While (procrastinating before) doing research for an essay, I found this poem by Amber Tamblyn and it's just too good not to expose to the amateur world.
He Seemed Like a Nice Axe
You were adept in the art of slow recoil.
Not a freckle on your face ever cared to surrender.
I stopped counting the times
I couldn't count on you.
Started the habit of smoking to
forgive your mouth for giving up mine.
Whose lips did you kiss
that last time we did?
You went for them like a draw.
A double dog dare.
You just gazed at the bridge of my nose
while the dams around it broke.
My eyes shrunk to combusting plums,
sadder than a Christmas tree on December 26th.
I should have listened to all the New England fireflies
who told me not to.
My heart was a wave
that broke for you.
Continue reading >>
Saturday, November 21
Mid-sweet talk, newspaper word cutouts
I wrote this entry about a week ago, and hesitated to post it because of how incredibly personal it turned out. But at this point, it doesn't matter anymore. There's nothing left for me to lose or worry about.
“I don’t want you anymore.” That’s what he said to me. That’s what he said on the sixty third day after I fell in love.
I suppose the Sunday morning church bells people are attempting to entertain the crowd by turning the monotonous dongs into a quirky melody, but that just adds another layer of sadness. And they stop, enwrapping the bleak dusty church windows into a silence, letting the car honks and the cart rattling and the wild November wind drown out any hint of a symphony.
Though they’re like a symphony of their own. The soundtrack to the [insert typical adjective here] New York City. If I had to describe the soundtrack in three words, I would say cold, restless, and lonely. It can be ninety degrees outside, and all you have to do is just listen to the city to see its coldness. There’s no time to stop on the sidewalk and read a poster because the crowd is permanently following a dogmatic unchanging rhythm. There’s no time to pause and think of where you’re going because they expect you to know that in advance. There’s no time for anything, including emotion.
Is it just more practical to resort to callousness in a city like this? Isn’t there a place for people with an emotional span of Europe who welcome walking down an avenue holding hands just for the hell of it or skipping around puddles without the scowl of a businessman? For people like me? Or do I actually have to become an emotional rock like him and close my heart to intimacy?
We think love is this concrete, significant state of being into which you fall and everything becomes rosy-colored. Truth is, it’s just a human emotion as transient as anger or shame. People fall in and out of love all the time. Where is the constant? Passion is always fleeting, constantly re-imposing itself on people and objects and places and more manmade concepts. If we can be angry with someone one day and then make up the next, what makes love different? The answer isn’t black and white, but it’s not all that complex. If we want to hold a grudge, we are only hurting ourselves; if we want to stay in love when it’s time to let go, well, there’s your answer.
They say you fall because you can’t help it. Personally, I think breaking up feels a lot more like falling. We try to deal through all the problems and approach them as rationally as possible, but in the end it turns out we’ve been slowly dying a little for a while and the breakup couldn’t be helped. So we fall down, down into a land of might-have-been’s and regrets, which is, from my experience, always a depressing place to be in. Then every time you see or hear evidence that your ex-significant other is doing well, it’s like a pang in the stomach when you’re already lying on the floor in defeat. Your eyes become murky and blurry. Insult to injury.
If they say love is irrational, how come people try so hard to rationalize through the reasons why someone doesn’t feel it? If it’s easy to accept that we can’t help who we “fall for,” why is it hard to understand that we can’t help waking up one day and not loving someone anymore? It’s gotta be the same going in and out. Logical or senseless. And if you ask me, since every other damn feeling out there – through rooted in logic – has no substantial reason other than impulse of thought, I’d go with the latter. Love is smooth, but it’s not logical and it sure as hell isn’t constant.
We raced through a fragile honey-colored plane of impossibilities. There were problems, but love is tricky like that because it makes you think it will conquer all. If any human emotion could conquer all, we’d be in trouble; the world spins round because we learn and grow and change our minds. And then I couldn’t take it anymore and threw a fit, and perhaps we rushed with the breakup. But he knew. He knew how I felt and he went on living the single life in front of my face. I remember one day, way back when we first started dating, I told him I’m worried because I feel like I’m falling too hard, and he smiled and kissed me and said our relationship just became serious. I should've known right there love was bullshit. But I wanted it so damn hard to be real, so I believed.
On the sixty third day, I told him everything. That I still loved him and was mad at myself for giving up so easily. He listened with a completely grave expression on his expressionless face, and after a few seconds of silence he buried his face in his hands and said “I don’t want you anymore.” His reply didn’t shock me – I knew what the verdict would be before going into the conversation – but I just wanted him to know, even though he already knew. I wanted him to hear it from my mouth in case there was an ounce of a chance that he still felt it. Because up until that moment, I believed love could be constant. And in the realm of my daydreams, I suppose it could have been; but in the real world, there is nothing permanent except change. His emotions were not hidden or even all that complicated. They were as transient as anger and indifference. You can look at a pretty box all you want, but eventually you’ll have to open it, and it will be empty.
So I’m going out on a Sunday evening. I will put on my new button-up overthrow and brown high-heeled boots, and I will go into a coffee shop and read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and flaunt my independence. And if some cute (or, more likely, creepy) guy flirts with me, so be it. Because life’s not about trying to hold on to one thing when the world is madly spinning around you; it’s about, for example, how the New York weather knows exactly how to appease your mood when all you want to do is listen to the never-ending car honks and watch the cold city lights change colors. It’s about the people who don’t know the worth of something until it’s gone forever.
Continue reading >>
“I don’t want you anymore.” That’s what he said to me. That’s what he said on the sixty third day after I fell in love.
I suppose the Sunday morning church bells people are attempting to entertain the crowd by turning the monotonous dongs into a quirky melody, but that just adds another layer of sadness. And they stop, enwrapping the bleak dusty church windows into a silence, letting the car honks and the cart rattling and the wild November wind drown out any hint of a symphony.
Though they’re like a symphony of their own. The soundtrack to the [insert typical adjective here] New York City. If I had to describe the soundtrack in three words, I would say cold, restless, and lonely. It can be ninety degrees outside, and all you have to do is just listen to the city to see its coldness. There’s no time to stop on the sidewalk and read a poster because the crowd is permanently following a dogmatic unchanging rhythm. There’s no time to pause and think of where you’re going because they expect you to know that in advance. There’s no time for anything, including emotion.
Is it just more practical to resort to callousness in a city like this? Isn’t there a place for people with an emotional span of Europe who welcome walking down an avenue holding hands just for the hell of it or skipping around puddles without the scowl of a businessman? For people like me? Or do I actually have to become an emotional rock like him and close my heart to intimacy?
We think love is this concrete, significant state of being into which you fall and everything becomes rosy-colored. Truth is, it’s just a human emotion as transient as anger or shame. People fall in and out of love all the time. Where is the constant? Passion is always fleeting, constantly re-imposing itself on people and objects and places and more manmade concepts. If we can be angry with someone one day and then make up the next, what makes love different? The answer isn’t black and white, but it’s not all that complex. If we want to hold a grudge, we are only hurting ourselves; if we want to stay in love when it’s time to let go, well, there’s your answer.
They say you fall because you can’t help it. Personally, I think breaking up feels a lot more like falling. We try to deal through all the problems and approach them as rationally as possible, but in the end it turns out we’ve been slowly dying a little for a while and the breakup couldn’t be helped. So we fall down, down into a land of might-have-been’s and regrets, which is, from my experience, always a depressing place to be in. Then every time you see or hear evidence that your ex-significant other is doing well, it’s like a pang in the stomach when you’re already lying on the floor in defeat. Your eyes become murky and blurry. Insult to injury.
If they say love is irrational, how come people try so hard to rationalize through the reasons why someone doesn’t feel it? If it’s easy to accept that we can’t help who we “fall for,” why is it hard to understand that we can’t help waking up one day and not loving someone anymore? It’s gotta be the same going in and out. Logical or senseless. And if you ask me, since every other damn feeling out there – through rooted in logic – has no substantial reason other than impulse of thought, I’d go with the latter. Love is smooth, but it’s not logical and it sure as hell isn’t constant.
We raced through a fragile honey-colored plane of impossibilities. There were problems, but love is tricky like that because it makes you think it will conquer all. If any human emotion could conquer all, we’d be in trouble; the world spins round because we learn and grow and change our minds. And then I couldn’t take it anymore and threw a fit, and perhaps we rushed with the breakup. But he knew. He knew how I felt and he went on living the single life in front of my face. I remember one day, way back when we first started dating, I told him I’m worried because I feel like I’m falling too hard, and he smiled and kissed me and said our relationship just became serious. I should've known right there love was bullshit. But I wanted it so damn hard to be real, so I believed.
On the sixty third day, I told him everything. That I still loved him and was mad at myself for giving up so easily. He listened with a completely grave expression on his expressionless face, and after a few seconds of silence he buried his face in his hands and said “I don’t want you anymore.” His reply didn’t shock me – I knew what the verdict would be before going into the conversation – but I just wanted him to know, even though he already knew. I wanted him to hear it from my mouth in case there was an ounce of a chance that he still felt it. Because up until that moment, I believed love could be constant. And in the realm of my daydreams, I suppose it could have been; but in the real world, there is nothing permanent except change. His emotions were not hidden or even all that complicated. They were as transient as anger and indifference. You can look at a pretty box all you want, but eventually you’ll have to open it, and it will be empty.
So I’m going out on a Sunday evening. I will put on my new button-up overthrow and brown high-heeled boots, and I will go into a coffee shop and read “The Picture of Dorian Gray” and flaunt my independence. And if some cute (or, more likely, creepy) guy flirts with me, so be it. Because life’s not about trying to hold on to one thing when the world is madly spinning around you; it’s about, for example, how the New York weather knows exactly how to appease your mood when all you want to do is listen to the never-ending car honks and watch the cold city lights change colors. It’s about the people who don’t know the worth of something until it’s gone forever.
Continue reading >>
Tuesday, October 13
WHOO NEW POST ZOMGGG!!!111one
Because apparently, people still read my blog...
Honestly, guys, sorry for not updating. I've been horrible about this lately, but college is a whole new playing field for me. However, in honor of my birthday, I'm posting up another one of my poems. I was debating for a few days whether or not this should ever see the light of day, but I'm on such an emotional high right now that I feel nothing can crush me. Even your raw, ruthless criticism. I'm not giving any context, so take what you want from it.
Fleeting
The clouds move like a drunken New York biker.
Barely above ground level,
With no sense of a straight line or slowing down.
Fast like a subway train
Only it's the express one, so it skips a couple necessary stops.
Fast like the cigarette-infested October rainwater
Racing down battered concrete
into the Underworld.
Like a pencil gliding across a dead tree
To draw my skewed interpretation of Zooey Deschanel's nose
in 500 Days of Summer.
Why do we move so fast
Like braindead coke addicts?
I'm not on drugs.
I don't think.
I wonder if, when he wakes up,
He ever remembers how my eyelashes tickled his neck
As we drooled on his Ikea pillowcase
And pretended we didn't have class in twenty minutes,
Or that his roommate wasn't undressing in the bed next to us.
From the day we met,
We were as likely to last as the New York clouds could stay in place.
We raced through a fragile honey-colored plane of impossibilities.
When you speed the "in love" part,
It feels a lot more like falling.
And now
After the stale whiskey and screwdriver shots
And his lovely marks and my sleeping pills
And the uncontrollable, barely remembered hysteria,
After getting used to waking up without his warm elbow jabbing into my shoulder
After realizing his ability to ignore any emotion
After one week
I just keep thinking about the New York bikers,
Recklessly speeding and not caring who they hurt in the process
And leaving others to clean up the mess they've made.
Continue reading >>
Honestly, guys, sorry for not updating. I've been horrible about this lately, but college is a whole new playing field for me. However, in honor of my birthday, I'm posting up another one of my poems. I was debating for a few days whether or not this should ever see the light of day, but I'm on such an emotional high right now that I feel nothing can crush me. Even your raw, ruthless criticism. I'm not giving any context, so take what you want from it.
Fleeting
The clouds move like a drunken New York biker.
Barely above ground level,
With no sense of a straight line or slowing down.
Fast like a subway train
Only it's the express one, so it skips a couple necessary stops.
Fast like the cigarette-infested October rainwater
Racing down battered concrete
into the Underworld.
Like a pencil gliding across a dead tree
To draw my skewed interpretation of Zooey Deschanel's nose
in 500 Days of Summer.
Why do we move so fast
Like braindead coke addicts?
I'm not on drugs.
I don't think.
I wonder if, when he wakes up,
He ever remembers how my eyelashes tickled his neck
As we drooled on his Ikea pillowcase
And pretended we didn't have class in twenty minutes,
Or that his roommate wasn't undressing in the bed next to us.
From the day we met,
We were as likely to last as the New York clouds could stay in place.
We raced through a fragile honey-colored plane of impossibilities.
When you speed the "in love" part,
It feels a lot more like falling.
And now
After the stale whiskey and screwdriver shots
And his lovely marks and my sleeping pills
And the uncontrollable, barely remembered hysteria,
After getting used to waking up without his warm elbow jabbing into my shoulder
After realizing his ability to ignore any emotion
After one week
I just keep thinking about the New York bikers,
Recklessly speeding and not caring who they hurt in the process
And leaving others to clean up the mess they've made.
Continue reading >>
Wednesday, August 12
First step to happiness
Trust is tricky because you can't really love without trust. Even after my mother catches me lying to her, the next day she still takes my word for where I'm going that night (though with more suspicion) because she loves me unconditionally. A love without trust is tainted, and an honest relationship of any kind is impossible.
I rarely believe in successful relationships after one of the partners has cheated. The other tries to overcome the past because "I'm still in love", but except in rare cases where the trust is fully regained after a certain period of time, there will always be a slight sense of discomfort regardless of how benevolent both people's intentions are. I'm not criticizing - I've been cheated on in the past, and though I broke it off, I always gave another chance. But I'm also not denying that it won't be the same. Every time I see him messaging a girl he's messed with in the past, I flinch. Every time he stays out past midnight, it takes a big effort to drive away the slight paranoia that won't let me fall asleep. Why bother, if it's such a big stress case? Because "I'm still in love". But after weeks of the same scenario I can honestly say that it sucks.
A relationship is successful if it continues to make you happy, and true happiness is a long-term sort of contentness. An emotional roller coaster of tears and ecstasy is all fun when you're, like, 15, but after a while you want something that brings you security. What I'm doing is about as antonymic of security as milk and Campari, and yet I stay. And here's a fun fact: I've been crying every night for the past week. Every damn night - about moving away, my parents' scandals, getting yelled at at the post office (yeah... seriously), being the emotional baggage girl in college, and how I'm losing this fight. I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot when I tell him my insecurities, but that's wrong, because someone who truly cares about you won't love you less for your insecurities. Those nights, I feel helpless and can't think of a single step to take in the positive direction.
Then there are times like now, when I think I know what that step has to be. It is to trust, no matter how badly you want to keep your guard up. Either trust, or leave. I don't have much experience in love, but I think in the long term, it's better to be the person who puts themselves out there and gets hurt rather than the one who always lives in suspicion. Because pretending to be happy is about as helpful to you as knowing that tulips come from Turkey.
Continue reading >>
I rarely believe in successful relationships after one of the partners has cheated. The other tries to overcome the past because "I'm still in love", but except in rare cases where the trust is fully regained after a certain period of time, there will always be a slight sense of discomfort regardless of how benevolent both people's intentions are. I'm not criticizing - I've been cheated on in the past, and though I broke it off, I always gave another chance. But I'm also not denying that it won't be the same. Every time I see him messaging a girl he's messed with in the past, I flinch. Every time he stays out past midnight, it takes a big effort to drive away the slight paranoia that won't let me fall asleep. Why bother, if it's such a big stress case? Because "I'm still in love". But after weeks of the same scenario I can honestly say that it sucks.
A relationship is successful if it continues to make you happy, and true happiness is a long-term sort of contentness. An emotional roller coaster of tears and ecstasy is all fun when you're, like, 15, but after a while you want something that brings you security. What I'm doing is about as antonymic of security as milk and Campari, and yet I stay. And here's a fun fact: I've been crying every night for the past week. Every damn night - about moving away, my parents' scandals, getting yelled at at the post office (yeah... seriously), being the emotional baggage girl in college, and how I'm losing this fight. I feel like I'm shooting myself in the foot when I tell him my insecurities, but that's wrong, because someone who truly cares about you won't love you less for your insecurities. Those nights, I feel helpless and can't think of a single step to take in the positive direction.
Then there are times like now, when I think I know what that step has to be. It is to trust, no matter how badly you want to keep your guard up. Either trust, or leave. I don't have much experience in love, but I think in the long term, it's better to be the person who puts themselves out there and gets hurt rather than the one who always lives in suspicion. Because pretending to be happy is about as helpful to you as knowing that tulips come from Turkey.
Continue reading >>
Monday, August 10
The greatest lie ever told
I don't like talking to self-assured adults. They complain about their dull, banal problems and like to point out how much life experience they have to back up their arguments. What I saw back in Turkmenistan this summer was especially bad. The men took up the role of stoic-diplomat-on-vacation, walking around the pool with four cell phones allotted to their four different businesses while wearing very form-fitting underwear, and the women, when they weren't busy gossiping with each each other about what shade of beige is in this year (I'm dead serious), took precious minutes teaching their kids inverted morals to ensure that they grow up to be just like their parents. They all look hard for cliches and punchlines and idioms to appear intelligent to their aristocrat friends, whose brains just as equally epitomize degradation.
The greatest lie ever told is that life has meaning and adults know what it is. The problem is that by the time you realize this, it's too late: you've already spent your best years setting materialistic goals and slaving away toward a sugary future outlined by your parents (work hard in school -> work harder in college -> land a six-digit job -> success), and now you're thirty-something and no closer to enlightenment than you were ten years ago. Then you either end up with a special type of depression known as a mid-life crisis and desperately try to gain back lost time, or you can take your frustration out on your kids by letting the lie live on.
Does life have meaning, and does anyone know what it is? A popular opinion seems to be that we're brought into the world to find happiness. The problem with that theory is that it doesn't bring you any closer to being happy or to figuring out that which will make you happy. And if there are any adults worth talking to about this business, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting them.
Continue reading >>
The greatest lie ever told is that life has meaning and adults know what it is. The problem is that by the time you realize this, it's too late: you've already spent your best years setting materialistic goals and slaving away toward a sugary future outlined by your parents (work hard in school -> work harder in college -> land a six-digit job -> success), and now you're thirty-something and no closer to enlightenment than you were ten years ago. Then you either end up with a special type of depression known as a mid-life crisis and desperately try to gain back lost time, or you can take your frustration out on your kids by letting the lie live on.
Does life have meaning, and does anyone know what it is? A popular opinion seems to be that we're brought into the world to find happiness. The problem with that theory is that it doesn't bring you any closer to being happy or to figuring out that which will make you happy. And if there are any adults worth talking to about this business, I haven't had the pleasure of meeting them.
Continue reading >>
On art
Warning: do not attempt to read this post if you are excessively tired, sleepy, busy, impatient, or intoxicated.
This is from a book called The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, and I will probably be mentioning it a lot in the near future. Besides being hands-down the best book I've ever read, there are so many thoughts and ideas to take away from it. It continues to teach long after the last page was turned. I thought this was the perfect passage to start things off as it introduces the very reason I choose art - and I mean all kinds of art - as my career choice and lifelong path. I'm going into a political science major, but all for the sake of reporting on it using words that can influence, sentences that are crafted in a way that hits all the right buttons. That's art. Why is it that we are happy to read something really good, and we marvel at the writer's talent for so effortlessly lightening our mood?
Continue reading >>
Human longing! We cannot cease desiring, and this is our glory, and our doom. Desire! It carries us and crucifies us, delivers us every new day to a battlefield where, on the eve, the battle was lost; but in sunlight, does it not look like a territory ripe for conquest, a place where - even though tomorrow we will die - we can build empires doomed to fade to dust, as if the knowledge we have of their imminent fall had absolutely no effect on our eagerness to build them now? We are filled with the energy of constantly wanting that which we cannot have, we are abandoned at dawn on a field littered with corpses, we are transported until our death by projects that are no sooner completed than they must be renewed. Yet how exhausting it is to be constantly desiring...
This is from a book called The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery, and I will probably be mentioning it a lot in the near future. Besides being hands-down the best book I've ever read, there are so many thoughts and ideas to take away from it. It continues to teach long after the last page was turned. I thought this was the perfect passage to start things off as it introduces the very reason I choose art - and I mean all kinds of art - as my career choice and lifelong path. I'm going into a political science major, but all for the sake of reporting on it using words that can influence, sentences that are crafted in a way that hits all the right buttons. That's art. Why is it that we are happy to read something really good, and we marvel at the writer's talent for so effortlessly lightening our mood?
...We soon aspire to pleasure without the quest, to a blissful state without beginning or end, where beauty would no longer be an aim or a project but the very proof of our nature. And that state is art. When we gaze at a still life, when - even though we did not pursue it - we delight in its beauty, a beauty borne away by the magnified and immobile figuration of things, we find pleasure in the fact that there was no need for longing, we may contemplate something we need not want, may cherish something we need not desire. In this scene before our eyes - silent, without life or motion - a time exempt of projects is incarnated, perfection purloined from duration and its weary greed - pleasure without desire, existence without duration, beauty without will.
For art is emotion without desire.
Continue reading >>
Sunday, August 9
The beginning of the end
And here I go again.
I'm definitely planning to continue the blog during college - how else will my old friends know the agonizing details of the big fat crazy booty-shaking adventure that is life at NYU - but I feel like those posts will belong to a world entirely different from this one. Before I take that last step, there are still some entries left to be written. They'll be succinct and probably random, just like my last thoughts about all the years spent in Palo Alto.
The reason I've been MIA for a month is that I've been vacationing in Russia, but that's not why I haven't posted in such a long time. The truth is that there are so many things to say that I can't even start talking. Hopefully they'll come out bit by bit over the next few weeks because as I've said before, writing helps me deal with whatever's wrong, and yes I KNOW I shouldn't be complaining because I'm going to a great school in one of the most exciting cities in the world and yada yada, but since I'm saying something's wrong I must have a reason, right?
All I ask of you readers is that you don't dismiss my reasons. "You'll forget about it in a few months" sounds dandy, but at least consider the possibility that there's more to it. There may be more to it than the routinely cold feet or my habitual overthinking or, as Mr. Daren liked to say, my "teenage angst" (how strange to think that I'll never have to answer to him again). Or there may be not. Mr. Pandich, my old history teacher, liked to remind us of the kiss principle - keep it simple, stupid - whenever we wrote anything, long or short. So I'm keeping it simple and unedited. This is me, this is the end of a huge chunk of my life and the beginning of another, and this is how I say goodbye.
After I get the obvious out of the way, it gets complicated.
Continue reading >>
I'm definitely planning to continue the blog during college - how else will my old friends know the agonizing details of the big fat crazy booty-shaking adventure that is life at NYU - but I feel like those posts will belong to a world entirely different from this one. Before I take that last step, there are still some entries left to be written. They'll be succinct and probably random, just like my last thoughts about all the years spent in Palo Alto.
The reason I've been MIA for a month is that I've been vacationing in Russia, but that's not why I haven't posted in such a long time. The truth is that there are so many things to say that I can't even start talking. Hopefully they'll come out bit by bit over the next few weeks because as I've said before, writing helps me deal with whatever's wrong, and yes I KNOW I shouldn't be complaining because I'm going to a great school in one of the most exciting cities in the world and yada yada, but since I'm saying something's wrong I must have a reason, right?
All I ask of you readers is that you don't dismiss my reasons. "You'll forget about it in a few months" sounds dandy, but at least consider the possibility that there's more to it. There may be more to it than the routinely cold feet or my habitual overthinking or, as Mr. Daren liked to say, my "teenage angst" (how strange to think that I'll never have to answer to him again). Or there may be not. Mr. Pandich, my old history teacher, liked to remind us of the kiss principle - keep it simple, stupid - whenever we wrote anything, long or short. So I'm keeping it simple and unedited. This is me, this is the end of a huge chunk of my life and the beginning of another, and this is how I say goodbye.
After I get the obvious out of the way, it gets complicated.
Continue reading >>
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