladies at the airport which will be an uncomfortably emotional situation i am loathe to participate in. my mum has been terribly grabby today. ugh.

this morning got the brilliant idea to listen to devendra banhart on my little ipod as i was leaving for mong kok. instantly i felt well and whole again. maybe the sound of the city, all rushed and lonely and isolated, is making me feel so.

i really truly hate large groups and if given any kind of choice would probably rather stick to solitude. somehow making small talk with strangers is more lonely, as if i can now see how lonely and small i really am.

on the to-do list:

have got to deal with that whole 'being socially inept' problem. not going to get me anywhere in hk.

today a lady asked me where she could find wong tai sin. in cantonese. i think i turned bright red trying to grate out enough chinese to make sense. i feel quite embarassed because half the time they think i'm a local. ugh. anyway.

won't post again till i've got photos for you all. see you then.

two updates in a day means i'm deathly bored.

and feeling a tad unwell. i tried to have an american breakfast this morning at our usual chinese porridge place and was disappointed.

a) shit was about 19 dollars, which is expensive considering that a bowl of porridge is only $13.

b) bacon was half-cooked and stringy. i still wolfed it down. <--not exactly picky.

c) i think the bacon made me ill. 

that or all the hk greasy street food is partying in my belly. not fun.

When you live in a place like HK, I have decided it is best to locate your nearest market where you can find shit to cook in your room or fruit to eat, as I'm already feeling like I got machine grease injected into my veins. I've got this ridiculously delicious salmon en papillote recipe you can cook on a sheet of tinfoil in a microwave that I intend to utilize at least some of the time here. Cuz while it's not cheaper than street food, I reckon it sure is gonna be healthier.

There's a lot of South Asians here. I want to talk to them about how they came to be, how they find Hong Kong life, what are their thoughts on this or that. I want to talk to people! My mother is not allowing, as strangers lurk about every corner waiting to rape a young foreign thing. But every local I meet tells me the same thing, so the danger must really be there, a long shadow with an insidious owner around the corner somewhere.

Also drink a shitload of water, kids. These toxins and chemicals in the air and in the greasy food require much to flush it out. And you walk EVERYWHERE in this town, sitting only for the odd taxi cab ride, a seat on the subway si tu as de la chance. Don't get dehydrated in this enchanting cesspool :P

 

You know, when I was in Macau, all of a sudden, I heard Edith Piaf's clear and glorious voice trumpeting to my left. And though it was only two ballroom dancers having at it at the bottom of a staircase in front of a crowd of tourists, I was envigorated. Music will ground you when you are lonely and abroad. I feel like Thumbelina all wrapped up in her mother's great big hand when I'm listening to the soft and subtle notes of Wutang Clan's Shame on a Nigga.

We have quite run out of things to do insofar as these old ladies can handle. All day yesterday we waded through a sea of boot and leg in the Fa Yuen Street Market. Bought me a great big handbag to fill bricks with in case I get manhandled. Also bought sheets, as the university's not providing.

Found knitting heaven at Fa Yuen Market. Saw several booths selling nothing but novelty yarns and any kind of needles and stitch markers and gauges and *glazes over* I mean, I guess it's not like silk yarn or merino or anything but I could die here. Happy. That's a whole other blog though.

Need to get hangers, and all other kinds of amenities. When studying abroad, you always got to make sure to bring the little things. For example, if you're going to Hong Kong, do bring one of those little packets of tissue, as most ma 'n pa restaurants will not provide napkins for you with which to wipe down the greasy chopsticks and spoons. 

Of course if you're going to dine like a rich foreigner in those places with clean tableware, go ahead, but I only got so much cash and my stomach ain't so discerning.

Sorry if I sound a little antiquated. Was reading All the Pretty Horses all last night. Comepletely wooed by Cormac McCarthy's poetic prose, the stark yet sumptuous lyricism of his imagery. That and I adore westerns. 

Have got scads of pictures. Am downloading Irfanview now to edit that shit. Need to have time to post the pics up, so will do so at school when I have the leisure.

Can't wait to get rid of these old bags, as they are a whole lot of baggage for a lady to be carryin' around. I love my mum and aunt to death, but that old lady is annoying the fuuuck out of me. Honestly can't wait to meet and hang out with people my own age, drink legally. Karaoke. War games. Mmm.

Shabop shalom baby. 

kind of depressing.

Went to ladies' market night before last, which is like going to Chinatown except actually in China. Ladies' market is just one long strip of bootleg bazaar reaching a few blocks in length. After the first two blocks, however, you realize that everybody's hockin' the same shit, and then you head back, only to realize that you're lost. There was a contortionist begging in the middle of the way. The horrible smell of Stinking Tofu permeating everything. A little like a nightmare. Made worse because I had three old ladies in tow, and they kept stopping to look at bootleg Tumi luggage. And I kept wanting to stop and look at the cock costumes they had on display every five feet.

Bought a couple nice silver rings for 10 bucks USD. In the states they'd be 20 each. I try not to think about where they're made and by whom. For what.

It's hard when you're a stupide americaine traveling abroad and you've learned about this shit in the classroom. I mean, on the one hand, you don't want to support transnational crime organizations and child labor. On the other hand, shit is cheap. And the whole breadth and depth of the scheme is so large and encompassing you don't know what and where to go for any kind of legit shit. Honestly, if it's not the clothes at the ladies' market then it's the socks in the stores, or the bedsheets at the hostel. 

But that can't be an excuse. You gots to make choices, and change what you can. Which I suppose is hard, since the mindset around here is that you can't. 

But anyhow. Had expensive dinner with more old ladies and one of their well-to-do sons. The place is called Crystal Palace, and it's got decent Peking and Szechuan food. Hate to think about the paycheck.

The next day, we took a taxi to Tsim Sha Tsui to take the ferry to Macau. Tickets are decent in the daytime. Like 133 HK, but the return trip is like 175 HK at 7:30 in the evening.

The aunt and mum being asian and typical were swayed by very persistent tourist guide for exorbitant price. I think it was like $1000HK for 3 hours but we talked him down to $600 or something. 

Anyway, it was interesting as we talked more with him and learned about his family and where he was from. He took us to an AMAZING little bakery where they had egg tarts that just made me die. Delicioussss. But it took like a half hour to get them, the little place was so packed.

So I guess it was worth it, to have experienced it. Guy needs to work, right.

Alllssooo. On the way back our taxi driver told us that all the subway lines were shut down because somebody threw themselves onto the tracks. Suckz.

Also for new years' a gathering of people were silly enough to light a billion sparklers inside a crowded club. a fire of course ensued. sigh.

Came back and had really good chinese sausage and spinach rice. I could eat this everyday. A little expensive at 35 bucks a bowl, but two people could handle a bowl and still get stuffed. No english menus though. 

While trying to handle my earrings I spilled tea tree oil all over the bed. Shit is potent. Now, while I love the smell of tea tree oil and can deal with sleeping in it, the old ladies with me kicked up a fuss and we slept with the windows open, traffick noise blaring in, but the lovely smells of eucalyptus wafting out. Slept very well. 

I discovered a huge worn copy of Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses and the sequels at the hostel. Funny, since I had wanted to shell out cash for it in the states, but I found it here, a hidden gem. Mmm. But I have no time to read it. :( Might steal it, might buy it off them. Probably the latter. Fuckin' conscience :P.

Am now sitting here in the lobby listening to Wu Tang Clan, want to call Catherine but don't really want to deal with the other people here. That I think she might get annoyed with me wanting to talk to her all the time. But I do :(.

Will post pics tonight, si c'est possible.