Good Morning Clean Dishes

Also, I found something that supports my "controversial statement" in my last post.

"A good reader percieves the poem structurally, resulting in good criticism... A poor reader, on the other hand, simply expressses his or her personal emotions and reactions to a text. Such a reader is untrained in literary technique and craftsmanship. A poor reader and poor criticism, for example, may argue that a poem can mean anything its reader or its author wishes it to mean. On the other hand, a good critic and good criticism will assert that only through a detailed structural analysis of a poem can the correct interpretation arise" (57-58).

From Bressler's Literary Criticism. Woohoo, New Criticism! I'm a New Critic! English! English major! Woohoo!

So you think you can solve all your problems by yourself? Well nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermind.

Gay Sex, My Floor, Elevator Lobby

Rémy Peyroux is warming up a little bit to our class. Last Friday he asked us all if we had "fait une fête" the previous night, and then proceeded to tell us he was hungover. I took this as a sign of impending friendship. Tomorrow there is a mid-afternoon gathering called "Cafe Francais" in the lobby of Herter, and its purpose is for French students to drink coffee and speak French to peers. I am going to test my speaking skills, although I am très nerveuse to speak with native speakers like Rémy.

My English professor is super intimidating. Every time I speak in class he shoots whatever I say down. He does it to everybody. I kinda like it though. I'm sick of teachers who accept everything anyone blurts out as "one interpretation." Sometimes there's only one way to look at it, even in English. I'm aware of the controversy of that last statement but I'm leaving it. Kirby Farrell (my professor) is also incredibly smart. Today I mostly didn't say anything in class for fear of being made to sound ignorant. At the end of the class he remarked that "Phoebe didn't show up today." I yelled "I'm right here!" because seriously, I was a couple of feet in front of his face. He laughed and said he didn't recognize me because I changed my hair (straightened). Why is it that people notice my hair before my face? Last year Dan saw me with my hair wrapped in a towel and looked right past me like I was a stranger. It was surreal. Anyways, then Kirby gave me back my first paper. He had written "A" on the top, in combination with a couple other very nice things. I felt so great suddenly. I had apparently impressed this man who had scared me into silence for the previous fifty minutes. I can't decide if undeserved good grades or undeserved bad grades are worse, but I thought I earned this one and I walked home humming Camera Obscura and forgetting for a blissful while my petty occupations with people and relationships and desires.

Liz just texted me saying "GAY SEX MY FLOOR ELEVATOR LOBBY." Naturally, I bolted out of my room and down the stairs. Two guys were cuddling in the corner next to the elevator. I didn't slow my pace though, I ran right to Liz's room, and we danced maniacally in the hallways before I ran away and up the stairs again.

you're such a beautiful writer
that's not all you are
i'm sorry about making a pass
it was subtle but i think that you guess
the meaning intended

Another Thing

I decided I am going to be a soy milk drinker.

Cats of Doom

My cats are so awesome. They get in really weird moods and have to rub their bodies all over your legs and jump on you and sink their claws in so that they can hold on. They also can't meow like normal cats do - maybe this disability is a product of their age - but it sounds like a meow infused with a frog noise infused with a chain smoker noise. I like it. I am at home now for the first time since summer (okay that was only two weeks ago), and as usual, it feels weird. I am totally alone, literally. Whenever I come home from college and all my friends are in their own little worlds, probably drunk, and completely inaccessible, I feel the need to drive my car at night and listen to the National and try to be as sad as possible. Right before writing this post I went to the YMCA to use the elliptical for twenty minutes because really, what else could I do that would make me sadder. As I was driving there I felt like the darkness over what is supposedly the busiest street in Holden was eating me alive.

It's only when I take a step back and look at my life from an hour and a half away from it do I realize how dark it is in there. I know I need to wake up but it's like waking up isn't even the hard part, it's the wanting to.

I just drew five little pink animals and it's my new trademark. Also, nothing is more disappointing than being rejected by a job. Except about a million other things.

Funny Things Liz Altieri Says

Liz: My neck hurts.
Me: Mine too.
Liz: Why do bad things happen to good people??

Bethany: I thought you said you wanted to go out tonight
Liz: I did. But I meant go out to like... get soup

Liz: Not to bring up the green and purple guy, but Barney's favorite bread is pumpernickel.

There's a Lot of Yogurt in my Life

Today I woke up and Olivia and I helped each other pick out outfits. Then we went to the dining hall and I ate oatmeal. I am recently fascinated by oatmeal.

I found it hard to concentrate in French class because my teacher wore skinny jeans today. Also, I've already learned everything we're doing. This is good and bad for me: bad for obvious reasons, and good because language is really easy to forget if you go a year without any practice at all like I did last year. After French I had to watch a movie for English in the library. It was called "The Evolution of the Chicken" and I honestly have no idea why we were assigned to watch it. It was weird as shit. Then in English class, I realized my teacher is awesome. Definitely the best English teacher I've had here, possibly just the best teacher. Also when I was taking off my sweatshirt, I accidentally made a sort-of-groping motion on the boy sitting behind me. You know, like a sweeping of my hands across his legs. I apologized and he said, "That's okay I kinda liked it."

I'm so excited because it's the weekend! It's hard to get back in the swing of blogging.

A Couple Things, in List Format

1. Yesterday two freshmen asked me for directions and since then I've felt (falsely) like I possess an air of self-confidence and direction only achieved by knowing your way around places.
2. A girl just came into my room to tell me she loved the Cut Copy song I was listening to. Which is kinda funny since it's the first time I've listened to this song. But anyways that's sort of something I would do to someone I didn't know. I can feel the members of this dorm sort of soften up and start to be friends with each other.
3. My french professor's name is Rémy Peyroux. His name reminds me of a skunk or other small furry animal (pepé le pew perhaps?). I looked him up on facebook and his profile picture is of his red shoes. He is also very cute, and did I mention French?
4. I haven't been unhappy even once since I moved back to college.

The Omega Institute

It’s strange that after a summer-long hiatus from blogging, I chose today to restart. I am writing from the Omega Institute in Rhineback, New York, where I am taking a week-long workshop in insight meditation and mindfulness yoga. If this doesn’t sound like something I’d normally do, it’s because it’s not something I’d normally do, it’s something my dad would do. He’s the meditation guru of the family. My experience meditating is mostly limited to nights where it takes me more than two hours to fall asleep and counting sheep has already failed me. That said, this is a great experience. I love being here; it’s so beautiful and not boring at all. I’m learning a lot about myself, not the least of which includes that I can’t meditate successfully for more than five breath cycles, but hey, doesn’t that make me all the more likely candidate for learning how to meditate? That’s what I’m telling myself. Anyways, I’m going to tell the story that I came here to.

I am the youngest person in my meditation class by about eight years (I am not so good at age-guessing). The next people up are a couple whom I imagine to be about twenty-eight. The woman has a short, stylish blonde haircut and presents herself with an air of self-confidence that teeters over the border of arrogance. She looks, to me, a couple of years older than her partner, but he has what you would call a “baby face” so maybe she’s not. The couple are intimate in a way that makes me feel nervously uncomfortable – back-rubbing, hugging for extended periods of time in a room full of people, seductive glances; I often feel like a creep just for looking at them sit next to each other. Last night, as I walked from the bathroom back to my cabin in the dark, I heard a shriek coming from the woods. Before having any idea who it was coming from I knew exactly who it was coming from. I pushed the thought out of my mind and entered my cabin alone, lay on the bed and tried reading. But I heard noises. A faint whimpering permeated the walls, and at about the same rate at which the whimpering grew in volume and frequency, the steady thump of body weight against a bed began to crescendo. I felt a simultaneous surge of intrigue and panic. I ran outside the cabin to sort out what I was hearing, but the noises grew softer. This meant that they were coming from the wall opposite the door – the one directly behind my head. In shock, I pressed my ear against this wall and listened to my neighbors have sex – an act I neither wanted to be nor could resist doing. As I listened, two things struck me. One, I guess I have never actually overheard the act of coitus in real life, only in the movies. I know this to be true because after last night, I know I never could have had this experience and subsequently forgot about it. Two, my dad was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and would no doubt be returning at any moment. This struck a chord in me. Oh Lord please let him take his time. Please do not force upon me the horror of sharing this moment with none other than my own father. I heard what was obviously the grand finish seconds before my dad opened the cabin door. I sat rigidly straight on the bed and returned his greeting of “Hey!” suspiciously loud. But there was nothing left to drown out. From then until I fell asleep that night, I was hyper-aware of every fleeting noise I heard from outside our cabin. A creak of a bedspring, a word spoken at low volume – everything I heard made me jump as if I were suddenly startled by an animal directly behind me, ready to prey. The next morning as I dragged my groggy and headachy body out of my cabin, I caught sight of our neighbors leaving their own. Sure enough it was the blonde woman and the baby-faced man, giggling as they walked, the woman’s bouncy curls undulating up and down like those of a sickeningly-sweet child actress. From my half-asleep state I watched them secretly like the true creep I was. Oh what they had put me through. My poor, innocent mind! While I felt grateful to have narrowly escaped what surely would have been the most awkward five minutes of my life – sharing my already-traumatic experience with my father – I knew entirely too much about this damn couple. My meditations were distracted today.

No Amount of Coffee, No Amount of Cryin'

Right now I'm sitting cross-legged on my bed with a fan standing next to me like a child waiting to be noticed. I'm doing work for my internship at Baystate Parent magazine on my laptop. I'm not a journalist, but if I was, I'd be sitting in this exact same position. This internship is already teaching me so much and I've barely even started.

I sit on my bed at night, after everyone has gone to sleep, and go on the computer, or read. Lately I've been watching True Blood. But this night is different, for a lot of reasons. For one, I am getting work done. Also, I look different today. Just a little bit. After Liz dropped me off today, it only took the time from walking to her car to my house to formulate the decision to cut my hair. Not a lot, just a little. So I found scissors and went into the upstairs bathroom and chopped through select locks of my hair and they fell into the sink and separated. Then I gathered the hairs up in my hands and put them in the trashcan. The pile of hair looks like a little sleeping animal. My hair doesn't appear that different, but I know it is and I love it this way.

I am so equally divided in my feelings about how my life is at this exact moment. I don't like trying to sum up into words such broad feelings so I will let these events speak for them. Tonight I remembered that I have no way to get to work tomorrow because my mom won't let me drive the car without my license. I lost my license, and everything else in my wallet, at a Dom show in Worcester last Thursday night. Losing my wallet has caused me so much stress. I can't drive my car and I have no access to money. These two things combined make me feel incredibly dependent and very small. However, and I think this is metaphorical for my whole summer, I can't say that the show wasn't worth it anyways. It was so fun and lately fun with my friends has been so ridiculously freeing. It's like so much, including having no money and a future full of uncertainty, is just completely worth it. Today my group of friends unintentionally segregated into cars based on gender: four boys in one, four girls in the other. Before we could leave Calico & Cream and go back to the lake, Kathryn helped Parker attach his bike to the top of the car. I sat in the other and watched them through the window. I was loving the music that was playing and I couldn't help but feel like I was watching the whole scene as part of an audience. Why was the image of my friends, with their hair wet from swimming and their sun-tanned shoulders, attaching a bike to the roof of the car and then riding away, so poetic and beautiful to me? On the ride home I felt so in love with everything. I thought about how lucky I am to be able to appreciate this deeply when I simultaneously feel more fearful than I have in a very long time. I know it's the good kind of fear though; I know that for everything scary that's about to happen, there is something equally as exhilarating. Then Liz dropped me off, and I already told you what happened after that.

Running Dry

I am really really really really really really stressed about money.

New Year

Well I didn't blog "tomorrow" but who was much surprised by that. I don't do this often but I am forcing myself to blog even though I am not particularly compelled to right now - merely because I am trying to force the habit. Yesterday was the most fun day I've had in a while. Liz came home from California and we sat on the rail trail to talk. It was so beautiful and nice to be outside. Spending more time outside would be my New Year's resolution if New Year's Day was tomorrow. Then we met up with Steve and went to my house. We went to the farmer's market in Holden to buy lettuce, fudge, and a tomato, and we cooked dinner. Then Kathryn came over and it was a little mini dinner party in honor of Liz's return. Later that night, Kelsey joined us and we drove around Worcester aimlessly and blasted five-year-old hip hop songs that we all know the words to but don't really remember how it got that way. The best kind of fun is the kind to which you can say "I don't even know why this is so fun."

What a transitional summer this is. I've had a lot of people tell me the summer between your freshman and sophomore year at college is supposed to be the worst/ weirdest. That makes sense, because I can't logically deduce which of the two worlds - here, and school - I really feel like I belong in more, even though I like both. This creates a feeling of restlessness and of homelessness. And also, I am constantly plagued by the pressure to be doing MORE MORE MORE, to be having the MOST amazing and life-changing summer, to be destined for the greatest things. Do you know what I mean? I don't think I felt this kind of pressure before I went to college. In two weeks I am "moving" to New York City for a month. I've never seen myself living in a city but the past couple of months has drawn me to it immensly. I see this as a trial run: if I like it, then I might be taking a look into my future, if I don't, then I need to go live in the woods and go cold turkey on shaving my legs. But I can also see things turning out in a way that I will always have a special place in my heart for both of those lifestyles.

Sorry this blog is mostly pointless, but now I'm on a roll. Yesterday I found my cell phone from last year and read my texts that are still saved. I used to hone a habit of deleting pointless texts and saving meaningful ones, so this phone is an amalgamation of the most heartfelt, emotional, and intense thoughts that broadly sum up my senior year and summer before college. It's so weird guys!! It made me wish that I had that kind of stuff saved from this year, and also worry that my life now is so poorly-documented compared to the way it was then. But my obsession with documenting (I blogged every day last year!) often pulls me away from the present. I am a bystander on the sidelines of my life, taking pictures so I be in touch with my current feelings forever. I am constantly concerned with how the present moment will look and feel to me in three months or a year. My other New Year's resolution is to know that it is okay for some things to belong only exactly when they occur, and not a year later when I find them stored in a dusty and broken phone on my shelf. To know it's okay to leave them behind.

This is what I am trying to accept as true: everything that I want to do is easier then I think it is, and none the less rewarding. I swear!

From a Faraway State

This morning I awoke at five thirty to screams from someone who sounded like they had either been shot or watched someone very close to them be shot. Turns out it was neither, it was my two year old cousin Esther, and after about an hour of screaming/ crying/ laughing/ running around, she appeared at my bedside giggling and hiding plastic horses under my legs. I don't know how I feel about children in general, but I like this one. Even though the way I woke up this morning was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.

I'm in Florida right now and staying at a house with a back door fifty feet from the ocean. It's pretty cool. All there is to do is lay on the beach and read books and hang out with my family. This is an okay deal, especially because I would be doing equal or less activity if I were home right now. And I'm feeling so good about my summer finally! All of it, including the idle days I spent mulling around with Kelsey etc. and trying to find something to do that is at least as entertaining as following some weird girl from our middle school around in our car. Tonight I spend a long time getting really worked up for the Glee season finale, and somehow didn't feel as fulfilled by it as I had hoped. Maybe that's a life lesson to never ever expect to be fulfilled in any way by television. Anyways afterwards I went onto the deck and faced the ocean and I couldn't see it because it was night time but I obviously knew it was there. It was beautiful and it was pitch black. When it doubt, go outside. And I mean for that statement to solve bigger problems than being disillusioned by Glee.

More tomorrow!

Florida '10

My list of things to focus on so I can try to get excited to spend next week in my least favorite, hot-as-the-blazes state with my extended family:

1. Reading a lot of books
2. Getting a tan
3. Taking pictures
4. Going shopping
5. Listening to music as a metaphorical getaway from my relatives
6. Riding my bike on the beach and away from my relatives
7. Drinking a lot of beer and
8. Repeating 5 and
9. Repeating 6
10. Guilting my relatives into giving me beer


edit: I just found out that the nearest grocery store to where we're staying is ten miles away. So scratch 4.

Rumble

the first of june
found me in my house, and hearing
the "woop" of a boy, from the forest or
from the train tracks:
the ecstasy bursting through
his lungs and out of his mouth
and the sound waves flying straight
to my ears, and mine alone!
for this boy is my lover, or maybe
even my soulmate, or maybe
just a stranger but probably
not.

the first of june
found me running
through the door, and under the trees
that did not shield me from the
heavy the
tender the
fanatical rain
that soaked through my t-shirt and
outlined my bra in a matter
of seconds!
and I "woop"ed back at
the boy in the woods, who was
waiting for me, obviously,
and my voice flew from my
mouth and left me behind on
the wet wooden deck and
found the boy the
lover the
stranger
and he did not call back but
I know he heard me.

I Keep Saying "Doot Doot"

My whole life, my mom has become frantic whenever she sees animals outside the window of our house. Usually she yells for everyone who can hear her to run as fast as humanly possible to the window, but sometimes she just yells the species she sees. Once when I was much younger, I was napping in my parents' bed. My mom ran into the room and dragged me out of my slumber so I could see a cardinal that had flown away by the time we made it to the glass. Today my mom saw a fox and wouldn't calm down until everyone else had also seen it, even though this required passing from window to window as the bright orange patch of fur in the distance ran steadily around the perimeter of the house. After I saw the fox (which was actually rather awesome) I thought about foxes for a while and then made a playlist on my iTunes library of all the songs I have with fox in the title. This is the playlist:

1. Portions for Foxes - Rilo Kiley
2. Foxes Mate for Life - Born Ruffians
3. Nice Fox - the Rosebuds
4. Fox Confessor Brings the Flood - Neko Case
5. Fox in the Snow - Belle and Sebastian
6. Sly Fox - Nas
7. The Fox - Sleater-Kinney

I was kind of surprised that I had that many. It seems like a lot but then I searched my library and found that I have more cat songs than fox songs. Fitting. Anyways, I am going to stop writing about this now.

I just talked to Lanny on the phone for two hours. He's one of the only people I can do that with, but I wish I could do it with all my friends. Sometimes I'm feeling lonely. Sometimes I'm feeling loved. These days it switches a lot. Seems like every damn thing switches before I'm ready for it.

Untitled Post #2

How does one make oneself happy?

Train Underwater

Today I got a splinter while pulling myself onto the dock at Steve's house. It's a really deep splinter.

I don't feel grounded pretty much anywhere. But apparently that is a symptom of being my age, in college, etc. You don't have ground. You walk on air and live on clouds that feel like the ground until the weather changes and poof, you're falling.

Speaking of weather, it's still trying to tell me something.

Well if I could tame all my desires
wait out the weather that howls in my brain
cause it seems that it's always changing
the wind's indecision, the sorrowful rain

The Linen Closet

I have never been a morning person.

In the winter of sixth grade, my mom started waking up only to make me breakfast, so in the time during which I woke up, took a shower, and dressed myself, I experienced being the only person awake in my house for the first time in my life. I felt very alone, especially in the dead of winter when it was so dark. After I showered I'd take a small towel from the linen closet with which to dry my hair, and I developed the habit of turning on the light to the closet, fitting my small body inside it (my body today, seven years later, no longer fits), and taking a few minutes to stand there, alone, breathing in the smell of clean cotton. It smelled so deeply pleasing and I craved light in these lonely mornings, even the light birthed from a naked, solitary bulb in a rectangular box of a room. The long dark hallway from my bedroom to the bathroom reminded me of my infancy; there was nothing to hold on to, I was alone, wobbling feebly, in empty space. Inside the closet I was tightly confined and supported from all angles by bright white walls and good-smelling terrycloth. The moments I spent inside the closet were the most peaceful of my day, and I wonder if my remembering them every time I take a towel or wash cloth from the closet means that they were among the most peaceful of my whole life.

I am weak. I am afraid of everything, but mostly of death, pain, and vomit. I wish I was as brave as my mother. I wish I could help my dad when he is sick instead of standing paralyzed in the kitchen, unable to get in my car and leave him alone, but also unable to go upstairs and do anything that might actually help. I am tired of not being able to move my body just because my brain is scared. Also I am wondering lately, if you want something to happen so badly, and you know it probably won't happen, do you let your brain think about it anyways? And imagine it happening and how great it would be? Because that seems pretty unhealthy but maybe thinking can't hurt. I don't know. I'm tired.

The door to the linen closet is right next to the door to my parents room. The doors form an angle that looks like a capital "L."

Some Pictures of Recently

Stray Observations:
1. If you call a cigarette beautiful, then it is beautiful
2. Skateboarding may just be harder than it looks
3. I'm afraid to admit that my legs are really that white

Summer Spawns Creativity

We're gonna build something, this summer.

When I am feeling inspired, I write long lists. My lists are usually way too ambitious, or I just lose them. I want to do so much, and everything costs so much money all of the sudden!!

Genesis

On the first day of summer, the air was warm and we wore t-shirts and jeans. Some of us wore shorts but it was generally too cold for that. The sky was blue and cloudless and we were warmer as the day went on until the sun set and the temperature still rose, making our skin sticky as we ran through the bright night city.

On the second day the sun blared unrelentingly and we climbed staircase after staircase until the skin on our backs clung to our cotton shirts. We sat on metal dumpsters and concrete sidewalks and watched the people pass us by, the people with their unbrushed hair and their cut-off jeans and their hands to hold. We sipped cold soda from plastic bowls and when it glided down our throats it cooled our insides but did not quench our undying thirsts.

On the third day the heat rose still, and we were forced to peel off our clothes and leave them in hot wet piles. When the sun went down, we drenched our naked bodies in vodka and set ourselves on fire, climbing on top of the roof to decide, finally, if we were afraid of heights. We weren't. On a bare mattress in the dark, we found we could swim swim and fly and the heat wrapped itself around us, found its way inside of us, touched us, loved us. We tangled ourselves up in the heat and when it became too overbearing we cried under the windowsill and pressed our fingers into the cold backside of the refrigerator, hoping that months after we stored inside it our lovely fruits, cultivated a mere seven weeks before, they would remain fresh.

On the fourth day the heat melted everyone's hands and we journeyed limbless into the different constellations.

On the fifth day, the wind came, and the rain. Walking back from town, I ran down the last bus in the world. The cold wind that seeped through the windows of this giant mechanical whale brushed away the sweat and the sunburn that had been coagulating on my chest since the first day. When it opened its mouth and spit me out, I was at the very heart of the tornado. Three great strides were all that stood between me and my home, and yet somehow, all I desired was to be sucked inside the monstrous cyclone, standing still while the trees and the sky came crashing down around me in waves of cold fierce summer air.

Missin' It

Maybe later I will be able to organize these hectic thoughts of mine into blog format

It's been so hot out and that makes perfect sense

Today

I tried to run behind some girl and get under her umbrella a little. And I was holding a banana and it was obvious that there were pills in my backpack cause when I ran they shook around and made noise.

April Showers Bring May Flowers and Ennui

Today was so weird. I woke up with an awful sore throat and at lunch Bethany got me hot water with honey. All the honey pooled in the bottom of the cup so the more I drank, the more the mixture was becoming not a mixture at all, but just pure honey. What an abbhorent texture for such a tasty foodstuff. Then I walked into town to do errands. My errands took me almost two hours, and when I was done my feet hurt. I also had to talk to a very unhappy person working in a Verizon store. This guy just does not like his life! And he takes out this unhappiness by being passive aggressive to college students. He also had a tattoo all the way down his arm and I bet it meant nothing. Oops that is mean. My phone pretty much does not work at all and it's extremely frustrating.

Walking back from town Liz rode by on her bike. I didn't notice her until she was pretty far ahead of me, and when I saw her I instinctively yelled "LIZARD!" She didn't hear me, but a boy walking past me did, because I sort of yelled in his ear. He also had no idea why I was screaming out the name of a small reptile, seemingly at no one. The look he gave me was of utter shock. This made me laugh pretty hard to myself.

Later, I felt like I had a fever and passed out asleep on Bethany's floor. Kerry kept opening the window because the room smelled like garlic. The air was windy and moist but it felt good. I don't have a fever anymore but I am very tired. I am always tired.

I have about three more weeks here and they cannot possibly go by fast enough. I love it here, it's my life, but I need a change. I can't wait to be home in my house. I miss my family. I miss my bed. I miss my cat who doesn't live there anymore. I need a break from schoolwork and I need more time to read. I need sleep and I need space, literal space. I also need to go to New York and I am doing that but it won't be enough. All these things I need to feel alive and not so damn drowsy all the time. I wish it wasn't so cliche to love trees because I think I love trees more than anything else that exists.

But I am still alive in love and wide-eyed in my time

A Taste of Umass

The Taste of Umass is this annual event where a bunch of food vendors pack themselves into our biggest sports arena and all the food is free to students with meal plans. Umass closes all dining halls on this day so participation is pretty much mandatory, but they give you plenty of incentive by featuring a performance by select Patriots cheerleaders, a "Umass Idol" competition, and a hot dog eating contest. Sounds like my idea of a fun Thursday night. A couple hours ago, a bus picked Dan and I up outside of Butterfield and we began our journey into the true heart of Umass.

When we arrived a girl was on stage singing that chasing pavements song. Her voice was not that good and really quiet, even though the music was blasting. She wore a knee-length dress with a cardigan buttoned in the middle, and white, dirty flip flops. I don't know why I noticed the flip flops. We started trying to make our way through the incredibly dense crowd. Everyone was loud and eating, my favorite combination. I found it really difficult to find food I wanted to consume. I am trying to be vegetarian and it is pretty much impossible at the Taste of Umass. This is the kind of food that a lot of people would describe as "OMG SO GOOD." I would describe it being really unnecessarily cheesy. Literally. The music faded away really quickly before chasing pavements girl caught on and it was awkward. The judges gave unanimously gave her a 4 out of 10 which was also pretty awkward. Next we got to see the Patriots cheerleaders get on stage and jump in various positions. I started to find depressing things I usually find funny, but then I found a craisins booth and it was awesome. Dan had to leave to go to a show, and against all common sense, I stayed. Although there were about 100,000 people packed in the stadium, including everyone I know, it was impossible to find anyone. So I started the journey out of the building that would end up taking about twenty minutes. Around this time a girl got onstage and started singing her rendition of a Lady Gaga song. It was really screechy and her dress was three sizes too small and I was afraid of her. Feeling the need to escape was slowly developing into a slow-burning panic. I changed my course and tried to barge through a line of people that had temporarily slowed. I ran into a person of non discriminate gender who was holding a small cup of red juice. The juice splashed full force onto my chest and soaked through my shirt. No one noticed.

This is maybe the first time I've experienced Umass in all its glory. I've never been to a sporting event or participated in an activity that doesn't have any sort of common goal on which students of similar interests can bond. For example, the Radical Student Union does not appeal to anyone who would have an interest in obtaining an autographed panorama photo of the Patriots cheerleaders. The only common interest uniting the attendees of the Taste of Umass was food. And everyone eats food, so every kind of person was at the Mullins Center tonight. What's funny is that I'm going back to the Mullins Center on Sunday to see a Ludacris concert. Tasty.


Home is when I'm alone with you

Flower Bed

Today on the way back from Women's Studies I picked flowers and made a little bouquet which I held in my left hand. I offered it to Bethany but she thought I was just showing it to her, not gifting it. And instead of explaining the misunderstanding, I took the flowers up to my room, cut off the stems, filled a bowl with water, and let the tiny colorful explosions float on the surface, quivering slightly whenever the wind passed through the screen window.

A Nice Moment

I really like the atmosphere of my room, cultivated by me and my roommate. Moments ago I was folding my clothes and said of a dress "this should be hung up," out loud, to myself. Soon after Laura said, not in response, "I really like this scene," about a piece of her writing. Neither of our remarks were directed at the other person but we wouldn't have said either if the other wasn't there. This struck me as a very nice moment. 

Today I took a Greek Myths exam and felt like I did really well. I haven't felt this confident about an exam in a long while. That's a bad thing probably. My friend Michael from Women's Studies said today that everyone is seasonal affective here, meaning at Umass. It is so true! And I didn't realize it till he said it. If I had to divide my mood here into the categories of "happy" and "sad" (which I hate doing), I would say happy in the fall, sad in the winter, and happy in the spring. Was it really the circumstances that so dictated my demeanor or was it the weather that created these circumstances? Probably a combination of both, but this campus looks truly dreadful from November to March.

I did laundry tonight, and I think late-night laundry is a remarkably college-y thing to do.

The ducks are going crazy. Yesterday night I saw one by Wheeler. To get from the duck pond to Wheeler, one must cross two streets and cover a great distance. Dan and I have taken to pretending every stray duck we see is drunk. It's weirdly hilarious.

I will close this dramatically pointless blog by saying that I ate peanut butter three times today and touched white out which was stupid and now it's on my fingers and on this keyboard.

Untitled Post

See more funny videos and Cute Animals Videos at Today's Big Thing.

I Will Now Post Again, Because I am Bored of Studying for Logic

"They have giant buns for the sausages."

-boy sitting next to me whom I have never met

Studying for Logic

Everything loves Fergie. Something loves Fergie. Fergie loves everything. Fergie loves something. Nothing loves Fergie. Fergie loves nothing. Something doesn't love Fergie. Fergie does not love something. Not everything loves Fergie.

etc.

Home

Bethany is in denial. She is denying that Hephaestus tried to rape Athena because Hephaestus is her favorite God and she doesn't want to think that he did anything bad. Okaaay, well then who is Erichthonius' dad Bethany? Proof. I've been a vegetarian for three days and I want to see how long this can last.



My dad got in a bike accident and broke his collar bone, his thumb, and got a concussion. I wish I could go home because I felt really shaken up and there was a lot of panic that went in there and I wanted to see him but I know he's okay now. Still want to see him though.



This weekend was weird because it was so fun and actually a little cathartic and I kind of forgot what Umass was a little bit. Can I go back to New York now?



But then I would miss Bethany and Hephaestus, rapist though he may be!

Laura Lovett

I love my roommate. I told her I am attracted to skinny hipsters. Her response: "I like the chubby white guy. We all have our type."

Vignettes

My back flattens against the bricks as he finds my hips under my coat and shirt. His fingers draw tiny pictures on my skin as he kisses me and I do not know if I want him to continue but I say nothing anyway. I can smell the dumpster from where we stand and the puddle has finally made it through my rubber boot where I imagine it diffusing through my sock like blood. I am cold. I can feel his smile between our mouths and this makes me think about smiling and about liking him again, for a little.

Somebody Listened me to This

and i like it

Grasshoppers Part 2

Mary Lou comes on Mondays and Wednesdays and Fridays. She takes the bus because she has no car, and when she comes, she scrubs the floor and does the laundry and makes me and Edna franks and cheese, cut up small.  The grasshoppers are afraid of Mary Lou because she “ain’t takin’ no more hardship from nobody, ‘specially no goddamned bug.” That’s what she says. Hell hath no fury like the scorn of Mary Lou, and I knew this to be true the first time I saw her kill one of them. She flung out her hand – dark, leathery, and wrinkled – and smacked the bug in mid-air so hard that its bulletproof shell cracked in half before it plummeted to the floor. I wish I had half the strength in me that Mary Lou has, but she tells me I don’t want it. She tells me that what she had to see with her eyes and feel on her back to give her that strength isn’t worth another hundred years of life. I would never tell Mary Lou that God isn’t real, because once she said that God is the only one left on her side. And if she knew that there was no God, then she’d know she was alone. So I leave her be because sometimes you have to lie to someone so they can keep on wanting to live. I guess other bad things happened, besides the grasshoppers, that made me disbelieve God. Daddy tried to build us a treehouse last year but he stopped building and started driving his blue car away for nights at a time and when I asked him to keep building he’d ask me do you want me to use this belt and no, I did not want him to. So I tried to build the treehouse myself and stepped on a board with a nail in it and it went almost all the way through my foot and on the way to the hospital I prayed the Lord do not forsake me but He forsake me He forsake me in the ambulance with that man sitting over me who was not my father or my Father just a man I did not know and maybe if I had been good and not bad God Would Not Forsake Me But He Did And Now He Is Gone. Mary Lou always stays for a little while after Mama gets home. She makes us dinner and gives us baths. Having a Mama that makes herself an grown-up drink, closes the door to her room, and stays there all night alone is not much good anyways.

                  The grasshoppers hadn’t let up at all when Daddy came to visit us for the first time, since he left. He was in his blue car and wearing black sunglasses when we met him outside, me and Edna in our red dresses. We each held one of Daddy’s hands and we walked down the sidewalk of San Jose Street. Even though there were dark clouds in the sky, it was almost a hundred degrees out, and I felt sticky under my dress. Daddy didn’t say much except sometimes he would let go of my hand, never Edna’s, my hand, to point at the occasional snake or lizard, which, if we were lucky enough, would cross the sidewalk in front of us. Sometimes the cracks in the sidewalk would be filled up with grass and I would think it was one of them and a tiny burst of hope would explode in my head, but only for a second. Soon it started to rain and cool, perfect water poured all over us like the light of the dawn. And we tilted back our heads to receive the precious, wonderful raindrops in our mouths, on our chins, sliding down our chests, touching us, loving us, bringing us salvation. The rain pounded down and we were redeemed, me and Edna and my Daddy, from the heat and the guilt and the insects and the divorce. But Daddy took us off the ground, Edna in one arm, and me in the other, and started to run back to the house. He ran for so long with us bumping and bouncing in his arms, me feeling my brain hit the sides of my skull as the rain painted my hair to my face. And when we finally made it, Mary Lou had the door open and Daddy put us down, not softly, but not painfully, and ran outside, to put the top up on his blue convertible. I watched him run to the car from inside the window. I pressed my face against the glass, now cool, and watched my Daddy run away from me and to his car and to his new life. He is gone my Daddy is gone I watched him run through the rain that saved me but took him away, took my Father away. He is gone, no one left to lead me not to temptation, no one left to deliver me from sweat and heat and sin and guilt and He is gone and I don’t believe anymore in Him and I have no one left on my side but me, me here alone with an empty Mama and a grasshopper that is crawling up my arm, slowly, as I watch the rain fall from behind this window.

Falling Asleep in Public Places

will inevitably land you in a situation where you wake up surrounded by strangers, greeting you with looks of bewilderment and confusion. I experienced this today when I fell asleep on the couch in the Butterfield lounge with Foucault's Discipline and Punish splayed across my face. The boy standing above me when I awoke told me very nicely that there was a class in the lounge at that time but that I could continue to sleep as I was disturbing no one. I appreciated the offer but my surprise and embarrassment was quickly extracting from my body the desire to sleep.

Following was a sequence of strange events, appropriate I suppose. First I went into the mail room and found Jonah sitting cross-legged on the floor, facing the mail boxes. He told me he remembered his combination but forgot how to use it, which was baffling to me seeing as opening the mail box merely requires the very slight shifting of two circular knobs. But I did it for him and Jonah continued to disinterestedly stare at his now-open mailbox as I checked my own box and left the room. Then I went to Bethany's room and she gave me a small pouch of potpourri that she made for me in her herbs class. She had texted me earlier telling me to come get my potpourri. Bethany usually says weird things so I guess I was surprised that this time it actually rang true. Then we sat on her floor and talked for three minutes.

In Logic class we learned about predicate logic. Logic has variables, but unlike algebra, whose variables stand for numbers, variables in logic stand for anything you want them to. One variable, called the universal quantifier, is written "∀" and formalizes the notion that something is true for everything there is. I'm going to try to explain this.

Say the letter "B" means beautiful. So ∀xBx means that for every value of x, x is beautiful. x can be anything. In other words, everything is beautiful. My teacher used this example:

∀xBx means that ALL of:

• Ba - Amherst is beautiful
• Bb - Britney Spears is beautiful
• Bc - Chicago is beautiful
• Bd - Duran Duran is beautiful
• B... (and so on for everything there is)

must be true. I wrote a smiley face in my notebook at this point, because I had just learned that everything, without exception, is beautiful.

On the way back from Logic I noticed that there were earthworms covering the sidewalk. When it rains and the ground is filled with water, earthworms find their way out of the dirt and to the pavement. I don't know why they do this. Too ubiquitous to avoid, most were flattened lethally into the slick wet tar. Naturally, I thought this was beautiful.

darlin' don't you go and cut your hair, do you think it's gonna make him change?

Grasshoppers Part 1

The day the grasshoppers came was the day I stopped believing in God. They came in the morning, or maybe it was the middle of the night, but either way, when the sun woke me up that day in August, they were there. They blanketed our lawn, clung to every plant leaf, and fit their ugly bodies in the corners of our windows. Brown and yellow, the grasshoppers reminded me of old and rotten bananas. When we went outside, the grasshoppers found our shoes and followed them to our skin. They littered the sidewalks and the streets and we rode our bikes in zig \ zag / patterns to avoid them. But it was inevitable that some would jump into our paths, and so their dead, brown guts painted the circumferences of our tires. When I told Mama my revelation, at the dinner table, she grabbed my wrist and yanked me to my room. This was my punishment for no longer believing. Alone on the bed I cried for an hour until Mama pitied me and brought me my dinner. I sat on her warm, wide lap and ate the cold ham with my fingers and when Mama cried, I squeezed her soft arms, branding them sticky.

                  A month ago, when there were no grasshoppers, Edna and I found a hole in the backyard. It lay on the imaginary line separating our land from that of the Killington boys, who are much older than us. Dug with the metal spades, carelessly thrown across the grass, the hole lay three feet wide and exposed the moist, brown underbelly of the hot earth. We stood on the edge, and, letting our toes sink into the muck, peered into the abyss. I had hoped, while walking towards the whole, that it would prove a secret passageway to China, and was disappointed to see it was approximately four feet deep, harboring two inches of water at the bottom. Edna asked me why the hole was there and I said I didn’t know. Then, suddenly, Edna’s feet slipped out from under her and she landed with a thud before sliding into the cavernous ditch. I didn’t know if it was her fall that made me notice, or if it was just a coincidence, but right at this time, a yellow and brown insect piqued my attention. It floated lifelessly on the surface of the pooling water, and when Edna landed, it was flung into the air, ascended, and then descended again onto Edna’s leg with a wet splat. It was the first grasshopper I would see before the scourge. Edna was crying and I was watching the grasshopper. And I knew it was dead but still thought it was moving maybe and I started praying because she was crying dear God don’t let that grasshopper be alive dear God where art thou why are you letting that Godforsaken bug eat alive my little sister And then suddenly Daddy was jumping into the hole and pulling Edna out. And Mama brought the towel and wrapped her knuckles on my head, because I was being bad. And they went in the house and I stood alone watching the hole and sodden grasshopper, now baking in the August sun. That night Mama and Daddy fought again, but worse than ever this time, because in the morning, two lamps were broken, and Daddy was gone. That was a month ago.

                  The grasshoppers had a way of eating everything that lived. They hung from the Spanish Moss and they devoured the green beans that make you vomit on the floor if you eat them too much. They stifled everything alive and scarred everything beautiful. When we picked oranges from the trees in the yard they were bright and fiery on the outsides and the insides were full of sweetness and energy and grasshoppers. Just when we thought we were safe in our house, the grasshoppers found a way in, being stealthy like they are. They stole the food in our cabinets and the skin under Polo’s fur. When Mama took out the coffee pot every morning, she looked inside and saw a grasshopper in the bottom. As soon as I finished setting the table for dinner, there were, instantaneously, three grasshoppers sitting in the shallow bowls of each silver spoon, waiting for us. Our only haven was sleep, but they found us there too, penetrating our consciousnesses, swallowing our dreams and gorging themselves on our private, intimate thoughts. When they started to eat our speech, one grasshopper per word, we simply stopped talking. It was easier then, because they didn’t like the silence, but when Edna cried, she gave everything away. I didn’t like living with the grasshoppers but Mama didn’t seem to mind. With the grasshoppers there, Mama had someone to talk to again. She talked to them while she was making dinner or bathing in the sun. She’d say “How are you today, little bugger?” or “Can you believe this heat?” and the grasshoppers would answer her by getting a little fatter, a little fuller, with every word, emotion, and prayer she’d feed them. When Mama went to sleep at night, the grasshoppers slept on the left side of the bed, the empty side. Right next to Mama, and all through the night, they waited for the morning.

Swans

Bethany's excuses for my not blogging:

-you're in a weird place mentally.

I guess that would make sense though. I'm having a dry spell and I don't know why. It'll pass.

This week is my black week. This year, it seems to be everyone else's too. Even though I'm not feeling so sad, I'm feeling oh so heavy. Heavy with other people's sadness and my fears for the ever-increasingly-fast-approaching future. I guess I could say that this week, I am noticing what everyone around me is feeling, more than usual. I am full of feeling.

But soon we'll all move on. March is the month for change that you don't want but need. Once it's over, you're well on your way to being healed.

some of the first growth i've seen this spring.

Wordstrings

you are perfect but for your
jaw, which moves loudly and the enamel clashes together
mashing and thrashing inside your mouth
to tear up your fat and grease and salt:
a midnight snack.
you clear your throat amidst chewing
and I hear, within that din
a faint whisper of your voice, so high-pitched and
shrill and grating and clawing its way down the sides of my face:
from the temple, strung through my ears, and
down to my chin where it fastens,
locking me in.
your conceited wordstrings spill forth from your
moistened lips
a warm, wet jumble of empty carbohydrates and
heavy, perfumed sentences
fill the air immediately around your mouth.
you release this putrid mess,
rotten in its pompous frivolity,
and inhale again, for lack of sufficient alternatives,
the toxins back down your throat.
so this breathing, what I meant to say,
is why you are so far from perfect.
maybe if you weren’t such an instrument
in this never-ending cycle of poison pumping

through my heart to my bloodstream
I would hear you, for once.

Today Felt Like Spring

Social Experiment #1

I just went to the kitchen to make tea because my hot water heater is broken. On the table there was a plastic container with a donut in it. The donut looked good. Next to the container was a green post-it that read

"Social Experiment #1."

I ate the donut. I failed Social Experiement #1.

Liz is Eating Edamame

I feel crazy today. I feel crazy a lot. Sometimes I love my brain but today I hate it. These are pictures from yesterday, March Forth, National Day of Student Action. This is a video from the rally; I'm not in it but I was there! http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-416206 

I started a tumblr which is like a blog but cooler except it's private and no one can read it except Bethany, because she made me make it. I can't stop constantly posting on it. My posts are sporadic and not thought out and I don't have to edit it or make it appealing to readers like I do on here. Except I'm not really doing that with this post. Did I mention I feel crazy.

Pat says I get consumed by other people and don't have a solid rock within myself. I think this is a pretty good analysis.

March 1

I feel so alive tonight and I didn't expect to at all. Dan and I stayed at the library really late doing work. The library is great in itself; I never realize how little work I get done in my dorm. When we left, it was so perfect outside; I swear the sky has never looked more beautiful in my life. We decided to walk around campus and see things we have never seen before. It was almost one in the morning, and we were the only ones awake and alive in this world of thousands. We went to a clearing of trees where we used to hang out when it was still warm out. The clearing is relatively hidden - surrounded on all sides by greenhouses and old brick buildings. There are about four or five trees whose circumferences are at least half the size of my bedroom. They must be hundreds of years old. When we entered the clearing I put my hands on the trunks of the trees and I felt so alive and old and wise. I felt like I was catching wind of secrets that no one else in the world knows.I didn't feel tired. I didn't feel cold. I felt free from desires and perfect and like how I should all the time. Dan said how we should always come to this place if we feel alone. Because you can never be alone when you are surrounded by these giants of trees, so much older and more majestic and more powerful than we. They are alive and we somehow don't even look at them when we pass them on our way to class every day. Walking from point A to B, we are somehow blind to the infinite mess of beauty in the middle. I like to think that in the summer, when I love being outside, my life will be more about the travel than the destination. But winter is an awful long time to go without being awake and without seeing.

Most of the despondency in my life stems from a feeling of being trapped. Tonight I realized that if I let it happen, I will feel this way until the day I die. I am trapped in a routine and no one puts me here but myself, because it's easy, and sometimes, when I am asleep mostly, it seems like the right thing to do. But it is so easy to break, if by doing nothing else than walking around a sparse forest at one in the morning with Dan, commenting on how everything looks good when backed by the moon and how life is intoxicating in the purest form. College can so easily seem like a sort of suspended animation: the period between childhood and when our lives will really start. It has maybe never been more apparent to me than tonight that now, right now, my life is now. I will not be more alive after I graduate from Umass, I will not be more alive once I begin a career or move into a house or get married. I will always be this alive and I will always be myself and I will always be able to decide that if I want to, I can open myself up and absorb the intensity and sublimity of this world like a sponge.

To be awake is to be alive

Feeling

Today I was in the car with my friends driving back from UNH, where we were visiting Liz. On the highway we passed a giant, iron sculpture of a dog. It was two dimensional and in the middle of a field. What's weirder was that the shape of a bone (the kind for dogs) was carved out of its belly. I guess I sort of overlooked this sight while we were driving past it and it only occurred to me a few seconds later how surreal it was. I started trying to think of the giant dog's purpose and came up with nothing. There was no purpose. Maybe it was supposed to be art. Then I started trying to find other things around me into whose creation great effort was expended, and yet whose existence has no raison d'etre. Then suddenly everything seemed like it had no purpose, and yet nothing didn't have a purpose. Also I noticed this bumper sticker on the back of a car that said "Mean people suck. Nice people swallow." I thought it was kind of disgusting and offensive but then we drove past the driver of the car, who was a middle-aged chubby woman with frizzy brown hair. Then I just thought it was strange.

This weekend was a very abnormal one. I have this weird sensation that I barely made it out alive. To get back to Umass today, my mother's friend offered for me to drive her daughter's car (her daughter goes to Umass) and leave the car with the daughter once I got here. What a nice and weird offer! Driving felt a little bit like a near death experience. The accelerator was rooted to the floor with about the same sturdiness as a loose tooth. Going over small bumps and holes in the road, I was often uncertain as to whether or not I stayed on the ground or flew into the air.
Also, there was no music in the car except a CD of "Carmen" by Bizet. So I listened to Carmen 1.5 times and really enjoyed it. When I felt like I was going to fall asleep, I yelled alongside the melody, to keep myself awake.

I just went into my room and overheard my roommate confessing to her best friend Beth via Skype that if she were to die someday, she would give her kids to Beth instead of her sister. I thought about this for a second and concluded that I would probably give my kids to my sister over my friend. But then I thought about it for two more seconds and realized that not only can I not imagine having kids, but I can't imagine ever having to confront this decision about who to give my unimaginable kids to. Then I got a little annoyed that Laura Lovett is thinking about this seemingly so inconsequential subject. I don't know really why I was annoyed actually. I wanted her to be talking about something else. JEez, I'm a conversation control freak.

A lot of times I like to write on my blog "how I'm feeling" and right now, I don't feel like specifying. I am, without a doubt, feeling right now. I am feeling because I am alive and sometimes I think I feel everything.

Right now, it's a good thing.

Irina Orlovsky

is a girl that Pat recently started dating. I really like her. She says "ready freddy" which reminds me of my mom. Also, I just listened to this song like five times in a row. It reminds me of summer and how I want summer so desperately. It also reminds me of hiking in California because my sister wanted me to listen to it while we were doing that and we each shared an ear phone and hiking and sharing ear phones are really hard to do simultaneously.

This week was so weird. It was not a good weird. Things may or may not be getting a lot better. If my life progresses the way it has been for a while, things will be good until I realize that they're good, then they'll get bad. That was the vaguest thing I've ever written. Vague means "wave" in French.

I love my English class and I am excited for it every day. My story "Grasshoppers" got workshopped the other day, which means I wasn't allowed to talk while everyone in the class talked about my story. It was awesome, it felt so good. I think I want to put Grasshoppers on this blog but it's kind of long and I don't know if people would want to read the whole thing.

Something I miss: nightgowns
Something I don't understand: why I need to get my wisdom teeth out
Something I love: sleepovers, especially when they're really needed

The Word "Butterfield" Should Not Have Suffixes

I'm feeling so good right now. I will describe what I am feeling even though it's hard to put into words and I don't know why I feel this way. There are waves of chaos and discord crashing down all around me, and on top of me, yet I still feel so peaceful, and like my body is a sanctuary in which I can remain shielded from anything I don't want to feel. I somehow am completely in control of my own emotions, which is rare. Also, recent events that have compelled me to feel lonely or like I don't belong have been having the opposite effect.

For example, on Saturday I went to Dartmouth College with a couple of my friends, one of whom has a brother who lives in a frat there. We went to the frat's "beach party," which was my first experience at a fraternity. These places literally transcend all human standards for basic hygiene. They are disgusting. The basement floors are covered with a mixture of beer and what I wouldn't be surprised to learn was some form of excrement. The mass motive of all party-goers is sex, and beer, which will actually just lead to sex. Somehow I managed to feel completely rejected (watching someone look at me, size me up, and decide not to ask me to dance), and yet also objectified (pretty sure almost every part of my body was squeezed by those who were interested, whether intentionally or "not," which was also intentionally). Leaving the party I felt an all consuming sense that I wholly did not belong in that world. However, this sentiment produced so much happiness in me that I felt more proud of who I am than I have in a long time. The less appealing I am to the average narcissistic frat boy with superhuge biceps and a tendency to repeat the question "where are you sleeping tonight," the better I am as a human. I am laughing as I write this. This night was so cathartic for me that it's ridiculous. At about one in the morning, my friend Chris drunkenly stumbled into me while I was dancing with Callen the douchebag. Callen flipped his middle finger at Chris, who walked away looking helpless and confused. I was suddenly seized by a swoop of indignation and power. "That's my friend!" I yelled, suddenly possessing an unnatural amount of conviction. Callen looked dumb because he was dumb. How did he get into Dartmouth. I should have asked him that. Anyways, I ran after Chris and hugged him. It felt so good. It felt like I was choosing Umass and all it represents over any other place I could be, ambitious as that may sound. Soon after, Pat found us and asked us, even though we were planning to sleep in the frat (with Callen! ahh!), if we wanted to drive home and make it home by four. The answer was a resounding yes, from all of us. Leaving the frat felt like a final act of defiance against the oppressive regime of the stereotypical, chauvinistic, primordial, sex-driven "i love college" type party. I felt so brave. I was powerful! I was desirable! I was a woman! I was a BUTTERFIELDIAN!

Okay, we might be getting ahead of ourselves here.

Anyways, I returned home with my shoes full of sand and a newfound sense of inner peace. I may or may not have conveyed to you why I have this peace, I don't think I did. It's really hard to describe. But what I do know is that if there ever was a weekend to make me hate myself, it probably was this one. But right now I'm sitting in the library right next to the window and I can look out of it and watch the snow fall and the people walk, so far below. I am a bird peering down at the tops of their heads and the view from this chair is beautiful and today, I love myself.

Things I Miss

photography
being outside
summer and sun
traveling
being elsewhere

i crave change and QUICK before i start freaking out. maybe tomorrow i'll blog about my first ever "frat" experience.

... yeah, you should be excited.

Grasshoppers

This is an excerpt from the story I'm currently writing, because I'm too lazy to come up with an original blog.

The day the grasshoppers came was the day I stopped believing in God. They came in the morning, or maybe it was the middle of the night, but either way, when the sun woke me up that day in August, they were there. They blanketed our lawn, clung to every plant leaf, and fit their ugly bodies in the corners of our windows. Brown and yellow, the grasshoppers reminded me of old and rotten bananas. When we went outside, the grasshoppers found our shoes and followed them to our skin. They littered the sidewalks and the streets and we rode our bikes in zig \ zag / patterns to avoid them. But it was inevitable that some would jump into our paths, and so their dead, brown guts painted the circumferences of our black tires.

Note: this is not a grasshopper.

Tactics

When all else fails, make a joke about the inadequacy of your or someone else's love life. It will usually make you laugh.

One Ball Lane

Directions to One Ball Lane:

Take a left out of Clark Hill Road
Drive straight, or generally straight
Go past the admissions center, keep going, until the campus is far behind and then
there are some signs with the names of towns, they will help
I think a house with Christmas lights functions as some sort of landmark
There is snow everywhere
You'll think you passed it, but then you see "Ball Lane"
Pat will let you out
You kiss him on the cheek to say thanks for not drinking, and you walk towards the house
say hi to the smokers
say hi to amelia, who tries to give you a mohawk
smell
the way this house smells
your friends arrive
some kiss you on the cheek
some hold your hands while you hold their beers
move in time with the music
stand in the back, and as your confidence rises, move, ever-so-slowly, forward
meet evan
meet andrew
ask, "do I look like I belong"
contemplate mohawk
start dancing, do not stop
shove, thrash, trash, scream, release
fall, and rise again
at some point, go to the bathroom with your friend and tell her
you've never been happier
and look in the mirror and know
your chest, glistening with sweat and
your ruddy face is beautiful
dance again, for longer
feel skin on yours, from all angles
close your eyes, open your mouth, and let the feeling quench your body

when the cops come walk out without looking either in the eye
back in pat's car, let them take you home

Fact vs. Romance

Just now I couldn't decide if I wanted to write in my blog or start writing my short story that is due next week for English. I opened up Microsoft Word only to find, to my disappointment, that instead of a bounty of inspiration, I was just looking at a blank page on which I had yet to write anything. So I chose blogging.

Two things I've recently been wondering about:

1. Corporations steal so much from us everyday, and are just generally the root of all evil in our society. Do you know that corporations profit off prisoners being incarcerated? So they literally are evil. And what I've been thinking about is why do we all give them so much money all the time. I know some people who routinely steal food from huge corporations because they don't want to help an institution that perpetually seeks to exploit them and keep stuck in a cycle of poverty and suffering. Not that I'm ready to steal, but I won't still say that it's against my morals.
2. WHY are the ducks still in the campus pond. I was under the impression that birds migrate, no? Every time I walk by the pond, I feel an overwhelming pity for the ducks because seriously, imagine being outside in this cold all the time, except naked, and in freezing water. It worries me that maybe the ducks were supposed to migrate but then they forgot or something. And being the only one who noticed, I guess it was my responsibility to notify them of their error before it was too late. I may have the blood of forty aquatic birds on my hands.

How come all the other unicorns are dead?

I Don't Wear Glasses

These are pictures I took during a car ride to Northampton to take advantage of the one day sale at Urban Outfitters. Liz bought a shirt with a giant hot dog on it and I bought some fake, wide-rimmed glasses. Hipsters. Speaking of the term hipster, now that I've started porting glasses that do nothing for my vision besides ever-so-slightly hindering it, I've been feeling the need to separate myself from all other hipster-connotative actions. I guess I'm compensating. The first night I wore the glasses, a girl from my dorm spitefully called me a hipster in passing. Jack Barry, with whom I had dinner tonight, insightfully pointed out that I don't actually wear glasses. When I responded that I do now, he countered, "No you don't." I don't get the point of that, actually. Anyways, I like the way the glasses look, so it shouldn't matter if they're fake, right? Anybody? Will anybody support me in my quest for hipsterdom-denial?

Today I agreed to go to the gym with two of my friends but instead I fell asleep on Bethany's floor. Sleeping on the floor = opposite of exercising. What's worse, it's awful for your neck. Right now, the only way for me to avoid extreme neck pain is to keep my head hunched down in the front. I can't even sit straight. I feel like a turtle. Also today, a cute boy sat in the row behind me in Greek Myths. I tried to catch his eye and failed multiple times before I realized that every time I looked, I succeeded in catching the eye of the boy next to him, who wore a backwards Red Sox hat and had one of those beards that is just an extremely thin line of hair lining the jaw. He winked at me. Boy, do I know how to get a guy.

Song of the day is "Come Around" by M.I.A. My mom sent me an awesome care package; it has Scooby-Doo valentines!

Saturday as Usual

I've heard a euphemism before that says the cleanliness of your room reflects your internal happiness. A messy room represents pessimism and a clean one says the opposite. My dorm room has perhaps never been messier, yet, although it took me a while, I feel so truly happy here.

Sixty days of trips and stays you took to tell me dear, that you could not love me because you secretly still love a stone

Rabbit

a little lost
a little cushioned, from every direction
if i fall, it might feel nice
my eyelids, heated behind shrieking, headlights, blinded, i am sober in front of your ice
i'm ready to sleep

Clouds

[from a couple months ago]

My room is clean and I want to sit on the floor and do a project, but I don’t have a project. My head hurts I am nauseous and they are not talking to me. They are not talking to me and their conversation is dull and I never want them to leave, ever. If they leave I’ll be in trouble, I know it. “No we’re not, we’re nothing,” she says, she is consumed by her clouds, not even Red’s clouds touch her. Her world is so far from mine and I will never have her clouds, I will only have my own, once I had hers, or those like hers, now I have mine yours are yours and mine are clouds are thoughts are far removed from Earth. We are all ready to go home; that is maybe the one thing we have in common. If I call this place my home I betray my own sanguinity. He leaves and comes back and during the time he is gone I miss him and I feel more nauseous which is unusual considering all I know about him is that his name is Red and he used to run cross-country. I don’t need any more than this; he can be nothing to me and still I can need him in my room. I want there to be noise near me so I can feel preoccupied and not occupied. All I want, and I know this to be true, is to have someone else’s clouds in my head. It doesn’t really matter whose, but I would prefer them to be cumulus, an accumulation of unrequited loves, but so unrequited to the point that there is nothing to mourn the loss of – only to mourn the loss of what could have been. What could have been is not what was. I had what was but if I had his clouds - and I use him as a subject because his voice is in my head and he is sitting on the ground talking dully and his name is Red – I would have what could have been. We are all ready to go home.