something lost

my six year old sister slept over last night and suddenly i remembered what it was like to make decisions based on eenie-meenie-mynie-mo. i went to campus tonight to return some books and thought about my first few years there, when you just picked someone you liked and dated them for a while. when every day was an adventure in meeting new people and learning new things and thinking up unprecedented ridiculousnesses with which to stay up till 3am.

somewhere along the way i turned into an adult, with a furrowed brow and concerns about money and my future and time management and turning too much into my parents and still remaining true to myself.

i brought back a stack of my journals from home today, in the hopes that there are still sparkles left in the pages with which i can learn how to see the world new again.

no one should eat cold pizza.

period.

i am launching a worldwide campaign to stop people.

me.

beginnings and other tidbits & nippets

this is the story of a girl looking for home.

this is the story of a girl looking for him.

her gaze decapitated me--slice!

and that is how i sung my heart out.

thoughts after nine hours of paper-presentations by professors with wiry mustaches and wiry humours, anticipating an evening of mingling with such.

sometimes i get this sick feeling inside when i think about having to muster the motivation to make conversation with people i don't know.  the dread when it's 5 in the afternoon and you still have an evening full of strangers and strange conversation.  i long for familiarity.  i long for the ease, the satiating comfort of moving with those whose sentiments, habits, motions are familiar to me--the seamless conversation.  i would venture to say that when i try, i can be quite amiable, conversational, enjoyable even, such that no one would be the wiser.  but the problem i encounter, the grand secret, is that it is a near Herculean task to spark that fire, and the entire time i am longing for a quiet sidewalk with shady tree patches and roses and breeze, for a still room with silent chairs and welcoming books.  all inside revolts.  all inside digs in its heels like a donkey, and with as much reluctant dread is dragged to the altar of "pleasant minglings": perpetual "how interesting!"s and "it's a pleasure"s.  in those hellholes, i wriggle and writhe, all the while cased and caged in a smile, as if it were all i were made for, the end of my existence, the fullness of my essence.  

the story of the ill-fated vase(s)

i have a vase that thinks it owns my bamboo plant.  it cracked one day, and has since leaked water.  so i buy a new vase.  bring it home, wash it up, start putting the rocks in to ground the shoot, and one slips out of my hand, smacks the side of said vase, and shatters it to oblivion.  big sigh with head hanging down.  reinstall bamboo into old cracked vase.

today i bought another vase.  it's bigger and stronger and thicker than the old cracked vase.  same process: wash, insert rocks, and sure enough, one slips out of my hand, and cracks the top of the vase.  i turn to the old vase sitting on the counter, mocking me with its grimy, hardwater-encrusted sides, and i say, "look, idiot vase, you cannot have the bamboo."

alas, alas.

like letting go of the bicycle handles while careening down a hill

The subway shakes the ceiling above.

The urge to jump onto the tracks
and jump back out real fast,
the hunger for that adrenaline rush,
the zoomzoom of the oncoming train and your widewide eyes
and heart
beating to get you out
before being plastered to the front of the red line,
inbound to alewife.

concrete on top of concrete

TOUR GUIDE: "a few things about new york: don't look anyone in the eye. just keep staring straight forward like you know where you're going. and don't look up at the buildings and smile. people will know you're a tourist and mug you."

"give me big skies or give me death!" cries my Eaglecountry heart. stores upon stores, people upon people, smoke and hot dogs and more smoke and horns and big signs and more people.


despite getting locked in a cell...


...there were several redeeming graces:
1) we had to run home in the rain and got SOAKED, head to toe.

2) i saw tiffany's. i chose some earrings and asked the price. over $ahundredthou$. AWE-freakin-SOME.

3) larger-than-life-size LEGOS! gleam-in-my-eyes, this one's for you.

4) every candy imaginable! even Lego-shaped ones! (please notice my hands. ???)


5) nighttime on times square + dinner at an italian restaurant for my 23rd. they sang me happy birthday and brought out a mountain of strawberry shortcake.

for the one that does a body good.

ICE CREAM: rockin hard at hardrock.

pink sky and the coast guard.

banister reflexions.

& a five-story building of stories.  do you see the sheerbliss in my eyes?  do you see it?!