lesbia, let us only live for love

How deep is that river?

2011-10-18T17:54:00.000-04:00

I am still reeling from the weekend.

What a perfect, perfect wedding! Even the parts that weren't smooth were bumpy and awkward and hilarious in the way that only that kind of love and celebration can create.

There's nothing like standing on a perfect North Carolina beach and watching one of your oldest and closest and most tangled-up friends get married. Nothing, except running off and drinking the night away with the rest of your closest friends, postulating about the heteronormative paradigm, speaking French in short bursts, flirting with long-haired bridesmaids, successfully slow-dancing with your boyperson, and generally bursting with goodness.

If we can all be blessed with a send-off like that one, with the intensity of affection that pervaded the entire weekend, we're going to grow up just fine.

it's only once a year, so.

2011-09-12T16:38:00.002-04:00

Happy birthday happy!

This morning: started work (orientation was slightly boring and slightly hilarious, which bodes pretty well for actual training)
This afternoon: almost had to tutor at the last minute, but was saved by email (yay!)
clearing the way for this evening: birthday kata and birthday dinner.

also: sweet birthday cards from B's grandmothers (both of whom share my name) and a pretty wristwatch with a solar-charging battery from my mom. love.

Today we have news!

2011-09-08T14:11:00.000-04:00

And the news is ... I'm officially employed! I start at the full-time gig on Monday (after being vetted, assessed, panel interviewed, drug tested, background checked, and educationally verified), and I finish my training at the learning center today, so either Friday or next week I start tutoring solo.

And I called four barns to arrange walkthroughs.

Feeling pretty good about myself right now. Sure, there's definitely a lot of obstacles and tasks ahead of me (including: finding a small animal vet, getting additional vaccines for Pepsi, finding a way to trailer, creating an entirely new budget plan, making a new exercise routine, and making friends), but this is an excellent step in the right direction.

And not to brag ... but did I mention I'll be making about 75% more with these two jobs than I was at my previous two?

Yep, that's going to make that whole "horse" thing a LOT more sustainable.

A totally unexpected post about math.

2011-09-07T10:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was my first day at "work" (really just paperwork and review of materials) at Huntington Learning Center in Glen Allen. Training basically consisted of my supervisor handing me four humongous binders with lesson plans and teachers' notes for each section of the SAT (reading, writing, math) plus a vocab section, and instructing me to read them. So I spent four and a half hours doing that.

Then I returned later in the day to witness some tutoring in action. My supervisor had already told me I would be working with one of the most experienced tutors, which was definitely the case -- he was softspoken but effective and obviously knew the subject material backward and forward. While he worked one on one with a student, I followed along in my teacher's manual, watching him effortlessly transition between sections and alternate between explanations and having the student work through problems on her own. It was really impressive how well he communicated with the student.

After their two-hour sessions was over, he asked me if I had any questions or concerns. All the reading and writing material is straightforward and easy to understand, and the Huntington strategies are simple to remember, especially with the teacher's edition in front of you. But it's been a long time since I've done SAT-level math (that's Algebra I and II and Geometry, more or less) so I asked if we could review some of that.

Now let me say, I am not good at textbook math. I've never found it particularly interesting, and the way math was taught to me in high school was as a series of increasingly abstract concepts, making it difficult for visual-learner me to grasp the connection between strings of numbers. I've always been kind of ashamed of this, because I'm an intelligent person (I have a BA from a great public school! I speak two languages! I read books about epidemiology for fun!) and I should be able to read a textbook and intuitively grasp the principle behind the problems. Generally it is not so.

The tutor I was shadowing had a different approach. I've done plenty of basic math in handling the books for the Wine Guild this past year, so I asked if we could skip to functions and (gulp) quadratics. I basically remembered functions, which we renamed "function machines" because you put one set of numbers in and get another set out, which I liked. Then we started graphing stuff, which made my head spin a little bit, so I'm going to look my notes on at that more today. But I remember it making sense at the time!

Oh, and then we talked about circles. I discovered I still know all the formulas for finding area, circumference, etc, but I never had any idea why those rules worked. We talked about a simple one, finding the circumference (2pi*r or pi*d). He explained, with a diagram, that if you imagine the diameter like a string, and you take the string and start wrapping it around the circle, it always goes around 3.1415.... times! No matter what size of circle you have.

I almost fell out of my chair. And then he said, "you're going to learn so much math here."

Voila, the different between memorizing the formula and understanding the concept.

I can't wait to figure the rest of the math out so I can start showing other people how to do it! They sent me home with a workbook ahead of my second shadowing session tonight. So this morning I'm voluntarily doing math homework. Craziness.

Up next: a possible weekend in Charlottesville, the ongoing quest for a new barn, and my birthday.

Coffee for breakfast

2011-09-02T10:02:00.002-04:00

Bourdon, my laptop, has finally returned to service after a few dicey weeks in the back of the Apple store. Welcome home, bumblebee!

To celebrate, we're trying out Chrome, the free browser that definitely proves that Google has staged a total takeover of our online lives. I'm distinctly creeped out by having my Gmail, Dashboard, and Youtube accounts all attached to each other ... but the search/navigation bar and the minimalist settings are dangerously seductive.

I still have Safari and Firefox, just in case. You know.

Otherwise, no news. It's September and I'm still trying to adjust to RVA. I'm hoping by October, most of that will be behind me. I'm falling into another two-job scenario (more on that as things move forward, I don't want to jump the gun here), but with potentially significant increases in pay rate and benefits, which pleases me. I'm tired of looking for jobs and I need a source of income, stat.

As far as I'm concerned, the big effort of September will be getting Pepsi relocated to a barn closer to me. I've got a list sitting in my email of barns to check out as soon as I get my financial situation settled down / equine budget established. Having him an hour and a half away is terrible -- we're both cranky, erratic, and stiff when I see him on Sundays, and I'm constantly worried that something will happen to him (although I know the barn owners are taking great care of him as always). I've got too much time on my hands at the moment.

Final unrelated thought: I let calls go to voicemail when I don't recognize the number, because I want to listen to the message and have time to think about my response.

sit back down where you belong, in the corner of the bar with your high heels on

2011-08-29T22:43:00.002-04:00

Oh, Gaga. I've always had a soft spot for your crazy theatrical costumes and your catchy songs, but your VMA performance? In drag as a lean, scrappy butch, sitting on a piano and rendering row upon row of gender-inflexible celebrities dumbstruck? Even better was the catchy, classic-rock throwback vibe of the song itself. It has a very karaoke / get up and dance at the bar feel to it (in the best way).

My little dyke heart melted like butter in the sun.

If you haven't seen it yet, what are you waiting for? Full monologue + song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vi2KSTHbXo8

wear it out

2011-08-28T19:19:00.003-04:00

Why am I so senselessly in love with this song? Something about it is perfect.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0CGsw6h60k&ob=av2e

i hear you're good with them soft lips
you know word of mouth

just a test: apparently i can still do this.

2011-08-23T22:43:00.005-04:00

Il faut boire.

J'éspère qu'il n'avait rien à dire, particulariment à me dire, autour de ce sujet.

On peut dire que je bois trop. Mais c'est quoi, ce "trop", si seulement je ne peux pas me lever, ne veux pas me régarder le lendemain en face du miroir? Peut-être c'était l'idée originale, de me déposer à cet état de vivre sous les drapeaux, enfermé aux nuages en coton.

Je suis ... quelquechose. Intelligente, oui (dans un sens accotumé et normal), mais aussi crainte, impolie, difficile, amer. Le dernier, c'est possiblement là où je me trouve ce soir.

C'est le sentiment amer qui me chasse, là-dedans -- enfin identifié. Je diraient rien, sauf qu'il existe plusieurs forces autour de mon centre à ce moment. Il y a aussi des influences internes, plutôt qui me soulage et me conseille à la discretion, la silence, et les pensées independentes. A mon avis c'est la définition d'être "adulte" -- se silencer.

Il existe des femmes, et aussi des hommes, qui peuvent me toucher, me casser, m'écraser avec un seul régarde.

Je suis vulnerable, et bien contente.

Donc, il faut boire.

I still prefer the Ataris cover, but.

2011-08-22T18:58:00.003-04:00

Today is my 12th day in Richmond.

I'm supposed to be 1) applying for jobs and 2) organizing our apartmenthouse. That's what I've decided to call our place. It's the top floor of a big townhouse dating back to the 1880s (we think) -- larger than other city apartments, but not an independent house. apartmenthouse.

I lost the apartmenthouse motivation about ten days ago ... it turns out that trying to pack a three bedroom house into a twoish-bedroom pad with a galley "kitchen" (I use that word in a rather broad sense here...) is somehow frustrating and tedious at the same time. I like the way things look when they're precisely organized, but I lack the motivation to perform the constant, repetitive cleaning / rearranging required therein. It's pretty clear that "our unmade bed" and "tower of dishes in the sink" habits aren't going to reform just because we live somwhere smaller.

Things are slightly more active on the job-finding front, mostly due to my impending lack of funds ... I had a brief courtship with an insurance company that wanted me for my sales mojo, which was flattering but ultimately futile since I don't want to do sales and I think working for commission is extortionist. Barring that, I've had a couple of interviews at VCU but their HR department is either super slow or not interested in showing me any love at the moment (sad), and a few heartbreakingly unrequited applications to the Library of Virginia and VMFA (like I'd get that lucky). The rest of my prospects are being pulled from the internet (hello, Craigslist "administrative assistant" ads, though I'm trying to be savvy/choosy and pick things I'd actually enjoy doing / places I'd like to work) and some limited in-person hustling (wine stores, no luck there yet). Finally, I'm registering with a staffing agency Thursday morning -- I had a personal referral there through a Wine Guild contact, which was cool, and the agency specializes in temp-to-hire admin positions at (drumroll please) medical establishments and nonprofit agencies! Basically my first choice of adminning would be at one of those two.

Oh, and I've started to branch out in my choice of "doing it part time / just for the money" jobs. Today I applied to tutor SAT students part time (can you say "teaching experience"?), work at a bakery (cake!) and two more office jobs in fun-sounding places. If I have to work something non-serious, why can't it be fun too?

This just in: plans are being formulated to venture out in the big city on a quest for ice cream. I will continue to fill you in later!

For now, go listen to Don Henley's "The Boys of Summer" and think about fall, like I'm doing.

Are you getting somewhere, or did you get lost in Amsterdam?

2011-08-12T10:50:00.003-04:00

Blogosphere!

It's been a long time. Here's what I've done since January:
-Passed my black belt exam in karate (which was maybe the most fun I've ever had in an exam, a good time, the best of all times)
-Celebrated the one-year anniversary of my college graduation
-Watched my favorite coworkers divide themselves into factions, and subsequently learned that teamwork and collaboration are what I'm looking for in a career-path
-Quit both my jobs
-Moved to a new city, sans emploi
-Started using my connections here to hustle for a new job

Somewhere in there I also wore a lot of skirts and dresses, wrote all my Myo Sim notes out longhand, found an apartment that my parents hate, made a few really good friends, and decided to ride my bicycle everywhere.

And now there are plumbers in my kitchen! I wish that were a euphamism, but it's not, so I'm off to deal with that.

Bisous,

A.

2011 - put your ear up against it

2011-01-03T20:24:00.004-05:00

Hi there -

Just a few words about 2011. I'm not one for new year's resolutions, mostly because I think all year should be a time for trying to change and improve oneself, not just a few hurried, transient "holiday months" over the bitter wintertime. I am not overly fond of the holidays, perhaps because I work in two industries (wine and hospitality) that almost require banter and forced enthusiam about Thanksgiving / Christmas / New Year's Eve.

So, I don't have any resolutions to sum up from last year. Upcoming events in 2011 include the following:

Black Belt Test in 54 days (Feb 26, 2011)
1 year anniversary of graduation from UVA (May 23, 2011)
J.'s wedding (May 31, 2010)
S.'s wedding (Oct 15, 2011)

The first event, which is definitely the most present on my mind these days, has culminated in the forcible creation of a six-days-a-week workout schedule (an hour of cardio and stretch in the morning, an hour of karate every day, included with 3-hour karate classes four times / week). Anyone following a schedule that death-inducing really, really, *really* needs some workout tunes.

I have eclectic and bouncy taste in music, often straying towards acoustic, ambient dreampop, girls with guitars genres. That does not make the best exercise music, unless you're doing yoga. I'm running. I'm kind of loving it.

I've been working on my mix all day, and here is the annotated final version:

1. Break Your Heart / Taio Cruz and Ludacris
A little bit of top-40 hip hop is an absolute necessity for a workout playlist. The beat mixes well with the synthesizer, and I have to start my workouts out with a strong push of energy, or else I'll wilt early. And come on, I can identify with the problematic badassery of being the heartbreaker. Nothing like a tiny bit of self-loathing to power your run.
2. Rebel Girl / Bikini Kill
A genre switch early in the workout to angry feminist alt rock helps my mind stay plugged in. It also makes me feel a little less like a patriarchy-enabling stereotype of a white girl, jogging on a treadmill in part so my body can conform to what society calls "attractive". Also taps into my queerfem identity, giving me food for thought and energy for running,
3. Ready For The Floor / Hot Chip
This song is a reward for getting into the swing of the workout -- I used to listen to this all the time in Lyon and it reminded me of home, of love, of affection and attention to detail and of sweet summertime passions. "I am ready, I am ready for a fall" takes on a new meaning inside of the dojo, while "we are ready, we are ready for the floor" remains personal. Or does it? Happiness.
4. Giving Up The Gun / Vampire Weekend
One of the songs on the playlist I hadn't heard before a friend recommended it to me. It's a faster-paced version of many VW songs, with a build to a good chorus that pulls me into going faster and faster to keep up. The little high notes make my hair stand on end. "my ears are blown to bits from all the rifle hits, but still I crave that sound." A metaphor for getting what you want most? Weaponry? I like it.
5. Teenage Dream / Katy Perry
I can't help my giggling, teenage-girl amusement with KP. I loved this song when I first heard it, and loved it double when I saw the Glee take on it (this is the original on my playlist, though). For me it channels and challenges exactly what the title says -- my brief, halcyon, distorted and disordered and scarringly perfect teenage experience. A lot of which had to do with running.
6. The Boxer / Carbon Leaf
"She is the boxer, she knows when and where to strike". Enough said. And I'll take any excuse to listen to Carbon Leaf, one of my favorite bands from the happiest days of early college.
7. Take Your Mama / Scissor Sisters
I heard a DJ say once that this was a great workout song, and since I happen to like Scissor Sisters, I thought why not? It's funny and lighter than most of the other songs on the mix. Kinda lends itself to an easy, loping pace. And who doesn't want to get jacked up on champagne?
8. Soul Meets Body / Death Cab for Cutie
This might not seem like an obvious choice for a workout mix, but I like the guitars and little bells. I have to return to my soft, indie rock sensibilities to keep from being overwhelmed with noise. And this song means so much to me. "I do believe it's true, that there are roads left in both of our shoes, and if the silence takes you then I hope it takes me too." Turn it up!
9. We R Who We R / Ke$ha
A newer song also from the top-40 contingency; I like Kesha even more than KP. Because she's completely hilarious and a lot less serious. I like the strong synthesizer and the way the beat bottoms out during the chorus. "our bodies going numb, we'll be forever young, we are who we are." Simple, straightforward. Makes me think of Bot Sai Sho (a kata for black belt 1st degree), for some reason.
10. Temperature / Sean Paul
This one is actually in honor of Master Morton, instigator of the Workout Death Machine, as I'm calling this little adventure. I'll never forget the Sunday morning several years ago that he came in with his iPod and had the whole karate class doing a mai (movement) exercise to this song.
11.Kick Drum Heart / The Avett Brothers
Also a new song for me! I've known the Avett Brothers for other songs previously, but as soon as I watched the live video and saw the way the drummer was actually using the drum to imitate the heartbeat, I knew this was perfect. We have many discussions with Master Campbell about the importance of the heartbeat in karate timing.
12. Dejalo / Rilo Kiley
The exact translation of the title depends on context, but I got it roughly as "stop it, leave our thing" which I think is pretty interesting and also borderline applicable. Just one of my favorite songs. This is where the playlist inevitably slides into indie / cooldown mode.
13. I'm Always In Love / Wilco
"when I let go of your throat's sweet throttle, when I catch the moon like a bird in a cage" high strings, synthesizer, and some chanting in the background. Not much more to say about that one.
14. Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, and Wives / Voxtrot
A last hurrah for the feminist contingency of my playlist. A completely random song that was given to me on a mixtape last year, Voxtrot actually picks up the beat a little bit and lends a bit of energy to the tail end of the playlist (and these annotations). "the take and the giving leaves no room for the living, death in one corner leaves a space in the other you know."
15. The District Sleeps Alone Tonight / The Postal Service
This band and often this song are often selected to end playlists, to bring them down on a soft and thrilling and gorgeous low that never fails to creep inside of me. This song is about creeping cold and despair, attention to detail and a sudden, sweeping realization of the big picture. About unforseen loss.
16. Crossfire / Brandon Flowers
I absolutely can't end a black belt training playlist on a low note, so at the very bottom of the heap I pull out the ace: Crossfire. I first heard this song, which is the theme for a trailer to the movie of the same name. Katanas are involved. Everything, everything, everything about this song fills me with hope, from the opening piano notes to Brandon Flowers' clear vocals to the crashing rise of instrumentalism in the chorus. "And we're caught in the crossfire of heaven and hell, and we're searching for shelter. Tell the devil that he can go back from where he came, his fiery arrows drew their bead in vain. And when the hardest part is over we'll be here, and our dreams will break the boundaries of our fears."

It really does mean that much to me.

So there you have it! 16 songs, 59.8 minutes. Perfect.

our dreams will break the boundries of our fear

2010-11-18T21:40:00.006-05:00

and we're caught in the crossfire of heaven and hell
and we're searching for shelter
[lay your body down]

this song is a dead ringer for black belt training. I have never been so soundly beaten. I have never been so alive. the other day, C. floated through the air an extra four inches to collide solidly on a double-jumping kick. I had no doubt that would happen. I have taken to leaping into the falls, to twisting in flight, to landing with a crash that rings through the spaces in me.

I have taken to believing in chi because I think it helps me. There is a hundred-yard stare, a moment of focus, a deep breath. And then there is pure and fluid action, no contemplation, no abstractions, just movement. There is great comfort in doing one thing and one thing only. And I rely on lots of things when I am constantly told to be more intense, to be faster, to be more.

I reflect on riding, on the electricity surging through my horse as we approach a challenging jump, at the way his nostrils flare huge when the adrenaline hits him, at the moment when I give him his head and the energy roars through him, freeing us from the ground in a single unbroken motion. With him it is never pushing or rushing, it is letting flow what has been held back. His unflagging enthusiasm inspires me every day.

The rest of my life is fairly ordinary, but these two things that I do are the things that define me, the enduring and important ways for me to brush the extraordinary. And then we land, coming off the oxer, coming out of the kick or the throw, just hoping it was enough.

music of the current moment:
Brandon Flowers / Caught in the Crossfire
Pink / Raise Your Glass
Glee cover / Teenage Dream
Carbon Leaf / Learn to Fly

après moi vient le sang

2010-01-13T21:24:00.002-05:00

Well hello, January. What a winter of cold and snow and reflective sunshine.

As you probably don't remember, I spent a lot of high school in a philadelphia (the state of mind, not the state, unfortunately). I am recalling now some very good advice I was given, though I didn't want to hear it at the time. It went thusly: that you can never be friends with your former lovers until you don't want to be friends anymore. I always figured that at that point, the question had quite solved itself.

But being the late-evening internet wanderer that I am, I go meandering altogether too freely through old communications, emails and transcripts of conversations (shouldn't the universe conspire to delete those for me?) altogether too often.

And being my particularly astute self, I managed to dig up the only line that could make me think that oh yes of course if I broke this rule just once it would be fine. Because ruining my past relationships has not satisfied me, and I have to wander into a dubious space with my current one.

I detest uncertainty.

i get a thousand hugs from ten thousand lightning bugs.

2009-11-01T14:04:00.004-05:00

First and foremost, I am always tired.

Second, this is what I'm thinking about:
sets of three
partner exercises
footwork, footwork
breathe!
sword takeaways
free fightings + one steps

Also, I am doing so much less for my thesis than I should be, but I still seem to be on top of my other work. I'm not sure what that means.

2009-07-21T13:00:00.004-04:00

Ah, sickdays -- like some sort of vacation from hell, trapped in my parents' house with a deep chest cough and no medication but some sort of infrequent-use inhaler that, while it allows me to take a deep breath, is not curing my bronchitis.

This is apparently because I am idiotic and can't even manage to set up a doctor's appointment correctly.

This does not bode well for escaping from this place anytime soon.

I suppose while I am lying here, wishing I could taste the lentil soup I've been eating and also wishing that I could remember tae ryun four, I should get some things done, such as:
-finding a thesis adviser
-finding a thesis source base
-finding nommy recipes for vegetarian food

I also might explore the mysterious world of Hulu, the online television player. Other than that I have two books which I'm alternating between (Julie and Julia, by Julie Powell, and Skeletons at the Feast, by Chris Bohjalian), and after that I'm out.

More updates later, I suppose.

home front update

2009-06-06T11:17:00.002-04:00

I've been home four days, and so far I have hair cropped short enough to frame my face, an ankle brace with reinforced stays that actually supports me, a very filthy pair of riding jeans, pain from kendo in my neck/shoulder that will not go away, and a lingering numbness from my right elbow down to my hand.

I'm still tired, only vaguely sleeping at appropriate times, but pleased enough to be back and able to do at least some things right away. Work starts on Monday.

cold turns your breath into clouds

2009-05-24T07:30:00.002-04:00

It is anything but cold here, right now, in the gasping, record-breaking Lyonnais heat. I lay in the coolest room in the apartment with all the windows open, and dream while I am supposed to be studying.

I've been listening to this song a lot, possibly because the video is too cute for words. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4sa2HoXpsE&feature=PlayList&p=3C7EDDA78EE64DDD&index=1).

I am realizing that some combination of being physically inactive and living in the Land of Pastries has done some pretty serious damage to me. I'm not looking forward to having to buy new clothes for riding and for work when I get home -- hopefully something a summer at the barn and in the dojo can help me fix.

By the way, two songs that are really good to jump around in your underwear to are:
American Hi-Fi, "Flavor of the Week"
The All-American Rejects, "Give You Hell"
My weakness for bad pop-rock will probably never die.

I'll be home in nine days!

bisous?

2009-05-17T12:06:00.002-04:00

As I sit here frantically striving for some sort of thesis topic to present to Professors Rossman and Reed, I have one headache inducing, worry inspiring thought -- France is not done with me.

Or, should I say, I am not done with France. Despite the myriad tribulations this country has put me through this semester (and, inadvertently, in semesters and years past), it seems my thesis will be nothing other than a careful treatment of some aspect of French history.

I need to be putting my energy into thinking up that thesis, I think, not blogging about it.

notes on other blogs

2009-05-04T09:52:00.002-04:00

"Self-pity, needing someone, and the bittersweet sense of self-reliance. There must be an archaic, non-English word for that experience. (Probably French?)"
-nightmare brunette

The best I could think of was "débrouillardise" (resourcefulness), but I'm not sure it really carries the bittersweet combination that she's searching for.

The quote is an excerpt from a short piece on cities, loneliness, and life in your mid-twenties. I am very interested to see what the next handful of years brings me.

Now, back to the teeny world of note recopying.

listening to: mixes from ML
reading: blogroll

well you put on quite a show.

2009-05-01T16:37:00.002-04:00

This is the first book I want to read when I get home. (http://openlibrary.org/b/OL2196866M/Above-the-river)

I never thought I would actually feel like I was living in a James Wright poem.

listening to: Take A Bow (remix) // Rihanna
reading: nothing much

Maybe it will be a little countdown tradition?

2009-04-28T14:25:00.002-04:00

It being precisely five weeks until I go home, I am taking this moment to compose a short list of places I just can't wait to go.

1) The dojo. Uptown, downtown, class, or workout, I can't wait to get back to being the eternally-abused brown belt.
2) The barn. I would be happy to reek of horses, leather cleaner, and hay-dust.
3) Bodo's.
4) The downtown mall -- I hear it's having a facelift?
5) The nest.
6) My huge, low, down-comforter-dominated bed at my parents' house.
7) Proffit Road.
8) The Lawn-proper, The Corner, steps of the Rotunda, Old Cabell, Harrison-Small, and of course ALDERMAN.
9) Greenberry's.
10) Daedalus Books.

listening to: ML's mix (rap side)
reading: notes for Souveraineté et Mondialisation

dive in like honeybees

2009-04-26T13:36:00.004-04:00

I have so much to say, and it feels like so little time left to say it.

Maybe I never mentioned that I could never stop writing, not even for a brief hiatus, when I turned my back on the suggestion of being an English major and fell into the challenge of learning about something new. I know what you're thinking, that I could have sunk so deeply into literature, poetry courses, an interdisciplinary creative writing honors program, and come through these long four years with a portfolio worth showing.

I wonder if that would have been a better use of my time, as I tap my fingers on the dirty table and wonder how I am supposed to write a historical thesis abstract in the the next twenty-three days.

It's been more than four months since I've sat down to write an academic paper, the notes and sources and reference books arranged around my cross-legged form in a perfect semi-circle, coffee cups perched on the table and ignored, a pen twisted in my hair to keep it out of the way as I frown in concentration, my fingers flying to keep up with the corseted, gasping, tightly-laced flow of facts and images. I haven't recently had the pleasure and the tension of a deadline ticking down, the exquisitely formatted margins bottlenecking my text, three tabs on citation formats open in the background.

When I write papers, I write them straight through, churning out a page every fifteen minutes with footnotes included, racing through a detailed outline, until finally I reach the end. Then I sit back, reread, edit, scowl and change things, delete and add, move paragraphs around, polish the piece.

That love/hate relationship with the tightly bound freedom of writing papers is, at the end of the day, why I want to write a thesis so badly. Maybe sometimes I have been forgetting that desire.

Reading: my notebook
Listening to: What Sarah Said // Death Cab for Cutie

listmaking early on a Thursday morning.

2009-04-02T02:40:00.003-04:00

In precisely two months I'll be journeying home.

Here are the things I can't wait to see:
-bagels
-correctly formed lines
-stores that are open between noon and 2pm
-trees, grass, and similarly green things
-mountains
-American coffee
-ponies
-you

Here are the things I could be fine with never seeing again:
-American cars
-news from the conservative right
-my class schedule for fall 2009
-traffic on 29-North
-prices in dollars
-most fast food restaurants

hot beverages get you into trouble every time.

2009-03-31T08:04:00.002-04:00

tea on the Macbook last night, so not good.

hoping to get the situation resolved within the week.

days until family arrives: 3
days until B arrives: 12

extremely irate Sunday morning

2009-03-29T05:06:00.002-04:00

European Daylight Savings Time WHAT? (http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/city.html?n=195)

Apparently it's an HOUR LATER HERE.

And I thought the US was the only country stupid enough to think time was under its control to change.

...I hate having another hour of time difference between here and home. Great. I guess I'm running late now.

unwelcome spring news

2009-03-26T18:07:00.002-04:00

I sprained my ankle for the seventh time in three years today.

Misery. I will be spending most of my weekend indoors with the offending joint propped on a pillow and wrapped in an ace bandage. It's impossible to find ice in this country, so I'm not going to ice it -- and I haven't iced it since time no. 3 anyway, so it should be okay.

It hurts unbelievably. Super.

reading: my email
listening to: the street noise outside

two completely unrelated paragraphs.

2009-03-20T17:11:00.004-04:00

You leave me alone for a day, curled in bed and finishing all the books in my room, and this is what happens. I decide to write for debauchette and nightmare brunette, and not just to select one of the hundred labeled, catalogued, numbered word documents on my hard drive. No, I have time, and I certainly have no shortage of subject matter. I will write them something entirely new.

I long, right now, for the feeling of mucking stalls in the dead of winter, swearing and stripping off my gloves to punch through ice-caked water buckets, my fingers turning blue over and over again in waves. You're not a rider, a horse owner, until you've stood in an unheated barn at the crack of dawn, your warm breath condensing and immediately freezing on your scarf. I'm with K on this, though -- I like barn chores, the simple weight of the work.

reading: feministing.com
listening to: rest your eyes // azure ray

this is the way, is the way that we live

2009-03-14T16:05:00.002-04:00

Tonight I watched The L Word's season finale. I don't know what I expected, but (forgive the spoilers, I assume if you haven't seen it yet, you're not going to) they definitely get catharsis points for finally killing Jenny Schecter.

This was the show's sixth season. The pilot episode aired on January 18th, 2004. I didn't start following the show until the spring of 2006, which is when season 3 was beginning. I played catchup with seasons 1 and 2 that summer, and was pretty much hooked.

I've seen those first three seasons countless times, and they certainly carry connotations of the beginning of a relationship that's over now, which is kind of strange to think about.

I remember watching season three, curled up on the tan leather couch on Sunday nights, never able to make it through an episode without being distracted by each other. We were seventeen, tiny, scared of going to college, and ferociously in love.

The seasons continued to air and develop more and more ridiculously through our first and second years of college. This was before they went online legally, in high definition, and we would call each other with YouTube links to the most recent episode, watching pirated ten-minute segments in the few hours before they got taken down. The portrayal of queer people, and the drama in general, became more and more unrealistic, but I continued to watch because we all did. Love it, hate it, or fall somewhere in between, but the bi, lesbian, curious, and questioning girls all watched The L Word.

We aged, both of us, and I only feel it now, looking back across time. Watching the finale was certainly sweeping, and I am sure that it moved me more because of how faithful I've been to the show. I certainly never imagined that I would be watching it alone in an apartment in downtown Lyon. I am twenty, not at all tiny, living in a foreign country, noting a profound dissociation between the past and the present. To paraphrase, that was the past, and this is the present. I am no longer the person who lived in that past.

But tonight, ah, tonight brings these things back, perhaps in sharper focus that I would like.

The river moves like glass under the streetlight. I ache, for many things but primarily to be curled in bed with a glass of tea and a book, at the moment.

Listening to: You Are the Best Thing // Ray Lamontagne
Reading: The Fellowship of the Ring // J.R.R. Tolkien

in my room, you can go, you can stay.

2009-03-10T15:42:00.004-04:00

It's the end of another lazy Tuesday here in Franceland, Lesbia, and I still have no idea what to do with myself.

My mind is far away, thinking of the fall. I started this little corner of a blog in the fall, a fall that's now a year and a half ago, on the same day that I perched myself on the steps of the Rotunda (University Avenue side) and wrote a poem that 3.7 later published.

I miss the Classics girl who was part of my life in that time, at whom I bubbled once in a café about my new best friend. I remember her raising her hands together, palms inches apart. Face to face, she said. Stay away from this distance, it's dangerous.

I saw her in the architecture school one day last fall, a year after that conversation and that friendship happened. She asked me how I was, and she looked to sad to hear the truth, so I said exactly what I was saying to everyone last semester: "School's good!" She raised one eyebrow, and I raised my hands, inkstained, thin, cracked and calloused, turning my palms inward, face to face. And then I walked away.

Anyway, it was a good poem, and I remember us commiserating about how much we adored Sappho, how dirty Catullus really was, how incredibly gay this all made me.

I haven't been able to pass in the world as a straight girl since my junior year of high school, and then only briefly. I realize now that one of the things I miss the most is our mutual, fierce pride at living on the outside, at weathering the insults, the catcalls, and the compliments alike.

I suspect that, when I go home, I will be struck by how different the world feels now.

Reaching further back, I realize I miss queer culture, feeling like a part of something with a group and a definition and a name. I miss the overwhelming, glossy, flamboyant boys, the only ones whom I would ever allow to pressure me into a party, a dance floor, a drink in my hand. Something about their energy always pulled me out of my reticent, serious self and encouraged me to laugh more, to smile more, to enjoy the beat and the alcohol and the pretty, pretty girls.

I never go out anymore. There are all the reasons I typically give, and then there are others, but it doesn't bother me in the slightest.

In all truth, this post stretched from a night into a morning, and now I've somewhat lost the original train of it all.

I don't envy her engagement in the slightest. My needs can all be summed up in one phrase: please, please, you've got to get on the same continent as me. After that, everything else can just worry about itself.

More to the point, I've got to get home. At this point I am just willing the days to go by, devouring books I never thought I was interested in (but I'm so glad I gave Tolkien another chance), napping the afternoons by, ticking each successive day off on the calendar on the wall. Once June is finally upon us, I will be preparing to get on a jet plane. I already promised you that I would never go so far without you again.

listening to: the beatles
reading: The Fellowship of the Ring // J.R.R. Tolkien

you did nothing wrong, and nothing right

2009-03-07T11:23:00.004-05:00

While going for my morning run, I occupied my mind as I usually do, jogging along with some sort of bouncy iPod playlist and scanning methodically from left to right, then from right to left, in my field of vision. La berge du rivier was fairly crowded with promenaders, bicyclists, skateboarders, rollerbladers, French mamans pushing prams, and other runners, as usual.

As I passed one of the many half-pipe / skate park type areas, my eyes swept over a young man stretching with his skateboard propped up next to him. He looked like someone in kneeling seiza who had fallen over -- his lower legs still folded underneath him, but his torso flat along the ground, shoulders resting on the concrete, the smallest of arches in his lower back.

In the fraction of a second that it took for my brain to process the visual information, mental images shot through my head, narrowing around the look and the feel of the muscle the boy was stretching (the internet seems to indicate this is either the tensor fasciae latae or the sartorious, the flat deep muscle gathered just below either hipbone-point).

I saw a long front stance, the tension ripping through a room simultaneously; watched a girl mount a running horse, her powerful hips flexing to vault onto his back. The ghosts of fingertips gripped white-knuckled onto the lines of muscle standing out through my skin, felt the lengthening and resistance there.

I used to be able to do that stretch, to tip backwards until I lay flat on the ground, looking up at the sky. I don't think I can do it anymore.

Or maybe I could. The thought has stuck with me for the otherwise unremarkable and lazy day.

36 days.

killing time on Thursday evening

2009-03-05T12:54:00.005-05:00

From my morning internet perusal:
"I just wish two things were more promoted in our sexual culture: pubic hair and foreskin."

Thank you, thank you, nightmare brunette, for making me feel like I'm not the second-to-only person constantly saying this. Well, the former point, at least (I can't claim any beliefs about the latter).

Apparently the reflection comes from reading the tumblr site sexartandpolitics, which I'm not familiar with personally, but I scoped out the offending post that inspired nightmare brunette's comment and perhaps I'll add it to the 'roll.

Come on, I'm living in a foreign city with no classes and nothing to do but soak up French culture and spend money. The least I can have is an extensive Anglophone blogroll to read in the morning before I go out and do those important things.

Eh, on second perusal, I think I can skip it. Too much watered down politics that I already get in full force from my obsessive reading of The New York Times and BBC World Service.

Nothing else of note to report. Hop on over to Squidgirl in Lyon to take a look at my pictures from Italy, or, you know, kick back with a giant mug of tea and some sudoku and a view of the river like I'm doing right now.

38 days.

you've been leading me beside strange waters

2009-03-04T02:51:00.000-05:00

I am, as usual, baffled by the things I learn on Facebook.

It's too early in the morning for this kind of excitement (namely, the kind that isn't exciting at all). I am still lying in bed, not looking forward to pulling back the curtain and surveying the cloudy day, not looking forward to having to fill another endless morning and afternoon with things to do.

It's only been five months.

Today marks my two-month anniversary in Franceland.
In one month I will be entertaining my parents, and anxiously counting down the days until you arrive.
In three months I will be celebrating my second full day back home.

I guess that's all. I still can't bring myself to go out for breakfast. Maybe a midafternoon coffee. Then again, probably not that either.

like painted kites those days and nights went flying by

2009-02-24T09:57:00.001-05:00

Wow, today has just been one of those awful, awful days that blindsides you every once in awhile.

It all started with my lack of sleep, I think, because even though I got seven or eight hours last night, the two-day trek back from Italy is something that my body surely hasn't recovered from yet. Pair general fatigue with my recently re-sprained ankle and I was already pretty ready to drop.

But the really bad part was when ML and I trekked all the way out to class and discovered that this grève nonsense is still going on. I still say that I respect French administration, chercheurs/enseignants, and etudiants, but for the sake of everything holy, this is the fourth week of strikes. When we got there the students had taken it upon themselves to physically blockade the stairs / doors to the auditorium with tables, chairs, etc. I've never encountered so much opposition for trying to go to class before.

So back to Quai Sarrail we marched in the cutting wind, chilly and miserable, both (I suspect) wishing we were walking along the sunny River Arno in Florence again.

This was particularly crushing to me because I was impatient during much of Italy to get back to a life with a routine. Although students might not have the strictest time schedule, everyone sorts out their own daily plan and I especially like to have a reliable routine to my days. It helps me feel productive. But I came back and things are just as nonsensical as before.

All these things combined, I spent the remaining morning hours curled up miserably in bed, rolling back and forth with the ponies tucked against me, feeling completely sorry for myself and generally homesick. I finally gave in to the need for some external comfort and dialed your number from Skype, despite the extreme earliness of the hour (just around 6am at home). On the third try I woke you up successfully, and I got to hear your bewildered, sleepy voice on the other end of the line, slowly making sense of my words. Undeniably comforting, if very selfish.

After that I summoned all my courage and got out of bed, walked to the kitchen (blessedly deserted of roommates, who were similarly napping or out), and slowly put some lunch together. Once I had fed myself and had some tea I curled up again and closed my eyes, convinced my body needed rest. I woke up a couple times but managed a two-hour nap, waking in the late afternoon to bright sunlight pouring onto me.

I'm still upset about the same things (no classes, few chances to practice my French, a feeling of general uselessness) but feeling much less despairing about them. I've made a resolution to go running more, because I need a higher level of exercise than I'm getting here, but the full-body fatigue combined with the ankle makes that seem like a bad idea for today. Maybe I will practice some self-defenses or kendo stance sword work tonight to take it easy.

I have to say that was the worst that I've felt not just since coming to France, but in a long, long time. I hope things here settle the way that they're supposed to, and soon.

I think that's all for now, Lesbia. From across the ocean, I bid you au revoir.

and what if there are no damsels in distress?

2009-02-06T09:06:00.000-05:00

I had a friend once who owned the complete discography of Ani DiFranco. I had forgotten about this album until a few minutes ago, and Not A Pretty Girl stuck out at me. I like angry Ani better than almost anything.

Lyon is Raining. Not just raining as in for a few hours, stopping toward the evening and breaking into a lovely, mild night. Raining as in with a capital "R", pouring from the first light in the morning until late at night, pedestrian streets flooding, crosswinds flipping umbrellas inside out on the bridges, water driven absolutely sideways by the gusts. You can barely stand in a doorway without getting soaked to the skin.

It is a particularly bad time for this kind of rain because we have not had classes for more than a week now due to the professor strikes against Sarkozy's education reforms. I finally heard a good explanation -- he is trying to change the requirements for becoming a teacher, shifting the focus away from historical and cultural knowledge to pedagogical logic, as in, how to teach, rather than what to teach. The French are not reacting positively.

You can see how the combination of these two things can get a girl down. But I've tried to have a productive day, braving the rain to explore bookstores and pick up plenty of groceries for the weekend (seriously, where does all my money go?) and suchlike.

We're also planning the Florence trip, which is getting more and more out of control. Hopefully all will, in fact, go as planned.

Off to be anti-social until dinner.

Election international

2009-01-19T15:03:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow, as you are all painfully aware by now, is the much-awaited inauguration day. While I am across the ocean, currently hunting for a bar or a friend with a television so I can watch Obama's speech with my fellow expatriots tomorrow evening (due to the time difference, it will be from five to eight pm here), I am thinking tonight about November fourth of last year.

My memories of the first presidential election during which I had the right to vote are decidedly positive, and also charged with feeling.

I remember walking into the polls, fixing the familiar middle-school gym with a direct stare, aware that history was being made. I stood in line and thought, most appropriately, about showing you the movie Iron Jawed Angels, about the sacrifices that were made so that I, and not only you, could vote on that day.

Exit polling was a whole new excitement for me, and I stood in the rain and did it, to the delight of a PolySci student in the parking lot. Then I ran back to the car, raving about how exciting exit polls were, and you laughed as we drove away.

That night there were two bottles of wine, the winning bottle and the losing one, a white and a red, and we curled up tight in the already-drafty living room and held our breath as the results came in, state by state.

It was eleven pm by the time that they called Virginia blue, and I looked at you, and you looked back at me, in disbelief and the dawning realization that it had really happened. We ran out into the dark street and set off fireworks, listening to the exuberant reveling that was starting around us, enveloping the two of us in a cloud of smoke and noise. I called my mother, woke her up, screeched my excitement into the phone over a bad connection.

We left the door standing open and I didn't hear a word of any victory of concession speech, didn't see the footage of proud supporters crying and laughing at the same time.

We stood on the corner of the damp porch and held each other tightly under the eaves, and I think I cried a little bit when I said we did this, this is happening because we're here.

And then I said something else, something I hadn't intended or even known I would say, the words tumbling from me into you like little birds, half-whispered in my second language (prettier by far than the first) and you stared down at me. Say it again, you said. And I did, brazen and eyes wide open this time, unmistakably there.

You picked me up and carried me across the threshold into the house, kicking the door shut as we went. We turned off McCain's concession speech and that was the end of that.

You're going to miss inauguration, you told me, and I just smiled.

And yes, I do wish I could be home to celebrate with the rest of everyone, but most particularly with you. It will be good and it will be moving and it will be unmistakably positive to watch it here, whenever I can, bonding in our little island of Americana one third of a world away. But it won't match even a quarter of the goodness of last November.

On an unrelated note, here are the songs that I have come to miss the most:
Babylon / David Grey
When You Were Young / Oasis
So Alive / Ryan Adams
Reva Thereafter / Girlyman
Live Your Life / Rhianna feat. TI
Wonderwall / Cat Power
Under the Table and Dreaming / Dave Matthews Band

All those songs that I used to play while I was driving and sing along with, drumming my hands on the steering wheel, constantly ramping up the volume until it filled the whole world.

2009-01-10T04:17:00.001-05:00

Well, hello, you!

Here are the things you should really know:

Lyon, France is good so far. I would say that, for a girl with commitment issues and fears of traveling and an introverted nature, I'm adjusting pretty well. I've done a good job of making friends, I think. We're moving into an apartment today, but I'll still be with two friends, so that is good.

I never thought I would hear Taylor Swift over here, but I did, and I won't lie, it made me miss you very much.

Anyway, we're trying to organize, so off I go. New places, here we come.

Oh, and I discovered at dinner last night that one of the girls I am moving in with was, no joke, E and M's next door neighbor in Reeves last year. Small world, isn't it?

Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

2009-01-02T14:00:00.001-05:00

I leave for France in three days.

Pepsi is arranged for, with five different people on hand to ensure that he is cosseted, ridden, petted, fed, trimmed, and generally smushed with love.

Red Stripe and Thé will be delivered to the nest on Saturday, and my car will remain at my parents' house, hopefully to be driven occasionally.

That's the everything of value that I own; all of my sundry possessions that I can't take are staying in boxes here. Mostly books and fancy clothes, as well as school things and odds and ends that I don't need or can buy overseas.

***

I'm ready to go. As Rick said, I guess I'll find out when I get on the plane, but I just stood in a parking lot and yelled "I'll see you in France!" which pretty much sealed the deal.

And I realized that this is the beginning that is coming from the end. To be honest, this town is crushing me with thoughts and memories of you, and as much as I love home, I don't want to come back until my guilt and pain have lessened. The only thing I really want is time.

you take it on faith, you take it to the heart

2008-12-22T10:28:00.000-05:00

A solid couple of hours of organizing and then I am off to the barn. Despite the sub-30 degree temperatures, "having" to go to the barn every day to feed Doughboy, Nan's adorable retired miniature showhorse, is a delight. My personal resolve is to ride Pepsi every day until I leave for France. There is something about being a part of the barn's literal everyday life that lets you see so much more than just your horse.

I'm in love with my latest mixtape and I've circled tomorrow night in highlighter on my metaphorical calendar.

I think I'm going to purge some of the old teenage-me things from my room -- clear the bulletin board of senior year's reminders (keeping those that mean something, like my first test invite in kendo and my bryn mawr acceptance letter), organize the standing bookshelf in a way that makes sense, leave some shelves empty.

Today when I made my bed I tucked the sheets underneath in the way that we do together, and folded the duvet back to half-length. Then I slatted the blinds, looked around, and realized maybe all I need is a more peaceful place to call home, rather than a larger space for useless things.

I'm wearing a new sweater, to top it all off. A splurge, but one I look very warm and collegiate and incredibly cozy in, and one I will probably wear on the plane to Lyon. Two weeks, by the way!

will you count me in?

2008-12-04T01:18:00.000-05:00

I never know how to start these things. I can't sleep, which is the truth of why I'm here, lying on my back with my old glasses on, instead of the slightly different lying on my stomach with my eyes closed, sleeping peacefully.

The amount of work I am accomplishing is staggering, my commitment to showing up for things (classes, appointments, social promises) slightly less so. I can't believe it's already December, that month we loathe like no other. Even February, with its chilling rain and miserable shortness, doesn't approach this dreaded "holiday season."

I get halfway down the screen and realize honestly? I have nothing left to say.

Edit: I feel horribly sick and I know that it's my mind more than my body that is actually feeling this way, but that isn't making it better.

Here's hoping things get better soon.

maybe you were kidnapped, tied up, and held for ransom?

2008-11-19T13:33:00.000-05:00

No matter how quickly I rush home from work, how fast I eat, how rapidly and semi-carelessly I fulfill the immediate academic requirements of the day, I am only left with fifteen minute breaks in the day.

With my whole heart, I just want this semester to be over and done. Even though I have so many things to do before January 5th, I would gladly take the stress of doing those, rather than the drawn out, burning out, endlessly aching feeling of these classes.

Among the increasingly impossible stack of everyday things that I am running after is now taking care of the sick. I am not particularly maternal by nature but I do know how to be humbly attentive, as long as my patience holds out. Every time you drift away from me in slight delirium, and I have to leave to attend to a thousand other things, I go slightly catatonic with hurt and silence.

I have never suffered from such a profound lack of discourse as I am experiencing right now. I lack any words strong enough to penetrate the protective shell of numbness, and its subset of warm affection, down to unspeakably blank sadness around which everything else rotates.

Reading old Charlottesville City School Board papers from the desegregation process yesterday at work, I contemplated why we are weak and amnesiac. I knew people mentioned in those bulletins, and I knew that they had been involved when I was attending the very high school that was to be the result of these battle lines. But how could I have brushed that aside so lightly? Why are we constantly apathetic about the very real struggles of our parents' generation?

And why am I not as strong or as self-sacrificing as my own actual parents? I still don't understand how they unrolled their private drama and still functioned as a unit, always overshadowed by our needs, constantly at odds with their own families.

Maybe I just had less to lose, or less desire to save what I had. Or more of a self-destructive pride in just being free.

a rebel without a clue

2008-11-10T14:09:00.000-05:00

Last night was the first time I really talked, a full disclosure from beginning to end, and even while I was being held and cradled and apologized to, I still wondered if I felt anything yet.

Mostly I am just focused on getting through.
-through the hundreds of pages of reading I am behind
-through the raging cold/virus I am fighting
-through the mid-range steps of my meandering path to Lyon (update: plane tickets purchased!)
-through the massive piles of clean laundry, the lack of sleep pushing behind my eyes, the books I have to read that I can't even find
-through the clinging attachment that leads me to write French papers with you curled up in my bed, fast asleep with a stuffed pony under one arm
-through yielding, giving in, allowing myself just to be admired and stretched out and wholly decadent.

I'm skipping class to get homework done, which strongly suggests that I should go do that reading now.

the fountain of apollo at the garden of versailles

2008-11-03T09:29:00.000-05:00

Six songs for the current moment, in a specific order:

Viva La Vida // Coldplay
Forever // Chris Brown
Butterfly // Mason Jennings
Starting Now // Ingrid Michaelson
Crazy Faith // Alison Krauss
Mary Jane's Last Dance // Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers

Isn't that just about everything?

i can't spell it out for you

2008-10-20T18:41:00.000-04:00

I got the email telling me I don't find out about Lyon until Wednesday, which made me pathetically grateful because I have been pushing this decision back so hard already.

What else is there to say? I am still feeling the burnout from midterms (which went over fine, thankfully), and this constant exhaustion is nipping at my shoulders whenever I turn around. I am a class-skipper, a lazy lieabout, a girl who avoids conversations because they make my head pound, swimming with feelings and with apathy.

And how long has it been since I've felt normal, without the blood rushing to my head, without starry wind cutting against me, without the ache settling deep somewhere at the base of my spine? My fingers are going from brown to purple at the tips because the heat still isn't on here, despite the frost from the past two nights, and the familiar pulsating ache is building behind my eyes.

Coffee with Nora tonight, looking forward to that. Perhaps I will lie about, indulge, be decadent, read Emile Zola in translation (I swear that Late Victorian Fiction is ruining any moral judgment I had left, and any barriers to desire), and then head to Alderman.

Speaking of decadence, here are my current indulgences: Au Bonheur des Dames. Art chocolate. Long showers just to stay warm. Eye makeup. The Pussycat Dolls song entitled "I Don't Need a Man". Instructions.

it'll take more than just a breeze to make me fall overboard

2008-10-09T11:53:00.000-04:00

It's already October? How did the summer get away from us and fall rush in so quickly?

My Lyon application is due a week from yesterday -- how terrifying and fascinating all at once. I've been truly reticient to discuss this, mostly because I am terrified that if one person manages to talk me out of it, I won't ever be brave enough to go.

At the same time, I can't help but see the lure of stepping out of this life and these life-things and doing something radically different.

For now, I am skimping on my DMP reading and looking forward very much to this afternoon, when I will not have to worry about classes until Tuesday. Yay, fall reading days! Unfortunately, I really will be reading for most of them, since the Late Victorian Fiction midterm is the Wednesday we get back.

I am so glad I took that class. It might be my favorite this semester.

For now, I am a little bit thinking of how to begin to pursue something that I've wanted to speak out on for a long time -- the distressingly negative and repressive attitudes of our culture toward menstruation. This discussion of course brings in issues about parenting, female puberty, sexuality and sexual development, birth control, fertility, pregnancy & childbirth, and menopause, to name a few. All of these are important parts of feminist discourse, but I want to focus on the straightforward physical phenomenon of monthly bleeding and the range of attitudes surrounding it.

Here are the things I want to change: shame, secrecy, and negativity about menstruation. Unfounded fears and stereotypes about menstruating women (including the infamous diagnosis of PMS). The disdain many (most?) women feel about their cycles, and the corresponding lack of interest in alternative menstruation options.

And most importantly, I want to see a radical shift in the way that we teach our daughters (the inheritors of third wave feminism and the succeeding generation to ourselves) about the incredibly creative power of their bodies.

pour tous les matins du monde, il n'y a qu'une aube.

2008-09-12T09:00:00.000-04:00

To do this one, I won't lie, I pulled the posts I had written for my nineteenth birthday, and my eighteenth, and my seventeenth. They're sort of an odd mix.

As far as I'm concerned, the past year has been one of the richest and the best -- spending the fall chiefly concerned with my horse, declaring two degrees, spending the winter holidays with the family and Em in a (more or less) laid-back manner.

Spring, vacations, the slow-burning fuse on a best friendship that completely blindsided me. Summer, hot days, smothering nights, a surprising affinity for work. And now we're back to the balancing point of fall, looking into evenings with the Decadent Reader and weekend journeys across the state.

Since my tour-de-force brown belt test has already given me everything I could want, I look forward to a tolerable day and perhaps some joint birthday kata this evening (among other things).

And who wouldn't want to take on this song?
[[there are things that drift away
like our endless numbered days
autumn blew the quilt right off
the perfect bed she made]]

It's my birthday.

got your earrings in my pocket till i see you again

2008-09-04T16:38:00.000-04:00

I am finally settling into the give and take of things here, and am realizing that I turn twenty in eight days. How strange a thought is that?

What else is there to say, except that I miss the relative comforts and companionship of the summertime? I've made a promise, foolishly and selfishly, that the weather will break by my birthday and be incredibly, breathtakingly, a Blue Ridge fall day. Perhaps that's more hope than anything.

Things I have gleaned from my classes so far include:
-hope and doubt are two sides of the same peculairly human state
-I am violently appalled and sickened by the not-so-ancient (though more and more discredited) notion that history is a a grand, divinely ordained, *progress* toward liberty, perfection, and telos -- that there is an END to this thing that we are tearing apart.

I need to see my fellow DMP students step away from the blindness of faith, that the world is some non-accidental creation, that the "great men" of history were somehow preordained and "chosen" to grasp the reins of historical change. I am prepared to slap everyone in the face with Britain's crippled postwar economy, the unmitigated disaster of Vietnam, the Armenian genocide, the formation of terror cells in countries whose leaders do not care about the welfare of their citizens.

I just can't reconcile myself with the unbelievably arrogant idea that we are progressing -- socially, morally, economically, politically, and religiously, toward a predetermined telos. I will not be cheated out of the intense intellectual pleasures of ripping down old theories, sustained research, a true quest for understanding, an admission of the senselessness and vastness of the past. By default, I have an incredibly dim view of the future, of the times that we can't think about and the incredible disparities that we face every day.

No one's fought me on it yet. I have to admit that I have more respect and perhaps even affection for my fellow DMP'ers than of any other class thus far. The redheaded boy with the impatient quotations who will challenge me on Voltaire, the gorgeous Russian girl who speaks with conviction, the girl from Georgia whose apologetic drawl does nothing to soften the barbs of her criticism, and all the manifold others.

Oh, and art history can be boring and fascinating by turns.

Sprained ankle - healing well. Skinned knee - healing slightly less well. Test in six days, oh panic.

you should come back home, back on your own now

2008-08-30T00:07:00.000-04:00

It's quiet, here, quieter even than it was last year, I think. This new room is finally a little bit starting to feel like a home-place, coupled with a better layout and a nice roommate on the other side of the wall.

I am here, anyway, saying what I should have said last week -- that I miss little Andi, and maybe I didn't realize how much I would miss having her around at the barn until she left to go to school four hours from here. There are not a lot of opportunites to meet someone for the second time, to get another chance at a first impression and a friendship, but I am eternally glad that I had that with her these past two years. I have never had the pleasure of knowing someone so open wide, so free, so small but full of fire. This girl taught me how to make things happen, how to race horses and ride the fine line between suspended galloping and flying out of the saddle, watched me take my first bareback steps and jump my first jumps. The constant oversharer and the only other irreverant liberal, the only other teenage girl, at the barn, she showed up on cold mornings with killer hangovers and never once complained.

Above and beyond all of that, she is a superb horsewoman with a patient voice, a settling touch, and an indomitable determination. She will make a wonderful vet if that's what she goes forward with, and I can't wait for Thanksgiving break when we can reunite, sitting on the porch to clean tack or make horseshoe dreamcatchers and talk about the fall.

This was supposed to be more detached, better formed and quieter, less elaborated upon.

School is going as well as can be expected. I am mildly fond of each of my classes in a different way. In each there is someone fascinating to compell my attention (a stunning French girl, a cheerful boy with red hair, a professor who seems much too young, a girl who keeps reappearing in my courses), so that is something good.

Tomorrow I am spending most of my day at the barn, purely to avoid the overzealousness of football fans and such.

There are so many decisions I am avoiding, it should be criminal.

tried and true, faded, in the twilight

2008-08-22T15:28:00.000-04:00

I've come back home once more, and all of a sudden it's August. It's not just August, it's late August, the end of midsummer falling hard with a huge orange moon in the sky every night.

School starts in four days (five, for me, the one who perpetually has Tuesdays off). I am once again migratory, getting ready to reset my flawless internal global positioning system to Brown, resizing all my distances, resetting every frame.

More specifically, I am enjoying the perfection of this weather, so delicately balanced that the slightest breeze would make me shiver or the lightest touch would be too warm. It's absolutely gorgeous as summer turns into fall. Fall!

I don't really know how to write full paragraphs any more; everything is too exciting and yet I also have to go fill in metadata fields.

Oh, and I got invited to test.

[but I was a young James Dean, with a way with the ladies...]

all your waves and all your thunder got me a haze running for cover

2008-07-17T22:32:00.000-04:00

Things are disjointed. I'm moving in a forward direction down the winding path to a Myo Sim Karate first dan black belt, which is terrifying and exciting at the same time. More about that as the new semester approaches and this year's test (finally) takes place.

I wrote a very short poem about the glorious full moon tonight, getting down and dirty with pen and paper for the first time in way too long. I have been on the cusp of bringing up something large, looming, soft and silent, something I foolishly assumed had gone to ground inside of me.

On the same subject, I consciously lied to you by omission for the first time last weekend, and it's been weighing low and heavy on me for the past few days. I told you the story about home, about my transience and the wrapped black milk carton that travels, cradled in my protective arms as I tack back and forth across this sprawling town, never getting unpacked, smelling like nag champa and oak. I told you each of these things in turn, using the low tones of my voice and the sprawl of my arms to emphasize their importance, but crucially, consciously and painfully, I neglected to explain what it is and why.

Needless cruelty, shortshifting covered over by a mysterious smile and a distracting punching combination.

On another note, apparently I invite pounding because I have "a good frame for it." Shockingly, probably for the first time I *reacted* to an instructor reinforcing this statement (effectively, playfully punching me in the sternum) by pulling both fists back and into a short range double solar plexus punch. It is the unfairly agressive behavior I generally only unleash on B., and I swear you could have knocked the aforementioned instructor over with a feather.

But not in a bad way.

reading: Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (and other observations) // Al Franken
listening to: Sweet Mistakes // Ellis Paul

you've got a lot to learn about possibilities

2008-07-03T11:18:00.000-04:00

Running through the gamut of bookmarked blogs on my browser last night, I suddenly realized that Blogger had logged me out since I hadn't updated in at least a month. After a ten-minute struggle to remember my password, I return to Lesbia today in an effort to send some kind of update about how things are right now.

In the boring specificity of the day to day, I'm at work right now, constantly starting and stopping the medium-sized flat item scanner, running off hundreds of pages of rather boring 19th century sheet music. My iPod sits beside the monitor with a couple of hairties wrapped around it -- extras, since the one holding my long hair back is on its last threads. I'm avoiding the solitary world of playlists because I want to keep having intermittent conversations with the girl at the other Digibook. She is very polite and has a nice laugh.

I am well-worked and tired, my body slightly stressed after hours of hiking yesterday, but not sore like a difficult class or a long run might have left me. The tension in my neck is left over from Tuesday night falls, a little bit of whiplash that I still can't prevent. My right palm is scraped a bit and my fingers are cracking, and I desperately need a haircut that I can't afford.

Having tomorrow off for the holiday is a nice break from my usual Friday routine. I pretty much don't know what to do with myself without workout, but E. and I will be at my parents' house for dinner in the evening, which I expect will be nice. By "nice" I mean "bearable due to the presence of free food and drinky drink."

Hiking yesterday was gorgeous and relaxing and just generally wonderful, by the by. I stood too long on the edge of Blue Hole, watching B. splash around in the freezing water, but eventually I got over myself and jumped. It was every bit as cold as I had imagined, a cold that ended with both of us screaming and flailing for awhile, but eventually going numb and climbing out to bemoan our usual state of unpreparedness. Towels will be involved in similar adventures in the future.

Plans are being formulated for the annual Rhode Island trip (or exodus, as it were). I am extremely glad that E. has consented to come with for the second year in a row -- if the first year with my strange extended family didn't scare her off, then pretty much nothing could. It should be a pretty good time, at least. Two cushy weeks of bayside living isn't really a struggle.

In much more general terms, I'm looking forward to the fall semester already, though I'd like to find a class to replace my filler of "Late Victorian Fiction." Doesn't exactly sound riveting. I'm not nervous about third year -- I'm quite content to have a major and a plan, even if it's only for the next two years and doesn't mean much outside the department. I'm excited to have more days per week to ride, since I think I'm on the verge of starting to do a little bit of showing just for fun, but I'm also apprehensive because little Andi wants me to take over for her as a lesson instructor. I'm not sure I have the patience, the time, or the skill -- but I could sure use the extra cash. Big Andi seems to be in favor of this (but who really knows what she thinks? I can never tell). Sometimes I think she forgets how little time I've really been riding.

As for Myo Sim, what will be will be, and I'm not going to fight it. B. and I talk a lot about training, about what will happen to the school in the future, and about how things were (or in my case, how I've heard they were) way back in the earlier days of the school. I try not to think too much or too far ahead in classes, just practicing, just doing whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing and thoroughly enjoying it. I am worried about possibly leaving in the spring and being declared unready to test next summer/fall, but really, my own readiness is something that has to come on its own. I want to feel it, and know that it's there, before I have to show it to the world (our small, insular, meaningful microcosm of a world, that is).

That was entirely too many words for not saying much at all, but since conversation is generally lacking and reflection even more so, there you have it.

My hand hurts.

On the landing in the summer

2008-06-02T21:57:00.000-04:00

Perhaps two or three weeks ago, I recalled a piece someone I once knew had written on the subject of kneeling iai seven, part a. In recalling said piece, I reflected on an old instruction from when I was training for ... green belt? brown belt? Awhile ago. Anyway, the advice was about picturing someone you cared a lot about kneeling before you, mid-seppuku (ritual suicide), waiting for you to sever their neck and hasten an already painful death.

For me it was always K., a constant act of vigilance and faith at the beginning of class, an ordinary moment made extraordinary simply by the fact that then, and only then, would I allow myself to see her before me. I carried that isolated feeling, the power of being her imaginary second, well past the days when we actually had to spend time together (slow, slow torture), past graduating from high school, past turning eighteen and the first half of college.

And then, one day, the girl under my sword changed into someone else from the past, lovely darkblonde hair turning deep brown, clear blue eyes turning greener. It threw me to see another there, welling up from my subconscious, making me feel strange and slightly sick after the kiai. But I took it, you know, because as long as the iai looks halfway to respectable, what does it matter what soft neck I need to pretend is under the katana?

Two nights ago I dreamed that K. broke into my room in Brown to find me eating a late dinner after a Thursday class. She tossed her long hair back, haughty, proud, and demanded why she wasn't in my kneeling seven anymore. I told her that there were so many other lost connections in my life by now that it was only natural. She slapped me once, right cheek and then left cheek, and told me not to give up.

It reminded me of how, right in the beginning when I was so young and raw and hurting, I would dream before the opening of class. I imagined testing for my first degree black belt (as I'm sure we've all daydreamed about), imagined righteously deep stances and beautiful partner work. In the midst of all of this, I imagined those two smooth glass doors opening, my pupils dilating at the sight of her, coiled tense and beautiful, with the deepest blue eyes fixed on me. A pointless dream, that a near-stranger would travel across the country simply to watch a black belt test in her hometown, but one that unashamedly motivated me.

So when we did kneeling seven tonight, and our instructor reminded us that it is appropriate to gaze slightly downwards, I was projecting the same pale white skin below me. In exchange I got the same feeling of intensity as we swept downwards as one, all slicing cleanly and honorably through the necks of people who would probably be horrified to know their role, however hypothetical.

I like to think you might shiver, even now, knowing this part of my experience is sunk so deeply in you.

one magnet to another

2008-05-24T22:46:00.000-04:00

What were you doing 10 years ago?
In the spring of 1998, I was looking forward to turning ten and being ... in the double digits? In fifth grade? To be honest, I don't remember a whole lot before about twelve.
That was the summer we went to Helsinki, Finland and Stockholm, Sweeden -- a trip whose many marvels I have not forgotten.

Name five things on today's "to do" list.
-clean kitchen / bathroom
-grocery shop
-buy E. some birthday presents
-give my horse some kisses and a good workout
-start a new mix cd

If I were a billionaire ...
I would buy a beautiful piece of land just outside Albermarle and rescue horses; and I would write on the side.

Name three bad habits you have.
Getting stressed about little things that don't really matter, general perfectionism, and self-depricating comments.

List five places you've lived.
Ivy, Virginia (1988-2000)
Charlottesville, Virgina -- in Greenbriar (2000-2006), on-grounds (twice- 2006-2007 and 2007-2008 school years), on Fontaine Avenue (summer 2007), and on JPA (summer 2008).

Name five jobs you've held.
Full-time Student
Unpaid Horse Trainer / Groom
Office Assistant (read: paper bitch)
FCC Grill Busser / Host (read: kitchen bitch)
RMDS Transformative Digitizer (read: digital bitch)

there's a low moon caught in your tangles

2008-05-10T09:06:00.000-04:00

No, I haven't quite slipped off the face of the planet yet. Things have been too wild, too crazy, too busy recently, with finals dragging on forever and the messy process of two people moving twice.

That is me telling you that the past couple weeks have been stressful in all kinds of ways -- I have been frustrated, and angry, and sad (and I'm sure I've inspired similar feelings in other people as well). You have my apologies for not being patient and relaxed, but understand that I can't help it. Packing up and moving is something that I deal with as a undergraduate and will no doubt deal with for awhile thereafter, but the sight of everything I own in cardboard boxes and laundry bags makes me anxious (no matter how organized it is!). For me, the ultimate comfort is being in a space surrounded by my posessions -- whether that's the sweatshirt I stole from L. six years ago, my sword bag standing in the corner waiting for the next class, or the happy birthday note scribbed on the back of an envelope from Inga, to which I've attached sticky notes from E. and B.

It's been stressful, but I'm glad that the semester has finished up and I'm ready to start the summertime. We're moving this evening into the fabled House of Dimes (which makes my decidedly non-dramatic self slightly nervous), and my last academic assignment is due by Monday at noon (just a late paper revision). Then I have three more days and work starts Thursday morning.

I'm a little bit looking forward to spending full days in Harrison / Small -- it's going to be more interesting and more active, particularly with other people like C. there to keep me company. I'll miss the graduated fourth years, but not their drama and their annoying moments. I mean, sure, it still means being locked in a windowless underground dungeon-chamber for most of the day, but I think it will be more than just okay.

On tap for today is a little bit of last-minute packing, calling Rick (and going to see the a/c unit?), PONIES (hopefully with little Andi), lots of showering, food food food, and moving house.

A bientot.

reading: email inbox
listening to: the way i am // ingrid michaelson

I was nineteen, calling

2008-05-01T17:45:00.000-04:00

Another semester is racing toward its finale, and I am nothing if not a sickening mix of stressed and excited.

I refuse to make any predictions about the summertime, because I don't want to be disappointed. I think that I will be happy, and it will be enough. And really, everything else like work and traveling and whatever is uninvolved and only of mild importance.

My body bends. I'm having trouble typing since this is what I've been doing for the last five (six?) hours.

I have entry upon entry plotted out in my head, and yet when I grab these moments in both hands, I can't remember what I wanted to say.

Here is the next week--

Friday: paper due at 5. workout???
Saturday: errands in town -> British History final, 2-5 -> drive to Williamsburg, return with E.
Sunday: class? -> whatever
Monday: edit French papers, prep for Enlt review session -> class
Tuesday: Enlt review session, 12noon (?) -> sell textbooks back -> class
Wednesday: turn in two French papers -> move out of dorms
Thursday: Enlt final, 2-5pm -> class
Friday (workout) or Saturday -> move into Sophi's room

I'm just going to go now.

listening to : Tegan and Sara
reading : feministing.com

i could speak italian

2008-04-28T00:20:00.001-04:00

I can now change the oil in my car (and, presumably, in other cars as well).

Parkour = something I want to play with more.

I also am in posession of a loaner pair of drumsticks, and will henceforth proceed to drum loudly on all available surfaces.

Have I mentioned how awesome life really is?

listening to : kanye
reading : feministing.com

and in this place we stagnate

2008-04-26T16:18:00.000-04:00

It figures that, just as I start to get twitchy and feel like just soaking up the afternoon sunshine isn't enough, a huge peal of thunder cracks overhead. I really want it to pour, and it seemed like it would earlier, but now I'm not sure.

Lazy afternoon / evening, you know? School is so close to over. I wish I could move before next week.

There are things I need and things I want, but unfortunately, times are tight and free cash is in short supply. Recession is coming (recession is here?) and I am lucky that I am secure in all the big things, and that I have a job.

That being said, there is no question that my horse's expenses come before my own. If the money is optional, it's going for him. After that, it's any equipment I need for MS (thankfully, those expenses are rarer), and then car / gas stuff, and then me.

I'm seriously considering working 40 hours / week over the summer, like an actual working lady. It would suck not to get a third day off, but I'm thinking it might be necessary.

I'm going to take a shower, try and get some work done, and perhaps go running later. It's getting dark outside the window and I want so badly to be back in the morning, to let that lightness and warmth and closeness carry on.

reading: nothing
listening to: st. peter's bones // girlyman

I can dim the lights and sing you songs full of sad things

2008-04-23T01:44:00.000-04:00

Parce que l’ennui de Jérôme et Sylvie se tourne sur le matérialisme, il est à la fois un symbole et un symptôme d’un plus grand mal dans la société contemporaine. Selon Perec, ce besoin de se soutenir avec les choses est un problème parce que les choses matérielles ne peuvent pas provider le bonheur concrète.
[translates as]
Because the "ennui" from which Jérôme and Sylvie suffer turns upon the axis of materialism, it is at once a symbol and a symptom of a greater evil in their societal experience. In Perec's opinion, this need to underlay/support oneself with mere things is a problem, because material things can never provide a solid happiness.

That's the paragraph I'm working on right now. We're at the bottom of page three (out of four) THANK GOD. This paper, like so many French papers before it and oh so oh so many to come, is making me want to drown myself in the shower. I don't know why I can handle papers in English with such finesse and French papers drive me up the fucking wall, but that's the way it is.

On the bright side, I'm only a paragraph and a half away from calling it a night (about another half hour), and J. made me a squid! I love it. My reward for finishing this paper of ennui/death, aside from the excellent reward of collapsing into sleep, will be to name the squid and to title the blank CD that B. is going to fill for me.

I've got a few ideas about both but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

listening to: only the good die young // billy joel
reading: redaction 2 -- l'ennui comparitif selon Zola (La Curee) et Perec (Les Choses)

c'est quoi, la vanille?

2008-04-20T10:15:00.000-04:00

I was fully intent on spending this morning asleep, sprawled out warm on my stomach with a stuffed pony tucked under my arm, yet another delightful weekend morning. The weather's finally turning warm and it's raining a little, making this the perfect time to brush aside all the things I should be doing and lounge under the window.

Failing that, I was going to wake up, be good, go to class and then come home to get some workthings done. Or, since the whiplash is still fierce enough to keep my head still, maybe just skip right to the French homework and short seminar paper and then skip out for the afternoon.

Instead I am lying in bed, blissed out on expensive chocolate, diet coke straight from the bottle, watery sunshine filtering down through the blinds. I was vaguely going to write in tribute to C., to make a weird curved line between the way that her sister once called me "the tautness I hold myself in" and how her forays into photographing and being photographed are part of a sense of self that I will never have.

That's all for this morning. I'm up and awake and on the move; I can't ever be unconditionally attracted or unconditionally blissed.

didn't we almost have it all?

2008-04-17T22:37:00.000-04:00

...is the title of the Grey's Anatomy episode with the Ingrid Michaelson song "Keep Breathing," the intro to my current moodstate. I was going to have an involved / mildly pretentious post about how fucking cool that song is, but unfortunately the lyrics are fighting for top shelf in my brain with my intense hatred of Shakespeare right now.

I mean, it's not that I hate Shakespeare on principle or even in actuality, but seriously, this paper? It's making me realize what absolute hell being an English major really would be. Seriously. "Let your paper grow organically." "Go with the flow." What does that even mean? I need organization, and facts, and cross-references, and backdating, and total precedent for my claims. Not Elizabethian English. It's a tad pathetic that I fought valiently through the first six pages and I'm taking three times longer than I should to write the last one.

/kvetch-fest. Paper's due at noon tomorrow, either I'll hate myself while I'm turning it in or I'll just be sleepwalking.

Right, Ingrid Michaelson. While it took me awhile to warm up to the song "The Hat," it sort of infiltrated my subconscious until I was sitting in class and the whole "I should tell you that you were my first love" refrain started to play in my head. But she's got this cool vocal thing where what looks like one line on print gets trilled and stretched and carried out to two or three, so it's kind of a slow-moving song in some respects. "The Hat" is cute and sweet and fun to dance to, but nothing mindblowing.

"Keep Breathing," though? Blew my mind when I heard it first (Grey's), and I thought a little of that was probably because it's the close of season ... 3? When Cristina leaves Burke at the altar because fuckall, she is too much of a badass lady to get married, and then Burke leaves Seattle without telling her. And she starts hyperventilating in her apartment and Meredith has to cut the wedding dress off of her.

The song stands well alone, still. It sort of builds through verses, and then the last half is one long rolling build of "all that I know is I'm breathing / all we can do is keep breathing..." but with a little half-breath hesitation before the end of each line. She a capella's it for a while and then when the percussion comes in the whole song sort of peaks, which is so cool.

What I think is really interesting here is the simplicity. All we can do is keep breathing now? I mean, who hasn't felt that way entirely too many times? Physically -- running, pounding the pavement, gasping for air, all you can do is try to breathe. Have you ever been punched square on in the solar plexus? All you can do is sort of fall over and agonizingly wish that you were breathing. Moving from the physical into the more emotional sense -- jumping horses, adrenaline that is half fierce terror and half fiercer joy, a static awareness of how loud your breathing is.

Other things. The way that we breathe in different situations; breathing in the anticipation or in the wake of pleasure, or of pain. Listening to someone else breathe when you lay your head against their chest. And of course, the way it was used originally -- the way that when depression crests inside you, the automated function of breathing is lit'rally too much effort for you to expend. That's when people have to cut you out of dresses.

That was entirely too much discussion about one song, but I thought it was applicable.

Tomorrow, tomorrow, I will be done with this hateful paper and this staying-inside nonsense. I will go to class, turn in my paper, and if weather permits, lie down in the soft grass and the softer sunshine and watch the world spin by.

reading: ENLT final paper
listening to : Keep Breathing // Ingrid Michaelson

you can't let the evil pink robots win

2008-04-11T09:35:00.000-04:00

I am annoyed that I failed to realize class was cancelled this morning until about 5 minutes before I had to leave. By which point, of course, I was up, showered, dressed, and on my way out the door.

Sigh. I sent off the paper that's due by noon, so that's good. Now I just have to:
write my weekly seminar paper
write my final seminar paper (AUGH. and do all the reading for it)
write my exposition de style en francais (which reminds me, I need a cool place in the 'ville to write about)
go to the Hearing Israel : 60 Years of Music and Culture conference at Darden

++ all my usual reading work. Go me!

But, today I am feeling cute, and my super cute girlfriend is coming to the ville! Yay for that. I'm also due for a free coffee at the bookstore (coffee cart loyalty cards, represent) and I think I might just skip out on some of that work for the moment and go shopping for new jeans, since my old ones ripped yesterday. What will I ride in now? And more importantly, what will I wear?

things I need:
sunglasses (aviator style? will I be mocked for this?)
new jeans x2
summer clothes (blech)
a summer work schedule
keys from sophi x2
new stirrup irons + leathers for Jessica
grocery store things (lists never work for me there)

things I have:
halfchaps (brown, size small, up for grabs)
tons + tons of new music
a pony!

I'm going to rethink this whole jeans thing today; it's supposedly super warm. Ah, what a glorious lack of productvity today.

will this make our lives much better?

2008-04-08T14:15:00.000-04:00

As you've probably heard by now, I'm into the history DMP program. I have never been more proud of my academic work.

Tempering this intense happiness is the realization that it's your birthday and yet, I still don't know where you might be. You're twenty today, starting a whole new decade of yourself, and all I can tell you is that I'm thinking of you. You would laugh, perhaps too forced and too hard, and I could finally give you these letters that I have poured out for you.

So; happy birthday, Netti -- I am still here where everything began, honestly believing that you're happy and that you might not be too disappointed in me.

reading : french literature syllabus
listening to : azure ray

she's well-acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand

2008-04-07T22:34:00.001-04:00

I lit'rally do not have time to write right now. That's literally without the middle syllable, that's the way I say it, and yes I know how pretentious that is. I like it that way.

My head hurts and I am absolutely bursting at the seams with literary-ness, the need to express, the raw desire and willingness to write. I feel like my hands are trying to run away from me. But currently it's not happening, because I'm too busy getting frantic about things for school (why why why haven't I heard about the DMP yet? where is my ENLT paper topic? exams what?) and procrastinating and all of a sudden I'm waist-deep in paperwork.

We found somewhere to live. I'm so excited about the fireplace in the hallway, spending summer nights out on the roof, a house full of queer kids.

I've got to stop here because I have real work to do. I'm just not sure what that might be.

listening to : kate nash
reading : my exam calendar (oh god oh god)

oh it feels good to be free

2008-04-06T14:29:00.000-04:00

I haven't stayed up all night in such a long time. I'm feeling the kickback from that now, having already spent an hour feeling sick to my stomach and swapping breakfast for coffee so I could stay awake. This was after I passed out for a few hours, ironically wrapped in blankets on the couch.

Back on grounds, comfortably ensconed in my own room with the quiet rain tapping outside and a couple short paper assignments waiting for me. I know they're due soon but I just can't bring myself to start yet. I'm not worried - everything gets done in its own time, particularly near the end of the semester. And the longer paper is for my favorite course.

I just wolfed down a bagel and I'm not totally sure why my head is still a little dizzy. I think I need longer for the food to hit my system, and then I'll be fine (right?). But it's fine -- I have time, plenty of time, nothing in the world that I need to do.

Hey, it's 2:34. Friend time = perhaps not totally expected (friend time does not usually include watching a sunrise together) but totally worth every minute. I am cultivating more and more respect for the rarity of the way I can rest my head on your shoulder and tell you how much I adore my girlfriend, without the slightest strangeness or expectation. I am learning to hold room for friends in my life without taking myself away.

I was floating on caffeine and happiness when I came back this afternoon. Things I am grateful for:
-the way the tunnels smell when it rains (half disgusting and half like home)
-how i am both sad and happy when i listen to that doria roberts song (sad because it first belonged to K. and R. and a feeling that is in the past, and happy because i get to sing it with you, ladyfriend)
-coffee

listening to : Mothers, Sisters, Daughters, and Wives // Voxtrot
reading : La Vie Devant Soi // Romain Gary

your wingtips scorched by glory

2008-04-05T01:24:00.000-04:00

It's been a hectic and heavy few days. I went to Take Back the Night on Thursday, the annual rally / vigil held on many college campuses to raise awareness about sexual assult and its long-term effects on peoples' lives.

It was good, but sad and hard, especially the vigil. I appreciated being with friends, radical feminist friends who accepted that I don't particularly go in for cathartic public crying, but that I still felt incredibly touched and saddened.

The hardest was listening to the testimonials where, even though the person speaking was hidden from the audience's view, I could identify the voice because I knew the speaker. A couple I expected or knew about previously, and one was a surprise. It haunts me now, your disembodied voice floating toward us, my flashback recognition, the callous way that we accepted your post-traumatic stress syndrome behavior as an integral part of you, not something in reaction to external stress.

I am shamed that I was not a better, friendlier person when I lived in close quarters with you. And I'm appalled that people all around me have stories like yours.

I'm looking forward to a little escapism this weekend, and a long bath at home. I have new music!

reading: the new york times online
listening to : tears dry on their own // amy winehouse

we'll become silhouettes when our bodies finally go

2008-04-01T16:41:00.000-04:00

I grow increasingly concerned about my weight. Actually, more the distribution of weight across my frame and how that affects what I do. I've been sitting on my butt far too much since last fall (and counting riding as "exercise," which is particularly is not) and since I won't eat dining hall food often but I'm low on money, my eating habits have become unscrupulous and ridiculous.

I'm going to make a point here: I don't agree that women should feel compelled to reach a "magic" size or weight just to uphold the standards of the patriarchy. That won't get anyone a partner / job / real respect in life / anything that actually matters. Be your size and raise your standards, ladies.

I still reserve the right to determine my own size, though. I don't think that's an unreasonable demand for a girl who is an athlete, a young student, and a patriarchy-blamer. And if I don't see myself reflecting my personal size standard, I reserve the right to push myself toward that in a health-positive way. Life's too short (and we're too capable) to be unhappy.

That sounds fancy, and nice, but the translation from idea to action is always slightly difficult. Maybe I'll go running (with my new headphones!) and think about that.

reading: les choses // georges calec
listening to : keep it loose, keep it tight // amos lee

a more perfect fall

2008-03-31T18:23:00.000-04:00

Firefox quit on me after a huge fight with a flashplayer (okay, I admit it, trying to watch copyrighted Disney movies online was probably a dumb thing to do -- but they weren't on youtube anymore!). I'm using Safari now, which is a pain in the ass, but since I've spent the afternoon working with it it seems to have improved somewhat.

Sadface. I miss all my firefoxy options.

That being said, today I didn't have to go to work -- way to win! Apparently there are not enough full time staff to hang out with us due to acute sickness. Also, one of the girls who shares my bathroom has shingles (gross). So glad I've had chicken pox before.

Other than that, I went running, walked to barracks and back (exercise and food all in one!), and did most of my homework. I have class in half an hour ... gross. All I want to do is lie in bed. I was so productive this morning and now I just feel exhausted. Pathetique. I wish I were going to kendo tonight.

I want to go hear the first minister of Scotland speak tomorrow, but it's during my 2pm so I don't know. I don't really do the reading for the class as it is ... I feel like I should be there.

/ motivation. I'm so looking forward to time off from classes ... argh. I wish I could find out about the DMP sooner.

I guess I'll go shop online for horse stuff I can't afford.

somewhere in a woman's room there is always something, an object, a detail, that is her wholly and unapologetically

2008-03-27T21:43:00.000-04:00

Eating and packing tonight, class at 9 am tomorrow, and leaving for Williamsburg right after that. I'll be back Sunday evening, I'm thinking.

Hopefully my poor horse won't be too lonely, and my karate and kendo friends will suffer through the slightly less entertaining atmosphere in the dojo and at the dinner table. It's not that I don't love you all dearly.

But right now, I'm all collapsey of tired.

And to answer the question you are thinking, no, I haven't decided what my object is yet. In looking around I realize I am disgustingly unattached to about 90% of the objects in my room. What I love is the glass - two round white wine classes, half-circle teacups, a spherical pom bottle, my elegant midsize French press. In fact, now that I look around, practically everything else seems to fall aside and I love these delicate, widelipped, rounded, thoroughly ungraceful things. One in particular is saying hello to me; I do believe I will keep it to myself tonight.

listening to: Gilmore Girls, season 7 finale
reading: French Word a Day // Kristin Espinasse

when we sway i go weak

2008-03-24T16:39:00.000-04:00

So, most of the time I'm just a silly college girl, but sometimes I'm seriously cool.

Like: my adviser is irritated with me because I have the status of a second-semester third year ... yes, you read right, that's a year AHEAD. I'm barred from taking any more history classes next semester because if I do, the College will force me to graduate at the end of my third year.

I mean, if I actually *wanted* to graduate a full year early, I'd need to take about seven classes both semesters. I ... don't really feel the need to do that (as sexy as the thought of graduating university at twenty is). What would I do with myself? Become a vagrant for an extra year? But I'm damnably close, apparently.

That being said, of course I'm talking about applying to the history honors program and declaring a second (French) major. But! great news. I'm going to do my best to only take 12 credits (4 classes; the minimum for a full-time undergrad) from here on out. No more of this senseless 15+ credit nonsense! No more staying up until 1 am working when I have class at 8 am the next day! No more trying to read three books at the same time!

Well, probably still *some*, but a hella lot less.

What does this mean for me, realistically? Making every single karate / kendo class without any prior commitments to get in the way. Riding ... at LEAST four days a week, probably five. I might try to groom for someone, a couple days a week? And give lessons. Of course, if I actually get into the DMP, it won't be so exciting as all that. But I should still be able to take a lighter course load.

Speaking of riding (as I so often do), I cantered Pepsi bareback for the first time yesterday. I was terrified in the half-second it took him to transition, even though my seat is technically perfect and my legs are strong. I actually closed my eyes (about as safe as closing your eyes while driving a car) and held my breath because I was *so sure* I was going to hit the ground. When I didn't fall, I opened my eyes and we were on the other side of the ring! I could feel his haunches pushing behind me, sliding me back and forth along his spine, my hips opening like a pair of french doors, but my lower legs miraculously still and quiet. I held onto his mane with one hand, taking both reins in the other, and pressed my knees into the sides of his shoulders. And I laughed as we flew past the gate, my beautiful little horse charging down the ring track and me on his back, white-knuckling the reins and laughing like an idiot. That's where little Andi found us, staggering down to a walk that almost threw me with its suddenness.

Although it might sound like a little thing, it's not. It was the most amazing feeling -- like learning to ride all over again, like falling in love, like being born or giving birth to something amazing that's entirely yours. It's like ... diving from ten meters, feeling your body arch and twist in the air and being terrified that you're about to be in so much pain, but instead you pierce the water at the perfect angle and for a moment you're one and the same. It's a climactic moment, but it's also the beginning of an entirely new thing.

In this case, that thing is riding bareback and similar unofficial equitation arts. There's always been a wall between me and the people at the barn who ride bareback, and now that's gone. Now I have the confidence to get on my horse (mine! squee!) and practice all of these things, to fall off but also to get back on, every time, until one of us gives out or I discover something new.

i cannot break this situation

2008-03-23T21:22:00.000-04:00

I am apparently incapable of having one solidly good weekend.

Procrastination takes over again. I know I *should* care about the next three mini-chapters of Les Choses but I'm pretty sure that they'll be as boring as the first two. And that whole "second year seminar" thing? I've skimmed Equiano and Carretta's notes on the biography; I couldn't care less about the forum discussions that come later. My paper is due ... three and a half hours ago. I guess I'll submit it tomorrow afternoon? After I've written it, I mean. Pretty good, for a class that has no structure.

Don't even get me started on all the British & Jewish American history that I've earmarked as 1) unessential and 2) boring. I'll probably never catch up on all of that. Moreover, it probably won't matter at all.

Adviser meeting tomorrow afternoon, DMP meeting Tuesday morning, application due Wednesday by four. Riding with little Andi Wednesday afternoon. Jewish History paper and topic statement for English final paper due Thursday. Leaving for Williamsburg on Friday, coming back Sunday. One whole week of life pushed into three sentences.

My lips are chapped and burning, my stomach hurts and I'm hungry, I seem to be falling asleep and the edge of my laptop is digging into my arm.

This all seems ridiculous. I'm going for a walk, to think, to get food, to get away from this fucking miserable evening.

the critical mass

2008-03-22T18:21:00.001-04:00

Good days. Not much sleep, but full days with good conversation and great riding.

I'll fill you in once it's settled down again. Right now I'm putting away laundry / doing chores, and then I'm going to dredge up some half-decent clothes and head downtown for Athens Boys Choir (free!).

reading: DMP application (againnn)
listening to: Friends (in the background)

sooner or later it comes down to fate

2008-03-19T21:36:00.000-04:00

I've thought of a thousand things to say, recently, but haven't actually said any of them. I guess the desire is more momentary than anything else.

Today was fine, I suppose. Nothing special. We're looking for a summer sublet -- I hate how anonymous and random it seems -- living with strangers, really not my thing. I haven't found anything great yet but my mom has a contact who owns a bunch of rentals in the area so maybe that will rustle up something. Sigh.

I'm a little tired of arguing about whether Renee Nare (of La Vagabonde, a Colette novel) is feminist in her decisions. She's a woman alone, and she's had a shitty painter husband (Antoine Taillandy), and if she wants to reinforce her own misery by not marrying Maxime at the end of the novel, so be it. It's not that being alone defines a woman as feminist or antifeminist, it's that she establishes her ability to choose the lifestyle that she thinks is best. Even if it sort of sucks. Such is French romance.

Moving on -- I went shopping to forget the stress of housing, and then I went running to forget the stress of shopping. I don't know what to say about that. Not to be pessimistic, but I'm awkwardly in between clothing sizes and I don't appreciate it. If I'm not going to fit into my riding jeans from last summer, I need to establish that now so I can go buy ones that fit -- but the next size is too big, and I know it will be worse once they wear in and stretch out. Or, I need to get my butt in gear and fit back into those jeans. That might be better, since I really can't afford a whole new riding wardrobe. Sigh.

That was remarkably deadpan of me. Aren't you proud?

come on Virginia, show me a sign
send up a signal, i'll throw you a line
the stained glass curtain you're hiding behind
never lets in the sun
i tell you only the good die young

reading: DMP application (arrrgh)
listening to: name // the goo goo dolls

just because they're decorative doesn't mean they're not sharp

2008-03-16T22:42:00.000-04:00

Feeling wonderfully caffeine - crash at the moment.

I finished studying for the British History midterm (which, incidentally, I'm going to beat into submission rather handily). So that's pretty nice. I also got an email from my French professor, telling me that I got an A on my presentation. Good stuff.

Concerns *do* include the fact that I have 200 pages to read and a response to write for tomorrow afternoon, and a two-hour movie to watch in less than two hours. Interesting, ja?

My hair is finally long enough to twist into a figure-eight, which is the first step to the day when I say "this is too long, time to cut it off again." That will be -- the end of the summer, I think. August? September?

God, I'll be turning twenty in the fall. I don't feel like I've come through two whole decades of life. Maybe I'll do a year-by-year recap later on.

I studied in the MacGregor room today, which *always* makes me feel better about school. It's just such a nice place to work -- dim chandeliers accompanied by task lighting, wide tables that you can really spread your books across, poofy armchairs, and mahogany floor-to-ceiling bookcases. I mostly go there to hibernate and study for midterm / finals that are in extensive essay form, so for me I associate the place with Buddhism exams, Environmental History research papers, Western Civ reading response tests, and now British History midterms.

I don't know what else to say. I'm so invested in riding right now. Little Andi mentioned that someone she knows is looking for extra people to come up to Culpeper and help their horses learn how to trail ride at all four gaits (walk, trot, canter, and gallop -- slow, jogging, running, and sprinting, for you non-horse people) over the summer. I told her I'd love to do it, I mean, provided the horses aren't insane. I told her to ask around about a grooming job for me.

We took Pepsi and Coco out for a gallop across the boys' field today. My horse can *move*. Speaking of which. News of the ownership transfer (from Jessica to me) has started to spread around the barn, and I really wasn't expecting the reactions I've been getting. I mean, a polite congratulations is one thing, but multiple hugs? Impromptu equitation and tack etiquette lessons? I always get a little embarassed when people at the barn tell me how talented, devoted, impressive, etc. I am. I mean, it's nice to be among people who appreciate your passions, but I don't ride because I feel like an immensely talented person who deigns to get on her horse once in awhile. I would rather that people compliment Pepsi, because he's such an accomplished little horse and he's tolerated so much crazy, silly experimentation from me. I ride because he lets me, and because I can.

aaaanyway. Moving on mildly. It's too hot in my room (as always) and I am getting all yawny and not-working. I think it's time to lie down and plan how I'll get a plurality of things done tomorrow.

a spring saturday

2008-03-15T16:00:00.000-04:00

Hmm, good things this weekend. I was at the barn for seven hours today (a record?).

First Pepsi got his feet trimmed, then I helped with maneuvering the baby (Lucky Charm) and his parents for their trimmings. Then I rode for an hour while the next four horses were trimmed. Tommy and I got Fancy into the washrack and trimmed her front feet, and then I had a short lesson with Jan and Donna. Then we went on a trail ride, along with Jay and Andi's lesson person (Brianna). That was crazy and fun -- Andi and I rode double on Pepsi for the hills and stream crossings.

Riding double is a personal favorite of mine. You actually need to be a pretty good rider to stay on in the back, because the rocking motion is so much stronger on the haunches. But the front rider needs to do all the normal control things (legs on, hands guiding on the reins) and tell the horse not to worry about the extra weight. I was surprised that Pepsi took it so well, when I gave Andi a leg up and she hopped right across the width of his back, and also when she slid off his haunches later.

I'm glad he can handle that, though. It's silly and warm and comfortable and I love it.

After that, I bought my first piece of tack -- a bridle (with reins and bit). It's beautiful double-stitched dark leather, with a padded noseband and light wrappings on the reins. It's not the fanciest thing, but it's the best piece of tack in the whole world to me.

sugar spell it out like oh, oh

2008-03-12T21:54:00.000-04:00

This semester has less and less push behind it. I'm looking forward to maybe taking the minimum number of credits next semester ... that would be such an improvement. Sometimes I can't wait to get out of here.

Today, I went running, and since I couldn't make up my mind on where to go, I ended up running all the way out to Hereford. I set my toes in and sprinted up that long, steep hill that I used to climb every single day. It was so pretty in the late afternoon sunlight, with lots of people outside playing soccer and a boy playing guitar on the hammock, just like there was last year. I stood outside my old window (third floor, midway up the Hill) and looked at it, missing my view, missing having my totally secluded space.

Don't get me wrong, I love my location and my bathroom-mates now, but I miss being able to come home to a place that was quiet and elevated and removed from the wild pace of things here, in the heart of everything.

Additionally, I have a new poet who suits me: Mary Oliver. Born in 1935, specializes in observing the natural world and capturing it mid-motion, has lived as a lesbian in Provincetown for more than forty years.
tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

It's intense, anyway. But it's an intensity I like.

I finally have a little bit of spare money (I think). I want hemp rainbows for the summer, and a book of Mary Oliver, and some really good iced tea.

reading: othello
listening to: tegan and sara

"he moves me in an epiphany of waterfalls"

2008-02-27T21:58:00.000-05:00

I miss you and the peculiar combination of circumstances that allowed us to tolerate each other. I'm not entirely certain that you're academically happy here, but you always said that if you cared for it, your hair would be so lovely. I passed you on the street the other day, coincidentally, awkwardly, and as you turned back to wave hello I realized that your hair was perfect, longer than ever and silky curled at the dark tips.

Stunning. I envy your social ease, the way you find your niche and your activities and, apparently, your boys. I took the school side, anyway, reaching further than we ever thought I could go. I have things to do and places to be, and that's enough.

But are you happy?

reading: feministing
listening to: dashboard confessional

demi cote

2008-02-27T00:54:00.000-05:00

I've been having musical adventures for the last few days. I also haven't been doing my French homework (but I found the book I'm presenting on next week, so that's mildly encouraging).

Spring break is getting more and more complicated. Hopefully having company on the ride down will defray the boredom, and a bit of the expense. Never mind you that, to leave at 11am, I have to be at the barn before 8 if I want to ride and be back by 10 to shower and finish packing and leave. At least it might be warm.

Having coffee with J. was so nice today. I hope we can make it a regular thing -- friends are not easy to come by right now, let alone ones that make me laugh.

Sleep and I aren't getting along in these current weeks. Reading books about cholera epidemics isn't helping my comfort levels, either.

Jump, again: this is one of the most cheerful tracks on Girlyman's "Joyful Sign" but I still think it's sad.

we are breathing
we are seething
we are hardly underway
we have high hopes
like the old popes
even saint peter's bones decay

raspberry vinagrette

2008-02-24T22:31:00.000-05:00

[This hour I tell things in confidence,
I will not tell everyone but I will tell you.]
-Walt Whitman

Oh, thou, within whose mighty poet-heart
two fathomless abysses are intertwined:
the deepness of the pure, blue heavens and
the softly cradled deepness of the earth;
within whose heart arose the sun, the moon,
and where, in all their bright magnificence,
stars without number blazed, whole worlds of stars;
within whose heart the buds of May awoke,
and where the harsh voice of thunder sand
beside the twitter of the nightingale;
within whose overwhelming chant one feels
the pulse of nature, its omnipotence;

immortal bard, I honor thee: I kneel
upon thy dust, before thy dust, and sing.
-Morris Rosenfeld

Props to anyone who can tell me how those two are related.

Dark chocolate peanut m&m's - the best. Go try some.

I thought I had nothing else to say, but apparently I was wrong. I love this song beyond all reason, love it in a windows down music up country roads during the summer kind of way. I don't really drive around for the fun of it anymore but this is the kind of song that makes me want to do it again. [king of night vision, king of insight].

I am like this sometimes. I had a wildly disappointing morning, between only getting a few hours of sleep, deciding not to go to class and sleep in only to discover that I didn't feel well and couldn't get back to sleep. I ended up doing work and freaking out about my French paper (just finished that, finally) and then going to ride, at least. Which made me spinningly, almost violently, happy -- and then I swung back to agonizing. So then I spent four hours writing a four page paper.

The gym, laundry, and dinner all fit in there somewhere. Now I am sitting with my eyes pressed closed and my back against the wall, avoiding the stare of the bright spotlights I have on to keep me from falling asleep. I am pretending that I won't be woken up in the night or tailed during the morning by wave after wave of pain. I'm going to be disappointed if I have to spend the afternoon lying in bed, especially since I can go to kendo tomorrow if I feel up to it.

There's nothing I can do except wait, and stay still. I am a girl, and that's fine with me, except I'm never very far away from bleeding. Which in the past has variably involved pain, pain, sickness, periodic passing out and a little pain for good measure.

But hey. You take what you can get, right?

reading: my french paper
listening to : Galileo // The Indigo Girls

horse sports

2008-02-23T19:38:00.000-05:00

Polo (or, poyo?) is insane.

Have you ever watched a rugby game? Well, polo is like rugby, except there is less mud and falling down. Compensated for by the presence of long wooden mallets (which are swung in massive arcs by the players) and hard white polo balls.

Did I mention there are six horses galloping at full speed, with six riders all trying to run/shove each other off -- while chasing the ball, trying to whack it with the mallet, neck-reining with two sets of reins and carrying four-foot dressage whips. And using them.

So basically it's awesome.

I'm considering fangirling the UVa men's polo team. Not seriously. But a little bit.

oh except for the summer wind

2008-02-21T13:24:00.000-05:00

Lying in bed for half an hour between work and my next class, lazily watching my history paper print out and scanning readings before class, is such a luxury.

I love living in the middle of things, being able to come home for a few minutes and watch the sunlight pour into my little room. Being able to walk out the outer door whenever I feel lonely or bored and instantly being surrounded by people, people on their way to class or going running or emerging from the dining hall.

Plus I never have to leave to go anywhere twenty minutes beforehand. Winner.

i'm totally gonna electrocute you

2008-02-16T10:31:00.001-05:00

Getting up early just so I can lie in bed for three hours is the best.

No, not pointless, absolutely the best. I was mildly irritated when there were people being loud in the bathroom at 8am on a Saturday morning. But, to be realistic, I'd be getting up early anyway. I just got to see the light when it was all new and clear and then got some reading done.

Now I'm rewarding myself with mindless DVD-watching and will soon be dropping by chez parents to pick up a present (and hopefully breakfast/lunch). Then I will go ride for the whole afternoon, and then the girlfriend will come visit me!

And then we have Vagina Monologues. Winnar.

your brown skin shining in the sun

2008-02-13T19:44:00.000-05:00

http://www.twloha.com

When I hear about things like this I scrutinize the mission statement. I look for gentility, intensity, humane methodology, courage / an absence of fear, and a true desire to reach out to people. More than anything, I want to see patience, an understanding that forced treatment / rehabilitation will terrorize someone who's already vulnerable, sometimes beyond belief.

I respect this project. I'm much more romanced by grassroots organizing, as opposed to institutionalized branching-out. For one, I don't trust the medicinal systems in this country (usually for other reasons but also for things like mandatory therapy). For another, I happen to believe that people who start grassroots movements do so for reasons that are personal as well as social/political. They're on the ground and they often have firsthand experience with their issues. This usually prevents them from acting like total fuckups.

I respect it, but I find it a little self-serving and more than a little divisive. I'm also not comfortable with ... I can't put my finger on it. I won't be writing "love" on my arms tomorrow. I will take note of people who do, and people who can't. And that's all.

reading: The Jews of The United States // Hasa Diner
listening to : Teenage Dirtbag // The Hullabahoos

each gate will open another

2008-02-12T00:23:00.001-05:00

I've got to start going to sleep early again. My reticence to go to bed at a normal hour is twofold: I *hate* lying awake, staring blindly into the dark waiting to fall asleep, and the internet is just so damn easy. All of a sudden, checking the news at one am seems like an essential part of my day.

I feel like I should be getting something done. And I'm going to be so tired in my 8am tomorrow.

Greg's memorial service was nice. Very Protestant, endless hymn verses and we sat down the whole time. There was an enormous flower arrangement right in the middle of the choir. Bradley said it best -- I'm uncomfortable with institutionalized religion. But it was okay, since I went for Faeryn, and Maya, and to watch Master Campbell be quietly awkward.

Someone asked me if my family was Quaker today. I just looked at him, and then I thought about what it might have been like, not to have been Catholic. Would I have been as intense, and would I still have extracted myself? And if I had, would I have been able to go back? I'm [finally] trying to square with Christianity, because holding it against the world is exhausting. I've been seeing it abused so often, though (and I don't just mean historically) -- too often for me to feel better than mildly-uneasy about organized religion.

reading: my email
listening to: tout doucement // feist

meditations on the economic recession.

2008-02-08T11:26:00.000-05:00

Stimulus package passed the Senate today.

Now, while I am a self-respecting liberal lady who believes that the economic recession is the fault of stupid anti-progressive tax cuts and similarly shortsighted measures that fail to account for the poor, especially women and children of color, and emphasize benefits for the wealthy capitalists and white businessmen who already have money, this is bitchin' good news.

Here's why: I am edging close to damn broke. I owe my girlfriend three hundred dollars. I want to buy tack that will probably cost three times that. My car will very soon need repairs, gas prices aren't exactly on the decline, and I need to get outfitted with practice and steel weapons of all sorts in preparing for upcoming kendo advancements. I like to travel. I like Rhode Island, and Ausin, and Williamsburg, and *especially* I like Europe. Well, the idea of Europe, anyway.

Here's why else: purported advancements of tax refunds to come for the next few years, to arrive in May, on the order of a few hundred dollars. Granted, that may not mean much to someone who only makes a few thousand a year but anything is something.

Couple that with my respectable (read: three figure) refund from this fiscal year, the money my mother is refunding me for housing deposits, and the paychecks from work that should start rolling in within the next couple of weeks. Win.

So, don't hate me too much when I say that I hope this anti-recession stimulus package actually materializes. Likes me the ability to afford my lifestyle.

spelled out on a double word and triple letter score

2008-02-06T22:20:00.001-05:00

I am slipping out of focus. Unfortunately, I don't have a f-stop or a shutter speed delay; I can't open a textedit file and reset my integer value and reshoot my evening. I'm not a rare manuscript, I'm just someone who has packet after packet of American Jewish History primary source readings.

Shakespeare and Amazing Grace took it out of me tonight. I recommend that you see the latter if you have any interest in the Atlantic slave trade and the British Empire. Or in laudanum.

I need to:
read Jessica's emails
pick up my umbrella, bank card, and Pepsi's papers*
finally catch up on Jewish History reading
go to the gym / running
brush up on my pagan current events; followed by ->
get over myself and have a real conversation with Keitly (sp?)
find out why Lenore isn't getting my messages (damn phones)

In that order.

Now I'm going to do a crossword puzzle, read international news, and prod my buddy list occasionally to see if anyone of interest surfaces. I love the internet.

listening to : my moon my man / feist
reading : lemonde.fr

this is the way that we love

2008-02-04T23:53:00.000-05:00

I'm wandering away from my paper yet again, despite the fact that it's only two pages long and I have about three sentences to go.

School is so exhausting. Everyone in my history seminar spent the ten minutes before class started counting how many times they'd seen each other at some frat party last Saturday. Gag me with a rusty spoon. Since when is "sleeping until 4pm" a bragging point? If I'm going to be in bed all day, it had damn well better be for more than just passing out.

This is my way of saying that it's 11:30pm and I'm ready to fall over from tired. I didn't realize how mentally *taxing* it would be to talk about slavery as a global phenomenon for two and a half hours on Monday nights. It's especially taxing when you have to explain to the frat boy across from you what "the patriarchy" is ... and he STILL doesn't get it. Tabula rasa, baby. And not in a good way.

Paper finished, self put in bed. Seven hours of sleep and then we start over.

you'd better start wishing

2008-01-27T00:18:00.000-05:00

I desperately need to connect with someone on an emotional level right now.

Where are those people I can look to for that? Busy, away, sleeping, missing in action. The downside to my evening caffeine kick that makes it possible for me to get work done is that I can't sleep afterwards.

Yesterday I had trouble focusing as I made phone calls and daydreamed about the electric shock of divulging secrets. I don't have many to speak of these days -- does openness speak for itself? It seems as though when things are in the past, it's not necessary to ever think about them again. The way I miss you shot down my spine again when I told Lauren how oddly she reminded me of you. I am so terribly wanting, wishing myself back into the past, but apathetic about the actuality that we're all moving into. Perhaps it's natural to always be a little in love with the first person who taught you about being a romantic partner, or perhaps I live in my memories too much, preserving the you that has faded on.

I need to get my head out of the past and start finding refuge in the present again. Things are too overwhelming for me and I close my eyes, pretend I'm fifteen and not eating again, pretend I'm seventeen and angry about it, pretend I'm eighteen and drinking myself awake. I open my eyes and realize I am nothing but the culmination of all these moments.

qu'est-ce que c'est que ca?

2008-01-23T22:43:00.001-05:00

If I really want, I can go to Lyon.

If I apply in the next week, I can spend my whole third year there.

New decision: AFTER studying abroad, I want to do a J-term (in Ireland, Greece, or Italy -- the three places my family is from) my fourth year. To celebrate the almost-end of undergrad.

Love love love.

shy that way

2008-01-20T21:30:00.000-05:00

i am smelly.

tristan prettyman keeps smooshing my head with her lyrics. especially the one about the story (you'll write the title and i'll write the chapters, you'll tell me what comes after). each song is haunting but in its own special way.

anyway, the point is i can't stop listening. (the memories come flooding back in a field of butterflies)

people are going somewhere. all of these girls that i used to know, intimately or just casually, are moving through and past the world and building their lives (the seasons changing in your heart).

i'm not sure i want to go to france anymore. the deadlines for a full academic year (08 09) are in less than two weeks and i am not ready to go anywhere. i need people to stop pushing me to leave.

what's the point
if i can't even dream up a dream
that's not worth the keep
what's the point in going
if i'm better off not knowing?

for the struggle

2007-12-17T01:55:00.000-05:00

I feel no pain for you, only sadness.

It's been such a terribly long week, and a longer evening. I think of the time when you told me that sleep would make everything seem better. My intent was not to push you away. And I am sorry that I foreclosed on our limitlessness but really, child, there was more than enough dealing to be done.

Don't taunt me, and don't prejudge my sadness. It is more than a little bit lucky that I've emerged on the other side of growing-up whole, if you look at who I was a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. Emerging strong and dreaming and learning altogether even better. There are things about the young life that I miss -- the endorphines, the competition, the limitless sense of acceleration and pain. Those things yet to be discovered.

When I am quiet and boring and sad, realize that I've waited a long time for the freedom to lie in bed and reread old books for an afternoon, and feel whatever it is that I feel.

per le say

2007-12-16T20:05:00.000-05:00

Still slogging my way through exams. I'll be done on Tuesday.

There's really nothing else happening with me. I feel heavy and awful and weak all the time; I sleep too much and at the wrong times and I desperately need to work out more. Only I don't want to become a rabid distance runner again and I don't know what else I can do. Maybe I'll go to the gym not for karate, for once (I have been saying that all week).

I keep making "I'll see you soon" promises to semifriends and I don't really intend to keep very many of them (which is a little sad, I know).

I never got to see you over my little break even though I desperately wanted to. I was too busy heaving my guts up all morning (period sickness wtf).

As Barry said, I hate December. I will be so glad when the stress of exams and family and holiday and travel (eesh, all of those things combined look like death) is OVER and I can sit back under the windowsill, enjoying the way the wind plays through the naked trees and riding my horse on cold cold pure mornings.

reading: Women and Gender notes
listening to: Long White Arms // Paula Cole

i'm walking on a wire

2007-12-14T23:28:00.001-05:00

I came home today, to learn that the itty bitty high school seniors are finding about their colleges of choice around now.

The giving, loving, sweet part of me wants to see them get into Smith and Cornell and Oxford and Princeton and UC-Berkely, pack their matching suitcases and leave this little hill town behind, preserve memories of coffee shops and early morning bagels and lovely fall country roads in translucent fossilized amber.

The bitter, unmitigated part of me wants them to taste failure and rejection, to face the next four years and see unchanging surroundings, lowered expectations. To see them move from hope and new life to a sour, biding-my-time sort of attitude.

Maybe I am more well-suited to this restraint, though. I've been saying it for a long time and I still think it's a little true -- I'm not invested in my own happiness. My academics are about competition, departmental status and proving other people wrong. My athletics are about reaching for perfections, accumulating knowledge and skill and using it to its fullest extent. Whatever I do socially, I do out of obligation to old friends, family members, or those people I need to keep diplomatic relations with. I love my girlfriend because I love her and it is not what I would have chosen, but I invest the future of my life in her, instead of myself.

reading: nothing, actually.
listening to: curbside prophet // jason mraz

and the wind cries mary

2007-12-05T22:21:00.001-05:00

I don't think our journey is done yet.

You're so highly intellectualized, so smart and calm and ineffable, that I forget how charged your life is with the sexual, the erotic, the lovely. Even if it's not the usual expression of personal physicality, the things you read and encounter and digest and share with me (with that little attachment of "this makes me think of you, a little" under lines about submission) remind me how dissimilar we are.

I could never have lived with your restraint, but I love the intellectual openness it's given you now.

listening to: All At Sea // Jamie Cullum
reading: Love and Death in Renaissance Italy // Thomas V. Cohen

maybe all we can do, is to see each other through

2007-12-02T20:52:00.000-05:00

I created a book drawer. A drawer, under my bed, to hold all the books that were living on the floor. I also converted a hatbox into a little stool for my foodstuffs (also former denizens of the floor).

I love it.

In other news it is raining and I want you to pick up your phone so badly, Noni! (is it irreverant that I call you that? is it too familiar, or too childish, or altogether out of style? or does it make you miss me a little?) I need to tell you how I've been feeling. There are so many things I share with you that I don't have in common with anyone else -- so much life, and experience, and through all of that changing business you have consistently and lovingly been there.

listening to: Hour Follows Hour // Ani DiFranco
reading: Fearless: The Complete Personal Safety Guide for Women // Paul Henry Danylewich

square frames

2007-11-30T23:24:00.000-05:00

I put on my new dress and it made me lonely.

My suitemates are at Rocky Horror. Really, I don't care about the show -- I love it, I've seen it a thousand times, game over.

Sometimes I get so tired of being attracted to everyone.

glamorous

2007-11-14T20:15:00.000-05:00

I am looking through the pictures of a friend who is spending her fall in Paris. She's talented and lovely and free and her pictures reflect all of those things. I have an aesthetic crush on the angle she captures things at. Her use of perspective turns me on.

And I am still left wondering, what happened to Paris? Where has my light little traveling heart gone, anyway? I don't want to look back on my time and Charlottesville and feel like I was just biding that time, waiting around until something came along. The days when I get to the barn and the air is so cold that we ride our horses up the stream and across the field to the barn instead of leading them, risking slippery backs for their warmth, is that biding my time? Hours and hours of being in the dojo, flying on the same techniques endless times, bare feet sliding across wood floors, what does that amount to?

I have no answers, but in other news, I DO have official advice/permission to take a less fucking demanding class load next semester. Thank goodness, maybe I can start riding a majority of days out of the week now.

listening to: Cursive
reading: my Western Civ paper

sun flower

2007-11-12T20:55:00.000-05:00

Stop haunting me, for the sake of everything.

You've changed almost beyond recognition. I've changed in the same direction I've always been changing (tame and away from danger).

And yet, and yet. I can't get the lines of you, silhouetted against dark curtains, out of my mind. Your hair is just as bright, that shining river of honey strawberry yellow-red that crashed through everyone you stood too near. You were forever standing too close to me, watching my pulse twitch.

I love the newness and the sanity of you, but at the same time, I can't let that gorgeously messed past you've got quite go.

miscellany

2007-11-11T23:11:00.001-05:00

Still sick, more updates forthcoming.

I should be reading Noble but hey, I'm not. It's boring and I'm going to go help paint Beta Bridge in 20 minutes, I guess.

Also, Feministing.com isn't loading and that is upsetting.

Class signup is tomorrow. Whooooos not ready. Oh right that would be me.

I need more friends.

listening to: Umbrella // Rhianna feat. Jay-Z
reading: Les Liaisons Dangereuses // Pierre Choderlos de Laclos

i have gone marking your body with crosses of fire

2007-11-09T18:55:00.000-05:00

It is still hard to translate from my head to the blank white "update blog" screen, I think.

In other news, tomorrow is Caturday. Don't laugh at me, I will tell my horse to bite you. I am sad because I am sick and I can't go to karate tonight so I am sitting here not knowing what to do.

Today was a little sad when my Classics professor expressed her doubt that any of us read poetry. I've always read poetry -- maybe not classical love poetry, until now, but give me a break; it's hard to get through if you haven't been familiarized with all those references already. But I've done Keats and both Shelleys, Blake and Marlowe and Marvell and all those other silly dead white men I had to read in high school.

And by myself I fell in love (back in those days when I thought love grew from nothingness and lasted forever) with Shakespeare's sonnets -- I have a complete book of them, each carefully scanned and annotated in my twelve-year-old handwriting. Pablo Neruda still makes me cry and one day I want to read him in the original Spanish because I *know* I am missing things. I spent a week translating T. S. Eliot's French poetry but I still love The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock like none other. I have Emily Dickinson, Alice Walker, Anne Sexton, Elizabeth Bishop sitting on the shelf for the times when I need to listen to things that intelligent women have to say. I still look for James Wright's "A Blessing" every time I go to a bookstore, and I can't read Ezra Pound without wishing for the days when A. and I wrote so freely and so together.

I reject a world that lives without poetry. I fantasize about joining the Renegade Poet Society, those masterful night poem-chalkers who use e. e. cummings and Rainer Marie Rilke to vandalize construction walls. And most densely of all, I know those swaying, rhythmic poems that bring us to the sacred, those studied poems that are prayers. Those catholic ones that are milennia old and transliterated directly, those pagan ones that make us divine with ecstasy, ecstatic with the divine.

Last but, naturally, not least, I am always writing poetry. I am pulling metaphor from thin air and spinning nothingness into somethingness and back into infinity again. I am recording that which is in the past (the smell of blood, deeper than roses) and those things that are still coming (my first Paris in Seoul). How could this ever be alien to me?

listening to: Buffalo Soldier // Bob Marley & The Wailers
reading: The Joy Luck Club // Amy Tan

get lucky sometimes

2007-11-08T23:12:00.000-05:00

Oh Lesbia, who are you? And who are we?

I have a torrent happening in my mind, a literary hemmorage -- Sappho Sulpicia Seneca Tertullian Ovid Dante Petrarch Catullus Thucydides Homer Virgil Valla Guardino (to name the last few days).

I've been feeling cut off whenever I talk to you these days. I spend my days thinking about the sex and my nights dreaming about uncertainty -- what does this say? And yet sometimes it is quite the reverse.

listening to: even the losers // tom petty and the heartbreakers
reading: the italian renaissance // paula findlen

moisturizer problems

2007-11-08T11:55:00.000-05:00

i officially have no money, after filling my gas tank up 4 times last month and a 200$ moving violation fine from last month. i mean, not literally no money at all, but i'm working ten hours a week and i need:
clothing related things
to pay emilie back for the 300$ plane ticket
800$ for tack in the spring
christmas presents
a new gi
gas money
food money
laundry money
etc.

& not want to die when it's all over.

reading // women's life in greece and rome, by levkowitz and fant
listening to // malcom mclaren, about her