we would really like cats.

erin: "i hate that all the animals i want are either running away from me or behind glass."

we set out for the sun, but i'm living with the moon and watching the sun through new york windows. radio show #5.

i affectionately refer to this weekend as "new york adventure weekend."

when i typed that, i meant new york city, but i suppose i had probably my best afternoon/evening ever at sarah lawrence on friday, so i guess westchester county in new york state can get in on the titled weekend as well.

on thursday a girl from my playwriting class invited me and another girl (i realize that "girl" is becoming a less and less accurately descriptive term, as these two "girls" were 20 and 27, respectively) to her house on friday late afternoon for tea. i was so excited.

tea was four of us young women sitting around discussing gender and time and blood and women and poetry and then tea became red wine and the afternoon became 9:30 at night. so very nice. it felt so very "college" or "sarah lawrencian." then i met my roommate erin back at out apartment and we walked dizzily to the "fall formal," a surprisingly well attended and attired event under a large white tent. we had ice cream. we danced. the dance ended, i went to watch some "friends" perform short plays about sex and censorship. i got a very long, very nice hug from a new friend.

i cooked rice at 1:30, alone for the first time in many lovely hours and feeling every minute of being alone, for better and worse.

on saturday,

i met with a friendly acquaintance/friend from high school in the mid-afternoon on saturday and we just hung out in the city for several hours, intending to end our night in brooklyn at a vivian girls show.

seeing her was nice.

we talked about her "boyfriend" (ihatethatwordihatethatword) and the confusion liking him a lot entails. i tried to give advice that may have been a little too flighty or existential (do i sound pretentious yet?) for her to latch on to, but she said she was glad i said it, as no one had given her the advice that i had.

we went to the opening ceremony store and tried on very very beautiful and well-made clothing and shoes for a while, which was surprisingly fun.

then we tried, in vain, to use public transportation to get to this vivian girls show in a nowhere-land industrial district, that we ultimately had to take a cab (expensive. so fucking expensive, i cannot spend any money this week, except for friday, when i'll maybe go see vivian girls again) to get to this crazy cement block of a space.

but oh man vivian girls are good. so good.

we were right up front, the two people closest to the stage and pretty much the only two dancing. fuck hipsters. yeah i'll just cross my arms and maybe nod my head or tap my right foot. also i guess with a band like vivian girls, it's like, well yeah they're a punk band, but they're also really girl-group-y, so maybe i should just sway and listen to their pretty voices. just dance, people.

speaking of girl-group-y: the vivian girls dressed as the shangri-las for halloween, which was kind of the coolest thing ever (okay, not ever). they dressed in the white shirts/black vests/black jeans of the leader of the pack cover. they also covered two shangri-las' songs: "gone" and "remember (walkin' in the sand)." hot.

while i stood there, so close, listening to these songs that i have come to love, that have started to mean something to me over the past several months, dancing, i was doing some thinking.

vivian girls sing a lot about boys, which is great, they're writing what they know, i have no problem with that, that's what i do, but

why is indie rock so heterosexual?

and also

i want to be at a bikini kill show. i want to watch bikini kill play. i want to be part of a bikini kill show.

but bikini kill is long gone. i think i was thinking that because i was watching these three creative women and listening to their delicious pop songs, singing along, feeling so full. but the kind of full that comes with ice cream.

with m&ms.

with caffeinated black tea, drunk down like oxygen or smoke.

i wanted bikini kill to shout along to,

to witness to pure female, pissed-off power.

i wanted an attack and i wanted to feel the full where my heart swells and my limbs shake for fear of holding my very core together.

but they are so long gone.

the rest of the night was a mix-up of public transit and west side college campuses. it was utter exhaustion, it was chewing gum on my sequin dress, it was two.5 hours en route, it was getting stranded at barnard and then sort-of saved (let's say "relieved") by absolutely one of the last people i ever thought would be of any use to me ever. it was an hour gained.

my friend and i fell asleep on separate couches in barnard's 8th floor lounge at 4 in the morning. we woke up at 10.

waking up in new york city is without a doubt one of my favorite things in the whole world.

a few more hours in the city held bagels-and-cream-cheese, philosophy-on-a-relationship-level, good-byes, missing-my-train-thanks-a-lot-fucking-new-york-marathon(oh-man-i-can't-be-annoyed-with-you-because-you-are-all-in-such-great-shape, ihope), back to slc.

it was a nice weekend.

here's the radio show, that has already happened tonight. it's heavy on bikini kill and vivian girls for obvious reasons.

double dare ya - bikini kill

i want you back - jackson 5 (three nerdy looking boys in union square were tap dancing and then stopped and sang this song, with karaoke wordless music. this song is dedicated to them.)

never see me again - vivian girls (one of my favorite vivian girls songs.)

where did our love go - supremes

tell me so - bikini kill

celebrate the mundane - grass widow

all the time - vivian girls (according to their set list, which my friend got to take home at the end, and which we could see on the stage from our close proximity, this was the second-to-last song. but they didn't play the last two songs.)

be yr mama - sleater-kinney

rise above - black flag

speed heart - bikini kill

when i'm gone - vivian girls (another of my favorite vivian girls songs. one of my favorite songs in general right now. "will you do what you think is right?/will you ride your bike past my house late at night?" - i love that lyric.)

sittin' on the dock of the bay - otis redding (a street vendor in harlem had this song playing from a boom box when i walked past.)

shelia - atlas sound

remember (walkin' in the sand) - the shangri-las

skeletons - yeah yeah yeahs (love this song so much right now.)

listen next week, 6 p.m. eastern, 5 p.m. central, 12 a.m. france.

not nearly as good as i'd hoped.

radio show #4. my fingers are dried apricots and i keep eating them so i can't do my homework.

if it wasn't before, i'm going to use my hour long radio show as a personal journal. it's going to be the musical equivalent of my week or of an event of that week. this week's radios show takes me back to last saturday/sunday, which was one of the best weekends of my life. easily. i went to manhattan and walked to brooklyn to see no age play. and they were awesome. today in the shower i noticed that the bruise on my thigh from the show is still dark purple. after the show i walked around brooklyn, having a great time, with a friend and some of his friends and we slept at one kid's house and in the morning (which was really the afternoon, when we woke up) we walked around brooklyn some more and i really really like it, it's a little like uptown and pilsen and i could maybe live there someday, hopefully.

teen creeps - no age (no age started their set with this song)

island ave. - jacuzzi boys

rise above - black flag

to where - grass widow

born under punches (the heat goes on) - talking heads ("to where" and "born under punches" were both played as like space fillers, when the stage changed bands)

everybody's down - no age

boy void - no age ("boy void" was the last song played and i totally freaked out, i love that song.)

be my baby - the ronnettes

beg waves - ponytail (after we'd had late breakfast on sunday afternoon, we sat around listening to music (notably, "be my baby" and "beg waves" and more no age) while deciding where to go that day.)

tally ho! - the clean

throw aggi off the bridge - black tambourine

lola - the raincoats

move to california - times new viking

ever fallen in love - buzzcocks (dedication:)

thirteen - big star (i heard this song playing out an open window on the nyc streets and had to sing it through in my head before i could figure out hat it was. also today is my little brother's last day of being thirteen.)

twilight at carbon lake - deerhunter

that weekend was like all of the teenage weekends i never had in chicago.

it was great.

the greatest.

i just want to live and work in brooklyn and go to shows.

i don't want to be at school.

my favorite part of college is

not living at home

and that might be the wrong reason to be in college.

oh, yeah,

listen to the radio show,

pleeeeeeaaaaaassssssssssseeeeeeeeeeee.

6 p.m. est, 5 p.m. cst, etc.

i promise it'll be good.

loneliness, home, friends, family.

i knew what i was getting myself into. i knew i was

going to let myself have a day of nostalgia and minor moping.

i knew that when i walked away from the train station: alone, for the first time in

days. fine. i knew what i was in for when i sat outside of my apartment building smoking to feel dizzy, early in the morning (for a saturday),

wanting to hear only beat happening songs, and

finally deciding to take my bike out.

i ended up riding to bronxville and going to the y.a. section of the quaint new-books-only bookstore where i picked up looking for alaska and sat in a corner and (spoiler alert) read the part where she dies and i

wanted to cry

and i

almost did

my nose got all sniffly and my eyes got heavy.

and i left that bookstore and walked the at least one-point-five miles back to the apartment in the rain.

and i sort of knew what i was in for when i asked erin repeatedly if she would go see

where the wild things are

at the nearby cinema at 5:10 p.m. with me

and she said yes.

i needed that movie today.

we sat in the theatre at the end weeping, quietly sobbing, next to each other, as the ushers began to clean and the credits rolled and lights came up and turned our faces a ghostly grayish yellow.

i wanted to cry a little harder.

head in my knees....that would have felt just right yes.

when i described the movie later to another girl, i said it dealt with "loneliness, home, friends, and family." and she responded, "oh. so basically everything we're going through right now."

yes. an unexpected answer from this girl, so maybe erin and i aren't the only ones who feel like we do about here about college. maybe lots of kids do.

yes.

loneliness? check. plenty. though it's not always a bad thing.

home? don't got one. the "city of chicago" is the closest thing, but maybe that doesn't count for some reason.

friends? maybe. very few, if any.

family? got one, at least in the blood sense. they're eight hundred miles away and i like it like that.

so everything we're going through right now,

only more so for me today,

because he just said i was his home.

and i just sent him away.

and because we really are friends, for sure, i think.

we could end the loneliness.

maybe.

if i wanted to.

i cannot wait for the sunrise!

i'm staying up all night!

i'm drinking lipton black tea like my life depends upon it!

i'm writing a paper

(which i will not be proud of)

on antigone's performance history!

it's a lot of work!

it's due in four hours!

i had two weeks and two days to write a well researched paper and i decided to write it in about 10 hours instead!

college.

you know, i don't believe i've ever "pulled an all-nighter."

this week has been full of firsts, i'll give it that.

like listening to fucking animal collective on some chick's shared itunes library as background music. that's a first.

here is a backwards photo of the world's greatest mug! it is from sacramento by way of my aunt biddy. i like it because it is huge and aunt biddy is nice memories.

good night, morning, i need to work! i'm nowhere near finished!

we are elves. luminous.

we walked across the brooklyn bridge

holding hands and smoking cigarettes

and smiling all the way.

ee cummings.