The beginnings of a new blog post

Nevermind the fact that I’ve basically abandoned this thing. I want to talk about something else.

Everyone’s different when it comes to making themselves happy. How far will people go to achieve their own happiness? Some will seek out an entourage to constantly feed them self-esteem. Some will suffice with a few close friends. Some prefer to be alone, reading or solving a world catastrophe or putting together a puzzle. Some will steal, some will kill, some will simply run away from problems. Some will get a job and some will beg. Yet in all my years until now, I thought everyone had good intentions from their own point of view. Everything people did could be justified if you consider that person’s well-being at the time. And it doesn’t make it better, it just explains things.

And then I met others whose intentions justify nothing. Funny it took so long to see, and I blame it on being so sheltered (and selective) back home. The fact is, these others have little to nothing that can sustain their happiness. It’s really a sad predicament – I don’t know where I’d be if I was still searching, still wondering every night what is it that I want, that which will eliminate weeks of brooding. I’d probably be one of them. Because you see, the only way these people can ever feel good about themselves is if everyone around them feels a little worse. In the extreme case, they thrive on criticism, putting people down and yet pretending to be above all the nuisance. The funny thing is, they need people around them because otherwise, there wouldn’t be anyone left to put down. This forces friendliness out of them, but it’s a fake friendliness that’s easy to spot almost right on. Have you ever bonded with a stranger over mutual hate? Doesn’t it feel good to know there’s someone else out there who shares the same antagonistic feelings? But imagine this was your life. That the strongest bonds of friendship you have are rooted in negativity and mocking, and when the object of negativity no longer pertains, you have absolutely nothing left to make you happy.

It’s no wonder these people have so much to criticize about the world. It’s jealousy, in the purest form. Jealousy that others can sustain themselves just fine, can laugh so hard about something other than making fun of those surrounding them. These people are really only laughing at themselves. You feel sorry for them, try to help them, but it’s futile when you suspect they secretly (very secretly) thrive on your misery.

In a way, we’re all like them. We are selfish and want the best for ourselves, and if that means someone will lose, that’s a sacrifice we will take. But what differentiates them from everyone else is that aside from their bashing, they have nothing else to hold on to. I meet these people now and then, and every time it gets a little easier to distinguish fake from honest. A true complement from a backhanded one.

I didn’t know how long it would have taken me to say this, but I believe I’ve found my happiness. I’m sure people around me will come and go, but I know exactly where to turn in my moments of sadness and helplessness. Where, and to whom. No amount of mocking or criticism can even begin to hold a candle to the joy, the security, and the relief that my own happiness can bring. I’m not saying there aren’t bad times – if life was this good constantly, it would be totally unfair – but they don’t seem to matter when I consider the long run. Everything is lost in the promise of permanence. Of course, nothing is permanent, I believe I’ve mentioned that several times in the past few years. That is, nothing is permanent except change. And to be able to grow, change, and mature next to someone is a hell of a lot better than doing it while trying to push everyone away.

In this turbulence, I found my constant. I only hope you’ll find yours as well. Continue reading >>

Buy one, get one free

As a promise made in the previous post. PS - thanks Kat for the title idea :)

Why didn’t anyone tell me
That women are like Christmas trees
Really only good when they’re all adorned
With round silicone curiosities
And cotton to cover up their prickly idiosyncrasies
And unruly oddities
That they inherited from consumer fables
While they stood obedient, silent
In the vacant corner of the local deli
Forced to observe, and knowing better
Than to yell when the back is already turned
So that the merchant,
Void of any guilt from the illegalities entailed,
Can approach the customer
Tilt his head in the direction of the object so pleasing to the eye
And say
“Yep, they only come in real or fake.”


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On garlands and candy canes

I bought my first Christmas tree in Brooklyn, New York on a cold November afternoon.

That's not to say this is my first tree ever, simply the first that I picked out and purchased myself. I don't want to say "paid for" because I used the credit card linked to my mother's bank account, but that's another story. Point is - I hauled my ass to Brooklyn armed with gloves, a purse (into which I would end up stuffing the fake snow I stole from the Target display trees), and a really really big Bed, Bath, and Beyond bag to hide the illegalities entailed in my holiday mission.

Something was clearly off when I ended up with the disabled shopping cart. It was the only one I could find stranded on the second floor of Target, and God forbid I cross over to the other side of the store down the escalator and get myself a normal one. No: I found this little guy left for vultures in isle 6, surrounded by Christmas decorations galore. The moment I tried to move him, the right front wheel rolled but did not turn, whirling the cart to its right smack into the artificial candy canes. Hmm, I thought. Either this is nothing more than a disabled shopping cart, or some higher power is trying to tell me to buy those spiffy-looking candy canes. If you know me at all, I always go with the option that's more fun. What this meant was the next 40 minutes of me pushing and shoving and adjusting the wheel every few seconds and crashing into a lot of customers. They understood, though. Christmas brings out the mercantilist bit(ch) in all of us.

After I had my fun picking out the canes, ornaments, garlands, and a wreath, I kicked the cart's bad side into the isle with the trees. Only this was no isle - the entire back corner of the second floor looked like a forest out of Elf. I had never seen so many fake trees so close together at the same time; my little cart could barely maneuver past the plastic branches and the tangles of Christmas lights. It was beautiful, but it wasn't quite right - they were all too big or too skinny or too fake-looking. I realized you can say the same thing about women. Maybe I'll write a poem about how women are like Christmas trees in the 21st century.

And there it was. If I were in a cheesy movie where angels bellowed their "AAAAAH"s and the object in front of me was illuminated in mysterious light, this would be the scene. Just over four feet in a natural shade of green, it looked at me from a stand that was about as high as my dresser. I would put the tree on the dresser. The turn of events couldn't be more perfect if I had a normal cart or if having a Christmas tree in the dorms was legal. This was my baby, prelit and pre-packaged. Sixty dollars for something that will probably last for the duration of my college years? I didn't even think twice.

I asked the nice men in green hats and nametags where they sold the fake snow that was so neatly displayed among the branches, and they threw me a "we don't sell that here". How was I to have a tree without snow? The Russian in me didn't hesitate too long. The purse was small, but if I packed the rolls of snow like sardines, no one would suspect a thing. Besides, would they really care if I took one itty-bitty fraction of the blanket of cotton that covered the ugly tree stands?

After paying up at the cash register, I pondered on how I was going to get the five-foot long box past my dorm's security guard. It wouldn't have been bad if the box didn't say CHRISTMAS TREE and had photos of the goods plastered on all four sides. This is where the BedBath bag came in. I wrapped one half in the shitty wrapping they gave me in Target, left room for the handle, and covered the other side with the plastic bag on top of the shitty wrapping. I was buying a lamp, I swear. The handle cut the skin on my fingers; this is where the gloves came in. At least two men stopped me on the way from Target to the subway with "You need any help, honey?" No thanks, go molest the Victoria's Secret across the street. Brooklyn never fails to substantiate its stereotypes.

As I rolled along the Brooklyn Bridge in a lonely subway car, I considered why I'd go through all this trouble for a holiday which I don't even celebrate, during which I won't even be here. The tree and the candy canes and the colorful lights lift my mood like no other, sure. But what was it about Christmas that made me so incredibly happy for no apparent reason?

I want to say I don't know. I want to say I don't have any particular expectations that the holiday spirit will instill itself into everyone and make them nicer, more forgiving, more optimistic. I want to say that I'm not hoping the $200 worth of decorations in my room will somehow make magic happen and turn the implausible into reality. I want to say I don't wish things were different. But I can't lie to myself, now can I?
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I should've listened to the New England fireflies

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.


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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.

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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.


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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.
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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.


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On art

Warning: do not attempt to read this post if you are excessively tired, sleepy, busy, impatient, or intoxicated.

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.

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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.




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List of the Week aka Just Friends, v. 2

This week, the post features a list of things I will miss about this boy. I was thinking of writing it entry-style like I did at the end of last year, but figured this way I'll kill both birds. After all, what better theme for a list of the week than a run down memory lane full of uncomfortable, awkward, kinda-makes-you-cringe-every-time-you-think-about-them sweet old memories? This time there's a lot more to say anyway.

Things I'll miss

1. Our ridiculous, at times completely inappropriate and at all times frustrating stubbornness.
2. Catching a glimpse of your head in-between people I really don't care about
3. (And you're not hard to spot, you have a total of like six shirts that you rotate every now and then)
4. Walking - more realistically, shoving and pushing - through the crowd to where you're standing, making quick expressionless eye contact (I am so breezy) and continuing on my way, wondering what thought crossed your mind in that fraction of a second
5. The jokes that didn't ever make much sense
6. Comfortable laughs
7. Simple, unspoken understanding
8. How I could always count on a conversation whenever my day was crappy (and that was like 28 days out of each month)
9. The long, long talks every night that were the reason homework wasn't finished and bedtime came at 1, sometimes 2
10. How I told you absolutely everything (too much, apparently)
11. Your sober, practical, slightly jealous point of view that I turned to when the girls' got overcliched and annoying
12. Your taste in music that I rarely liked
13. Your equally strange taste in movies that were usually overdone
14. Except for When Harry Met Sally, that one was good. And I remember that's not where everything started with us but it just made things more complicated.
15. Your hands, which were so rough from doing what you love to do (that's what she said (not really heheh (well kind of... but that's not what I mean)))
16. Your endless search for a fitting compliment that just ended up making me laugh anyway
17. How you could always notice the small things, but didn't always understand them
18. Watching you stand all cute and shy at Starbucks
19. How, no matter how amazing of a day I was having in New York, I couldn't wait to get to the hotel room to tell you all about it
20. Which reminds me: I'll miss calling you in the airport to say goodbye, in case our plane crashed
21. Directing my many AIM statuses at you
22. Singing (and I think it's time to agree that I am loads better)
23. Making faces when I should have been paying attention during a class with a teacher FROM THE DARKEST PITS OF HELL
24. The couch, your laptop burning your thighs
25. (I watched that show till the end, you know. The very last episode.)
26. Your face when it got really, really serious. Which, honestly, scared me a little
27. Your naive plans for us, for me. Didn't I tell you it was a one-way road I was on?
28. How you were outside your house barefoot in December talking to me on the phone because you couldn't do it otherwise
29. Most importantly, I'll miss how you forgave me. You forgave me for my little Christmas surprise, and you forgave me for what happened the day after.

But dammit, I wish you'd forgive me for my choice. Now that the year is winding down and I'm getting ready to pack my bags for the Dominican, there's nothing I want more than to leave on a good note. You say you're over it, but you clearly haven't moved past it. Obviously, things will not go back to normal; but they sure as hell aren't gonna move anywhere if you keep them at this stalemate. You've gotta start somewhere. One word, some effort. What you're afraid of won't even matter now since we may never see each other again. There'll be no more glances, no more smiles -

There’ll be no more grabbing my hand to pat it as one of our many inside jokes and no more sharing the worst pickup lines that involve touching body parts of the opposite sex (in appropriate places, of course). No more yelling across the hall about how great my ass looks in those jeans because you knew that made me insanely uncomfortable, and you’ve always enjoyed my misery.


I miss being just friends. I guess I never got used to it.



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Changing face

When I looked at the home page of my blog this morning, instead of feeling a rush of excitement at all the writing possibilities, I felt a whopping bleeeeeeeeeh. It just screamed (or more likely whimpered, as it dried up, withering) dread and depression. So I changed the header to something more fitting to the next few months that are opening up ahead of me.

For some reason I have a newfound obsession with the color lime - it is bright without being obnoxious, and at the same time cooling without looking dreary. I've got a bit of New York in there, although I doubt this header will last far into the year. The funky font is actually the same one they use for the headings in the Calvin and Hobbes cartoons, which is what my life reminds me of sometimes - a giant cartoon. Only less funny.

Countdown to trip: 9 days. I'm still trying to figure out a way to blog in internetless Turkmenistan.


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It starts in my toes, and I crinkle my nose

As we drove down the road that was more twisted than a pair of untangled headphones, he laughed at my “focus” face. Both eyes ahead, eyebrow muscles slightly strained. I could only afford to crank the car up to 40 – anything faster guaranteed a run-in with the mountain slope. We didn’t talk much on the way up; I remember “Birthday Sex” came on the radio and we sang along in our mutual tonedeafness. How easy it all was. I knew I was going to be home an hour late and I knew I would never hear the end of it, but I went anyway. So I pushed away all thoughts about what I was going to tell my mother and enjoyed the view that was starting to peek through the treetops.

The view was amazing. More stars than I’ve ever seen concentrated at one dot, and others thrown around like dandruff on a black suit. The entire bay area slept under a soft thin fog. A few lights here and there, but mostly it was black, with a barely perceptible red glow that I could only assume were the diffused street and bridge lights. It was surprisingly warm. Four other cars were parked next to ours, whose owners leaned against the railing smoking and laughing and talking and kissing. It was impossible to see more than five feet in front of us, so everyone had their privacy.

There, with my feet on the ledge, cigarette in one hand and his hood strings in the other, was the first time I felt a goodbye. What a perfect place to bid farewell to the last nine years in this town. This – the town, the warm air, the rough skin on his hands – felt like home. I did not think about talking as words glided effortlessly through my mouth, and everything that was said was just right. Just enough. Then again, there isn’t enough time in the world (especially not a week and two days) to say everything. But that’s just how it is, and how it always was.

“What will happen on this very day in five years?” I asked. He pressed his lips to mine. “You’ll be in my apartment, telling me about school,” he decided. “And I’ll hopefully be telling you about my school. Not hopefully – I will be telling you about how I accomplished my goal.” He blew the smoke out the side of his mouth so it wouldn’t get into my hair. “And what exactly is your goal?” “Easy – to be successful,” he shrugged. “I know I’ll get there in five years.” No, I thought. Easy was what we were doing now. It really only gets harder from here. But nothing else needed to be said, so we looked at each other in silence as the wind played with our jackets.

There are many times when I think I deserve better. Many memories of pain and disappointment, and countless promises to myself to never go down that road again. And while I’m sticking to that promise, part of me desperately wants this one last week. And that part of me wins the age-old battle of brain versus heart. Because if this is as good as it gets, then it gets pretty damn amazing. It brings charm and comfort to any ordinary thing. Where will I find comfort in the crazy, chaotic New York City?

And then I remember how much we’d give up for each other. Screwed could not even begin to describe our condition that night with our parents, and if you don’t count the drive there and back, the entire meeting lasted less than twenty minutes. Was it worth it? Hell to the fucking yeah.

I know I’ll get used to it, sometime in the next year, eventually. I just have no clue how I have to bear the separation now.
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My dirty little secret

Who has to know?
When we live such fragile lives
It's the best way we survive
I go around a time or two
Just to waste my time with you

Tell me all that you've thrown away
Find out games you don't wanna play
You are
The only one that needs to know


And I plan to keep it that way. Every time I replay the sequence of events in my head, I can't help but smile. I know it's wrong, but unfortunately it feels like the right kind of wrong and I'm doomed to always choose my heart over logic. I can't help myself.


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I forgive you.

I began writing a post three days ago, but was never able to finish. I had all the words to start it but not enough to write an ending that actually had a conclusion. So I'll leave that for after senior trip-


In the meantime, there are so many things I want to say before the year ends I don't know which topic to start with. Since we're boarding the bus for the 5+ hour ride (with the Darenator!...) to Laguna tomorrow, I'm going to keep this brief.

A friend reminded me today about mistakes and repair, and somehow this takes on a different meaning when I'm saying goodbye to one part of my life and leaping into the random scary unknown. We all make them, the mistakes. Some are practically harmless and some turn our life around. Luckily I don't think I've made any of the second type, but who knows? Who's to say that if I hadn't made this decision or that one, I would be in a completely different place? But if someone makes mistakes that affect us, the important thing is not to hold grudges. This is particularly hard when "affect" means ripping every endorphin (='happy' chemical in the brain (yes I'm aware I'm a psych nerd)) apart and stomping them down until nothing is left but sad, brooding regret. I have the right to be mad for another week, you say. Then I'll think about forgiving them. But what if there isn't a tomorrow because this is the end, this is it? How important is getting back at someone when in a few days there's a good chance you'll never see them again?

Most importantly, if this person has been a major part of your life, shouldn't the leaving memories be at least amiable? That's a very weak word in retrospect. Amazing, unforgettable, happy are all better substitutes, but things rarely work out that way. The most we can do is make an effort to not make the memories painful, for either of you. Not when it's the last week, day, few hours. And then to forgive. That's one of the few qualities that make us uniquely human - acknowledging that someone screwed up but accepting them and loving them anyway.

So I forgive you, you stupid, stupid idiot.


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What is and what could've been

Two poems today, both by Laura Haskins-Bookser.


Regrets

I am seventeen
and I just came home
so drunk and
so high
that I've just pissed myself

My mother is alone, asleep in her room

I rush to clean up after myself
trying to be quiet
but when I get out of the shower
my mother is standing in the hallway

Screaming at me
in a rage that I rarely saw
Beating on me with her fists
slapping me wildly

Do you want to be like your father?
Do you want to be a drunk?

I dodge out of her way
make it to my room
and remember one year earlier

I sat my parents down
Told them I thought I might have
A PROBLEM

She screamed at me that day as well

You don't need help
You just want attention

So while she is
still yelling in the hallway

I lock the door
ignoring her
and fall asleep quickly
because of my lethargic state

The next morning
the masks go back on
the superficial talk of the day begins

I think to myself
It's only Saturday

I still have another night of partying
before my weekend is over

Sleep Deprived

I slept
slept like a baby
a normal baby, that is
who doesn't survive on
three-hour blocks of sleep

I slept
without one interruption
without one peep from your crib
without any noise at all
from you

I panicked
and jumped out of bed
raced to your crib
on the other side of the room

You are not breathing
I am sure of it
I cry out
call your name
pick you up
wake you up

Oh no

I slept
slept like a baby
and could have gone back to sleep
if only I hadn't woken you
from the deep sleep you were enjoying

You scream
and I laugh and I hug you
that's the baby I know
that's the baby I love

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Black Coffee

By Cathy C., Damascus, MD

“I don’t care where you go or what you do!” That’s what he said to me. That’s what he said to me on the sixty-third day after I fell in love.

It started quickly, but it always starts quickly. Love was classic, and love was smooth. If there were a soundtrack to those first four months, it would consist of nothing but Frank Sinatra songs. The cover would be black and white. A picture of a coffee house. And that’s where we met: a coffee house. Classy. He ordered a medium coffee, black. I ordered, well, I don’t remember, but I remember he ordered his coffee black.

After the quick start, after the laughing and the crazy nights and the dreamy eyes, everything slowed. It always does. But mostly you just don’t notice what speed you’re going. Once I fell for him, though, it was all about which love song on the radio reminded me of him. Love is like that. It’s waiting in line to check out in the grocery store and taking all the lovey-dovey quizzes in the trashy magazines. And it’s all about those music videos full of slow-motion shots of two people running their hands along each other’s skin. Once I had fallen, I kept falling – like Alice down the rabbit hole. Incoherent objects and instances flew by me as I fell, for what seemed like eternity. Contrary to popular belief, eternity is actually only 63 days long.

It doesn’t matter anymore what started it. It doesn’t matter anymore who said what, it doesn’t matter why we said it. But I gotta tell you, coming out of love feels a lot more like falling. And I stood on his door step, after the screaming and after the tears. Calm, collected I stood there for a good four minutes. Not moving, just letting the rain soak into my white shirt. Of course it had to be raining; it rained like someone had just died in a Disney movie. And of course I had to be wearing white, because everyone knows you have got to look the most pathetic after a breakup and I don’t think standing in the rain for four minutes in a white shirt could be any more pathetic. It didn’t matter how it ended to me, just that it ended.

“I don’t care where you go or what you do!” he had yelled. A cup of black coffee was all I could think about. If you are ever in a coffee house and a man is drinking his coffee black, don’t be intrigued. It’s not a sign of mystery, it’s not a sign of suaveness. Because his heart is as decorated as his coffee. He is empty, which is tricky because even when you attain something empty, you still feel like you’ve gotten something. Don’t be fooled. You can marvel at the pretty package all you want; but eventually you will open it. Empty.

So I got on a plane to the East Coast. I am gonna go wherever I want. I am gonna do whatever I want. When I land in New England, the first thing I’ll do is put on my cutest outfit. Then I am gonna go to the nearest coffee house and stand right next to the cream and sugar.

© teenink.com
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And the world spins madly on

© Masha

A spin on my photo from here.

BTW, the title is a lyric from a great song by The Weepies.


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The car ride home

"I first fell in love when I was 14," this man had told me.
I'm not sure why;
Silence was taboo on this 20-minute drive.
He asked if I had read Gone With the Wind.
No, I told him.
"You should," he replied,
"Those kinds of stories are good for your age.
That's when I read them." And then he proceeded
To tell me about his first love.
"I dated her for two weeks.
Man, 14," he repeated.
I smiled and read the license plates of cars we passed by.
"We held hands and all of that."
I looked down at my legs
And watched the sun burn the car leather right where I sat.
I usually hate these lazy scorching May afternoons -
always more of a winter girl -
but today was different.
"And walked in the park late under the moon."
He laughed.

With his left hand on the wheel,
He left the other motionless on the side
Still unable to break the habit of his old stickshift.
"I even cried
About her. Once. But after two weeks,
I was done."
His happy nostalgic smile nicely complemented his graying hair
Which looked white under the sun.
He wasn't old or anything;
He had a 10 year old daughter
And a worrying wife
Who, like a gypsy with her ash-black hair,
Looked flawless every day
With another on the way;
Above all, she was kind.
"Her I married within a month," he told me.
"Didn't want to wait too long
And change my mind.
Again."
But there's no feeling quite as high as that first love, he said as we pulled up to a red light.
Cars crawled like ants into the intersection
With men and women and children
Behind the wheel,
Killing time and thinking
And talking and smoking and drinking.
I wondered if any of them were also remembering their teenage girlfriends.

"What about you? Have you ever been in love?
And I mean like, real, crazy,
Pull-your-hair-out love?"
As he said this, his eyes flashed
Like this love thing was the greatest ever.
I could have said "Oh, don't I know it!"
I could have told him about
The Italian pizza I bought us for takeout.
I could have said, "Funny you ask,"
And told him about the books we planned to read
And the frozen yogurt
And the stolen bikes
And, of course, his grandfather's spoon.
I could have shown him my worn-out eyes
And remembered that morning I was sleepy but happy
After a long and perfect night.
I could have said, "Don't get me started!"
And told him about the day that we parted
And the strangely rectangular shape of his head
During all those horrible things that were said
Instead of a proper goodbye.
I could have chuckled and sighed.

"Have you ever been in love?"
"No," I lied.
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Whoever thought of chicken soup obviously never had Bailey's

Because, let's be honest, the soup kinda tastes like oil and shoelaces. Bailey's, on the other hand, tastes like chocolate wrapped in sunshine. The taste of alcohol is almost unnoticeable, but the mixture still has that dazed-dizzy-but-completely-relaxed effect on the body and the mind.

The reason I bring this up is that I'm having a hard time dealing with what happened. I want to think about all of it at once and never remember it again at the same time. To avoid falling into a mopyteenagercoma when I'm left to myself, I do what I do best - draw, write, paint, sing, play, make, bake, whatever - but all of that somehow seems to relate back to the brooding thoughts that pound at the back of my mind where I left them to rot and fester. So I decided there's no use fighting them anymore. But there is a healthy way of letting them seep out on their own, and that's why I'm creating a special segment in my blog that will hopefully let me express everything I want implicitly. It's a collection of poems, paintings, and short stories, some by me and some by people who've had similar experiences. I'm hoping to recreate that feeling left by Bailey's that is so carefree and intoxicating, you'd swear you just jogged off five pounds of cellulite and are now having your celebratory cake.

As a side note: it's difficult to publish stuff that's very personal. The reason I created the blog is because I wanted people to hear what I had to say, but there are many things I write every day that will never be seen by anybody else. I could just as easily have kept these poems and stories private, but I think it'll be easier for me to get over if I'm not the only one looking at them. Maybe if I allow it to fester out there rather than in here, under the judgmental condescending eyes of people who probably don't relate and will likely misunderstand, I won't feel confined to my own contemplations. Or maybe I'll find people that do relate, and help them out as well.

Here is something to start things off (and also because it's 11:46 in the night before my morning english lit exam). Who needs poultry? I'll take a shot of the Irish Creme.

Chalk by Rebecca Ann Brown, 13

Love is like a piece of chalk
First it's brand new
Never been used
Then
With time
It fades away slowly
Until there is nothing left
But a small, tiny piece
That cannot be held anymore

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