green light

Sometimes I do not know the category in which I truly belong. As I walked through the airport in Las Vegas with white shorts and white cardigan over a ruffled navy top, I wondered if people thought I was a nice break from the over-tanned over-bleached status quo that is Vegas...or anywhere. Am I refreshing, original, a unique beauty that surprises and invigorates or am I simply dowdy. At times I think I have a look that may be considered beautiful by those of a higher opinion, at other times I think I may just be off, cemented in the wrong decade, the wrong century.

time travel

Untitled by fountainreeler featuring Ralph Lauren

I would like very much for my future to look something like this.

Last year I had a benign little pest removed from my left breast. As far as technicalities go, I was told it was most likely a fibroadenoma, a very common and benign tumor. Apparently roughly ten percent of all women have them. They're harmless, though are connected with a higher risk for cancer later. Even with this knowledge, I don't think that I was prepared. I was a seventeen year old girl getting an ultrasound from a forty-something with spiked hair and a lipring. I was a seventeen year old getting a mammogram, meeting with doctors, finally excision. Of course my family took care of me well after the surgery, but I felt ultimately very alone. Alone when I decided that it wasn't a fluke, the product of menstruation. Alone when I passed out in the shower when i took off the bandage.

I usually pull these facts off as a laughing matter. "boob alien." And who can't laugh help but laugh at a split chin and pale face from falling out of the shower. Really though, I was terrified. I still am. So many things about whatever it is that was extracted from my body do not line up with the description of this tumor. I can't help but worry that it was something else. Nothing to really worry about, but something other than the ordinary. Sometimes I think I got it from going on birth control at a young age. I think I was fifteen, maybe younger when i first started taking oral contraceptives. Menstrual problems and discomfort led to the unsettling knowledge that I didn't have the right hormone levels. If it wasn't corrected it could have led to sterility. The irony of the safeguarding my ability to have children possibly leading to an inability to feed them is sometimes too much.

And then there is the aesthetic side. When i was young I wanted a distinguishing scar. In the same way that I adored the gapped front teeth of my neighbor Olivia, I wanted something that would set me aside, add some intrigue. Of course my wish for a scar passed when I decided that my face was something that I had learned to like and wanted to take care of. The idea was fulfilled in a much more mature and lovely way when blue dot appeared on my face sometime my sophmore year in highs school. The small speck nestled in the climax of my ever-deepening laugh line was first feared as some sort of skin anomoly related to my auburn locks. Thankfully, it seems to be nothing more than a child's answered prayer. When I happened to turn NipTuck on tonight and Christian was in a support group for breast cancer suvivors, chastising women on chosing to be ugly, I could feel my throat closing. Hearing (an admittedly fictional and dramatic) character that is supposed to be well endowed with wordly knowledge tell these women that they were kidding themselves and that their husbands were just banging some perfect-breasted twenty year old on the side made me blush from the worm-like scar on my breast through to the freckles on my back.

Of course I want to be beautiful. Of course i want my husband to want to have sex with me. To find me desirable. To love my body. It's embarrassing. So unwomanly and crude. It's embarrassing that I'm humiliating myself for something that should be overcome with my mind, my sense of humor, my taste, ie. who I am.

I know my boyfriend loves me, and I think that he will be the other one I trust to hold my babies. At times the confidence and trust are so comforting and tangible. But sometimes, when i send the modern version of a message in a bottle that reads,

"I'm watching a Nip Tuck about breast cancer and I'm getting really depressed"

...and get the response

"I am at the bar with dave and that girl with the Dooney!" (character from a humorous story he's often told, i've often requested)

All I can think of is that though this girl may be stupid, she probably has perfect breasts. I'm waking up on the floor with the shower still running.

wringing out

long distance has the ability to bring out the worst in a relationship. this is okay as long as your relationship and love is stronger than the worst. mine is, thankfully, but boy will i be relieved once I step onto that southwestern ground.

not as depressing as this

I, like my dear friend Leggsington, am looking forward to my arrival in the dear town of Hermes - ton tonight. (Only those who are acquainted with the true town know the joke of tossing designer names into the same name, even the same paragraph) However, this is one of my few thoughts that bring a smile. The rest are the product of spending the day in the dark; blinds closed, lights off, reading, thinking, and know I have to go to work for a meager four hours this eve.

Thoughts are: I should write a paper on how different I believe embarrassment and humiliation to be. I don't think one is a degree of the other, but that they are two different species entirely. More to come.

Also, on finishing my book, I am not filled with satisfaction, but loneliness and the knowledge that we cannot escape the past. Also, that really, it all comes down to love. This was supported on my google homepage by a quote from Nietzsche about desiring women. If Nietzche can't escape it, what makes anyone else think they can?

adskjf;alkdjs the mind is all a-jumble. I'll have to grab a redbull for the drive home. yep, I said it, home.

ATTN ATTN

Jimmy Choo will be teaming up with H&M, with products available this November. Hello fashion forward and affordable finds. Hip-hip-hooray!

Special Note

The novel the Piano Teacher is not the same as the film of the same title. The film is horrendous and terrible, the most disturbing thing I have ever seen. The novel is wonderful. Do not be confused.

old habbits die hard

I stayed up until two last night reading. Quitting only when my eyes refuse to jump from word to word, I feel asleep happy, knowing that summer has officially come.

I finished Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss earlier this summer, and it was not satisfying. Tedious, melodramatic, and structurally incongruous with my tastes I forced myself to finish for the sake of saying I had.

Thankfully, Janice Y.K. Lee's The Piano Teacher has saved me. It may not be the most intellectually challenging novel, but it is wonderful. A book split between post, present, and pre war Hong Kong, it fantastically mixes romance with themes of survival and the things people go through and become in war. I have not been this happy with a novel, reading until the wee hours of the morn'....since...Harry Potter? Smile.

too much time on my hands

oh the styx, makes me get to missin' camwon.

I tricked myself into getting up an hour early yet am still hard-pressed for time to ready myself before work.

something is wrong with the air here. it's tiresomely dry, but still somehow, when I apply lotion it seems to stick to my skin all day. forget this silk shirt I'm wearing, it's more like a plastic raincoat, think pam anderson in playboy; without the breasts, without the sex appeal, with all the mugginess.

maybe I'll go home sick today. cough, cough.

sans culur

blakkwhiet by fountainreeler featuring Moschino

culur

Printemps by fountainreeler featuring Paul Smith shoes

four hour shifts

je suis fatigue. apres mon travail, je veux aller a nouveau mexique immediament.

my feets hurt.

I'm going to hermiston next week, near the end. thursday and friday i have been released from the clutches of my personal hell, and thought it would be good to make a trip. I get off work so very late that I may leave thursday morning, but wednesday night may happen just as well. I want to do a few things whilst in hermiston;

1. Go to Goldned Palace and have chow mein chinese style.
2. See my friends Annie Plucinak and Laura Trapp and Stephanie Wood.
3. Watch a movie and eat cheese with my dearest Alex in that ol' familiar living room.
4. Make sure NOT to go to my old house.
5. Have some fun.
   

I'm really excited to go, as this will be the first really summery thing I've done. I had placed all the weight of that on New Mexico, and this will be like an hors d'oeuvre, getting me used to being happy again.

dangerous woman up to a point

I've begun to take things into my own hands. changing mannequins in the mens department; men haven't worn three-button suits since the nineties. do they even want to be selling clothes? wearing dark red lipstick to my four hour shift; so what if I have to take a break every ten minutes to check my shade, is fashion not the name of thine holy game?

The townsfolk began to fear for their lives and their sanity as this monstrous beast of an outsider began to become emboldened.

yuck

All day I listened to poppy sugary songs about love. Catchy as they may seem to the untrained ear, their beats are recycled, their lyrics stale and stupid. I am completely confident that none of these jackasses know a damn thing about love, but try to become sensitive to what today's youth deems 'deep.' Or something. Love isn't falsetto singing and guitar without piano, it's honesty and individuality. Lust is something too. I have no doubt in my mind that lust is essential to a loving relationship. Often the start of such couplings, lust is perfectly natural. Of course, acting on lust thoughtlessly, helter-skelter is just stupid and slutty, but I do know it has its place. I hate to get graphic but it's good that I go weak in more than my knees when I see my boyfriend.

Shivers.

I don't have a point, I really don't, other than love is not what vh1 tells us it is. It's not mustering up the courage to say "i love you." It should be flying from your lips.

click clique click

Fan of Project Runway that I am, I have had to settle for Bravo's replacement The Fashion Show. This week's episode has the designers creating outfits based on high school cliques. Those included in the show were; Goth, Drama, Jock, Mean Girl, B-Girl, Skater, Nerds, Prep, Tree-Hugger. Call me hyper sensitive, call me absurd, but at least in my experience, cliques are not what they once were.

My high school had its share of cowboys (an often excluded clique), skaters, mean girls, and jocks. But the thing about each group is that they mixed and molded, people often becoming hybrids of two or three, or often being...dare I say it...and individual.

For a year or two my best friend and I were classified as the school hippies. Of course we had an audience that was mostly republican, highly sheltered, and very very silly. We were classified thus for our knowledge of Bob Dylan, the sexual revolution, and life outside of our twenty thousand population town. Clearly this by no means creates an extreme individual, but you are what you eat, and we ate picnics.

I had my fleeting moments in cliques and groups, but it never really stuck. And however hard Bravo tries to convey the message of cliques, young and old (housewives, seriously? I thought we made it clear that the originals, the desperates, were an entertainment. these women cannot be taking themselves seriously), I'm beginning to think the concept is a little passe.

I made friends of all sorts, and so did many many other people. And if some silly high school kids can figure that much out, so can the rest of the world. Har har.

spray on spirits

I'm becoming one of those pitiful, lowly women who dress up to go to the supermarket. Of course my definition of dressing up has devolved into a classic button down with some linen shorts, hair loose and woven flats. But of course, I was punished for my excursion and got a stomach ache from the mexican food I enjoyed.

I'm going to cherish my sunburn, refuse to wear foundation when I'm not working, and make good use of my lipstick and many over sized tops.

I'd like to get a haircut. I'm getting a bit pyramidic. So uncool.

going under

Am currently watching a program on plastic surgery. I have always pondered what I could have done had I the money, time, or guts. Of course as time goes by, my list would change, but as of now...

• Nose job
• Liposuction
• Knee lift. Oi.
• Cankle reduction? Har.
  

the wonderful world

Gustav Klimt is an artist with which I've recently become obsessed. I was able in my American Art history class last semester to become intimately familiar with a few artists, not only through their work, but also through biographies and books dedicated to their thoughts and lives. I posess meager if any artistic talent, and it is such a pleasure to delve into the lives of those who see, and recreate what they see, in something so able to speak. Klimt was known as a womanizer, and his many sexualized subjects seem to bolster that point. His works is on the verge of pornography in some social circles, but is surely beautiful to all. I'm so effected. Not only by the power of body and form and color and emotion in each painting, even sketch, but by the vast difference between two different works.


Maybe I'm so attracted to these women, these works, this man, because I see such flexibility. Modernity is flexibility, variation. One hundred years ago Klimt had it. His subjects had it. I'm trying to attain it.

one hand on this wiley comet

My mother, for whom I have whored myself to Macys, distanced myself from any friend, and endured immense depression, just told me I had just decided to be unhappy. This woman has one amazing talent; nothing is ever her fault. Though she has forced me to live with her to ease her aching heart, then decided to leave for extended periods of time, she has no part in my displeasure. Every morning I decide to wake up and know no one, have nothing, and feel no reward for any actions. I only hope that one day I can achieve such superhuman powers of innocence and wisdom.

If you give a mouse a cookie

Yummmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

nix the post a few back about being body happy. unhappy, unhappy I am.

dehydrated and too unmotivated to get a drink. maybe I'll start on the choreography soon.

ZZzzZZzzZzzzZZZZzzzZZow.

that one band. they's coo.

http://www.myspace.com/princetonmusic

them's the real deal

The band Princeton. Any friend of virginia woolf's is a friend of mine.

oi vey

forgotten fact, must report.

At work last week, my coworker Kayla asked me if I liked olde english.

Let me preface this by a description of Kayla. She is twenty one years old, married, and working without plan of change at Macy's in the shoe department. Tangent times two, it's always odd to be working with someone over the summer that is there all the time. The job to you is a temporary, dreadful pass time, to them, a career. Anyways, Kayla likes horses, doesn't seem to like her husband, and has hair so blonde it is unabashedly and obviously considered white.

I was picking up the boxes left by the woman who requested that "Every white sandal" we had be brought to her when Kayla popped the question. Of course I had to ask her what she meant, and she was ready with an answer. "You know, like thee and ye, and Shakespeare and stuff."

Swr.

I responded that I was an English major, and yes, I liked literature.

c'est moi

avec mon petit ami. je t'aime.

wind in the willows

Funny isn't it, how when you're driving at night with the front two windows down, the breeze caresses your back, crossing you from left to right straight through your cardigan and between your shoulder blades. The hairs on the back of your neck stand up just as though you're sensing someone stare at you from a distance. Then the breeze leaps off your right shoulder and back out through the window. The same breeze dances on my back as yours. The same moon shines on me.

http://www.rhapsody.com/buddy-johnson/the-band-that-swings-the-blues

It's number six.

here am I I am.

Drinking wine shamelessly from the bottle, I'm going to a movie alone later. I have zero problem with this. However, I do not like being the only person in the theatre, which I happen to know I will be.

Bridget Jones II was on in the break room today, and in thinking of Bridg. and her inner monologue, I'm feeling slightly pitiful. However, 'True Life, I hate my large breasts,' is on and I am feeling greatful for my lovely, moderately sized knockers. Therapy, self-help, surgery...these poor women. I just have to deal with dry skin. Sheesh.

Going to the movie I shall be clad in my going out standard issue.

Oversized cardigan. Dark wash, tight on the thigh jeans. Docs or flats, I cannot yet decide. Lipstick.

I like myself naked. I'm going to a movie. My feet may hurt but I'm lucky.

But he's a fungi!

I want to do something fun.

Sit around the table drinking burned coffee from Shari's, watch movies when no one watches and everyone chats, sit around under blankets in uncomfortable chairs (though you don't mind, you're comfort lies in those you're with), develop a buzz over three hours from a nice wine, drive around calling other people to join.

Something, anything.

For Frodo

The final battle scene (LOTR, obviously) is so emotional for me. All of these characters, so lovely and familiar, go rushing in with all their courage and bravery and strength...how my heart can flutter.

"The eagles are coming!"

Oh what a moth can do to this mortal soul.

I was preparing myself for this moment from the time I watched Jafar's lamp drop into the molten depths. The PG version of the battle over one's soul, I was still terrified. And every time, I'm just as terrified when Frodo states, "The ring is mine."

He has indeed forgotten the taste of strawberries and cream! The King of Men may be slain! For heaven's sake, phalanges are being lost! Of course, enter here the mournful sighing of the elves. Smeagol's tortured smile.

And then..."Don't let go. Don't you let go."

Oh Sam! Oh Triumphant day! As Sauron's tower collapses, "Frodo! Frodo!"

What a sap I am. Teary eyed as the rest of them as the mount explodes, I have the solace in the fact that I have seen this movie perhaps seventy two times. I know that Sam will marry Rosie, see.

Thank you Frodo, for reassuring me that I will still be able to see the shire.
Golly gee. The cinema. Har.

you never change your socks

thanks to my doc martens, i was able tonight to kill a spider. this is one huge deal.

I wish i was living on the big rock candy mountain instead of the mediocre dirt hill I've landed on...

I've begun to screen the calls of the only human being with which I'm acquainted here, and so I suppose I'm in the process of making myself an island. Damn these waters are choppy.

Why does the new will farrell movie look like such rubbish? come now.

I'm so hungry, as I've had no supper, but it's ten o'clock. Sourdough toast it is.

I can't wait until my hair is long again. Really, really long, with beaucoup layers. ;ldskjf;aklsjd ;

Lady Godiva long, if you know what I mean.

ce soir

For dinner,

Some thin, cold slices of a roast.
Sliced cheddar cheese
One nectarine.
One glass of wine.


Yum.

spindles

I'm beginning to think that it's not heroine that's so passe. A life of sports has not made me body in vogue - in fact, it's made my body a hodgepodge of parts and sizes. I am the platypus of the human variety. Alas and anon, I shall content myself with gazing on species of a more graceful nature.

the cat lady

Romantics are the only people who can truly appreciate cats. They're aesthetics.

"Mustafa climbed onto Sia's lap and she thought of how, since her romance with Gyan, she had a new understanding of cats. Uncaring of the troubles in the market, Mustafa was wringing forth ecstacies, pushing against her ribs to find a bone to ribble his chin against...Mustafa's bones seemed to be dissolving under Sai's stroking, and he twirled on her knee in a trance, eyes closed, a mystic knowing neither one religion nor another, neither one country nor another, just this feeling."

Romanticism is so indulgent, and though the dog holds the position for man's best friend, cats must be the romantic's greatest confidant.

Afternoon sickness.

I'm so sick I can hardly drink my freshly made coffee. I have often pondered the possibility that there is an alien residing in my estomago. However, it is a vindictive and evil little alien, and one that decides to come out of hibernation only on days off, trips for ice cream, and evenings out. I am discouraged, but have decided not to let my small martian friend ruin my day. I've determined to find myself a coffee shop. Carnal pleasures. And no, it cannot be a hybrid of astrology and dollars. Sheesh.

one basket

Being in love with someone is something that feels good. I never understood the explanation of love as being terrifying, frightening due to the vulnerability, but I think it's comforting. It's nice being honest and true after hours of simply coping with the world each day. At work I do not think. I have zero advanced thoughts for eight hours a day, but having my love be the background of it all gives me something to think on that is so much more than the task at hand. I'm feeling starved for intellectual stimulation, and love is so much more than an emotional fix. It works me. I'm lucky. I'm tired and my feet hurt. But I know someone who would rub them for me.

not quite as much as the next guy

Men and women of earlier generations are often lovely. Occurring in various shades of gray, they float through our lives offering wisdom, family stories, and gifts from Nordstrom's (the twenty first century version of the cookie). I look forward to doting on grandchildren, walking slowly and not being ashamed, and celebrating my Golden Anniversary with my husband. However, the excuses we've made for them throughout the years are simply ludicrous. "Racist Gramma Betty," should not get a pass on being a bitch just because she's lived through the depression.

I'm no champion of being politically correct, in fact I would classify myself as an essentialist and think I may have done better in my math classes had I been given a Y chromosome. However, I have not only been feeling the generation gap since my grandfather and his wife have stopped by to visit my mother, it has been pummeling me. Maybe I'm sensitive due to the fact that this grandfather has never exactly considered me a favorite, taking pleasure in the fact that he has always been able to make me cry, and only recently finding that his usual methods are stifled by technology (the availability of laptops make conversations that are nearing verbal psychosis completely avoidable). But I don't think so. Over dinner, he went over the names for different races and individuals that were accepted in his time, and how he thought that everyone was too damn sensitive these days. It was only yesterday that I felt such an overwhelming affection for this man has he sat his baseball cap back on his head and ate a banana split with a simply joy that could only have been matched by a seven year old after winning his t-ball game. I love my Gramps dearly and eternally, but an anger is stirred by this man that is often overwhelming.

Constant jabs to Barack Obama, anything involving equality or elsewhise mentioned on MSNBC can be expected, but not moving into a mindset of acceptance, in fact a clinging to a mindset of biggotry, was shocking to me. Older people cannot pick and chose what the world experiences around them. They cannot take advantage of advanced technology so they can watch their baseball teams or breathe efficiently and not realize that segregation was toppled, was wrong, and is now just an embarrassing mar on our history. My grandfather should not be able to fly on a plane if he cannot see that calling a Japanese person a 'jap,' is wrong. The world goes through changes, evolves, realizes, and these people are a part of it. They cannot go on ignoring what the rest of the world knows, refusing to learn as their neighbors and grandchildren learn. However, as of now it's not really their fault. My mother never chastised her father for things she knew that he knew to be false.

The elders of our communities, our countries, are invaluable in learning who we are, what we come from. My grandfather taught me how to build a birdhouse. My grandmother taught me how to be kind... The lives led by people past a certain age are hard and lonely. I cannot forget that their friends are dying, their bodies are sore, and that they watch the world with a slight sense of detachment. Perhaps racism, clinging to old ways and ideas, is a natural defense...but maybe we should try to offer our appreciation and love and let this defense become obsolete.