Sweetness and Light

I'm not there

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 04:09:39 GMT

Earlier I watched this pathetic YouTube video of someone trying and failing to fly a kite by the ocean. I felt like I was watching someone die right in front of me. My whole day has been wasted trying to rid my belly of this empty feeling I am sure was caused by that meaningless clip. Thinking about this has also made me realize that embarrassment is probably the only emotion that I truly understand in other human beings, and that nearly everything else is completely lost on me. I can't relate to anything but the sensation of severe disappointment and agony one feels when they're embarrassed. Humiliation is the knowledge that death is clutching at your entrails and laughing in your face.

To me, dying is the only method through which I can connect myself to other humans. Only in death will I truly become a part of someone else, unselfishly, without doubt and forever. Living, my body resembles a capsule that excludes real existence, that contains me in a shell of muted perception. Sometimes, the desire to be torn apart, to be physically splintered until I am unrecognizable, overwhelms me. This is the only way the concept of death can really move me. Nothing moves me. Nothing but the thought of our consummated death makes me wish to be close to you.

Blow My Mind

Mon, 01 Jun 2009 03:46:32 GMT

I don't have what it takes to be a real person. I am too weak, too insipid, too indolent. Sometimes I feel like an emotional wastebasket. And I mean a wastebasket, which is unlike a real garbage can, or something that sits outside in the alley, braving the cold, where the mushy, pulpous, rotting emotions are laid to wither and stink-- the ardor of houseflies. No, I am thinking of the kind of litter bin found in somebody's office by their desk, the type of emotion receptacle reserved for sentiments that were never alive and can never decompose, lest it attract vermin. The inanimate variety of feeling is retained here, the kind, like dust, that flinches when breathed upon or scatters into the air. I have come to believe that if I were a trash heap, I'd be the one to bury this frigid regard; unerotic and thin; bloodless, crumpled and dry.

Say It When You Mean It

Mon, 27 Apr 2009 10:26:45 GMT

I finished my paper, it's past 6AM, I want to sleep or vomit or die, but I can't, I'm suddenly so gripped by the old thing, the old death, I always feel. I can't shake it, can't sleep, can't change.

Why is it so hard to stay the same person, to be forever myself and never anyone else? Who can live their entire lives in such a manner, in such brutal atomity? I feel like a sucker for it all, I don't know what I could've done to prevent it.

Tomorrow the flesh will have melted off my skull and I will be someone else-- someone ugly, brutal and terrified.

Dumb Angel

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 00:10:46 GMT

There's this girl in one of my classes who is the perfect facsimile of a friend I once had. They have the same mannerisms exactly (brow furrowing and lip puckering that give the impression of discomfort even when uttering the most banal things), the same voice (surprisingly nasal and whiney), and the same ambiguous brown skin (my friend was Jewish and Salvadoran; the classmate has the first name of an Arab boy and an absurd British last name). Their laughs are identical-- a flat, unenthusiastic squeak-- as are their hands and how they hold their pencils. Their poetry style is more than similar (we're in a creative writing class together). Lines like "pink plastic electric Jesus" could've appeared in the work of either female. They even own(ed) the same shoes.

(I don't talk to that friend anymore. It was nice to know someone who was game for everything, like she was, but it turned out that we had nothing in common. She was actually kind of a repulsive person by the end of it. She's in Washington state somewhere, I think.)

I have an impulse to admit all of this to the classmate. I have this impulse to let her know that she's just the refuse of my recollections, the debris of my past experiences. That her face and her thoughts are the product of my laziness, my withered imagination. I want to let her know that her life is a compilation of my expectations and a blip in my otherwise smooth-surfaced reality.

When I look at her, I feel like God. And everyone is insignificant. And my neck is long enough that I can see everything.

Ready to die

Tue, 30 Dec 2008 23:34:19 GMT

Turned twenty today.
On winter break.
Got a 4.0 for the semester.
Internet broke.
Getting old; dying.
Feeling fine.

In gest

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:15:07 GMT

I only feel really sure of myself these days if I happen to be riding the subway. Every day I take the 34 trolley from 43rd and into the tunnel, to City Hall, to the Broad St Line, to Cecil B. Moore. I am all alone. I am the Queen of the Subway. I have a way of moving that I've realized is totally distinct when I'm underground. I feel a little on the prowl, and maybe all of my usual anger turns into something real here, a primal aggression I'm incapable of producing outside these conditions. My nails are red, my tongue is red, I just don't know-- I become a different person.

I find it hard to think. It's like I have a boner for myself.

Sometimes I feel in complete control of everyone surrounding me. I tell them which subway car to choose. I imagine they are all kittens. I listen to music that I find utterly euphoric and fantasize about guns for no particular reason. These are the instances in which I believe I'm really being myself. I know I only think this way to fight my supreme terror of public places, that I'm only building a grand fortress of fear. But at the same time, I'm practically invincible when I get in there.

So invincible I didn't even wince when I accidentally sat in a puddle of someone else's urine today, or what was an otherwise perfectly fine subway seat.

Dump all these body parts into my trunk.

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 01:01:13 GMT

Things I have learned: life is messy, and dull. God, does everything bore me. I've grown sick of dressing myself in the morning, of applying mascara, of waking up, of urination. I am hopelessly tense about everything. Every time I'm walking around campus I have this horrible, overwhelming feeling that all of my organs are going to suddenly fall out of my ass. I really do. I concentrate on trying to keep them in my belly. That's what I do. I'm really just so terrified that somehow something big and gross will happen that'll irrevocably reveal just how disgusted I am by everything. I start to think one day I will arrive in class spontaneously drunk out of my mind and tell everybody how stupid their clothes are and how ugly they seem to me. How is it that my loathing of all people isn't obvious to those that look upon me? I hate you, you're terrible. Everything about you is bad. I'm sorry. That's all.

A lot of things are slipping out of my control. As if I am in the mood to continuously prove myself, over and over. Things would be better if I had an objective confidant. I feel useless talking about anything though, especially here. If I don't do my homework soon, I will be struck by lightning.

When will this election be over with.

As nasty as I want to be

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 00:42:35 GMT

I have so little to say I feel almost blind. Classes started, all a bore. It's pretty agonizing at this point to even recognize a face, let alone shuffle past one with any gesture of acknowledgment. I can't serve coffee to this neighborhood anymore, it's practically killing me. Whenever I get out of the house I see all the regulars and realize I know so much more about them than I want to (this man feels his life is out of control whenever we can't serve him coffee in a mug-- they're all being washed, sir-- and this one can't look me in the face but his girlfriend is even worse). I am that girl who serves your latte with a scowl. Sorry, but I find it impossible to do otherwise. One day I'll work for a travel agency and all my memories of the service industry will be reduced to a small blur of faded hate. One day I'll forgive the public for their inability to order food in an organized fashion. But until then, I remain another coffee shop ice queen.

Other things:

All of my classes appear to be very easy this semester.

I never want to talk to anyone ever again.

Have fun and remember to tip.

Last Minute of Summer Update

Wed, 30 Jul 2008 21:22:29 GMT

Dear Loyal Livejournal Friendies,

I finally bought a new laptop after spending this whole damn summer without one. The one I'd had previously was given to me for free by an ex-boyfriend years ago but only saw nine months of action due to its extreme shittiness, inability to connect with my house's router, and various other problems throughout the years. It died entirely in May. Today I am sitting with a brand new hot pink laptop, a gift from my parents for getting straight A's this past semester (probably the only gift I've ever received from those slackers). So expect more entries (I think). In other news, I've spent my summer caring for kittens and watching Kids in the Hall. Gabriel graduated from college, but he hasn't got a job so we spend all day smoking cigarettes in public parks. I've started to hate Philadelphia and now I fantasize about moving to dull places like Delaware and being a completely different person. Gin rummy and Boggle have also dominated my time.

I hope this has been an accurate portrayal and sufficient summation of my time spent without you.

Love and Tenderness,
Bella

Self-homicide

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:08:06 GMT

I've never been able to imagine what goes into the making of a common human being. Any girl with straightened hair and a dubious tan riding in my same subway car is able to be loved, consistently thinks of herself, and belongs to a sect of people only she may be aware of. I place importance in believing she exists and wondering why, and I begin by imagining a collage of meaningless moments that bring me to the brink of insanity. In my day I have pictured with passion the sweat of sweet girls, a cellphone dying in the dark of a closed purse, the unconscious face someone makes as they stare into a mirror, plucking eyebrows. I wonder why one could love her so, as they could, someone like you or I. Before she was born, her mother chose this name for her to carry and attribute herself to for all time (I don’t know the name). In my day, I have held close the earnest efforts of pretend people, the toe curling unseen in the shoe, the deaf decisions, the hearts without breath, the bodies without blood, and the death. All humans are whispers, wisps of air worth grasping but made to fade. Any feather here carries a ton. When we sleep with our mouths open and the dark pressed all in the room, who will know us?

Another day devoured in the agony of so many possibilities. People as mosquitoes on my throat, those I don’t care for, those I haven’t met, all who I cannot be. The absence of their simple existences contains only myself, feeling a little emptier than I'd thought. In the end, I wonder, mostly, of what I lack. In this way do I court death, sincerely and with such faith, for eventually their inadequacy and mine will meet in the shared arena of mortality. We fear the same things. We are guided to the end. You and I will die some day, inscrutable, colossal, and alone.

Cover me in you/I'm getting lovelier by the hour

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 22:12:56 GMT

I'm in love with my own introspection. I can sit for hours, drunk off the silly promiscuity of my thoughts. I'll continue on in this fashion until I'm full, with Krispy Kreme fancies stuffed to the brim of my throat. And here I am, close to the sun in lonely lands. I find myself without you (for the first time in years). But I am comforted, knowing-- I can't become a different person in this way. Not this time. You're too strong in me.

The truth about me is that my whole day revolves around Gabriel. We don't do things without each other, literally, which I've learned is unusual. The offspring of my own private personality is still his, even the secrets, even the lies. All the rebellions, all the revolts, each grievance and each smirk is still his. I've tried to fight it, but in the end I'm satisfied knowing this is pointless. My greatest betrayal could only be a smear of my feelings for Gabriel-- a blowing of the nose, a sweaty upper lip-- of my love for Gabriel. Our marathon fights are directly proportional to our daily satisfaction: we are extreme people. I've become convinced that no one can approach our sinking hatred and blurring apathy. We have such distinct conventions of thought, such a thorough digestion of material, that I couldn't imagine ever beginning again. Even having friends is difficult, I find them all too slow on the uptake. Gabriel is instant gratification, profound satisfaction. When we are together, I find myself rapt with deliverance. It's possible that at least one of us is a monster, but we must continue on together, if at all.

I am drunk right now.

Glossata

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:38:56 GMT

When I was younger I used to get this intense fear that whoever I was sexually involved with could see everything I was doing through my eyes, like some kind of Being John Malkovich shit. For weeks I'd refuse to look at myself in the shower and close my eyes when I'd change clothes. I'd try to convince myself otherwise, but the horrible sensation would remain. As if anyone who touched me stole my soul in some way. Or had the password to all my insecurities. As if they could see right through me ever after that.

It is easy to alternate between loving and hating yourself for the same exact things. Spending so much of the time being full of it, I find myself suddenly shocked by how easy it is to vanquish confidence in favor of some brand of vapidity, thinking "I want to be just like you" about any empty idiot on the sidewalk. Today this could be the case as well, but I'm aware I'll continue pursuing the same things I used to within the hour.

Today I am a different person, I am used to the things that I think and I anticipate what I'll think in the future. Today I am a shallow person and stronger for it.

When I walk with my Angel

Mon, 24 Mar 2008 17:43:50 GMT

I am unconvinced by the male population. Despite their aggression, they remain the less important half of our species. Men are flimsy and pathetic. Male motives are mechanical and transperant. Don't you realize you're all puppies performing tricks for a contented master? Except for the fags out there, y'all are pretty self-sufficient, huh.

Being a girl is truly unsatisfying.

P.S. My English teacher told me I should be writing for Salon.com in five years, HAHAHA.

Meow mix

Wed, 12 Mar 2008 02:48:23 GMT

In honor of Spring Break, Mother Nature has bestowed stray babies on me. I need name suggestions for the following kittens:

Blonde:

(I'll explain these bottles of alcohol later)

He's the biggest and most rambunctious, but also extremely sweet and intelligent. Obviously mother's favorite.

Brown:

She looks like a bear and one of many names on her list was Osita. A lap cat already but still adventerous, despite being the most clumsy. She moves slowly but happily.

Red:

He's the smallest and his eyes are so sad he looks silly. He's too lovable. Gabriel says giving him away will be like giving away money.

Black:

(Frog/cat juxtaposition)

See the resemblance? She, like her sister, also looks like a little bear. I know you think they're both black but Brown up there is much lighter, having much more visible stripes. Black is overly mewy and often seems dissatisfied with you. She was initially my favorite because she moves around so much.

We're probably only taking the mother, Blonde and Brown, leaving me with a total of six cats. Still, I need suggestions for the others, too.

prelapsarian/postexilic

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 05:10:50 GMT

I have a problem with Livejournal. I'm constantly thinking I should post in this thing more often, but I've gotten too used to being aloof. Even now, I do this only to procrastinate working on math homework. It's just that I usually get caught up thinking, What does the Livejournal audience expect of me? And really, what does anyone expect to find me writing? I often wonder how obscure I'm being, if anyone even knows what I'm talking about, and how many things they find confusing about my life. I often feel the urge to clarify things in really ridiculous ways (i.e., a statement like, "I'm not ugly. Most people find me attractive."). I don't want to post anything actually personal, and then I offset everything with a picture. The picture is my favorite part, as it has nothing to do with anything. Anyway, what the fuck am I talking about. Oh yeah. Give me feedback or I may continue feeling awkward.

The moral of the story

Fri, 08 Feb 2008 00:55:14 GMT

So as of this past Tuesday I have been on Livejournal for a total of six years... I hope you all know how sick that is. To celebrate, I've been looking over past posts, but rereading old livejournal entries from the seventh grade really makes me want to sob endlessly. I was such a weird kid, OH CHRIST. I should be doing school work but I just can't, it's too depressing. Looking over my old poetry makes me want to pee from the eye sockets. But it's kind of amazing how well I can recall exactly what I was doing as I wrote all one thousand of those entries. (It's also amazing that I'm pretty much exactly the same.) I remember everything pre-high school so intensely... God I had NOTHING TO DO. (Wednesday, May 21st, 2003: yesterday my high point was watching Knight Rider on the scifi channel, and today it was finding a grand theft auto sticker in a magazine at the dentist's.) I'm currently looking at an entry that says I was listening to Yoko Ono. I want to cry. :[

If I could do it all over again I would've... stayed indoors forever. High school completely ruined me.

Heath Ledger

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 03:46:12 GMT

Today was my first day of classes.

My first class, at 10AM, is "Psychology as a Social Science." Despite how serious its title may sound, I only signed up for the course after hearing that it was total cake and because it fulfills some kind of banal requirement (read: Temple's core sucks), so I'm not really expecting much. However, the professor's voice was really irritating me and I really couldn't figure out why. I eventually began to doze and started dreaming intensely about King of New York... At which point I woke up with a start and realized that Christopher Walken was my teacher and that my teacher was Christopher Walken, and why would anyone hire someone to teach children if they sound exactly like Christopher Walken? What a bad idea. I once heard that Mr. Walken used to take the scripts he was working on and remove all the puncuation so that he wouldn't react to all the commas and such while memorizing the lines, seeing as normal speech doesn't have pre-planned puncuation or something. In spite of his effort, I don't think many people find that Christopher Walken speaks more any more naturalistic than a carrot. Anyway, I realized it was impossible to continue concentrating on what my professor was saying and promptly stopped attempting to.

Math is being taught to me by some closeted homo, which is fine. He has the unnatural habit of speaking while shutting the classroom's heavy door which always obliterates everything he says with the sound it makes, but he likes to pretend that no one notices this. But I don't hold it against him. My Spanish teacher is a large white man who was an airplane mechanic for thirty years. Apparently, he learned Spanish and got a masters at Rutgers in his spare time, became a Spanish professor while still a mechanic, and only retired from his initial profession last September. His accent isn't that great, but I had to hand it to the guy.

My English teacher is some horrible bitch from Long Island who speaks so loudly and so incessantly about the worse things imaginable and then laughs in the most offensive way possible when no one reacts to the nonsense she spews. Insisting that we all sit in a circle, she made one boy sit in front of the open door and then started to drool senselessly like a monster saying, "That probably wouldn't be good FENG SHUI would it? Right? Right? RIGHT! FENG SHUI? FENG SHUI! RIGHT!" I can't imagine a person less suited to me. The syllabus includes reading some edgy academic article about The Sopranos and writing a paper on it, seeing Bowling for Columbine (which I had already been forced to watch twice in fucking high school), and blowing my goddamn brains out.

Life in pink

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 23:27:40 GMT

New layout, etc. Have spent the winter break doing useless things that delight me: learning to pronounce all the different brands of scotch, eating smoked fish for breakfast, watching Peter Lorre movies and falling in love with Ingrid Bergman in the process, listening to Harpo Marx's voice, and not doing any fucking laundry. The state of the room is a disaster. In order to get out of the bed one must face The Great Trek, a sordid journey that consists of wading through piles of giant christmas presents, massive candy wrappers and wild underwear beasts, then quicksand. Once you've survived that, The Trail of Tears will lead you to the door. I keep stubbing my toe on imaginary Indians.

Gabriel and I borrowed the first season of Six Feet Under from his parents, and we somehow managed to finish it. That show is garbage. Nothing happens and all of the characters are shallow caricatures. I can't stand nearly any HBO show. Where is the "good writing" everyone is always going on about? Every show on HBO seems only capable of falling back on their cheap premises: What if there was a show about a mafia family? What if there was a show about a polygamist family? What if there was a show about a family who owned a funeral home? The envelope is pushed so far, the characters are always undeveloped cliches, and the plot merely mimes clever. "Curb" is just Seinfeld-Lite--and I don't care if it doesn't have a fucking laugh track, why is that supposed to be so impressive? Entourage blows, it's not even worth talking about, and I bet if I hate on Flight of the Conchords every female on my friends list will hemorrhage shit all over me, so I promise I never will. But anyway, I'm actually in a good mood. I'm hoping The Wire isn't just another cop show with some sorry agenda hiding under an expensive gritty filter. Besides I love watching horrible television, and VH1 isn't funny at all, its lame irony is just as trite and forced as Real World shower sex. Boy, I should start reading books again or something.

My birthday was yesterday.

Mon, 31 Dec 2007 22:01:53 GMT

Now I'm nineteen.

Weeee!

Everyone else must be having fun

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 08:36:51 GMT

I only hope that this decade and all of its fads will go down as the most insignificant in history. I don't want future generations to feel as if there is any amount of worthy nostalgia to be had from MisShapes or iPods, that Al Gore movie, Inspi(red) and Africa-mania, Family Guy, or any other kind of meaningless shift that occured in these Naughty Aughties. It has all been irrelevent: the conversion from goth to emo, from alternative to indie; the silly multicultural/urban fetish resulting in Lily Allen and Lupe Fiasco; the horrible "independent" movies all attempting to resemble the non-characters of Mr. Mediocre, Wes Anderson; a penchant for remorse over lost pop culture from previous decades that had been much more interesting; and Southern rap, which sucks. The return to "classy" aesthetics is only a ruse to distract you from the drastic drop in every other kind of standard. The cynical fun of New York hipsters in contrast to even the most vapid, cocaine-induced euphoria of the late Seventies is still more pathetic. The flimsy pretense of "irony" serves every youth with an excuse for any misdemeanor, and it has become impossible for anyone to distinguish whether they feel sincere anymore. Even internet culture is just a waste; it is quite obvious that fourteen-year-olds run not only MySpace but YouTube as well. I hope we can all forget about these things as if they never happened once 2010 sets in.

Then again, I bet anyone could have thought the same of the Eighties, the era where both men and women were made ugly. Perhaps America will only get worse and twenty years from now I will have reconsidered this age as a darling epoch of innocence. I give up. And here is another picture of a naked girl.

alea jacta est

Mon, 03 Dec 2007 08:03:09 GMT

I had this dream about my dead cat this morning. I was standing around my house with some other person and I saw Jazz come up to me and make his usual greeting noises. I pet him and he felt exactly as he did in real life. Then the person next to me said, "Isn't he dead?" So I walked up to him and we looked at his body. He had looked perfectly healthy before, but then I saw that his fur was all ragged and that he was missing a leg and half his tail. He went outside and we followed him. There were all these Indians coming off a bus in what was suddenly a busy street. I asked a little girl in full Indian garb to tell me what had happened to my cat. She didn't want to help me, but I forced her. She put her hands on him and told me that he had escaped from where he had been and that spirits took him, that he had traveled all around the world in order to come back. I kept interrupting her, asking her all sorts of questions. It was horrible.

In other news, I just finished a seven page paper that I had to rewrite because it disappeared from my computer the day that it was due. I woke up to print it out on Thursday, and there was simply no trace of it. I am currently stalling beginning a second term paper. For the entirety of the week I have been sleeping for hours without remorse and sitting idly by my angelic humidifier as if drugged. I haven't done my laundry in weeks and just as I was about to, the dryer breaks. Everything this week has been characterized by a sluggish anxiety wherein I cannot find motivation or direction. I'm procrastinating for the first time since senioritis was all the rage. Also, the cable doesn't work anymore.

I saw "No Country for Old Men," and it was good. Nothing has been good for a long time. Don't get me started on Martin Scorsese--nothing he's done has kept my attention since he started thinking Irish Americans were ever some kind of novelty. Who ever thought Irish Americans were interesting? No one, with good fucking reason. And you can stop casting Leo DiCaprio in everything, grandpa, cos no one is interested. Anyway, movies suck.

it's my party

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 08:18:48 GMT

After writing a paper for a few hours in the vacant room across from him, I miss Gabriel so intensely that the hunger in my belly crumbles and resembles the ache of desperation. I eat olives and think only of his skin.

Jazz

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:32:18 GMT

Today my cat died. He was the oldest one, but I didn't really expect it. I came home from spending Sunday night at Gabriel's parents' house and the whole house smelled of death. I found him underneath some drawers in the kitchen where my mother had had him wrapped in blankets when she left for work. His back legs were wet with piss and shit. His mouth was agape, but he was still so soft. My mother came back from work within the hour and we cried and put him in a box with some flowers. But I had to leave for class. On the trolley, a man sat near me softly whistling. I pictured myself in a meadow of bright, soft light. The small woman beside me kept making bizarre demonic noises that could have been burps, convincing me that I was to be swallowed and taken to hell. I didn't feel awake.

I'd had him since I was six. I can still remember his face when I found him staring back up at me from a hole in the porch. We were moving that day, and if I hadn't seen him then, I never would have. My intense devotion to him as a child lead to a lifelong obsession with felines. I used to dress him up in doll clothes when he was a kitten and we'd both feel so pretty and pleased. I still can't get the smell of sour intestinal fluid out of my nose, nor the memory of his hardened body under his soft fur. How his body had become as inanimate as a dining chair. I spoke little, and the day was overcast. On the subway ride home, I sat with four other men, all of us equidistant from each other, all of us wearing dark browns and faded blacks, surrounded by the orange seats and orange advertisements. I loved Jazz and can't believe that he is dead. I cannot sleep now for the pain in my stomach.

I had this sitting in my LJ client for like a week.

Tue, 06 Nov 2007 07:21:25 GMT

Worst headache ever
Might as well die right here
I want to die

Everyone makes me miserable

I hate washing the dishes
I hate doing the laundry
And sweeping or vacuuming
Why am I so tired?

I am not learning anything
My weekends are a waste of time
Cleaning is boring
Sex is boring

I don't want to be on top
You should do all the work

All of my cats are getting old and dying
I can only get fatter

This is a joke said only to depress me.

whispering bells

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 01:34:56 GMT

FYI livejournal has stopped sending me any comments, either responses to ones I've made or ones posted on my journal. What a little bitch. Don't take it personally because I would be responding back if I could (and I have been to the ones I go back to find), especially since I've been on such an awesome procrastination kick. I've felt quite good all week, but today I can only feel unwholesome and bad, and I know it's because I should be thinking more about myself than I have been for months.

School is too easy and work is too boring and everything has been slipping by between them. I am aware that this is not loneliness but rather something opposite that leaves me without my very self. I have spent too much energy becoming one person with someone else and no time contributing to anything I had built before. But this is already too serious for me to talk about, and I feel I must gather resources to begin writing and dreaming again. In the meantime, I wonder about unsatisfying phrases: Pizza Hut, Radioshack, Taco Bell-- what do these things mean? I register for classes until I go deaf and my left eyeball pops. Gabriel and I compile a list of things to make the winter more cozy (cognac, slippers, honey and tea). I am not serious, and I am not pensive, but I am still the serious, pensive girl. This is boring, and false; I do not feel good impressing anyone.

I want to think. Today I saw a boy on the trolley that looked like Gabriel, and I felt in love. My favorite person to talk to is my dorky, wholesome friend Nathan, who thinks I should lighten up and be more optimistic. I feel completely comfortable around people who don't take any of my heinous narcissism and rampant antipathy seriously, and a tad disgusted by people who feel compelled to join in. I am obsessed with people who always ride the same subway car with me on my way home from school: a small Asian girl with a constant archaic grin; a skinny punk girl I took pottery with when I was ten who used to be homeschooled and convinced computers were "evil"; a couple of nondescript professor types. We ride in the last car everyday. I listen to a mix I made titled "Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving" everyday. Only during these times on the subway do I feel in the right place.