calm in the valley of the dogs

there is calm in the belly of the beast
there is no alarm in the least
for a thousand and one flashlights in one place
and the glow of a thousand TV waves

The tapping of my feet has moved from the floor and into my chest, where they beat restlessly to no certain rhythm, sometimes resting for a few moments before starting up their thrum once again. There are nerves in my belly now, spent yesterday wavering in uncertainty over the toilet, wondering if I was indeed going to throw them all up. I didn't. But this weekend marked a finality - the last weekend I will ever spend at home as I know it. I will not be back next summer. And so the family and I went shopping - two trips that always mark the weekend before I go back to school. Mervyn's for an extra pair of cheap Levi's jeans and replacement sunglasses. Target for underwear and socks and notebooks and pencil lead. The bags are thrown down on the floor of my room and I second guess myself at how much I'll be able to fit in what I'm carrying back. I won't be able to fit all of it. Up until this point, my mom has been fabulous at keeping my room the way it was - my posters up, my stuffed animals out, still piles of stuff left on the floor from last summer - but how long will it be there now? Saturday was one more week with my kittens. They are staying home and I have given up all Christmas and birthday presents to ensure that they will stay alive the year I am gone. Guilt. I charged up my iPod for the road trip and sometime this week I have to bring in pictures to Costco to get developed so I can put pictures in my album and pictures on the wall. Tiny obligations, squishing my chest in from all different directions. I do not wish to pack. I do not wish to say goodbye. I want, for a while more, comfort in things I know - things like sitting in front of the telly with my mom and brother at night, working on one of my half-finished projects. At the same time, I want this Saturday to get started!i'msoExcited!disneyland!Brother!RoadTripIknowwillbefabulous&IamSpendingitWithaFabulousPerson! but no, I am just a baby. And I'm going to wrap one arm around my little brother and the other around my mother. I'm going to remember how my dad fixed both my old sunglasses and Puss-in-Boots watch with his little tools and tricks of ingenuity. And I will smother my face in my little kittens' fur until I sneeze.

And while I think about this present that will soon be the past, I must remember that this is my past. And that the last few years of school - what I have felt and what I have done - they are the past, and other people are allowed the past as well and prying into a past that is not offered up to me willingly is not worth knowing. I hide things, I do. Not because I am ashamed, not because I am lying, not because I want to forget, but because this is you, me, here, now. That doesn't really matter right now. That was me in the past. This is where I am, and I hope to stop fretting and start trusting and start forgetting...

notice

my mind is not on work, oh no. my mind quit work on friday. it is towards the future.

hot stuff

it is crunch time of summer. it is less than three weeks now that school begins and now my mind revolves around nothing but a bunch of lists and requirements and lack of time.

yesterday i decided that i was going to be the head honcho art curator at a national museum. since i discovered this, i have plunged head first into career reports from princeton review and the government about my newly decided upon career - one that, unless you are a curator a large museum, in true macalester style, pays an average of $30,000. and you gotta have a masters. and if you want to be a big shot, a doctorate. so what the hell. any job is hard to get into.

so i continue to plunge, evaluating internships and the schools that offer doctorates in art history/arts education/museology (i'll be going to socal, florida, or new york, apparently) and now again reworking my major/minor macalester plans.

decided i had to be an art major in order to achieve: it's impossible. can i be an art minor? should i do it in studio or history? i'm further along on the studio track, but would art history look better? and if so, does that mean i should take the 8:30am MWF art history 1 class next semester and therefore be totally screwed over in both sleep deprivation and staying until the very end to take my last final?

it's 10:41am and i've already taken to advil at work.

this planning, this stress, however, gives me focus. and none of it's really real yet.

give me back the stress of planning the road trip, please.

nuh uh.

creepy beyond all reason:

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/futurebody

envy is bad and the english language is inept:

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0307.epstein.html

amen.

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." - Oscar Wilde

I feel like I am not in the gutter, but I am indeed looking at the stars. Today, I am in the stars, and I am flying by them and they wave to me, and today I am entirely convinced that I am going to do something fabulous with my life. Today I am convinced that I will be brave and bold, that I am as clever as all those people, that wherever I go, I will bring laughter and what I hope most of all is that I can possibly inspire this feeling in others that I care about.

A cliche sentiment perhaps, but my mood is nothing but jumping up and down on the bed and I'm five again and my head doesn't even come close to hitting the ceiling.

true love.

so i'll do my part

not to break your heart

and baby, don't break mine

because i adore you

and i know for sure

you're the spark on the sun

I love the Fruit Bats beyond all reason. I got a chance to listen to their new album yesterday (several times) driving to and from Fresno, a 2.5 hour drive that also allowed me to groove to Kelly Clarkson, Annie, and the new New Pornographers. It feels good to fall in love with a band - it's a fabulous affair, one that allows no broken hearts and allows me to give myself fully while not worrying about etiquette and what others think and no missing, none at all, but still the lovely painful twangs when I listen to "Earthquake of '73." Indeed, I will nurture the love we share and keep it close to my side, and oh, it should be my own little true love, singing of nonsensical things and the beauty of the world.

Yesterday I saw a bear at the zoo. He was alone and pacing and had claws half a foot long. The zookeeper came to the fence and held up a bunch of grapes. Grinning, the bear came to the edge of his habitat and squatted on his hind legs and held his paws out to the side like he was about to give the grapes a big brown bear embrace. 'Oh, I'm so ready,' I bet he was thinking. 'Throw the grapes to me, I will catch them in my mouth!' The zookeeper threw the grapes and they landed on the ground in front of his torso, his paws still spread out waiting to catch them. 'Where are they? Where are they?' . . . 'Oh, drat.' And as the bear was shifting his massive weight to get the grapes lying between his legs, a friendly zoo guest chucks another bunch of grapes. . . right at the bear.

I saw two hookers at the gas station. I assume they were hookers - they were scantily clad and had high heeled shoes on and were leaning through the window of a black pick-up. I wonder what they were saying. How do they know who to approach? Who pays for the motel room? Is it included in the price of the tryst? Is it cheaper then if they just do a backseat job or something? I wonder. But not really.

sad/sad/happy/happy

sad one: When my dad wearily asked, 'How many years left of school does Brian have?' My mom answered, 'Nine.' My dad sighed. 'Nine.' Nine years before he can retire. He will be 66. My parents have made amazing sacrifices for us - and this kind of selflishness is beyond my grasp of understanding - as compassionate as I try to be, everything I do is ultimately for my betterment. Let's face it - it's true.

sad two: The same pattern, repeated, a year later, with a person I thought was my, not to say 'evil twin,' but my equivalent in the world, a friend I made in ridiculous record time and who I thought would salvage my days. And they did, for a while. I could tick off a long checklist of traits they had in common: both had amazingly freaky similarities with me, both are incredibly sensitive males, both tend to believe the world revolves around them, both get offended incredibly easily, both take your sarcasm to heart and dig you into a hole of guilt so deep you can never get out, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And so I call them my new best friend one week, and then can barely handle them the next. It is discouraging, this emptiness I taste.

happy one: I ate pizza and played Risk with my mom and brother tonight. I won Risk, after my brother pulled an Adolescent Hormonal Manuever and quit the game just as I took Southern Europe from him on the defense. Got drunk on wine while sipping it with my mom. Love my mom. Love my brother.

happy two: I am never sure whether to be responsible or irrational. Today, I choose irrationality.

remember when we used to paint our nails?

love: fruit bats.

rusty wings try in vain to catch

the wind that blew my heart away

turn this plane around right now

'cause i'm sick of all this shit

save yourself, save yourself

'cause i'm sinking with this ship

the how to's

How to make a grown man cry: tell him that beyond all else, what you crave is inspiration. Tell him that it's one of the reasons you want to go back to school so badly. Tell him that that's why you've been able to get along through these long summer months as well as you have. Lost time spurs anxiety, which in turn inspires activity. Tell him that the crispness of Minnesota, who knows, something about the place, sharpens your brain and quickens your heart. Tell him that your life is alright as long as you're inspired by something.

Tell him that, and he'll shout YES! and then ask you to stop, please, because he feels like his life is running ahead of him barely allowing him to catch up and that if you keep talking about inspiration, he will realize his lack and start crying.

I WILL BE THERE WITH YOU WHEN YOU TURN OUT THE LIGHT

There comes a time in every properly maturing woman's life where she must stand over an office copy machine for hours in a short skirt. It is a rite of passage and I am proud to say that I have accomplished it.

Dear friends, how I hate copy machines. I hate the way the paper feels hot and grainy after it comes out and I hate the rays I imagine are frying my brain when the document is too fat to close the cover the whole way.

things that brilliant people have said

"Now once more the belt is tight and we summon the proper expression of horror as we look back at our wasted youth. Sometimes, though, there is a ghostly rumble among the drums, an asthmatic whisper in the trombones that swings me back into the early twenties when we drank wood alcohol and every day in every way grew better and better, and there was a first abortive shortening of the skirts, and girls all looked alike in sweater dresses, and people you didn't want to know said 'Yes, we have no bananas,' and it seemed only a question of a few years before the older people would step aside and let the world be run by those who saw things as they were - and it all seems rosy and romantic to us who were young then, because we will never feel quite so intensely about our surroundings any more." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Although a man may lose a sense of his own importance when he is a mere unit among a busy throng, all utterly regardless of him, it by no means follows that he can dispossess himself, with equal facility, of a very strong sense of the importance and magnitude of his cares."

"When I speak of home, I speak of the place where -- in default of a better -- those I love are gathered together; and if that place were a gypsy's tent, or a barn, I should call it by the same good name notwithstanding."

"Love, however, is very materially assisted by a warm and active imagination: which has a long memory, and will thrive, for a considerable time, on very slight and sparing food."

"Mystery and disappointment are not absolutely indispensable to the growth of love, but they are, very often, its powerful auxiliaries."
Nicholas Nickleby Charles Dickens

"I am not young enough to know everything." Oscar Wilde

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."
Lady Windermere's Fan Oscar Wilde

"The truth is rarely pure and never simple."

"Oh, I don't think I would care to catch a sensible man. I shouldn't know what to talk to him about." The Importance of Being Earnest Oscar Wilde

"The advantage of the emotions is that they lead us astray, and the advantage of science is that it is not emotional." The Picture of Dorian Gray Oscar Wilde

general nostalgia and his troops.

You should check out some of my old entries. They are quite pretty. This is another thing about school: it inspires me to write good online journal entries, and definitely does not give me time to write entries on how old entries used to be good.

l'amour horrible

"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it oepns up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses, you build up a whole suit of armor, so that nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life...You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. I hate love."-Neil Gaiman

I thrive in painful love quotes, I do. I like them more than any quote about love that is uplifting and soaring. I like the giant needle and the big stinger of love, I guess, the beautiful words that they inspire people to create. Because pain makes pretty amazing things happen. Oh it's bad, it's bad, but it's all so thrilling.

I wrote a love letter to the Fruit Bats today.