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i got all moody this evening when liz jay and i went to umd to tuck lana into her new life. actually she needed no help from us. unexpectedly, her room has sufficient space for four people — it’s light blue and they’ve done a sweet job decorating and aside from the lack of air-conditioning, it seems very functional. jamie was there to meet us too. she and lana both seemed very settled. nomi joins them tomorrow.

i’m not sure why i got upset. maybe it was just the whole summer’s-ending thing. it was a damn good summer. one can be relatively certain about the past and just as certain that there are no guarantees for the future. i don’t know why i’m so timid. it’ll be different! it’ll be new! it’ll be exciting! but when i look beyond tomorrow morning (packing car, driving off) all i see is white space. a page to be filled in and not-so-much by me.

bah. at least i’m not too stressed from packing: i’ve pretty much got everything under control. the only thing is i don’t remember what size bed i have in my room so i don’t know what size sheets, comforter, &c. to bring. i tried calling but the phone isn’t plugged in yet (note to all thinking of contacting me by phone: call the cell. i’ll have it w/ me and yes, i remembered to pack the recharger so it’ll continue to work and continue and continue like that goddamned energizer bunny.) speaking of bunnies, that’s something to look fwd to — i talked to him tonite; he tried to calm me down. futile. but fun. 🙂 he advised finding something to punch.

it’ll be okay. everything always is.

i have the liz phair song stuck in my head: “go on ahead”:

You go on ahead, honey

You have a good time there

You make me feel funny

I’m no ordinary lover or friend

I believe we have things to do

I believe in myself and I believe in you

I believe when I sleep you are near to me

I believe when you sleep I am near to you

You walk out of the room with your hands so deep in your pockets, I don’t

Recognize you

You say you’re a ghost in our house and I realize I do think I see through you

It’s a death in our love that has brought us here

It’s a birth that has changed our lives

It’s a place that I hope we’ll be leaving soon

And I fear for the year in his eyes

And it goes around in circles: one night is lovely, the next is brutal

And you and I are in way over our heads with this one, it’s hard

To admit it, but you hold me and I can’t feel you

We hurt but we smile

I promise I’ll make it back when the summer has warmed me awhile

hmm, i’ve done much quoting recently …

anyway, til i can update again, everyone, have a wonderful nite and a last few wonderful moments of summer.

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Damn everything but the circus!

…damn everything that is grim, dull,

motionless, unrisking, inward turning,

damn everything that won’t get into the

circle, that won’t enjoy, that won’t throw

its heart into the tension, surprise, fear

and delight of the circus, the round

world, the full existence…

e.e. cummings

(courtesy of hanging on)

also, a link: this guy is one of the smoothest writers i’ve come across on the web so far: the bleat. i guess that’s cause he writes a column for a living.

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shit, man, i just revamped all the poetry pages, including the poetry page itself. give it a look, wouldja? i have a cramp in my side from sitting in the same position for 2 hours. but it looks a lot cleaner and more professional, i think.

thanks to becca for the tip about the frames; to liz for the tip about the colors; and to rob for the emailed kiss on the cheek.

i’m okay, if you get me at a good angle

and you’re okay, in the right sort of light

we don’t look like pages from a magazine, but baby

that’s all right; baby, that’s all right …

let’s show ’em all how it’s done:

let’s do it all imperfectly

— miss ani

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i wrote a whole thing before that blogger erased when it crashed. ah well. it was basically a paean to bjork, whose new album is coming out tuesday (right, ross?) i quoted “pluto”:

excuse me

but i just have to

explode

explode this body

off me

wake-up tomorrow

brand new

a little tired

but brand new

i made some mention of my general uneasiness. tuesday is only days away. that’s unsettling. lana’s already at skool. so’s becca. annie goes tomorrow. tamar and i go thereafter. liz and i spent the nite at donny’s — we hadn’t seen her all summer. college has made her a little tougher, it seemed. more sarcastic? she’s still a great person, someone i wish i saw more often. luckily ours is a friendship not contingent on contact.

my mom and i were reading personals ads this morning. it’s frightening how depressing those are. one man’s in the bottom corner of the magazine in red declared himself authoritative and wanted a petite, pretty, feminine woman. seriously. another was from a “mr. mom” w/ a kid looking for “a wife”. the ad described him and the child, and for the goals of the relationship, he had “pregnancy” listed first. his kid needed a sibling. so why wasn’t his kid placing an ad? or why doesn’t he just adopt and get a maid?

another in the top left corner, boxed off so it looked important, was a divorced man, 56, looking for a woman between 37 and 44, white, rich, attractive, petite, feminine. fool: all the white rich attractive petite feminine women are married by 37. hell, they’re married by 22.

all of them said attractive; most said finanically secure; all of them said white. one said “intelligent” but he was talking about himself. nearly all were divorced. i couldn’t help but wonder where their wives were now. sipping daquiris in fiji, rolling their eyes under their gucci sunglasses at these pushy, shallow personals ads? hocking the china? or pawing thru a pocketbook on the aisle at safeway, and realizing there isn’t enuf change?

sad.

my mother asked me how i’d describe myself in a personals ad. i laughed off the question. “dorothy parker seeks robert benchley,” i said. “anyone who gets the reference would be all right w/ me.”

saw six feet under last nite. amazing how real the actors look. writing cinematography &c. all quality. everything is two degrees from death in that show. everyone’s job, everyone’s significant other and preoccupation. they talk to ghosts. it’s transfixing stuff. too bad the barn does not come equipped w/ hbo.

oh, and i redid the first of my poetry pages. if i get positive feedback on the design, i’ll proceed w/ the others. check it out and let me know, would you?

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all right: top five modern filmmakers:

darren aronofsky

brothers coen

tom tykwer

guy ritchie

lars van trier

(altnerate: wong kar-wai)

i saw snatch last nite. i laughed at everything that was funny, amusing, ironic, or well-done, so by the end, my stomach hurt. who was it recently told me that i laugh too much at movies? i guess if you count m. van trier’s films, i cry too much too. and flinch: during the fight scenes, i was reacting (like always) like i was being hit myself. liz told me she’s never seen anyone so sensitive. damn straight: years ago, i used to have to leave the room during Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles when the others made fun of rafael too viciously. i have a very clear memory of standing behind my family room’s door, crying quietly, while my brothers cheered along w/ the tv inside.

yes, let’s a have a moment of silence for that, shall we?

now when liz returns from running we’re meeting lana and annie for brunch. she told me i talked in my sleep last nite. i was amazed — that’s a first. (the talking, not the amazement.) all i remember from my what i dreamt was that something was wrong w/ my website (god i’m a dork) and that i kept having to take refuge from the rain by ducking into strange places. in one of them, these people were cooing over me and wanted to polish my feet and i was begging them not to.

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this is ridiculous. i have to take a shower, make lists of things to take to skool, make collages, make ilana’s box, and all i’m doing is playing goddamn 3d pong. it reminds me a lot of jezzball which i got bored w/ eventually (*cough*a year*cough). i almost always have some computer game fixation. first semester it was Freecell. second, minesweeper (fastest expert time: under 100 seconds). my little brother masters those complicated death-by-gun games that involve blood and burly men grunting as you blast thru their chests. i don’t have sufficient aggression. but these small, frustrating games engage my competitive spirit. or maybe just my propensity to procrastinate.

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silly the things that make me happy. i’m sitting in sweatpants and a fir-green shirt i bought 2nd hand, chewing gum, listening to tori, pondering reggie’s entry. and i’m perfectly happy. i got off the phone w/ tamar: we were reminiscing. william called my poetry “groovy”. something could go wrong. i mean, come to think of it, i’m getting sick of the taste of nutrasweet — and when i go thru too many pieces too quickly, i start flushing and that can’t be good. i could get a headache. i could remember that i only have four days left to be the charming, easy person i am at home. reggie’s entry hit the nail on the head (forgive the cliche). we don’t have personality mirrors, tho we wish we could, or i do anyway. i was flipping thru girl, interrupted by miss kaysen (who went to [swat]becca’s skool) and noted w/ interest how she had xeroxes of her therapists’ diagnoses of her as she progressed.

i’d love that.

i mean, of course not the crazy part. but diagnoses, honest reads by objective folks. that’d be great.

question: should i fuss w/ javascript? is it worth it? i finally figured out how to do a drop-down menu; but should i? what say you?

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two sites i’ve found on my random circlings today are really worth mentioning: zalary.com (titled Catharsis? it’s hard to tell), b/c she posted a lovely sylvia plath poem i’d never encountered before, and bouillabaisse for the soul, b/c he raised my eyebrows and made me laugh (the man put his IQ up on his About page!) anyway, it seems like original content.

i find a lot of these, bookmark about half, and return, continually interested, only to a few. it’s hard trying to compile a good set of links. it’s also mildly disheartening coming across people whose designs are so much more sophisticated and whose fanbases are so established. some folks write two lines and get nine comments, just like that. but i shouldn’t complain: it’s moving, however slowly.

almost all of today was spent sitting on the linoleum next to my grandmother’s bed, holding her hand like it was a vase. i’ve never seen her so thin — she must have lost thirty pounds this summer and she never had much spare flesh on her; she’s too thrifty for that — but i tried not to let the dismay show. her face, unlike the rest of her, reassuringly looks mostly normal. i imagine that’s a good sign.

we entertained her, bought her sherbert and bananas, conversed. i made a joke about bringing her harry potter b/c she was too weak to read the john adam’s hardback she was in the middle of. somehow it ended up getting taken seriously and my father brought the thing along w/ him when he arrived. hey, whatever. as i told her, if she likes it, she can see the movie in november.

at quarter to five, i left to go to the dentists. like all college students, i had to do my lastminute checkup before heading off to skool. unlike most, i think, i’m lucky enuf to not have any problem w/ my wisdom teeth. i was petrified he’d tell me they needed to come out — i’ve spent the last year teething, sometimes painfully — but he said if i’m content w/ them, he’ll leave ’em where jesus flung ’em. content, hell — i’m ecstatic. this year, even if they were occasionally a nuisance, they did some good: they inspired a poem or two. i wrote this first semester when i was melodramatic over boy #1: fifth column

I�m growing a new tooth:

I feel it thrusting like a tulip through hard,

February earth: even

when I try to dwell on other things, my tongue

meanders back: you distract me: dark,

intense, and out of place: you are

throwing the rest of me out of sync:

black tulip white tooth, only a surgeon

could remove, stubborn

in the shadowy corner of my mouth:

you frighten me: you feel

less alien to my prodding tongue

every day: you are thriving

even in this crimson, hostile land: I wonder

at a surgeon�s hand

which of us when pulled

will yield. (fall 2000)

it was published in, uh, one of those silly lit mags i write for … damn, now i’ve forgotten which. i think small craft warnings.

ooh, ben just called. and laughed at me for saying i was posting. and derailed my train of thought. blame him.

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i dreamt last nite that i was living in a barn-type arrangement (a series of rooms) w/ my parents; ilana and ellen, from swat, who shared a room; ben; and mariah. for some reason, ilana and ellen and mariah were always fighting and i was trying to mediate; and ben was always off by himself. i remember thinking he was taking me for granted and getting upset.

at some point, i went into his room and we lay down together and everything righted itself. i was so relieved the only thing i could do was breathe.

then my mom came in and got upset b/c i was wearing a shirt that said “i love cock” in pictures, like the shirt that townie was wearing at falconridge. i turned to ilana, who had also come in, and said, “at least i’m not wearing the fuzzy strawberry shirt.”

my grandmother’s in the hospital. it’s not terribly serious; they suspect legionnaires disease. we’re going to visit her in a minute. i have to get dressed. i hope she’s all right: the woman is 88 and strong, capable, independent. she had my grandfather by her side all morning as they tried to get her into a bed. they’ve been married over 60 years. it’s incredible. they keep each other in shape, they take turns taking care of each other. my family is lucky enuf to live really close to them in d.c. so we see them every week.

babbling. sorry. time to hop down to GW again.

why am i the only one who likes female poetry?

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the best things, i’ve just realized, are done w/ your hands. typing, turning pages, twirling your hair, touching people — hmm, those all begin w/ “T”. a coincidence, i swear. the best foods are what’re eaten w/ your hands too: dry cereal, muffins, carrots … casual food, stuff you can lick off if necessary.

these are the conclusions an afternoon in front of a computer leads one to. 🙂 august is a slow month.

i’ve also been looking at kat’s quote page. it’s an astoundingly comprehensive list. another that i’ve always liked is melanie’s.

on the subject of quotes, one from last nite: “you only name things that are going to die” — liz. ponder that.