Sunday, December 26, 2010

the most advanced piece of technology i've ever put in my pocket.

i figured it out.
i am full of rage.
where is my knitting?
my tea?
i'm still a luddite.


Saturday, December 25, 2010

about THIS close to chucking it across the room.

oh it's cool.....
i got this.
i'm in control.



i'm missing something.

my suburban cousin
took pity
on her poor urban luddite cousin (me)
and gave me her old ipod touch.
touching.
she got a new one two weeks ago.
and well, better than a landfill is a pack rat's bedroom.
so i've been staring at glowing screens for a couple hours
wondering what the hell i'm doing wrong because i can't for the life of me
figure out this user-friendly apple bullshit.
way to ruin christmas, technology.
excuse me, i have to flip my tape over to the b side.


Thursday, December 9, 2010

basically,

about a week ago, one of my professors recommended that i make use of the school's counselors (i.e. "therapy") because i have no friends and i had burst into tears in his office for the third time this semester and not done my conference work.


Tuesday, December 7, 2010

dear ancient greeks,

i love the fact that the word “hysteria” diagnoses the condition of a wandering womb. when i get all panicky i love to think that it is because my womb has become detached and is wandering. i embrace it.

Sunday, December 5, 2010

lost, but part of a generation that has found itself in the particles of the air we call the Internet.

i'm sure there's a more blog-chic way than youtube to make you listen to a song, but i'm kind of F.U.C.K.E.D. on my conference work and fucking hating school okay, so just listen to the velvet underground and goth lady music and stop reading my blog, because i'm going to do all of the above and i have to stay up all night and go to work at 7:45 a.m.



so that's how the world works and i believe it's called unrequited when i pine for the boy, that boy, that, him, you, yes, you, look at me, dream about me, talk to me someday, promise?ok. actually it's called a crush and i'm twenty i should be over crushing on people. i should just go straight to dating them or fucking them or killing them because vampiric relationships are hip now right, lovely bloodsucker. lovely invincible werewolf babe, it's getting colder and i'm getting older and like really really cold, but not because that's just like a contact-california speaking, rubbing off.
i
am
swedish.
like ikea. like abba. like strindberg.
i
am
midwestern.
like jake barnes. like the cubs. like corn and soybeans.

1/8 swedish and first generation midwestern. i don't belong hrrrrr.


Thursday, December 2, 2010

i think it's fair to say,

that we all screw up.
at some point.
and for a lot of us, a concentrated, simple, clean, easy, and unfun place to screw up is college.
we waste our parents' money. and our own. and our time.
and at 2 in the morning,
my orange tea tastes bitter. and i've stopped making any headway on my studies. not that i have for a while. i'm nailed to my
standard issue
cushioned
real laquered wood
college common room chair.
a little box.
in these last two and a half weeks i'm pushing towards blindness.
cause of blindness: macbook.
cause of macbook: college.
cause of college:
isn't it funny how i'm still the same person i was at seventeen?
and now i'm twenty.
(and as far as i can tell, twenty is the birthday that people give you a lot of sugarfood.)
and i still don't believe in college. and i still don't believe that this waltz of study and sleepless and macbook and blog is what i want to do.

i would like to find, when i wake up, that thursday was taken out of the week.
so i might be spared the hassle of crying in my professor's office and recovering from crying in my professor's office and writing a shitty essay and going to rehearsal and pool-staring and attempting to justify a badly edited video as art....i just want to be in chicago. i just want to go to a state school. join the swim team. get a lobotomy. forget how to ride a bike. ride a bike. tour the midwest. and amsterdam. hide my eyelids in a jawbone when the sun turns to rainbows through smog and airbourne shit. it's fair.

what feels unfair,
is that my name can get spread around like herpes.
from my professor
to my don
to the dean
to god-knows-who
all because of a bad evaluation.
i think.
there's a boy i never want to be like and some moments i'm afraid i might get expelled for the same root cause that he got expelled for.

must not be an emotional wreck.
think of irene.
keep the dead dead.
when we dead awaken, cannot, will not should not happen.
no more weeping in the bathroom,
looking at your hunched figure warped in the reflection of the sink's pipes.
this is where the water happens. how fortunate we are, that water happens.

i was told i have a future today. in a place/area that i become farther removed from daily.
excuse me, hi, yes, i have a number, will call, may i please pick up my future. just tell it to me straight.
do i make it through thursday?
may i go to art school now? is it my turn to live in brooklyn? or the lower east side? does participation count for anything?


Sunday, November 14, 2010

why is it that i get such strangely prophetic roommates sometimes?

first erin, now elizabeth,
who tells me,
"your body hates you right now."
i know.


also i'm turning 20 in ten days. i don't want to be 20, and i certainly don't want to deal with being 20 ten days from now.
dear extracurricular (theatre) activities,
i just want to do my homework. is that so much to ask?



Saturday, November 13, 2010

propos'd.

so the housemate with the figs a few weeks back, the one made of magic? she is still so wonderful. so full of delightful. i made chocolate chip cookies yesterday. i made half full o' butter and half vegan, so that i could share a few with her. then i found this note on my computer this morning:

dear Emma,
Thank you for the wonderful vegan cookies. (I ate them in the night.) You are total marriage material.
xoxo
lm.
*and then she put a shiny grasshopper sticker at the bottom.*


and apparently i am marriageable. go figure. tell it to my lonely hands and the playwriting places in my heart&spine. i could fall over.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

procrastination on my mind.

i made a new scarf.
















i like it a lot.



Thursday, October 7, 2010

figs and dates and things more marvelous than you.

i've been having new fruit lately.
new fruit! who knew?! i thought the world of fruit stopped at the tropics, where do you go from mangos? well, to starfruit and guavas and coconuts, i suppose.
and then this date babe is sitting next to you in food and agriculture class all dried out and looking waxy brown like a cockroach and, i do believe that's tasty in an entirely different way than a mango. it's like caramel doing its best plum impression, but failing in a good way.
and this morning after and all-night freak out (homework related), i go to the kitchen with a banana skin and caffeine coursing through my veins like steel springs and there's my housemate, the most beautiful girl in the world, made of magic and soup, cutting figs. figs! fresh figs! not the kind wrapped in starch and baked to death and named newton, but real figs!
what are those? i ask.
figs, they're my favorite fruit, you must try one.
and the fairy girl made of magic is handing me a fig on the edge of a knife and i think it's the most delicious thing i've eaten in a long time.


Sunday, September 26, 2010

new plan: i saw it in the distance but it hit me in the face anyway.

soooooo, this weekend, on saturday, i was like, hmmm, there's roller derby happening in a nearby suburb. hmmmm, let's see how nearby it is. hmmmm. a five dollar round trip train ride. hmmmm, why not i guess? (other than the obvious reasons of homework?)

and so i went and watched the women's flat track derby association (wftda) eastern regionals competition. i watched the steel city ladies positively punish providence rhode island and north carolina beat montreal by two soundly disputed points (for the fifth place spot).
and oh, yeah, i fell in love and met my future wife.
but really. i knew i would love roller derby but i hadn't ever seen it live and it was like seeing too much light for the first time. i went, "that. i want to do that. i need to be a part of that."
and then, when i got back to my house i bought tickets for the championship bout today.
new york city's gotham girls roller derby vs. philadelphia's liberty belles. i was rooting for gotham because - duh. i talked to a couple of the girls yesterday. they are awesome.
when i walked in yesterday to buy my ticket, the lady in the box office asked where i was from. i told her i went to sarah lawrence. she liked this and told me that the westchester "suburbia" team is having try-outs next monday - october 4. NEXT MONDAY!!! i have no skates! i am doing too much silly shit at school!! i want to marry you all and be a part of your lives and be a blocker to your jammer and sew you hot hot hot little derby skins (which are what their hot pants are called).
and then the gotham girls have try-outs on november 20.
i need roller skates.
i met a grad student there who goes to my school and used to do roller derby in madison wisconsin. she's gonna try out for the suburbia team. she's gonna practice skating on our school's tennis courts. we should be friends. her name is harlot bronte.

today was incredible. it was such a good bout. gotham was so fast. just so fast and i their three main jammers were just uncanny. and it was great because today, i understood the scoring and the hand motions and i was totally just able to follow it. so then because i knew what was happening i got really into it and my heart was pounding an i was sitting on the edge of the track and - gah! so much love that my heart got sympathy bruises because it was trying so hard to work its way onto the track!
here are pictures from today:

gotham girls huddle.
the leg with the lightning bolt belongs to bonnie thunders who is an insanely awesome jammer.

liberty belles.

liberty belles (aka: 2nd place!) on their pre-game introductory lap.

gotham takes a knee while the belles are on their introductory lap.

gotham!

after the bout.


#46 is "swede hurt." yesterday she was telling me about seeing bikini kill in 1994 when she was 16 and in america on exchange from sweden.


i talked to beatrix slaughter yesterday for a bit about derby and getting into it. she was super sweet and i love her name.


2nd place: liberty belles (in blue). 3rd place: charm city (in yellow). 1st place: gotham girls (in black). these three will go to nationals in chicago to skate on november 5, 6, 7. you should go and cheer in my absence.




and a tiny video i took. who wouldn't want to play this sport? it's strategic like football and cool like feminism and craft fairs had a love child at a skate park.

(the whistle at about 19 seconds is tournament mvp hyper lynx being sent to the penalty box. this was one of the few jams where philly got lead jammer. it's a weird moment that i selected to record.)


thing one: i need skates.
thing two: i need to learn to skate really, really well so that
thing three: next fall when i am not so crazy busy i can skate with suburbia or gotham and begin my bruised career as a derby girl.


Monday, September 13, 2010

the thing about circles.

the thing about class at sarah lawrence is,
when it's a normal seminar class you all sit around a round table.
like knights.
which means that no one sits behind you and
no one notices that your hair is clinging to itself
because it hasn't talked to your shampoo in over a week.
no one torments you and touches it and notices that it has a texture not unlike barbie's blond strands.
i like this.


Sunday, September 12, 2010

to more.

to the first years,
i hope you thought,
when i walked away,
rain will always come again
and you will never get that kesha song outta yr head.
but better.
and i hope you go to yr dorms and use google and i hope you go to yr local sister school for the music and it feels like church.
and i tonight for a second,
in the bathroom,
i thought,
i should go to church tomorrow.
and then i stood in front of the mirror and watched myself place my open right hand over my open left hand and say amen like yes like cannibalism for jesus and his body. like saying amen whispering amen to the elderly people that hand out the host at catholic mass. a year ago my grandpa asked my father if there was a catholic church near my school, because to him it matters and to me i lied to my mirror image in a moment of faithlessness at a break from a dance party that i was throwing with too much pop and too many chips and the world caving in on my pop music sensibilities. because i may have been flirting with a boy who likes billy joel, this kid who may have a girlfriend and uses a complicated word to say that he feels comfortable in his gender. and i definitely broke a girl's heart or maybe just scratched a cube into its surface with a thumbtack because she's been telling herself stories. i can't blame her for fabrication. i spend ages on fabrication. i spent eighteen years fabricating and dismantling a personal christian lie and now i work in the realm of the third dimension and metaphor. the tactile and the unsaid where i got married onstage last night. it was a dream that could come true if i spent more time at my loom and less time tying knots in my yarn.
he climbed 9 feet in the air and i played the only tune that could be "our song" and dropped my flowers on purpose. the world is a funny one when you are the comic relief and don't get to the microphone because charisma and art direction are what's expected, but not delivered. so i make small talk with the first-years and hope to see them again - why not? for a few minutes i got to talk in the words that feel most right, get back in touch with the basements, before i have to fall asleep and wake up a night later in the skin we all expect and again sink into faithlessness.


Tuesday, September 7, 2010

heavens to our friends.



heavens to betsy at the international pop uunderground. their first show, like whoa.


russian double.

as for saying goodbye, we don't know how,
shoulder to shoulder we keep walking.
it's getting darker and darker now,
you are pensive and i'm not talking.

we enter a church - inside they believe
in funerals, christenings, weddings too,
without looking at each other we leave...
why is everything different between you and me?

or else we sit in trampled snow
in a cemetery and begin to sigh,
you take a stick and draw the chateau,
where we'll always be, just you and i.

anna akhmatova
(tr. lyn coffin)


i'm glad your sickness is not caused by me.
mine is not caused by you. i'm glad to know
the heavy earth will never flow away
from us, beneath our feet, and so
we can relax together, and not watch
our words. when our sleeves touch
we shall not drown in waves of rising blush.

i'm glad to see you calmly now embrace
another girl in front of me, without
any wish to cause me pain, as you
don't burn if i kiss someone else.
i know you never use my tender name,
my tender spirit, day or night. and
no one in the silence of a church
will sing their Hallelujahs over us.

thank you for loving me like this,
for you feel love, although you do not know it.
thank you for the nights i've spent in quiet.
thank you for the walks under the moon
you've spared me and those sunset meetings unshared.
thank you. the sun will never bless our heads.
take my sad thanks for this: you do not cause
my sickness. and i don't cause yours.

marina tsvetaeva
(tr. elaine feinstein)



russian chicks understand.


Monday, July 19, 2010

speaking of cranes and herrings and being in the sky.



it took all the air in my wheels all the sound in the microwave all the clock faces and it was nothing but fog and an optical illusion and i still got to work early.

and i guess that was work. there was prairie grass and cityscape and acid yellow cicadas and brown paper bag grasshoppers. and a butter-colored butterfly crammed in to a bug box, caught with 10-year-old palms, a bug hunt enthusiast for sure.


Sunday, July 11, 2010

good grief no.

one of those times,
where you call into question your favorite band. is it still allowed, for them to be your favorite band, can you trace it to your roots, can you survive in a vacuum. are you buying that 45 because it's a great song or because it's an opinion. it's the time to divide things up but i can't do the math because the lines are blurred and that division symbol looks like a plus sign. or maybe a multiplier. and everything is amplified. the wind in my ears and the uneven jostle of the road for a full block, a sick feeling already in my stomach only enhanced. oh god i think i'll vomit right here on ravenswood, exactly a mile away. and suddenly my bike weighs more than i do, when
before i couldn't feel my legs or the road, now i can barely push one foot over the other.

but this is my bike.
i bought it with my money, that i earned from one odd little job or another. a job as a swim teacher or a costumer or an artist or something. and no one was there for any of that. and that's why it was right.

i'm cutting fishnets into my face with the sharp ends of bobby pins, it's easier to peel off my skin that way, i'm not washing it, it's oily, it will slip right off. i'm enhancing my shape by deciding that i'm a new bra size and exhancing it by boiling pots of pudding. my pudding and my obsession and my inexplicable decision to wear a bra.

jessica, i understand. when two months ago you described the feeling of having the ground pulled out from under you and you have to look at a loaf of bread you've baked yourself and say
okay, this is my bread.
just to stay on your feet.
and at the time, i nodded but i didn't know. and now it's not extreme. not the worst, closer to the best. but the waves. it comes in waves synchronized to bike crossings and when i'm sucked under the waves in my sweet new homemade swimsuit IT'S EVERYONE'S FAULT. well, i guess just mine and yours or just mine or just yours.

and then there are young men on bicycles who smile and say hello to me as they reach up to stow a cigarette behind their right ear. everyone is friendly on saturday night on foster. hello, i breathe in a moth sigh because my attention is split between that single gear and everything else and i don't know if etiquette is real or just a thing to make wallflowers feel bad about being awkward and introverted.

so now it's time, i think, for weeks old already chewed chewing gum and new autobiographies to lust over lives that will never and can never be your own.


Friday, June 25, 2010

grace.

way to make my day, my so-called life.


Tuesday, June 22, 2010

carrying ciabatta rolls in your back pack.

dear christine,

you're gone. you think i don't know but you're in italy. you think no one knows. i bet tania knows. i saw the italy tour guide in your bedroom whenever it was i visited you. february? i don't quite remember. i'm sure it's italy and i'm sure you're alone, run off in a flurry that you created yourself, the flap of a butterfly's wings to the rest of the world.
tell me: is it romantic?
is it art?
is it all the perfection of a sharpened number 2 pencil and all the self-exploration of my so-called life?

i know you have run away or else you have simply not answered my phone calls and e-mails. sure, maybe you lost your phone and got a new e-mail address. these things happen i am not naive. in the same category: maybe you do not want to see me anymore. i do not mean to flatter myself when i say that this option seems unlikely.

following that thought: i want you here. with me. now. i hope, sincerely, that if you have run away and you are in italy, that it is everything you want and need, but i feel like i so badly need you with me now. i miss a lot of people right now, in varying degrees and for various reasons, but you are undoubtedly top of that list of people i miss.

i need a cool girl to talk to and laugh with and sit by the lake with and smoke with and make jokes with and watch my so-called life with and or any one of those and
shit it's all so pre-teen
but feeling out of place,
too opinionated (or something) to be popular and to square to be hip (in the good way)
it never goes away, and i think we're a little bit the same.

goddamn i have things to tell you and i know it's somehow narcissistic to want to be with some one you see as vaguely similar to yourself, but i want to tell you things and hear your answers. i don't care what jennifer has to say or ewelina. they are so five years ago. i want to tell you that i watched rachel getting married and i chose our wedding song. not yours and mine. but, well, whatever. while i watched that long fucking wedding scene at the end, i thought that if i ever were to marry him (impossible), i figured out the song that we would dance to. and i just wanted to tell you that.

so i hope your life is treating you well. i really do and i really hope you will tell me whenever you can see me again. even if it's as far away as september or october.

so,
much love,
and musings and salami and fine art and large loaves of bread,
and more love,
emma.

Friday, June 4, 2010

your underwear is showing. there is hot caramel in your bangs.

how did that get there?
whowherewhat.
her, that one, the perky smile, the south side accent, high ponytail, and loud shoes. her.
standing next to that tattooed man with the dragon necklace.
you really like me?
one hand on my cell phone the other on my heart. break for typing.

"Hello all! Ahh very excited, but just let me know when to expect you so that im not showering/wearing my retainer etc :)"

i got that text message this morning.
i don't know who it's from. nope.
i have one guess. but the part about "expect you" and "retainer" don't make sense with that person.



when you are hiking down dock street try not to hit the tourists. don't second-hand-smoke-kill their babies after a long day. don't look at those people on the boats and wonder when one of them is going to jump off that huge fucking ocean(lake)liner to their imminent demise in the LAKE. when you look away they will cast anchor and you nod. yes, there went their body. i heard it hit the water and according to half a dozen philosophies, i'm sure, if i never turn around then it surely was their body and i can't be convinced otherwise.
was i stood up?
was an hour too long to wait?
did you buy me a beer and then end up drinking it yourself and leaving ten minutes before i got off work and fifty minutes after you got off work? did you bike to pilsen wishing you hadn't while i stared forlornly at the chairs packed on to the tables and the lights all out at the billy goat tavern and grill cheezborgercheezborgercheezborger the outer porch patio all locked up. so i mistook a bro on a fixed-gear with a handful of facial piercings for you and he mistook me for someone else and stopped his bike and asked if we had met at...........
me: no oh, i don't know you, i'm waiting for someone who looks like you i thought you were someone else
bro: oh ha, yeah, i just did the same to you,
me: okay well, goodnight!
bro: yeah, nice bike,
me: thanks, you too.

COME BACK. i want to ride home with you. with anyone i don't know.
i guess i'll just call her back, that x-best-friend from grade school, oh my gosh, is that your live voice on the other end of the phone? it is! omgggggggg. oh my goshgoshgoshgoshgoshgoshgoshgosh. i don't take the fucking lord's name in vain no. i use fifties slang and hold down a summer job. mmmmmmmkay?.
listen chica, i'm excited and terrified. us four gals are gonna have to talk a mile a minute to catch up with each other. can we do it. i just stripped that retarded nude nail polish off my nails this morning. less wind resistance. i'm gonna need it.
(but pause okay.... i need boy advice. for realz. now i want to tell ya'll a story i need ya'll to do that girly shit where everyone sqeals and then i need ya'lls' help. understand?)
I GET THE CAR TONIGHT. suck it. i get a nice long drive way the fuck out north west from the neo-futurarium and you bet i'm gonna be singing the whole way. singing at the top of my lungs taking breaks to curse like hell at the assholes in the street. oh man, blackhawks-drunk street assholes.


i'd like to coat my arms in hot fudge and give you all a hug. it would be warm and messy, which is one of the best ways to be.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

another day one.

i biked fifteen miles (round trip).
i've been on my feet for 10 straight hours. my calves are all full of their own blood or something.
i just ate dinner.
never before have i so honestly felt the phrase
i need a drink.

in other news:
i found a job.


Tuesday, April 27, 2010

a message from the wildlife.

it is three a.m.
the birds of westchester county, new york want you to know they are awake and in a much more functional state than you are, even though you are the one who should write maybe five more pages in the next couple hours. not to rub it in.



day one, point five.

today i tried to be a leader.
i sat with my shoulders slumped.
uh.... um.....um... stop. sigh, begin again.

it is hard to lead alone.
why am i scared of being called a bitch?
why did half of everybody look like i was insulting their life?
why was i not smiling enough.
.
.
.
why is it so hard to verbalize your hopes and dreams.
the audience is unreceptive
i want to help you all so bad
but you are used to this being a fey democracy,
and i think we need to go a little communist russia and
use a dictator for a while, but shit, i swear i will be benevolent.
and when you can run on your own two legs i will set you by the river an watch you run for the fishes, and i will collapse on the river bed and work on my tan.



Sunday, April 25, 2010

act four.

dear sonya and vanya,

thank you for letting me in tonight. tonight. i don't know where to begin except to say thank you, and that after i left your estate, your home now so devoid of ...of ....hope, i wept. all the way back to my apartment and the mine-all-mine (just this weekend) bedroom, not such a rampant mess as it was last night (this morning) but equally without love or order or hands to hold. it was really the right time to pay a visit to your russian country home - twenty-six rooms! - this, the night after stumbling into my room and collapsing into my floor covered in cast off garments and littered with sewing pins, face down with dry sobs after listening to two drunken young men pour their hearts out for a few hours. i so wish i could have helped one of them. or that one of them could have helped me. one did for a minute. when we laid on our backs as sweet as though in a field, but only in an apartment (five floors above my own), and i asked if he could see the stars and he said yes, and then said that the ceiling was painted oddly. later he was close enough to need to ask about my shampoo. head & shoulders and the finest chlorinated pool water in all of westchester county of course.

dear sonya, dear vanya, what if i am like you my whole life? "i put up with things patiently and that's how i mean to go on till my life comes to its natural end. you must be patient as well." patience will get us nowhere, and it will get us everywhere maybe too? so it's action that breaks hearts, but patience that hardens them, i suppose.
it's beautiful to think that if we suffer in this life, our next life will be radiant. but what does that matter, because our next life is not now. because that one who just walked out of your home for the last time is/was your true love. could have been. that next life doesn't matter.

"we shall bear patiently the trials fate has in store for us. we shall work for others - now and in our old age - never knowing any peace. and when our time comes we shall die without complaining. in the world beyond the grave we shall say that we have wept and suffered, that our lot was harsh and bitter, and God will have pity on us. and you and i, Uncle dear, shall behold a life which is bright and beautiful and splendid. we shall rejoice and look back on our present misfortune with feelings of tenderness, with a smile. and we shall find peace."
gosh, i believe that's called tragedy.
we shall find peace.
______________

sincerely, with windfall,
emma.


Saturday, April 17, 2010

death valley '10.



my sweet. both of the e-mails you sent me finished with "lol." i will look past this. because
we should totally live together next year!!!,
you said with enthusiasm in your eyes, and a vodka drink in your hand.
you would be, like, my #1 with a cherry on top pick for roommate, with out a doubt, hands down, lights off, best friends, cold shower, root beer float, hamlet minus hamlet
#1 pick.
i just didn't know you wanted me.

************

"hey what's up?"
hey nice haircut, babe. you're always running away. and my lust always follows you right into your kiss that would inevitably taste like cigarettes. if i don't burn down this whole campus five minutes ago, our paths will cross someday. you will spend the night in my room and and we will listen to music until we can't sit up anymore when we will fall asleep on the floor in the clothes that we have neglected to change for days. and still one more. i've barely taken off my newoldimpulsebuyonanimpulsetriptobrooklyn wrinkled blouse and my one only one image of you lately is that red-with-the-green plaid button down.


depending on how you look at it, i am much better off than i was this time a week ago. i am causing less chaos for my poor sweet suitemates and i can remember everything that happened tonight. but i am also wedging sugar in between my teeth and the important parts of my arteries. you win some,,,,,,you lose. sum. i'm not trying to start anything here, except a theatrical revolution, but i lack the perspective at present. and the free time.
but not the whimsy. that flows through my immature swim legs in spades, in the places where the cartilage packs into the bones. whimsy is not my revolution.

why are there still plastic easter eggs populating my desk?

could someone get me out of this self-centered tunnel vision please?
could i have a best friend. dear future roommate, do we want to make this work. dear future co-chair, it's for the best that you have a girlfriend, let's save the world and blow some minds. dear fellow Melancholic, it's official and thrilling, hold my hand, we'll dive first into surreal female love experience.

next year i'm inheriting TWO student-run theatre companies on campus. TWO. one has an awesome reputation, one has a cult and the kind of reputation and disdain that comes with a cult.
TWO.
i don't even know why i like theatre. i don't know why i want to make it. i don't know why people do make it. i don't know why theatre is so dorky and exclusive. why the punks don't make theatre. I SHOULD NOT BE INHERITING THEATRE COMPANIES BECAUSE ALL THEY GIVE ME ARE IDENTITY CRISES. i want them. i love them. i hate them a little bit.

next year is drawing closer and closer. i want the summer so bad i could pull my hair out. but at the same time, i just want to plow on through, non stop, keep going, no summer, in and out, sophomore year
and then i can leave.
for some reason, my mind can't comprehend past sophomore year,
figuring that, after that,
i'll just be done. i'll just leave. twenty is old enough to not be in college anymore.
hell, any age is old enough to not be in college.
i just want to start building a world already.

okay, someone crush my idealism and do my laundry.
it's makin' me sick.


Thursday, April 8, 2010

need a house?

we're all about newloudfast,
i'm in college and all i want is new experience from the mundane to the classic.
from the bee stings.......
bee stings???
baking soda paste inactive
fuck you bees and mosquitoes and acne.
fuck you weather change. i've never felt such an internal shift with the weather. or any internal shift with the weather.
when you reach a certain age and dignity people give you wine as a gift. i like this.
when you are a costumer, you walk home with a bag of sweaty boy clothes. i am not such a fan of this.

i guess i am narcissistic. that's all this is. is online narcissism. i'm not old enough or mature enough to write in universal truth. there is nothing here for you. and the only reason i keep going is because it's your choice to







stop reading. did you stop? fuck you why not.


Wednesday, April 7, 2010

kitsch.


last week was the birthday of a girl in my acting class.
i made her a delightfully kitschy cake.



i figure that it is some sort of psychedelic night sky representation. the yellow panther is maybe a three dimensional representation of leo the lion constellation, because the birthday girl called it a lion, though i have been calling it a panther. i haven't been to the zoo in a long time. or thought about big cats. i could be very wrong. but then again it could be a plastic toy.

don't even know ...

elected
chosen
hand-picked
prayed for
popular vote
appointed
applied
paired up
singled out
single
alone
pin pricks
miss julie's throat
that canary
bleeding never
never engaged
daydream overhaul
gushing
leadership position
sly sentence
change slipped in
semantics
...(ellipses)...
really.
throat punch.
really.
half question
really?
half shrieked
really?
trained ear
catch differ
too much power
hold me up
expect
ing
SHIFT.

expected desired perfect unknown/known/who knows me?/people know me?/how?/aren't i the one sits in the corner?/oh, yeah, except when i'm an attention whore.

in theory
theatre
theory.
absurd
oppressed
clown
school
cabaret
retreat
revamp
ground up
building

i've had my eye on the anatomy of a revolution at the local thrift store for ages and i finally dropped the thirty-five cents to make it mine today. if nothing else that title is brilliant.

best yet. better best
promotion
brave new hope
brave new world
miranda my homegrrrl
so not.
batshit crazy
performance
collective
in a perfect world.....
and

"you want more people dancing at the end of the show than at the beginning."

i don't wanna make you regret this.

new jobs
today
and
yesterday
for
next year
and
saturday,
respectively.
now won't somebody hire me for the summer please?!

my whole fucking apartment smells like trash. and not in the good way. in the damp rot way.
i just took the trash out. this is not my fault. this is my fault. this is weather change.

Monday, April 5, 2010

number 50.

today i was talking (like i do sometimes) and mid sentence, one of the girls i was talking to stopped me to ask, where are you from?
chicago.
and she said something about me having an accent. REALLY???!!!!!!!! i said, like, a chicago accent?!, and both of the girls i was talking to nodded, oh yes, yeah. i don't know the last time i smiled so big. i crave regionalism.
we've talked just a little bit about modern language in one of my classes and each time i come away wishing that everyone sounded more like where they cam from. 'cause with today's generation being so verbally connected (internet, tv, etc.), our modern english is changing and people from all over the country are sounding more like each other. we're making one big region-less language. and i think that's sad. i adore the los angeles kids who display their accents like designer bags, uttering "shut up!" with the perfect inflection and cluelessness, or an inimitably nuanced "hello" when they answer their cell phones. or the vaguely nasal/throaty drawl that bubbles out of pacific-northwesterners mouths. and don't even get me started on a good new york/east coast accent or the delightful twang of a transplant from the south.

and i find that in times (like now) that i have simply too much work, too much to do, i want the hometown more than at times when work is light. i make up chicago to be this haven of safety and calm. no doubt, this is naive. but so is college. so whatever.

Sunday, April 4, 2010

sprung.

i got my scalp sun-reddened.
the watch tan has started.
and so it begins.

Monday, March 29, 2010

comeback.

1: motherfucker! i am covered in beer.
2: no one cares.
1: i care.
3: i'll get the sponge.
1: please do. oh it's on my shoes.

i can hear the party next door perfectly. their window is open so they can smoke. my window is open because my apartment is a furnace. our windows are perpendicular to each other. i could see them if the angle was right, or i was in the window in the other bedroom.

my roommate is back. i am resisting the urge to be disgruntled about this. i have banished myself to the kitchen. she will sleep soon. when i walked in, we talked for a bit, and that was maybe the most i've said today. yes, it surely was.

no one cares.



where are my fucking cigarettes?
right there
oh shit i found them.
they've been there for like an hour.
huh
how long have i been here
i know right

that's what i'm saying live fast die young.

i been smoking like a year i'm gonna quit when i graduate.
when i'm twenty-one.
right basically when you graduate.

you look really fucked up.
wait do i look really fucked up?
you look really really high.

we're on a college campus right now and we can't find any weed.

i love female dealers!

if you were gay, or you had a gay brother, i'd go for it.

this is the party
your face is the party.

all my smokers in da kitchen.
you're not a smoker.
i quit.

thus ends the transcription of the party next door.

(one more)
"peace the fuck out."

Sunday, March 28, 2010

indian winter. &c. &c. the utter lack of fire.

good night empty house.
i really love you.
when i can go out too late and come back and play cassette tapes as loud or as soft as i want.
no questions asked. the same song on repeat. the same album on repeat. paper walls.

when i impulse bake.
when i walk around half naked.
when the floor disappears.
when i talk to myself and speak less than one hundred words in a day. (so unfamiliar that i offend people when i am in social situations. sorry, nikki, sorry.)
i don't dance and sing nearly enough.
mourn for whatever celebrate whatever,,,,, pulling my eyebrows out in broad daylight and conquering our shared bedroom with collage cut-and-paste and library finds.
at three in the tomorrow the light is on and i haven't finished my homework because i've been out living in suspended nothing and dustbunnies.
our joy-less college apartment, the shared spaces sterile except for mud in the kitchen and floursugarcocoapowder in the bathroom.
if time never passes i never feel guilty. if melodrama was an ingredient i would be tablespooning it in to my cake batter and banana bread. stella adler has nothing to teach me, it's all in my head.
the swimming pool was too cold. so i won't be able to breathe on monday, when i'm there for the first time in two.5 weeks. think of the damage.
i think i've accomplished a lot with my two weeks. well, i've done a lot. accomplished little, depends what angle you take. not a lot of school work. just a lot.

spring break ends tomorrowtoday.
good bye empty house.

Saturday, March 13, 2010

bad haikus for a mounting fear.

(any apparent attempt at rhyme or meter is entirely accidental.)

if you're reading this
i have only one request:
if tomorrow you

wish to go for a
drive on I-80, i ask,
please refrain

for i may just go
insane. for i may have to
drive part of the way

from new york, new york
on to cleveland, ohio
my hands white-knuckled.

i am going on a
trip. a nice craigslist rideshare.
i will drive a bit.

you know, my sewing
teacher always said, if you
can sew, you can drive;

and if you can drive,
you can sew. well, i know i
can still sew. but drive?

i don't know.

THE SUBURBAN LIFE.

I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE ATTRACTED TO YOU THAN WHEN YOUR HAIR AND WHITE T-SHIRT WERE COVERED IN EGG.

TOMORROW'S TO-DO LIST IS ENTIRELY PRACTICAL.
NONE OF THE SILLY AND META-WHATEVER NOTES-TO-SELF I USUALLY JOT.

do you remember the lyric
"we've lived here for nineteen years but it's hardly our home"
my seventeen-year-old self sure does.
my nineteen-year-old self finds it romantic.

my
very
favorite
part
of
living
in
the
suburbs
is
saying
"i'm going into town."

not that there is much to go into town for.



Thursday, March 11, 2010

i'm pulling and all-nighter and writing about shakespeare? it must be wednesday.




i was talking with erin earlier tonight. she was saying that i'm getting bad.
she doesn't think my sleeping and working habits are healthy or something. that i
was so good at the beginning of the year. i would wake up in the mornings.
i overslept this morning for the second time this week. on monday i missed a conference (which is very very bad)
today i missed the driving test that i signed up for.
no big deal, but i'm sure i made someone with a clipboard
and a van
kind of pissed off. which sucks, because that person is probably the same person
who works at the place where i get toilet paper or the person who fixes our shower or something.
someone i don't want mad at me.
it seems like once a week
now, i just sort of concede
to the fact that i probably won't get any sleep that night.
oh-khay.
ok.

over spring break i will fix.
maybe. i will
break and mend
right
and
pollute and fire and finish and stitch,
read and sleep and cacophony and watch and take trains.
and forward motion.
and before spring break i will have to finish this paper.



Wednesday, March 10, 2010

last weak.

so here are some midnight cabaret videos from friday, march 5, 2010. our show that week was called "remember the victorious." (see more on our youtube channel!)
you might notice that this week, in an effort to try a new thing, maybe make the show more dynamic, we stole the neo-futurist's use of the word "go!" to start plays.
it helped. i'm sorry if that is somehow legally wrong.
i was in the show and i wrote two of the plays.
here is one.
"whale fridays." (this was the first play of the night, which is why andrew gives that really intense little introduction at the beginning.)
last wednesday, i was sitting in theatre history class, bored out of my mind, thinking about what to write for cabaret. (i do a lot of writing for cabaret in that class beacuse: 1. i hate that class. and 2. it is on wednesday, and wednesday night is the night where we pitch our plays. and 3. if i'm writing i look productive and if not engaged then at least productive, which is always admirable.)
i realized that i never write funny things. i don't know how to write funny things yet. so i decided to start small,
retelling and staging one of my favorite jokes, first told to me last summer by annie burns.
i don't really feel like i have a better handle on writing humor.


and this was my second play in the night's show.
"dear skydivers, i can see your life from here."
no i don't know what the fuck it means. which might make it worthless. i am a-OK with that.
this week i also wanted to try the effect of not casting myself in something i'd written. i suppose this was fairly easy because 1. i felt no intense personal connection to what i'd written, so much that i did not trust it to other performers. and 2. there was nothing that i intensely wanted to do. like cover my face in flour or sick my head in a bucket of water, etc.)


"bus. stop." by nikki.


okay i had nothing to do with this play, i just really like it a lot. (at the very end, there is kind of a loud clatter, and that is nikki (the performer) opening the stage left door and exiting the building.)


okay, one more.
"staring at the sun" by andrew.
well again, i really don't have much to do with this play, well i was in it, but mostly i just dig it. (but man, tv on the radio, you guys sound like fucking genesis or some shit.) i assume it looked even cooler in real life, as the camera can't really fit the whole stage and the camera work is shaky. also for this piece, the girl holding the camera talked rather a lot. she did not trust water onstage. she's a sweetheart.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

treasure.

OOOOOOOHHHH............

of course.
why didn't i think of that?
so many of the kids around campus who i've been thinking seem really cool,
who i wonder
hey, why aren't we friends
are
visual arts-types.
or art history-types.
why did i forget all about them?
i forgot that kool kids go to art school and here i am at liberal art school wondering where are the kool kids, and i forget to think "art class." art class? i forgot that was like, a thing, for some reason.

i guess i'll have to take an art class next year.
which i wanted to do anyway.

Monday, March 8, 2010

violence.

this time tomorrow.




this time next week.



this time next month.
this time next year.
this time .
this time i am sleepy.

my hair is too long.
this time the weather is nice.
this.





this time next week.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
.....,,.



herstory