put yourself in my shoes

imagine: you’re too tired to write a substantial entry. dispiriting days do that to you. also going to sleep at 3:30 for no better reason than because you’ve watched too many scary movies recently and are frightened to turn off the lights and be alone.

waking up and rushing off, disoriented, to tennis, only to swing vainly at every ball — in one case, even attempt to serve and manage to thwack yourself in the back with the ball — in another case, snapping unadvisably at the chill tennis instructor whose only offense was to ask you AGAIN to define for the class what a continental grip is — should teach you that this, as a plan, is flawed.

a whole day spent in philly with nothing to show for it. 3 hour long penn class merely pissed you off and the registration gaffe afterwards exacerbated it, as did having to tred carefully in your tractionless platform sandals so as not to fall in the sudden soddenness of the afternoon. thank god for your friend s. kelly who procured falafel and SATC with you to calm you down and walked you to the train.

actually you’re fine. you had a lovely weekend with your boy and his family. your hair withstood the humidity today remarkably well. so what if you don’t have a movie review this week? go to sleep; everything will be better tomorrow.

it’s about purity

driving up to new york on september 11th felt distinctly eerie. none of my fellow passengers seemed unduly stressed out. a few of them wore “i [heart] usa” buttons or t-shirts with flags, but quite possibly no more than normal in this day and age.

to avoid traffic, or something, we approached ny city via jersey city, which was a jumble of ethnicities you never see on television. women in saris, muslim men, a barefoot barelegged black baby running in circles while a couple watched from a porch, a few quickwalking youngish white folks but for the most part skin color ran the gamut from peanut butter to coca-cola.

stores boasted, Cheap _______ ! [nails, fish, shoes], some strictly in arabic.

i have to admit i held my breath while we crossed the bridge. i have to admit i thought, in the words of my predecessor, If i die, i die. i even may have thought it in hebrew, for extra kicks.

of course, nothing happened. i was glad to be getting off campus though. i wanted no part of any remembrance of the day, not leftist not rightist. for me it was enough to spend the day in class (normal) and travelling to new york (uneventful) and urge the arrival of september 12 as quickly as possible.

speaking of 12, here’s my review of thirteen. por favor, ignore the shittyass titling, courtesy of my editor who hates me.

terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day

and you know i’m never hyperbolic. yesterday just bit. i tried to make things better by being pretty: i walked around all day in a bright pink skirt with striped pink’n’purple knee socks and barely any black, by my standards, just a shirt and boots to balance it out. it didn’t work. everything just went wrong yesterday, in minor but increasingly irritating ways until i finally had a mini breakdown, read 5 chapters of hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy, and conked out.

today, i was determined, should be better. and indeed it has been! it’s been gorgeous outside. i feel pretty enough in my spiffy new (black) pants and new (black) shirt that says “hottie” in letters that look like they were spraypainted. i’ve eaten chocolate coconut cake, watched dressed to kill, read a whole wonderful book of dykes to watch out for, played tennis, watched the simpsons, seinfeld, and west wing, and am in the process of ordering pizza and watching some like it hot. i’ve made plans to visit my boyfriend tomorrow, with whom i had this exchange:

him: they’re teddy bear feminists.

me: what the hell are teddy bear feminists?

him: feminists who give teddy bears to people.

this, need i say, is the life.

this is why i keep him around

what a perfect way to relax after a helter-skelter day: to the streamed sounds of wfuv courtesy of m’ben. 8 – 12 pm on sundays this station plays the hard-to-classify music i like so much. gershwin-y, cole-porterish, 20s-30s music to which you can just see swishy skirts travelling in circles around a dance floor with three piece suits …

after exercising my legal right — hell, virtual obligation — as a 21 year old to drink the past two nights, i’m taking it easy now. of course i did a lot of co|motion stuff this afternoon/evening before i allowed myself to take it easy. and of course the night where a group of us got drunk on pina coladas and vanilla vodka and played charades was in and of itself easier than the night where a small group of us saw depressing though quality art filmage, then brooded over cocktails.

in general i’ve felt older recently. an interesting feeling, and one that is probably not unconnected to being a senior. while i like the frosh i’ve met, it’s not watching them run around that makes me feel like a senior, exactly. it’s something else that i’m trying to put my finger on, something related to the feeling of unshakable familiarity & comfort — even, perhaps, the beginning of a sense that i could be (soon) ready to move on. (not now, and not too soon, but, perhaps, soon.)

at last!

well hi there, blogger. nice to see you too. yes, it’s been a while, hasn’t it. where have you been hiding.

since i’ve just emptied my mind at the lj i have little left for blogger, even though out of love and loyalty of course i tried blogger first.

i did, at elizabeth’s mom’s behest, see a chiropractor this week. twice, even. my neck feels almost entirely better, but don’t tell friendly dr. boy-band-frontman-on-steroids because he wags his finger at discussing symptom disappearance. the focus of chiropractic care is to make your spine work at 100%. if your symptoms go away, that’s merely a fringe benefit.

still: my neck feels better. ben came to visit; surely that helped too. he found it weird to have so recently graudated and returned. i found it comfortingly normal.

also, my first film review of the year, dirty pretty things. yes, the title sucks. i apologize. i’ll do better next time. the review did garner me the first compliment i’ve ever received from my editor.

stay tuned next week for my review of thirteen.

ester incapacitated

ouch. i’ve done something uncalled for to my neck and now my leftward mobility is curtailed. i can’t lift my left arm, even to do my hair. this severely limits my options so it’s a damn good thing it’s already getting dark.

stefanie, daughter of a chiropractor and very much a true believer, informed me that ice is better than heat; that sleeping on more than one pillow is toxic and sleeping on your stomach is a death wish; and that i need to go get myself Corrected. she and eliz frequent a chiropractor about 15 minutes away by car so they don’t see this as a big deal, but i find it a little scary. i mean, it looks like it hurts.

if by tomorrow i still can’t turn my head to the left, i’ll go with them. but ugh.

the rumors are true…

… parrish, my dorm, is eerily quiet. there’s more noise outside my window at the rose garden/roundabout than in the hallway outside my open door. speaking of my door, why aren’t people knocking it down? don’t tell me this is one of those situations where i’ll have to learn to be assertive again. you think i came to college to learn?

currently i’m eating leftover sesame tofu with my fingers, then wiping my fingers on my jeans and using them to type. this bodes well for the future, both in terms of hygiene and the condition of my keyboard. but i have no silverware. i have no roommate either, and no boyfriend (well, at least none within arm’s reach). something, people, has got to give.

well, i have a pretty view outside my window, which is taller than i am, and my walls are so tall i can barely even see the ceiling. the ceiling is like a dimly glimpsed horizon. it may well just be a mirage. everything’s white, except the furniture (light wood stained) and the floor (linoleum. what? who ordered linoleum? not that i’m complaining, mind you. the other dorms i’ve lived in on campus had cinderblock walls and floors made out of compacted grade F meat). (still, i could use a rug.)

if you are someone i know, or the sibling of someone i know, you should stop by parrish 246 and get the awkward first “oh hi!” moment out of the way. i swear i’m not intimidating: at the moment, i have sesame sauce dripping down my chin. mmm, sesame …

one brother gone, one brother going

who is this man

and why does he start each day

by rolling out the white carpet

as though he expects a paint-covered god

what are the blue odorless flowers sprouted

along the carpet, following the banister up six

flights of stairs

why are rooms

changing tones like mood rings

she wouldn’t understand

the books spat from shelves, either,

the knickknacks plucked from walls

she could have tried asking

the house, which

in twenty years had never before gone under

the knife, but the anasthesized house

could not have answered

she would have dashed

out the door every day the man

was painting it and crouched, waited for us

on the lawn to coax her back in

to what we’d reassure her was her home

still

the biggest shift to me

is not the bathroom, cornered

and stripped at last

of the paper i’ve hated for years, or my brothers’

suitcases piled in the hallway like oversized

building blocks the biggest shift

is having to imagine her

confusion, instead of petting it away.

i have a cellphone

i do. i didn’t expect or ask for one — that’s always the best way to get something. my older brother’s heading off to iowa, where his plan doesn’t work. instead of cancelling the plan, the t-mobile lady (not catharine zeta-jones, sadly, but i guess she’s at home nursing) convinced him to give the phone to me.

at the phone store the phone guy, who reminded me a little of our foreign study coordinator, and my brother badgered me into getting the best phone available for $50, instead of the $50 one that’s less reliable but better looking. so my phone is sweet but ugly. hopefully it will grow on me. please feel free to say helpful things like, “don’t worry, the good-looking ones break your heart in the end.”

i have this phone for a year. in the best of all possible worlds, adam will return from iowa, and i’ll head there, and we’ll handoff the plan again. meanwhile, call me. i leave for swarthmore this weekend for my last year. i won’t think about that. instead i’ll play bowling and check my email on my sexy-ugly phone, for which i now need to think of a name.

no, eliz, you’re just a follower

i haven’t been in the dc public library in years. i would prefer to put the number at around 10; in fact it’s probably closer to 3 since i came here to borrow the LOTR books instead of buy them. since i ended up never bringing them back, the guilt kept me at arm’s length til desperation beckoned me in.

actually the reason for the gulf between the time i came 10 years ago and the time i came 3 years ago is also attributable to my library kleptomania. it’s terrible, absolutely terrible. the only stealing i’ve ever done! i don’t deserve to be a swattie, or at least to be thought of in the same breath as true, socially-minded leftists who never steal, or only from corporate congloms which deserve it.

since reading nickel and dimed i’ve become vehemently anti-walmart. fyi.

i find it funny that they even allow me onto the computer without checking my record here. if there’s a black list, i’m on it. if there’s a ten most wanted list, i might be on that too. oh dear. i wouldn’t be here, listening to the inexplicable minnesota accent of the librarian helping a woman in a housedress behind me, if a storm hadn’t racked our area, depriving many of power and my house of internet.

at home mostly i’ve been filling out applications. out of convenience/laziness, i’ve narrowed down my choices to: stanford, nyu, columbia (film), ucla (film), bu, emerson, and iowa. in the course of this, i’ve become as dissatisfied with my poetry as i’ve ever been. it’s too late now to burn the lot and start over. maybe when/if i get into some grad skool program. i’ll view that as a new chance.

if not, i’ll do as ben discreetly suggested. see myself as a recreational poet who writes things for people when they need them.

(at the time, less than pleased with that prospect, i said, “they could just buy a hallmark card!” to which he replied, “there are no hallmark cards for … pain …”) talk about a niche market.