bluedasein

Beware the old box...

2004-01-26T07:51:25Z

Today, whilst sorting through a dusty box of old art supplies, I found one of my old journals. This entry dates from my frosh year of high school...I think it might help to explain my infrequent posts:

4/6/99
Update: 2+ years later...

Spring Break. YES! Spring Cleaning. IKH! Well, that's how I found this. I thought the journal needed some additions to account for transitions (I'm not quite sure what I just said...) My handwriting has changed, I'm not as prolixitous (he he! oxymorons!), I still tell bad jokes, have more friends, more homework, more junk. Experiencing grammatical deterioration. Me Jane. You Tarzan. Nice Speedo. You know, each time I read old journals I seem more pompous, arrogant, young, and ignorant (volatile mix, no?) than I ever thought myself capable of being at the time of writing them. Each time I promise never to do it again. A few years down the road, there is a journal entry recording it...
I still sketch.

CRANKY!

2004-01-02T20:07:05Z

I can't deal with another day in Pleasanton--especially not when I have so much stuff to do in Berkeley. Nope, nope--I think I'll learn how to make a death laser if I spend one more day moping around the house, book trailing in my lazy little hand. AND I MISS MY FRESH PRODUCE, GODDAMMIT!

I would like to thank my Dearest Mother for inspiring this tirade. You see, we had already reached an accord: I would tend her beasties for the duration of her sojourn in Marysville, and in return she would END that sojourn in Marysville this afternoon (giving me a ride back to Berkeley upon her arrival in P-town). But, OH NO, she called me this morning to inform me that she planned on staying another day. Yeah, it would have been DANDY of her to inform me of this before I planned a party at my BERKELEY RESIDENCE FOR THIS EVENING! GAH!

Not to mention that I have that gross feeling of doing absolutely nothing for more than a day. I want my pools! My quilt! My myriad baking projects! And, Jesus on a Stick, don't get me started on how far behind I am in my artwork. Just don't.

So, I sit here getting crankier and crankier. The dishes I didn't have time to do are getting more and more disgusting. And all I can think of is, if only I were the Shrike...

dude, I love Nicola Tesla!

2003-12-03T05:14:37Z

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

dear lordy, I'm updating

2003-12-03T04:54:49Z

Hello, my little friends! I find myself at work, being far too productive. Solution? Some quality blog time!

Apparently I've been getting stranger as of late. It might be the stress. It might be a long-term cycle of madness. Or it might be the impending flip of Earth's magnetic field. Whatever its cause, I seem to be weirding people out more these days.

I have found a new love: Little Pillow Monsters. They are wonderful. They are fun to draw in lectures, or to make songs about in lectures, or to turn the professors into when their lectures are dull. They eat grubs and small children. For a song or a drawing, contact me.

Thanksgiving was dandy (minus the cleaning...that was decidedly undandy). It was full of CS folk--and an interesting crew they were. Catherine, Dave, Ben, Court, Jeremy, and Steve [HAHAHAHA! Sentence fragments are my]. Court seems to be much intrigued by stretchy hair. He and Ben should hang out with us more often.

I dragged my sorry booty out of bed at 5 am the next day to go shopping with Steve and Jeremy. Those loony lads were chopping each others titties. I hit Jeremy without reason. It was a cranky good time.

Friendster upsets me. I can't take it seriously, and that seems to be a faliure on my part to commit to a personality. Thought: personality can be divided in to the parts that do change and the parts that don't. The parts that don't are the ones that are not interesting on Friendster. Thought: what the hell do I care if a bunch of people I've never met don't find me interesting? Thought: screw Friendster.

I like Billie Holliday better than Ella Fitzgerald. "Fitz" is actually a Norman word...take that, ye silly Irischers!

I miss Liz. I have a new cellphone number, so Liz, if you happen to read this, call me on my apartment line and I'll give you the new one. Or I could send you an email...nah, far too sensible.

Does anyone want to go swing dancing over winter break? There has to be some corner of the East Bay where it's still cool.

Okay, I'm getting annoyed with myself. The time has come, the textbook said, to think of other things. That's really fucking pretentious. Gah.

OH! One last comment: only when all people in a market have the same goal does a free market model make perfect sense. To be elaborated upon after I become an economics genius.

i'm such a bitch

2003-09-16T15:29:56Z

ah, just this weekend, my luck looked to turn! i finally got my registration block cleared on saturday, and in the afternoon happened upon a spiffy little tutoring gig (to start this weekend). and then Lauren the Bitch strikes and unfairly pisses off one of her friends because she's a paranoid wanker and really needs to find time to go to the damn tang center. fuck. i would like to say to that friend that i am REALLY sorry, what i said was unfounded, and if it helps any, i had just woken up. not that i'm trying to excuse myself...
in other news, catherine and i had an interesting conversation last night about openness about sex versus openness about social (read: family) problems. whereas the sixties seems to have liberated many of my peers into surreal freedoms concerning sexual discourse, many of us maintain victorian codes of silence about equally pressing (and often far more traumatic) family problems. why is that?
in closing, sorry once more to the person i wronged. friends?

Inane Comment Day

2003-07-03T18:46:13Z

That's right, kiddies! Today is Inane Comment Day.

I have a new email address. It is i_will_marry_alyosha_karamazov@yahoo.com. I'm totally serious, here. But, don't worry. The only reason I have this address is because alyosha_karamazov_is_a_sexybitch@yahoo.com was taken. (Really!) Please send me email there, just for the fuck of it.

My oral report on Ivan Budin got postponed 'til Monday. GRAAAAH! No sleep for nothing. He was a fairly interesing guy...A nobleman by birth (poor, but with land), he attended a public school for five years before becoming this self-educated, Nobel Prize-winning author. From his experiences with lower class country life, he wrote of the Russian Peasant as largely ignorant and violent. This really pissed the Bolsheviks off. They were big fans of the Noble Savage nonsense. So he left for France and sheltered Jews from the Nazis during the length of the occupation. Yay.

Thishat should be a word. It could replace 'thingamagigger.'

If I have kids, I want one to be a daughter named Margarita who will become a lion tamer.

I am Eeyore

2003-07-02T03:15:09Z

Wow. I was just scrolling through some of my old LJ entries, and not only did I realize that I never update, but that I am a (gasp) downer. Do I only feel inclined to be a diarist when I'm depressed? Or am I just depressed in general? Or do I secretly long for public pity? One way or another, I think it's high time for a token happy entry.

Some other day...along with that treatise on religion.

oy ve

2003-07-02T03:06:01Z

upon (finally) looking through everyone's lj entries, i have come to an epiphany: the recent amount of Suckiness embrangled in Life seems to be a product of Evil Dwarves with Powers. Yes.
sorry to everyone for joining the overall funk as of late. i'm kind of upset about the parent-imbroglio. i'm talking to my dad, although we haven't made much progress past Inane Comments. my mom seriously contemplated suicide twice this week, as she informs me. thankfully, she settled for just getting really shitfaced. a few minutes ago my dad called me at work to ask me if mom was here. i finally reached her, but she only told me that she's not going to hurt herself, she's staying with a friend far away from dad, and that i shouldn't repeat to my dad what she told me. i called him anyway, told him i couldn't get involved, but that he should trust that if anything needed to be done, i would do it.
i hate that i can no longer concentrate on anything.
on the upside, i had really good pasta from home for lunch.

i am sorry for this entry

2003-06-08T07:21:31Z

i have to apologize in advance for this entry. i wasn't going to write in my lj while at home, but i really need to talk.
i feel like my world was built upon sand. my mom, as some of you know, was diagnosed with fibroid tumors. she's going in for a total hysterectomy sometime this month. and today, it was confirmed that my dad is having an affair with a woman in another country.
i don't know what to do. i don't know how to comfort my mom.
i don't know how to feel about my dad. i spent so much of my life simpering at his heels. i loved my dad so much--his words were my gospel. i would try so hard for some kind of relationship with this man...in a perverse way, i think it sparked my interest in science. my dad, my dad spent so much of my life isolating himself: in work, on the tennis courts, in cooking, in traveling. but i admired him. i worshipped him as he worshipped himself.
and then today i find out that my dad did the one thing i can't forgive. i want to change my name. i want to kill myself. i don't want to live in a world in which the men i most trust and believe cheat like this. i don't know how to believe anything anymore. i feel so, so empty. and i can't even fucking kill myself properly because i can't do that to my mom.
i hate that i have his blood in my veins. i hate that i'm dependent upon his money. i hate that i have his gifts lying around me.
i'm so scared. i don't know how to believe anymore.

Greg Davis

2003-04-15T23:23:22Z

Today I decided to skip math lecture and get some work done. On the steps that run to Stern and the Foothill DC, I heard a dull thud against plastic, the screech of tires. In animal tones, in death's harmony, a young man screamed. I turned around to see his body hit the cracked asphalt.
There was so much blood. Men ran from their cars. He tried to move; they held him down. I fumbled for my phone. Waited for it to turn on. Called 911.
The men were taking off their shirts to staunch the bleeding. The cobwebs of blood in the cracked asphalt were pooling.
The woman on the phone said an ambulance would be coming.
I panicked. I had no idea what to do. I've had a fair amount of first aid training, and the first thing they teach you is to stay out of the way. I had nothing to do.
Thought: health workers. They live in the dorms and are trained and equipped for emergencies. I ran up the steps to the front desk. Talked to this big guy, gave him the main details. He started delegating and moving quickly.
I went back to my room. Pondered about getting a first aid kit; decided it would be useless. Should have brought some pads down with me...they are sterile and very effective at absorbing blood. Tried to call Sonia (she's worked in free clinics and hospitals), but only reached her answering machine. I ran back down the hill to see if the ambulances had arrived.
The police were there. Interviewing and whatnot. There was this girl crying--she was standing near the officer taking statements. She was young, maybe in her early 20s, and wearing too much eyeliner. Her eyes were cloudy pools of makeup and tears. I asked her if she was the driver. She nodded. I gave her a hug and told her it was going to be alright.
The ambulance came. I was waiting to see if they'd need me for an interview. The women in the cars behind the driver agreed it was her fault. She had accelerated at the crosswalk. They said that something like this was bound to happen.
I found out the guy's name is Greg Davis. He looked like a student...he was crossing the road from Foothill on to campus. He was wearing a backpack and a yellow shirt. I watched them cut his clothes off of him as they would a corpse. I watched them neatly take his shoes and his backpack. So neatly, so deftly. Without rushing. They strapped him in to the stretcher. He was able to move his arms and feel his legs. Most of the skin was gone from his elbow. He was bleeding from the head.
The road was a red delta where his face had landed. I watched them clean it. I could smell the blood from where I was standing. They were erasing the mistake; dissolving it in water and blotting it out with paper towels. The road was too cracked from years of poor drainage--some of the blood stayed in the crevices. It will always be there.
I started thinking about mortality. I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I thought about pain. For a place with so many people, so few were rattled by this man's blood on the pavement. The driver and the pedestrian--their lives are changed forever.

clockwork orange

2003-04-14T08:19:31Z

today = uzhasnii dyen

will follow with treatise on religion and phenomenology (and why kant is an ass).

saw clockwork orange. very confused. why did alex speak russian?

sometimes, i hate performing in front of other people. i miss my church in sr. everyone was so loving. it didn't matter how well i sang. too bad it doesn't exist anymore.

today = uzhasnii dyen.

dense philosophy with a brief lyric interlude

2003-04-02T07:28:15Z

Every living thing dies alone.
--Donnie Darko

I want to touch someone. Really touch someone. Beyond the electric barriers of the physical world; beyond all material sense. I want to make this pestilence of lonliness abate.

What is love, if not the only way to touch? What is God, if not love? What a perverse irony: we can never make the lonliness wane of our own will. There has to be something else out there to connect to--a person, a moment, a star. All we can do is receive the gift. I think that's what love is...the respite from lonliness. I think that's what faith is...the hope of love.

WIMPs

2003-02-01T17:53:04Z

As pathetic as this is, my life right now calls for a physics simile. I feel like I am a Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP). Sigh. Ok, now that you've had your laugh, let me explain why. WIMPs are objects that can be proven to exist by virtue of their mass, but which pass through ordinary matter like phantoms. They exist, but they have little to no measurable effect on other particles. They exist, but they pass through everything else unscathed and unswayed. Lonely little things.

And you'd think, you'd think that this pitiable anthropomorphism is the result of social isolation. But, that's the key to the whole thing. I've been around friends more often than ever these past two weeks. Still, I feel isolated, like my friendships are nothing but yellowed memories of the meaning that they once contained. I feel like nothing I have to say is worth saying. I'm afraid to call up very old and very dear friends, lest they discover that I am an impostor, a phantom, a relic of the person I once was. I feel like I can interact with no one, and I hate it.

So now, I think I'm going to end this with a little prosthetic emotion. This is a bit of poetry that struck me last night at Shabbat services:

When I die, if you need to weep, cry for someone walking on the street beside you. And when you need me, put your arms around others and give them what you need to give me.

You can love me most by letting hands touch hands and souls touch souls.

You can love me most by sharing your simchas and multiplying your mitzvot.

You can love me most by letting me live in your eyes and not in your mind. And when you say Kaddish for me, remember what our Torah teaches:

Love doesn't die, people do. So when all that's left of me is love, give me away.

Procrastination and Retraction

2002-12-18T16:43:09Z

Today is the last of my first semester in college. I should be studying for my philosophy final, but this is sort of like existentialism. Right?

Arrr...I was very angry yesterday. I should avoid making proclamations when I'm cranky, but that's when they seem to flow most readily. I'm not intending to phase out boys next semester. I just need to learn how to get along without being their bitch. I should be more like my roommates--both strong feminist icons. Or I could just burn my bras. Pyromania is really fun stuff, y'know--although I'm afraid of the noxious chemicals that might waft up from my mini-conflagrations.

I need to be less of a bitch to my male friends, especially those true-blue gentlemen who have helped me through some dire times. Even though I don't approve of all they do, and even though they might piss me off to hysteria, they are genuinely good people, I think, and I shouldn't be so eager to condemn friends.

Philosophical question of the day: is it possible to love a friend unconditionally? Or is that the domain of family and romance? It's something I've been wrestling with lately. Insight would be sorely appreciated.

I am the Lizard Queen

2002-12-18T00:33:19Z

I don't know why I did the Morrison reference. I'm not feeling very lizardlike today...just sluggish and rather random.
I should start out my first entry by thanking DesertFoxx for giving me this account. So I will. Thank you.
And for those who know my online personality well, Holy Fuck,
I am indeed intending to capitalize! I had a scary realization whilst talking to Matt C. on AIM today: I am forgetting English grammar. Hmmm...one of these days I should try to get the hang of non-stream-of-consciousness writing, too. But, fuckit, I'm perfectly capable of saying that the written language is a corruption of speech, which is a better approximation of human thought. Which makes me a linguocentrist by asserting a hierarchy and blah blah blah--all that high school lit theory crap comes back to bite my tail-less ass. I be a pretentious bitch, foo.
I saw a colony of marguerites sprawling across the lawn in front of the west face of Stern. A few weeks ago, I took one from a patch of grass elsewhere on campus, under the impression that it would be one of the last I would see this year, and put it in my hair to remember it (so it would be on my mind). But, here it was: a gaggle of small white flowers poking through the damp green, like looking up at a rich field of sky from the light-polluted suburbs. They didn't need me to remember them. I don't know if this makes me happy or sad.
Life mostly makes me sad right now. I don't know why. Maybe I felt the need to be depressed. Maybe there are things floating around the back of my brain that have yet to be dealt with. This brings to mind a flock of hyperintelligent bats in a dark, gelatinous cavern, watching and waiting, with an aura of stealth that makes their appearance vaguely taunting. So, I shall ward them off with my magical powers: pugilism and profanity. Fuck, I really need to see a therapist.
I just ran down the hill to La Loma to return Dom's physics book to its rightful owner. Yesterday we got our grades for physics. I got a B. A fucking B. I had an A- going in to the final. I needed to sleep the night before, but neither Vlad nor Ryan wanted to walk back to Foothill by my deadline (midnight). Ryan was asleep on the couch. I was writing up cheatsheets for the boys, and then waiting for them to make copies, until two in the morning. Dammit, I KNEW I needed sleep. And I knew I fucked up on the final. The next day, I slipped on a wet grate heading downhill after the final and landed flat on my back. I layed there in the rain in a leather jacket, with my umbrella bent, just waiting for the world to end. I hate myself for helping them. I hate myself for studying with other people. I hate myself for not hitting them harder when they made lewd jokes instead of studying. Next semester, I am completely phasing out boys. Let them fuck themselves.