growing up

there are friendships and relationships that leave you heady with the love of life. a dinner and a movie with these kinds of people and you're driving home with the windows down, the smoky taste of tobacco and the night air, everything seen through some perfect gaussian filter that blurs the streetlights to dancing orbs peeling away from your speeding car. the sudden mist of evening showers, wet asphalt and perfume in the air and you feel so suddenly wonderfully alive. beautiful and free. like you could go on forever, like a contact high on a mountaintop of ecstasy and powdered sugar, barreling into the night.

and you know it takes a line of text in the cold light of your laptop from the other kind of friend that leaves all those fluttering feelings flailing like burnt bugs in a fly zapper. oh those kinds of friends. fair weather fairies fluttering flickering in furtive whispers, spring fevers, summer flings, autumn windfalls, fuckers all. fuck them all.

i've been struck with the broad side of my intuition, the great solid mass of my future, my adulticity. is this what it's like to wake up? strange it's so late in the night. and for some reason i imagined 20/20 vision, but what a cliché, right? what i mean is, what a waste of time. when i could be dancing in the evening rain. when i could be making breakfast plans with people who have good hearts, not empty husks. i know, i know, i know you can't hold time but i don't have time to spare for these vapors, for these vague manshapes and their breathy promises. these i'lltextyous and letsdolunch and loveyoulots, yeah, that's what i told your mom this morning, bitch.

i know i know i know you can't break a heart i mean it's an organ, it's very slippery and gamey probably, but i know mine knows pain in the most acute fashion, i'm not being emo i'm expressing a litany of emotions you could group together and if they were letters in an alphabet they'd spell something you'd recognize as heartbreak. there's a sound like the keening whine of cracking glass and you can't breathe and fuck but it hurts, and why are there tears. why am i crying over what appears to be dust in the glass. letters in the alphabet.

and i know, you know, i know there are times when you make mistakes and the people you think you love turn into statues of unknowable obsidian on the far side of olympus mons, what i mean is you don't know them anymore,

and maybe they've had these thoughts and i'm the bitch i'm the whore i'm the horrible bore that isn't worth their time. i'm the one with the loveyoulots and letsbefriends and whatever the fuck, i'm so sorry. god, god i'm so sorry. i never want to be that person ever again.

this is what waking up is. i'm so sorry, or fuck you. whatever you deserve. i'm done and i'm gone.

secret place

wish i could dig a hole to hide all my secrets in, shovel the dirt back on top and seal it off with a sigh.

so many friends and yet so dangerously alone, all the time. the impermanence of it all, the transience of socializing and befriending people, dumping all your heart into it and then watching them go away. i'm so done. i'm going to be alone from now on. it is something i will be okay with.

Okay.

Breathe breathe breathe.

I'm going to have to go through these posts and purge them one day or something. They're all a little too telling, unfortunately. Especially for what I have planned in the near future.

But for now, it's still the dumping grounds for this petite tete.

So I'm absolutely dead tired. Had another breakdown on Wednesday, cried all day. Tried having fun this weekend but everytime I sat in front of the computer again I just started crying and, as usual, I slept.

These things used to be so easy. I used to really write this stuff, all intently. I had a floodgate installed in there to keep the ideas from spilling out and now it's all rusted shut.

I used to like writing essays. And now. Now it seems like I don't like doing much of anything.

Procrastinationz

In which my social life is amazing and in turns amazingly depressing. And in which my school life suffers something horrible because I can't bring myself to give a shit.

I should be doing my french stuff. And my chinese stuff. And writing a ten-page paper. But there's so many millions of miles of things all up in my brain just jostling. it's not even noon and I've smoked maybe four cigarettes. Not really helping my cough. My liver hurts.

I'm wearing a sparkly cardigan, though, from the 90's, and it's so lovely it makes everything better. One of those outfits I tend to come up with the night before, and I get so excited about them I can't really sleep.

I really enjoy my mornings in French class. I show up a half hour late, but I get to smoke outside with the literature majors who are just the loveliest boys. I love Omar; he's so fucked up on the inside, and every time I see him there's some new lovely surprise about his super-fucked life.

I'd be with him in a heartbeat, but man if he isn't a bag of drowned kittens I'd rather not look into.

But our misery matches, and every explanation is coupled with an "I get it" or "I feel that way too." Man, if only he didn't look like a Lebanese Ellen Degeneres.

Anyway, been meeting up with the loveliest people all week for such good times. Drinking pretty much daily; trying to build up my tolerance for when I am abroad as I'd like not to end up in the hospital for trying to keep up with Dutch giantesses. Again. Laughing and joking and making so many grand plans; it's so good to be young. Supposed to go to Boiling Crab on Thursday, par exemple, or to Fullerton for happy hour soon. With Rogelio, who is such a laugh, and Memo and Serge. Oh my goodness what a night.

Unless it gets awkward and Memo starts crying because I say something horrible and insensitive. Again. I would. :(

But anyway, in the face of all that great good socializing, my coursework (month's work of chinese and french, 10 page paper on border conflicts due Wednesday) looks like walking into an Iron Maiden. With extra long spikes. Painted in venom.

God But I'm consumed with so much heartrending emotion.

I don't understand why I can't feel normally about things, you know? Like there's always been and there always shall be so much going on inside my head, and I'm near to bursting. I want to scream out.

I don't know why I let my life get controlled by all these feelings. It's driving me mad, and I want to be above it all, but I'm not. I'm just not. :(

Ugh.

The cold and empty feeling comes right after. You drive home in a daze. I'm so confused still and yet so clear. I know all it's going to ever come to is disaster, and still I'm the tugboat in the wake of some larger ship, some larger shit. fuck me. Fuck me but he's so lovely.

in other news the charity fundraiser i helped organize was horribly successful, and for the first time in a long time i feel satisfied and accomplished about school and about my professional future. I'm learning how to deal with people's ridiculous ish in a professional setting, and man does it take all types of annoying and ridiculous shit to make an event huh.

Like old times.

Shake up the old shyness like old times. Break out the cold sweats, pour out all the tremors and the palpitations like they used to come when he used to come around.

When he comes around it hits me square in the gut and i'm an idiot again. all over again. like old times.

burn it down

the sinking feeling again. i really need to start being one of those good buddhists. i still don't deserve to wear it proudly.

when me and catherine went to the red room, and he grabbed my ass i think it was like a wake up call, in a weird way.

I've been falling down those same stairs of infatuation, banging my head on the same steps, and still I feel like I'm not learning. Cookie started naming all the ways I change when I'm around him, and Friday affirmed it. I'm starting to lose myself again.

I'm not accomplishing enough. I'm not making these hats fast enough. I keep looking up at the sky, like I think it's going to rain, like some miracle will rise out from my hamper like Jesus resurrected.

I've got to work for this paycheck, god. damn it.

i'm not happy. i'm lost and confused. i want to stay in bed all day and dream, but all my dreams rush me to waking in the most horrible way. ah, night terrors. who needs an alarm clock?

I had to frog a whole hat the other day and start over. The thought still leaves me all hollow inside. It took me a week to get to where I was. Sigh.

Roll those sleeves up, I guess. Who wants to dwell? Who wants to dwell.

I really need to be single.

I've been knitting the wrong way this whole time.

ahmg. It's like finding out I've been adding instead of subtracting. Or turning right when I thought I was turning left. In other words, my universe has just shattered.

I've been knitting through the back loops of everything this whole time. I am thoroughly ashamed. Ashamed! :(

Hm. I was halfway through the hat already. Halfway! Probably the fasted I've knitted anything, really. Probably on account of the fact that I was so excited about making cables :P

But I didn't like how it turned out. It's a bit too slouchy already, which is perfect for me, but for stylish Italian Ahmad?? Who buys his stylish glasses expressly from stylish Lebanon? This must needs be tailored. So I frogged the bitch. Fucking Vanna's Choice. I was talking to Patty how after a while you get pickier and pickier with yarn. Maybe not exclusively cashmere or anything, but that super saver shit isn't going to cut it anymore. Vanna's Choice is joining the list.

After much hemming and hawing I signed up on Ravelry, and have been trawling its fibrous depths like a spiny lobster, absorbing patterns into my gooey crustacean innards.

Sometimes I want to skip all this youthful ambition crap and just retire to a mountainside cottage in Switzerland with a quiet, industrious Swiss husband and just knit all day with my seven cats and lumbering Newfoundland dog. 

Though most days I just dream about being Elizabeth Zimmermann.

It's like my ultimate dream to make an adult surprise jacket with long sleeves gathered at the wrists like the picture in The Opinionated Knitter.

Thick cream or mottled heather grey. Alpaca or cashmere or both. Or... sigh.

And one of those fair isle sweaters! Mmph! I've never really balked at any kind of knitting--except maybe Estonian lace :O--but the kind of intricate colour changes of fair isle kind of maybe scare me a little bit. 

I've been talking about knitting an awful lot since school has ended only because i've been trying to find things to talk about. :P Things will begin to happen on Friday. I want to make an effort to write things down coherently, since it's not a habit of mine to be especially coherent. 

I think my mind has suffered for laying fallow so long, so that hard work feels like hard work instead of the kind of mental adventure it once was when I was younger. 

I remember watching Serge at work, cleaning his brushes and putting away the sponges. It was as if every movement was calculated and considered. Everything was put back into its right place. He folded the paper towels we use to wipe down our paintbrushes into careful fourths and methodically wiped down the counters. And yet it wasn't a painstaking process. Every motion was determined and quick, executed with surety and peace of mind. I like being around Serge because he knows himself and he knows what he's doing. Maybe because he's older, he's stopped wasting time. 

Or maybe it's all the weed and the LSD. Maybe he burned out all the useless shit in his brain, leaving nothing but peace and efficiency, like watching a starving tortoise eating mash.

Those things can go.

Anyway, that's the kind of thing I want to go for this year. 

Off to the yarn shop :P

cable needle.

UGH I just got a cable needle. I've been going through all these cable beanie patterns and it's like being dipped in chocolate and gold flakes. MMMMM i'm in heaven.

That might actually be pretty unpleasant, but I'm crazy excited. 

Ahmad just asked me to make him a beanie for his DC trip.  While initially I was going to say no, I realized that Saturday would be the last time I'd probably ever see his sexy Lebanese face again, so I told him yess.

I'm thinkin' about just making him a plain old knit beanie. I do have all day tomorrow, though, and a shiny new cable needle. Hmmm. :( o the possibilities.

i'm beginning to feel my backfat.

BACKFAT. Like hairless moles furrowing together down my spine. MMMMM.

I blame the holiday food. I ate lobster twice yesterday, along with heapfuls of greasy Cantonese food. The day before that I had bacon, and also Korean bbq from Freshia.

Oh man when that stuff explodes into your mouth with grease and fat mamdfnadkfja; MMMM some more.

Hopefully I'll be making more healthful use of mum's electric grill pan thing. We tried grilling green beans and though it took a while for them to caramelize they were so sweet and lovely after they did. Maybe I ought to blanch them first. Mmm.

Oh but then my aunt made this chocolate cake with flan on top and caramel all dripping down its sides. 

i feel uncomfortably pillowed in my own fat. Ugh gross. and yet so deliciously cushioned.

i've actually always wanted to try barding a chicken. that involves wrapping the chicken breast in bacon before roasting it, since the breast is always in desperate need of some kind of juicy greasy fatness. 

of course i saw julie and julia today, and there was so much butter oh my goodness. butter, oh thou churned milk solids, thou sweet and creamy delectation. they were slathering the hens with herbed beurre. mmmmm. 

i got a 4.0 this semester, which is surprising, seeing as I struggled so hard and procrastinated so much. That I got a better grade in International Social Conflicts and Valentina didn't has got to be proof of devilry. I wrote our biggest research paper the night of, three hours before, on hasty research, and I aced the thing. :( 

I'm cowed by how hard she works, and how frustrated she gets when she doesn't get the grade she deserved, simply because English is like a second language to her. 

To me writing well is second nature, and I feel I coast on it, depend on my prose when I don't really have the kind of insight and understanding she has on any given subject. Just because she doesn't have the words to say it, she gets the worse grade. bleh.

I finished two hats today! It took me like three hours to finish Valentina's hat. I really like these seashell crochet beret patterns I came up with. I kept ripping up the one I made for Casey because I couldn't get the shaping right, but now it seems like they shape themselves. I hardly had to decrease the stitches at all near the end. 

I really want to try knitting a cabled hat. There was this cloche hat that had one thick cable braid down the side and looked so lovely and easy, I'd like to try it. Only the pattern's in a magazine in a bookstore far far away from here. And it cost like 20 bucks. For one pattern out of a dozen lousy dowdy tams and pom pom fucking beanies. Bleh.

 

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.