feel discovered.

it feels good that i want to clean house and lay in bed and read during this thanksgiving break in minnesota. when there's nobody around, then i can relax and be myself. or be domestic. or be something. i want to do laundry and i want to vacuum. at the same time, i haven't done any of that yet. i haven't had time.

(my little brother is so big.)
(i am getting a kickass pair of boots for christmas and for the first time, i am feeling girly and inredibly excited about a pair of shoes.)

detour.

a detour, understanding this, of sorts.

baby baby please believe me
i would never never do anything to hurt you
baby baby please believe me
i would never never do anything to you
to make you blue
but yesterday i found this letter
from the boy i loved before i ever knew you
before i even knew you
and the train from kansas city
is coming into town
the train from kansas city is a-coming
and there's nothing i can do to make it turn around

baby baby please believe me
nothing in this world will tear us apart
we'll never never part
so wait right here and i will hurry
i'll be back in the time it takes to break a heart
i gotta break his heart
'cause the train from kansas city is coming into town
the train from kansas city is a-coming
and there's nothing i can do to make it turn around

i never answered his letter
i just couldn't tell him that way
no i never answered his letter
i just didn't know what to say
-neko case

you'll never make a living.

there will be moments right before i fall asleep and moments when i am standing on the platform waiting for a train. there will be moments when i am bored in class and moments when i see lichtenstein paintings. there will be moments when i am staring at the computer screen and moments when i sit on a park bench in regents park. there will be moments of monotony and moments of poignance that will break up this whirlwind life you forsee for me. and then intrudingly and unforseen, the miss will rush upon me and i will wonder, unwisely, how much longer i will have to stay here without you. this is not sentimental. this is the unseemly truth.

chain gang of love

"it takes a little time to getting used to
but love can destroy everything
yeah love can destroy everything"

I haven’t been myself of late
I haven’t slept for several days but

Coming home I feel like I
Designed these buildings I walk by
You know you drive me up the wall
I need to see your face that’s all
You little sod I love your eyes
Be everything to me tonight
-elbow

i always tend to love to find the bad and the panic in something so good.
i've said - let it go, it's the past, it's the past. and history, is not, i said not, relevant because it repeats itself.
but maybe people do. and maybe i gotta get to sleep and maybe the walks in the snow are calming because the white helps me clear my mind. or maybe the intense concentration on staying warm leads to these thoughts. either way.

will the circle be unbroken

there are about 15 people in the room right now - in maura and erin's living room. there are approximately four guitars, a banjo, a fiddle, and a clarinet in use. there is redwine and chocolate cake and ice cream. i remember experiencing this for the first time last year - general jamming in large circles. i remember doing nothing but banging a drum every once and a while and feeling generally very extraneous, but this time i played some guitar, some clarinet, and again with my percussion, a shaker filled with lentils. it's beautiful, though. it's so beautiful and THIS, right here, is what college is all about. i glow. i glow like my teeth in black light. i glow.

69 love songs

There are, in fact, three volumes worth of Magnetic Fields albums called "69 Love Songs." We were talking the other day - how can there be oh so many songs about love? When really, from an abstract point of view, there is only one thing to know about it? Whether you do it, or whether you don't. The thing is, the way people do or don't seems special and unique to each and every person. So each and every person will write a love song before their end of days. I've in fact written three.

I've just finished reading Lorrie Moore's "Self-Help" book of short stories. It's the most inspiring thing I've read in ages - and by inspiring I mean not hopeful or jovial or classic inspiration by any means, but by the fact there there is writing out there that hits so close to me. It's my sentiments, my stupid girly sentiments, expressed in beautiful and humorous, scathing, angry prose. And those heartstrings I like tugged so much. Oh, that's there.

In other news, time is dwindling down already. I feel like it's been no time since I arrived in Minnesota, ecstatic and surreal, like no time since I arrived at this house, crying and alone on a futon in my empty bedroom. The last few days have been fabulous in self-improvement - I am inspired to write and to art. There could be nothing better.

A playlist: 1. Cloud Prayer-AC Newman, 2. Prelude #4 in E minor-Chopin, 3. Since I Left You-The Avalanches, 4. I Only Wanna Be With You-Bay City Rollers, 5. Morningwatch-Dolorean, 6. The Pledge-Brendan Benson, 7. If You Knew-Neko Case, 8. All Those Years Ago-George Harrison, 9. Hey Jealousy-Gin Blossoms, 10. Dare-Gorillaz, 11. O Mimi Tu Piu Non Torni-LaBoheme, 12. Annie's Song-John Denver, 13. Theme from 'Eternal Sunshine..'-Jon Brion, 14. Mornings Eleven-The Magic Numbers, 15. Ball&Chain-Martha Wainwright, 16. Kiss at the End of the Rainbow-Mitch&Mickey, 17. What is Your Secret-Nada Surf, 18. Teenage Kicks-Nouvelle Vague, 19. I Summon You-Spoon, 20. Saddest Quo-Pernice Brothers, 21. High Party-Ted Leo&the Pharmacists, 22. Nothing Compares 2 U-Sinead O'Connor.

"There is never anything conclusive, just an endles series of tests.

And could you leave him tripping merrily through the snow?"

john, i'm only dancing

Where is Padme? She's alright, isn't she?

It seems in your anger you have killed her.

NNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Instead of rocking to David Bowie and reloading websites I've already seen several times today, I should be drawing dishes in my kitchen. No, you're right, it doesn't sound very inspiring, and you're right, I don't like it either.

things.

> I've come to realize that I like pretty things - keep your philosophies and politics, good sir.

> I refuse all conventions of the female sex but fall prey to them just the same as you.

> I doubt that you would want this but you can go ahead and take it.

> I told myself I'd drive straight through because anticipation is killing me. I stopped several times for the fun of dying a bit more with thoughts of you.

> I'm gonna shake this polaroid up real good despite your explicit instructions not to.

> Sometimes it plagues my mind: who would I die for? I'd take a bullet for you, little brother.

a bed made of linens and sequins and silk

i have a pile of 20 cds to review for the radio station on my desk, i have a pile of unread entertainment weekly's dating back to october 5th on my floor, my bed has been unmade for weeks, i have a gluestick, women's health information, a swiss army knife, some rubberbands, and mirrors that have fallen down from my wall on the floor, i have 8 empty diet coke cans on the surface next to me, i have a box full of birthday presents unsorted, i have money laying out on my desk, i have items of clothing all over the room, i have several stories half-written.

but i glow on a day-to-day basis. and that is something.

giga dance

i'm going to south dakota now. it's fall break already and the semester's halfway through. how life has been good to me and how the sun is bright and my stomach is empty. i am waiting for the call and the honk and then i will be out the door.

vespa

'promiscuous makes an entrance.'

melancholy sets in comfortably in its armchair - for no reason at all.

under your nose

besides all the usual conventions and usual 'good things' in general about living off campus, the thing that i most like is riding my bike - specifically under the following clauses: when it is dark and two in the morning and there are no cars - there are no people - and you bike home as fast as you can with pleasant breeze in your hair and the air whooshing life into your previously tired eyes - riding down the middle of the street with the traffic light changing for you and thinking about - what if you are alone in the world? this is what it would be like - biking home in the dark with no sign of life.

cybele's reverie

oh love, you reckless bastard - why do you make everybody write about you?

i cannot concentrate. also, my stomach is upset so that may have something to do with it - or the fact that i, for once, have a plethora of things i'd rather be doing on the computer. for example, playing 'oregon trail,' 'where int he world is carmen sandiego?', 'jones in the fast lane,' 'simtower,' and 'mixed-up mother goose' - all games from the '90s, from my childhood. if there is anything better in the world than downloading, let me know some other time when i need a boost, because right now i am fine with that idea.

songs of the moment (some old some new):
sexed up - robbie williams
what is your secret - nada surf
eleanor put your boots on - franz ferdinand
the cloud prayer - a.c. newman
the pledge - brendan benson
tears - massive attack

don't give me no headrush in the morning

move it, kristina! move it! do it! get up and write it and create it!

just don't sit here and soak up too much of a good thing.
it's there. you've got it. love it. leave it.

i just had to break the window

I hope that I will know what I got before it's gone.

(I know I've got right now. I hope I'm not forgetting anything.)

handsome drink.

i'm at school. it's, uh, less inspiring than i thought it'd be. it didn't hit me bam boom and i wanted to write the next great american novel or write a song for the ages or create the first great artwork of the 21st century. it didn't. instead i'm tired, lazy, indecisive, and barely hanging on to my to-do list.

it's the little things that get me behind, yet it's the little things that still make me happy to be here.

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.