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welcome to august, folks. this is the month of dispersion, of reuniting, of leaving, of arriving, of thresholds. (ooh, do you feel that shiver?) i don’t really know what to feel, it all being so contradictory, that i’m content to just be calm.

on the good news front, my site finally made it onto google. only took a month and a half. 🙂

last nite the usual suspects gathered at my house and i fell to pondering where all my male friends went. suddenly my friend distribution is at like 80/20 rather than 50/50. it’s strange. at swat, it was about equal; when i was on kibbutz last spring, if anything, i spent a little more time w/ guys.

now the only ones i see regularly are ari and johnny. but the former is often drowned out in the clatter of estrogen and the latter i encounter only once a week. craziness.

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shit, miss annie! dar and annie here is the good woman herself (far right) w/ the immortal dar williams (second from left). they’re holding a poster of the green world, dar’s most recent album. miss williams revealed to us over the course of her concert that she hasn’t written much recently b/c she’s (a) recently gotten engaged and (b) writing a book. quite an eventful life.

we watched three straight episodes of Pride and Prejudice this afternoon at annie’s and ate rissotto (is that spelled right, love?) mm, colin firth … the series is delightful and really well-acted. my head is nearly sloshing over w/ jane austen and pretty, hilariously constricting parlor dresses.

trying to remember the word for ritual japanese suicide by disembowlment, you know, the kind they do in shogun. help?

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god, ilana’s getting popular. her illustration has earned rave reviews and it has found its way onto the background of nori’s page. *applause*

ilana has also discreetly mentioned to me that i made some mistakes in previous postings (heaven forbid!) to remedy: 1) the guitarists of the nields are named dave, not bob; 2) the farmer who owns the land in hillsdale, ny is bob, not joe; 3) and shite, there was something else, but i’ve forgotten. ah well, tis late.

today i walked from cleveland park to chevy chase circle, which means nothing to those of who not from d.c., and fell in love w/ potomac video and promptly signed up for a membership. my father called me a fickle consumer but i insisted that i’m just a demanding one. and if video warehouse sucks (and yes, yes, it does) why can’t i take my business elsewhere, like a good capitalist? the store gave me 5 films for $5. i went outside and encoutered miss block wearing a wsrn shirt. i felt a pang immediately — i have many good memories associated w/ that shirt. we talked for a while; she admired my rentals.

went home; then went to nomi’s, where i showed the girls the hilarious, feminist, forthright the-clitoris.com. funny conversation ensued and before it dried up i hopped over to becca’s to do what we always do: make jokes, share cold pop-tarts, and leave the tv on in the background, unwatched, while we chat. annie ilana ari and liz joined us in our merriment. i left around 12, regretfully. tomorrow: lunch at annie’s after work w/ tamar (w/ whom annie wants to be friends) ilana and liz; yoga; then movie at my house. what a life i lead.

returned home to talk to mr. i-hate-telephones-too. flash back to the advice the lady on the train gave me as i left chappaqua like two months ago. long distance sucks, she said. just don’t read too much into what he says on the phone. all right then, i won’t over-analyze the fact that he wants to set up a pool to see who he cheats first. the victim would collect. 🙂 no, really, tonite’s convo was more fun than last’s. at least i didn’t spend the whole time thinking alternatively “i wish i could go back in time and strange ben franklin w/ his damn kite” and “sleep … sleep ….” back on the same wavelength, after momentary panic on his end that i’ve become too brainwashed by martha and ms. just b/c i said he was working for the enemy. sheesh. and they say feminists have no sense of humor.

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to resume:

ilana drove the entire way up and back to/from the festival site in hillsdale, ny. farmer joe owns a gorgeous plot of land in the catskills and lends it out every summer to the hippies. i think it’s right commendable of him.

we had our own mini-music-festival in the car, singing and cding our way up the increasingly lovely mountain roads. we set up our tent, a borrowed a-frame none of us really knew how to use, and which liz ultimately figured out, in what we later learned was the social area. to our right, a group of kids our age seemed content to smoke pot starting at 9 in the morning and never leave their campsite. across from us and down were three boys that initially we could only see from afar, one of whom was wearing a shirt that looked like it said, in symbols, “i love cock.” liz went over to ask them for weed and when they returned w/ her we saw that the last symbol was a cat, not a rooster. (ohhhhh …) they may have been sexist but they were generous w/ their bowl. everyone in fact was lovely. that’s the folk-festival atmosphere.

after that, we met the 40 year olds: more neighbors who latched onto us i think to feel involved (the woman kept insisting her job was “uncool”). they shared a bottle of california wine and talked nearly non-stop.

and then daniel, a 16 year old (looked much older) long-haired free-spirit of the purest kind, who lost his wallet w/ $150 in it and threw up his hands and called it “karma.” he was very folksinger-savvy and he loved women: while he lamented that tho he missed his faraway girlfriend yada, he couldn’t keep from hooking up w/ others and he demonstrated his good taste by confessing to want a piece of ilana.

mostly, tho, the three of us spent time by ourselves. we talked a lot, we enthused over the same music, we people watched and we went to bed at the same time. one morning, liz made a hemp spin for ilana’s hair while i read portions of Tom Jones out loud. it felt really comfortable, really home-y.

ran into jonah on saturday so he chilled w/ us for a while. he had read this site (!!) and so knew that we’d be at falconridge at the same time that he was in the area. so that was cool and i got a report on the barn (kids: it’s doing fine). as he was leaving, he paused and then said that reading this journal was strange b/c i write things that i wouldn’t necessarily tell him.

made me think. i don’t consider audience too much — or maybe i do? i’m more circumspect than i am in the notebook only i read, that’s for sure. i guess i have to deliberate further.

and i hate telephones. have i mentioned that? hate ’em. nothing honest comes thru a telephone, or very little. i prefer email and letters: represenations of voice rather than actual, physical voice. the latter is too imperfect.

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oh man. home and so much to say. solution, of course: make lists!

physical newnesses:

  • my face is raspberry-red and puffy around the eyes, as much from lack of sleep as from sun. (why did i think that putting a wet’n’wash cloth over my face could substitute for lotion?)

  • i finally put my hair back: i decided to try the ilana method and keep it down for three days straight. as strings frizzed over, i dealt by braiding them.

  • my arms have gotten nicely nutty, further dramatizing my watch tan.

musicial newnesses:

  • the nields. northhampton-spawned eccentric energetic group. five band members: two singers, both sisters, both married to their guitarists, both of whom are named bob. i don’t know what the story is w/ the fifth guy but i imagine he feels vaguely left out.

  • erin mckeown. midgetous, impressive, bjork-like in style and energy (+ propensity to howl.) embarrasing moment: i asked her to sign my notebook, forgetting that i had written my impressions of her at the top of the page. she saw her name and asked, “oh, can i read this?” and proceeded to before i could splutter out an answer. i panicked for a moment, as i couldn’t recall what exactly i’d written, but it was all complimentary — she said that anyone who compared her to bjork was her best friend. course, i also wrote that she grappled w/ her guitar like it was an animal trying to get away; we both tactfully pretended that wasn’t there.

  • deirdre flint. awesome. elementary skool teacher turned folksinger; adorable, ironic, and really funny, like the musician version of janeane garofolo. i bought her cd, shuffleboard queens, available at folkweb and amazon. i also ran into her so i got her autograph as well. she asked me if i’d been to a particular lighthouse and i just blinked at her. “it’s written on yr shirt,” she said. “oh,” i said, looking down. “i just got this at goodwill.” 🙂

  • eddie from ohio. very much like the nields: upbeat, fun, clever. they played saturday nite after dar…

just got off the phone w/ ben, who wanted to share his musicial experiences. guess it was just that kind of weekend. but i’m exhausted and i’ll have to finish this tomorrow.

still to come: susan warner; our crazy camping neighbors; jonah; dar; and i haven’t said a word yet about ilana and liz. terrible. well, tomorrow.

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last nite, i woke up to the sound of my own voice. it sounded like it was coming from faraway; it took me a panicked second or two to understand that it was being filtered thru my answering machine. i jumped up and plugged in my phone, interrupting the message. “hi,” said ben. “are you sleeping?”

i consulted the clock: 1:15 a.m. on a usual nite, i’d be awake, probably tripping around the net somewhere. but i was trying to stock up on good, bedded sleep since i’ll be sleeping bagging it for a while. “yes.” i said. “i was just watching old films,” he said. “go back to sleep. i’ll talk to you tomorrow.” i hung up and crawled back under the blankets.

this morning when i woke up (to someone else’s voice thru the radio, the way god intended) i pushed play on my machine to hear the message from the beginning. it was the recording he had made of senior year coffeehouse, our skool talent-show of sorts. the camera, the phone, and my machine mangled my voice to a wince-inducing state but i remained comprehensible: i was reciting “confessional”. well do i remember that evening. i decided that, regardless of the fact that he was there in the audience, and filming no less, i was going to read the poems i wanted to read. and i did. i couldn’t tell at the time whether he got it. he hugged me tightly afterwards, grinning, but that’s just his way.

no room for interpretation now. “you called me yr ‘green-eyed muse’,” he says (on the message). “that’s so sweet. you have a great voice –”

at that point, the message cuts off b/c i managed to pick up the phone.

i hope he appreciates that poem. sweet, hell: that’s one of the sweetest things i’ve ever written.

ilana’s coming to pick me up in a matter of minutes. i’m all packed. also talked to the other ben for a while last nite (johnny: “why do you call him #32?”) after i got home from class. ahh benz.

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phew. getting on the metro this afternoon, all i wanted to do was go home, take a shower, put lots of gel in my hair (the frizz is driving me insane), and think calming, non-vagina related thoughts. anyway, it’s over. my dad picked me up and we went to a nice vietnamese lunch. i had surprisingly good squid, which didn’t bother me, but trying some of his soft-shell crab did somehow. i consider myself a vegetarian tho i do eat fish and seafood, but the crab felt particularly like an animal. part of my sort-of-joking excuse for eating fish is that i’m a jewish vegetarian (by jewish law, y’see, fish is not considered flesh: it’s in another, neutral category.) but by that logic, i shouldn’t be eating unkosher sea things. ahhhh maybe i’m taking this too seriously.

the doctor: a lady with thick blonde hair and precise mascara enlarging her already confrontational eyes. anytime she brought up an adult topic, she’d further widen her eyes to impress upon me the seriousness of the discussion. i had to widen my own eyes in response; by the end of the interaction, i felt like betty boop. of course i’m sure betty boop never had to go thru a pelvic exam.

(damn, she is cool. let’s take a moment and process that, hmm?)

the upshot is, there is absolutely nothing wrong w/ me. i suppose i could go to disneyland then but falconridge will have to do. 🙂 we have a tent! still need to shop. mmm, three days of living out in the humid air; no showers; w/ the hippies and their music … excellent.

i guess this will be my first moderately-extensive absence. i leave early tomorrow and don’t get back til sunday nite. so readers, if any of you exist outside of the close crazy circle of friends you see represented in my book, please sign — let me know you exist. if you have nothing else to say, say congratulations.

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according to emode’s personality test, i’m a movie star. since three of the other options were Poet, Critic, and Observer, i was thrown for a loop. but after checking them out, i realized they didn’t really fit me either. they all involve being shy which i don’t think of myself as (very much? anymore?) so i’m in limbo. fine. emode pisses me off anyway: it’s gotten too goddamn chirpy for its own good.

i’ve been at work twenty minutes and i’m already searching for things to do. last nite at becca’s during our conversation about idealism and the future and our perceptions of the Real World we will one day most likely have to inhabit, i told her she’d never make it in my office. we’re too inefficient, too chill. people do get things done but it’s not on the same kind of schedule that she operates on.

the discussion started b/c ari said that even if he lived 115 years, he couldn’t do everything he wants to do in life. 115 isn’t enuf, just like 4 years of college isn’t enuf, and don’t get him started on monogamy. … becca and i exchanged dubious glances. it seemed he was channeling the 60’s idealistic, hedonistic free spirits. get with the times, man: it’s about apathy and irony now. isn’t it?

at the very least, you have to be realistic. at 115, you probably won’t want to go on forever. your bones will hurt, you’ll have no teeth, you’ll have to wear diapers and feel your body whimper for death like an abadoned dog for its master. you’ll be a tax on resources. and even if there are infinite numbers of things to do, places to go, people to see in this life, not all are enjoyable or even edifying. and many will make you wish to die a whole lot sooner.

i don’t mean for this to be so gloomy. but the research i’ve done this summer has shown me that the world is not a friendly place (not that i didn’t know that before; i’m just more aquainted w/ the details now.) we should try to have a great time while we’re here and even better, try to leave a positive mark on our surroundings, sure. make lots of friends, fall in love, be ambitious, be optomistic even.

don’t romanticize it, tho. it seems like the only thing our country truly has faith in is money and that, probably, in large part b/c they don’t realize that it’s only their faith that keeps the system running. maybe it’s a good thing: most wars have been caused by people who feel passionately enuf to kill and die for a cause. (what cause? protestantism? capitalism? ridiculous in retrospect.)

maybe the only people who should be allowed to live to 115 are the ones who can guarantee they will leave this earth better than they found it in some small way. hedonism and/or fear of deat doesn’t cut it w/ me. the question is, if you decide to keep living, what are you going to give humanity in return?