July 27th, 2010 at 11:41 pm
Here in my car
More often than not, I look back on my experiences as they are colored by music notes and/or popular narratives. While this framework hides emptiness with whimsy, it also allows me to think of myself as an ‘individual’ while paradoxically subscribing to apocrypha. Subsequently, I’ve been trying really hard to arrive at a more legitimate form of romance. It’s hopeless.
I spent a lot of time in cars this weekend.
When I first learned how to drive, I thought of surrounding drivers as members of the same team. I still do inasmuch as observing intricate choreography at strange intersections, but my initial fantasy of fraternizing motorists was obviously a mechanism in making traveling less intimidating. We’re team members until traffic is bisected by fast and slow lanes.
Michael sent me a punk rock playlist so that I could listen to it on my way up to Santa Cruz. After 1.3 hours, the final track “Pushing the Extreme” by Wipers played and I picked up my iPod to scroll down to the next playlist: a top 40 mix I made for myself. I got pulled over for speeding when I was listening to Lady Gaga. That wasn’t very punk rock, you guys. Making up for this incident, I listened to Au Pairs’ Playing With a Different Sex for the next hour. I went back and forth between being excited about seeing my boyfriend and recalling every incident EVER in which I had gotten in trouble. A bus managed to pass me on the high way.
Michael’s car engine starting smoking when we took it uphill in San Francisco. Anxious bystanders pointed at the dangerous looking vehicle. He had an extended conversation with the tow truck driver about language, Atlantis, the Ming Dynasty, and a ragbag of conspiracy theories. There were a lot of sentences prefaced with the words “they say.” The driver told Michael that he should be a politician and repeated his concern for the next generation. I pretended to sleep. “Are you siblings? He’s a smart guy, isn’t he? Nice meeting you, miss.” Then there was wine tasting in Sonoma County and driving back to Santa Cruz in his dad’s Volvo. And other stuff.
I came back home today on congested roads. Music sounded less magical. I almost rear-ended a jeep with a Texan license plate.
June 17th, 2010 at 5:29 pm
In this world, birds eat horses
I felt like I wasn’t doing much of anything with my break until I realized that I did not have many opportunities to update this, let alone use the internet for very long this week!
Michael (boyfran) visited on Monday so he could experience the hell that is our weather right now. We also went to a local Thai food restaurant, used bookshop, overpriced Goodwill (srsly, where do they get off charging $6 for tshirts?), and the Griffith Observatory–except like, not really, since it was 10PM and the observatory was closed off, and hence, all good views of THE LOS ANGELES SKYLINE were obscured. Just the same, it was super fun times aaand I’m looking forward to heading up to Santa Cruz eventually so I can be like “durp a durp I love trees and smogless skies.”
I also saw my dear friend Winnifrette, whom I’ve known since I was a wee lass, so we could watch Taxi Driver (you may have heard of it since it’s classic and shit) and drink banana milkshakes. Now let me tell you about banana milkshakes: they’re delicious. I make mine with bananas, milk, and ice cubes because once bananas are overripe, sugar or ice cream is entirely unnecessary for your journey to sweet, sweet flavor town. I’m sure yogurt would also be a fine substitute for milk, but I don’t like to mess with art. Other ‘summer treats’ I like: frozen grapes, watermelon slices, lime popsicles, beer, leaving the freezer door open when my parents refuse to turn the air conditioner on, and beer.
My sister ‘hooked me up’ with a job at UCLA as a designer for study guides put out by the National Center for History in the Schools. Unfortunately, I’m only getting a stipend as opposed to an hourly wage, but that also means I get to work at home. I basically get to play around with InDesign and pretend I’m an educator as I skim all the history worksheets I’m plugging in, woooo!
I’m leaving for San Diego tomorrow via Amtrak to see my friend Margot this weekend. Excited, but also irresolute about what we’ll be doing. I haven’t been to San Diego for reasons outside of visiting the zoo, so it’ll be interesting to see where she decides to take me.
May 27th, 2010 at 10:17 am
Beware the friendly stranger
I don’t know when I became a pathetic weepy insecure mess. Lapse of sanity / badassery. But It’s okay guys, I’m back and better than ever! (I blame school, unsurprisingly.)
My problem: I rehearse conversations in my head prior to hanging out with people even though experience has taught me that they never play out just as I had planned. The friends I construct are, oftentimes, a lot more forgiving than their doppelgängers. Of course this isn’t always the case, as is the nature of generalizations. It’s tempting to say that everybody sucks and that it’s impossible for me to get close to someone. Now that assertion would justify my constant frustration with humanity, my tendency to say “I hate people, I’m done.” Those few TV personalities that my friends are allowed to have keep revealing themselves; someone is always another version of someone else. It’s like, also an issue of being a serial monogamist though. I get far too attached far too soon. I think the most important thing anyone can do is to be a better friend to himself. It’s just too easy to get caught up in ostentatious rapport, especially if you’re looking for validation.
Nevertheless, life is too big and scary to be dealt with alone. I was always really critical of my religious text books in [Catholic] high school when they asserted that humans are social creatures and that any sort of asocial behavior is inevitably damaging. This was usually the underlying argument for supporting parental consent laws in the abortion debate. Of course the major issue with this line of thinking is the fact that you can’t choose your parents and some parents are better than other parents. (And I’m pretty sure forced pregnancy is often worse for all parties than getting an abortion would be.) Anyway, overworking your problems within the context of “serious conversations” is never a good thing, even if it’s a conversation with someone whom you’ve chosen and believe to be rational. I can’t think of a single occasion where the relationship advice I received from someone was helpful. What I can remember being helpful are the occasions in which I had the clichéd shoulder to lean on. It’s not even about receiving feedback at that point, it’s about spewing thought vomit and being acknowledged, even if it’s just a “m’hmm” or “yeah.”
On an unrelated note, goddamn how could I forget how hot Gwen Stefani is? I was watching her music video for “Let Me Blow Ya Mind” (feat. Eve) the other day and took a screen cap:
She was definitely a style icon when I was younger and that’s probably where my love of winged eyeliner comes from. I mean, especially since I discovered her before being familiar with Audrey Hepburn or Anna Karina. (I know, I know. For shame.) It’s funny how that happens. I’m sure I saw bettie bangs on some rockabilly chick before I knew who Bettie Page was too.
P.S. Google search *still* doesn’t help me in my quest to find out if Gwen Stefani is Armenian. This is something I’ve heard for a long time: that her family name was originally “Stefanian.”
May 26th, 2010 at 6:53 pm
Nevermind
I AM HUMAN AND I NEED TO BE LOVED!
P.S. The EyeCandy website is live! >>>CLICK HERE<<<.
(If you’re a fellow Santa Cruzian, contact me if you wanna printed copy.)
May 26th, 2010 at 11:09 am
I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing
May 20th, 2010 at 5:57 pm
I’m pretty sure he’s a Czech… or a Belgian… and he learned English well into his eighties
You know, despite this week not feeling like a real work week (thank you two-day student walkouts), I have the biggest headache right now. Writing papers and obsessing over my health has been stressing me out in place of attending class, much more so the latter than the former.
Fortunately, the one extracurricular (EyeCandy, an annual student-run film publication put out by UCSC) I was involved in has reached its completion. I’m excited to see its printed form, as my article sat on my computer’s desktop for a few too many weeks, instilling me with irrational feelings of hatred for its layout–the same layout I worked on and was initially proud of for at least 48 hours.
I’m just like, feeling increasingly lonely. I guess. Nobody seems to give a fuck and I hate feeling like an attention whore.
April 25th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
I’ll tell you when you’re older
I am so out of the loop all the time. I mean I guess it’s a product of self-doubt or whatever but I also feel like it’s definitely something that happens to the youngest in the family. Everyone is used to keeping things from the baby and now that I’m not a baby, the family forgets to tell me things because I should know them.
I also obsess over Facebook friend deletion. What was it that I posted that could have reminded so-and-so that they don’t like me? What notification did they receive that had my name in it? Why me and not those other people that are still listed as their friends, that they’re not particularly close to? It’s stupid. It’s the story we won’t tell. I can’t send an inquisitive message to someone I hardly talk to because I will not get a response, and that lack of response will fuel more hair-pulling insanity. It sucks So. Much. when you’re not worth a response.
On the other hand, I feel like it’s fairly easy to get people to like me. I have received seemingly genuine apologies for not being a part of plans because of the assumption that I already had stuff going on. I can show up to things uninvited without worrying (too much) about being an imposition. I give firm handshakes. I listen to people, I open my eyes real wide, and I validate points through being extremely amenable. I feel like I’ve got giving good first impressions down pretty well. (Although, to be fair, it can require liquid courage sometimes.)
It’s the following up that is the hard part. It’s trusting the other person to continue liking me, to put my guard down, to state my worldview without immediately thinking that it sounds uneducated / ill informed.
It’s learning to be an asshole, periodically.
April 11th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
Selected Ambient Works
I’ve been dismayingly uninspired lately and it doesn’t help that I’m already so limited in this arena. There have been occasions that have confirmed self-deprecating sentiments. ‘Self-deprecating’ is a term I use half-willingly. Naturally, I don’t think there’s much to take from if I’m making these sorts of evaluations in the first place. I can spin this though, I can. I am good at existing, for example. I am a taking-up-space extraordinaire. Everyone’s favorite misanthrope. I can help you verify your own intelligence by mere juxtaposition.
I’m tracing the same shapes over and over again. These suspicions are nothing new. I feel that I’ve just been regurgitating whatever insecurities I developed in my formative years, but disguising them in some convoluted language in hopes of validating otherwise unfounded angst. Unfounded angst. Now there’s a redundant phrase. Case in point.
I mean, Trent Reznor has been replaced with Jaime Stewart and my bright purple fishnets are solid black tights now.
I would like to engage in sedate conversation with the perspicacious journalist. Like “Xtal” by Aphex Twin on repeat. Slow motion elation. I remember warmth and vibrations from current bouts. Even so, it was fleeting and I was scared immediately. I crawled into cramped spaces of unresponsiveness and closed doors. Mortality reminds me that I need to stop closing doors. Not my own mortality, as might be expected. It’s never your own mortality.
But yeah. Loose ends. Pretension. I’m off to bounty bread now. (Apparently it’s a suicide mission?)
March 25th, 2010 at 8:57 pm
Inhibited
I’m indirectly writing you all letters every time I publish something. Frustrating, abstruse self-censorship plays a large part in my posts. I could fulminate against your voyeurism, but that’s cliché and a character trait I thrive on inasmuch as it makes breaking the fourth wall possible. I am posing prose.
March 20th, 2010 at 8:49 pm
There’s a buzz in my backside
Hey man, I know that I know shit about music. I know that I like ‘experimental post-rock.’ I know that I stood three feet away from Jamie Stewart last night. I know that I felt his sweat, that I saw his pores, and that the fangirl next to me was creaming her pants at the mere thought of being in my place, despite the fact that the dude closes his eyes the entire time just like my morbidly shy German professor. I know that Xiu Xiu probably played way too fucking loud for a venue of that size, that I’m still deaf from the show, and that this paragraph should end soon before my insides turn into artificially scented ‘feminine hygiene product.’ I GOT CHILLS. THEY’RE ELECTRIFYING.
Stuffing myself in the back of a pickup truck and then getting a ride to campus from a (separate) saintly fellow led to a gathering of chemically altered states at an apartment occupied by new and old friends. I am glad to know them. It was comforting to get the jitters again and to reject my previous belief in utter unfeeling. Curmudgeonliness isn’t hip. Misanthropy is something I will inevitably return to, but I’m hoping these words will make their rounds again, that I’ll look at this memory in its less-than-transient glory (thanks, WordPress), and I’ll have some fondness for previous social successes. Feelings are funny things.
This morning was accompanied by (now familiar) wobbliness and apprehension but I resolved the latter by joining ‘old folks.’ BART, Shanghai in the 30s, food of the Vietnamese *and* Indian varieties, man. I’d like to see El Norte through the eyes of juvenile confreres, but I’m not entirely worried about that right now.
