Open mic tonight! Yeah!

Skin Picking

I overheard my mother talking to Larry about picking at the skin on her face. Now I know where I get it from. Any ways, senior year I wrote a monologue about it. It's technically not me.

I pluck my eyebrows a lot. It makes me feel better, like I am achieving something. Each eyebrow hair I pluck, I put on the edge of the mirror. It’s a locker mirror, but I’ve never put it in a locker. I think it might actually be my brother’s. I laughed at him because it is pink and sparkly. My brother tries to take my tweezers from me. He says my eyebrows are already too little; I need to let them grow. Maybe he’s right, I mean, I know that my eyebrows are too little, but seeing the little black points of hair sticking out of my pore, I can’t help but pluck them,
Actually it has been hurting lately to pluck them. I think some hairs are becoming ingrown, like that little black spot, just above where my eyebrow starts. Once I read a book about a cocaine addict who plucked her leg hairs, but the hairs became ingrown, like mine, creating swirls of hair underneath the skin, plucking leg hairs sounded like a good idea before that. I don’t want that to happen to my face, but I can see it happening. I think it might already be happening, I can see more of the black dots forming around my eyebrows.
God, I’m becoming so vain. Even my vanity is compulsive. Compulsively I pluck my eyebrows and pick at my blackheads. My forehead ends up looking like a human pincushion, all of my pores swollen and red. Every night I fall asleep, hoping, wishing that I’ll look okay tomorrow, like somehow everything will change over night, major transformation. When I was little I used to think about what it would be like to wake up as someone else. When I blew out the candles on my birthday cake for years that is what I wished for. Honestly though, seven year olds aren’t supposed to think things like that, they are supposed to be happy with themselves. I’ve spent my entire life being unhappy
This picking at skin, it all really started with zits and yeah I know that’s disgusting, but it’s the truth. I could sit for hours trying to pop all five million zits on my face at once. I used to put a green mask on at night too. It probably didn’t help because it had mint in it and mint irritates my skin. Once I used mint conditioner and it felt like my entire head was on fire. I don’t really like mint toothpaste either, but it gets rid of bad breath and so I tolerate it. That’s another thing that I’ve become compulsive about. I never was worried about bad breath until I tasted it on someone. Now I chew mint gum, but like I said I hate mint, but I am so worried, because bad breath can change how you see the composure of a person. Not that I am composed. I hate the way that I move. In second grade I decided I moved differently from everyone else. All my movements are so awkward and sharp, and all I want to be is this subtle, demure person, but the most I have managed is to pluck my eyebrows down into lines that don’t match up and it’s funny because I didn’t used to care what my eyebrows looked like, that’s the one thing that I thought I didn’t have to worry about. Then I went to get my hair dyed when I was fourteen and the hair stylist told me that I needed to get my eyebrows waxed and she could do it for me. I mean, maybe she just wanted money. Now that I think back that makes sense, but at that moment it was like the entirety of my being was reduced down to the fact that my eyebrows were too hairy. I got a third degree burn when she did it, a red arch underneath my eyebrow. It didn’t hurt when she pulled the wax off. Not anymore than it hurts to stick a needle through your ear and I am almost as compulsive as that as I am about my eyebrows.
I don’t really know when I started plucking. Probably when I saw the miniscule hairs creeping upon my nose. I just started with the middle, between each of my eyebrows. Right away I discovered a problem. We are covered in little hairs. Look at your skin, anywhere on your skin, look really closely, go under a light, and you’ll see them. Little transparent hairs, like the hairs on a spider. I felt it necessary to try and pluck all these hairs as well. I would sit down, just with the intent to pluck my eyebrows, and I would get frustrated, because it was like they were growing back while I was plucking them. So I just kept plucking them. Eventually I found how fun it was to pluck the really long hairs, the ones with a crimp in the middle, and then of course there are the dark hairs, the really dark ones that grow the slowest. It’s so satisfying to get them when they are just a bud, just a little dot. When you pull it out it’s longer, the little white ball of a root at the end. I mean, when you see that, you have to wonder how many other things are hiding underneath your skin.

An adventure of the death kind

My dad, my brother, and I are going to Milwaukee today to see my Grandpa. It didn't occur to me till last night how much this could affect my dad. I mean, it's his dad.

We have to do an open mic when I get back.

I will be back Monday afternoon. I'm not bringing my computer. It doesn't work well enough to make it worth it and I am going to try and force myself to work on German this weekend and finish reading "Dracula" for Victorian Literature (I gave up on Bleak House for awhile) (The back has words on it like "complicated," and I already can't pay attention to Dickens.)

Merry Christmas

First off, happy holidays.

Second, my grandpa is dying and I have to decide if I want to go to Milwaukee for Saturday through Monday. I probably will I guess? This sounds terrible. I just haven't seen him in years and I kind of want to keep my memories pleasant. Not good Christmas news.

I watch you watching my face indifferently

When I go back to school I am going to go to the counselor and rant about my mother. I want to rant now, but it seems innapproprite here. It also seems inappropriate to do so to my friends, but I do it any ways. Here is how it will go: I will talk about my mother and how guilty she makes me feel and then I will say I know I shouldn't let her make me feel guilty, that I am doing nothing wrong and she is fifty years old and should be able to take care of herself. The counselor will tell me that I seem to have a good grip on things. Perhaps I shouldn't prejudge, but the last two times I have tried to go see a counselor about my problems this is what has happened. Ironically (I don't know if ironic is the right word to use here), my mother is a licensed psychologist.

I am not actually dreading my victorian literature class anymore

I wish I could be like Jane Eyre, you know, without all the religion and sexual repression. For being an ugly girl (that's why that book is fantastic, they spend like half of it talking about how unattractive she is) she achieves quite a bit.

But I could never be Jane Eyre. I've never been good at repressing things and I would never tolerate Mr. Rochester's cheesy language as much as she does.

Three AM

It's those things that are said at three in the morning,
a question, three in my morning may have lost its significance
through daylight savings time and leap year.
When three in the morning becomes not, but becomes
as ambivalent as all the other times.

It was better in the sense that it was more real
when these morning words were said together.
It was worse in the sense that I was scared,
but I articulated it through the cold and shivers,
the air itself seemed to freeze and at the same time
whisper in a cacophony of the piles that surrounded us
(books and notebooks, old tests that we became ashamed of).

But still, three in the morning seems to carry more.
The furniture becomes heavier until it crushes us through the floor.
Gravity becomes important like time, though both of those
always weigh too much.

Help

I am stuck in my house. It's one degree outside and my car is at my other house. I watched "Muppets in Space," which has an excellent opening scene of all the Muppets getting ready for the day. I even attempted to play video games, but somehow all the controllers in my house are broken. I've decided the winter is like giving birth; you always forget how bad it is until you are in the middle of it.

Nutrolls are really popular in prison

We ventured to Morris and sure enough there was a blizzard. The windchill was -41. We spent a lot of time inside. We did try to go to breakfast on Sunday morning. That did not go well. It was a very nice weekend overall though. I will post more and put up pictures once I am on my own computer. I must keep this short though because I am on my brother's computer and he does not like that at all and my dad is picking him up from swimming practice right now. Driving back was rather scary, but Danny did an excellent job as you can tell because I am alive. Right, more later.

Hands

Another thing I wrote when I was seventeen. I read it at a reading. That was the night my brother stopped talking to my mother.

Her hands were skinny. Her hands were always skinny, even when her body swelled with childhood insecurities. Her hands were awkward and she hated them, just as I hate my hands now. Her hands were olive with bright blue veins sticking out. When she flexed her fingers you could see her joints move.
Skinny hands turned into bony wrists and long, thin agile fingers. Her nails were bitten and bleeding with anxiety. She bit her nails most when she was around her mother. She painted on clear bad tasting nail polish to try and stop herself from biting her nails, but she had grown accustomed to the taste and so the bitter peppery taste constantly filled her mouth and she thought that she must be very unpleasant to kiss.
When she was at peace with herself she was able to stop biting her nails, but these were short intervals. Her brittle nails broke easily and she couldn’t help picking at them.
She loved things that smelled good, and so she put on lotion every morning and night after her shower to clean her deoderant allergic skin. I used to love the feeling of her smooth hand in mine and wondered how she made them so soft. I started biting my nails, thinking that it would make my hands like hers, and now my nails bleed too.
Her fingers are bleeding again and she wears finger condoms to keep dirt out of the cuts. The finger condoms make her fingers smell like rubber, and I am reminded of hospitals and sex.
Her hands are skinny. Skinnier than when she was teenager. The joints in her fingers stick out grotesquely and her olive skin looks like a thin glove over her bones. Her skins looks glistens because of the extra-strong moisturizing lotion she slathers on her dry cracked skin.
Her hands shake now. She can barely hold onto the red gel anti-depressant capsules she takes everyday. She says that chemicals have burned through the skin on her hands and everything she touches makes them sting.

I feel it in my fingers

Tomorrow Danny and I are driving to Morris, Minnesota. Lovely place. It has about three residents and a coffeeshop built on God's love. I'm very excited to visit people there. This could very easily turn into an "I love everyone" post and I haven't been drinking so I have no exuse. The weather is supposed to be bad on Sunday, but I am not letting this stop the trip.

They're a little too loud for me

Story one
My room at my mom's house averages between 51 and 59 degrees fahrenheit. The rest of the house averages between 61 and 65 degrees fahrenheit. My perfect temperature is around 80 to 85 degrees fahrenheit. So, you can probably gather I am cold every minute that I am home except when I am under my down comforter in my freezing room. I walked into my mother's room to get a pen (all of them seem to have gravitated to her desk) and it was like a fucking sauna. This is after she tells me not to use the space heater every night in my room because it's expensive. Oh, but she did turn up the heat in the bathroom for me. Great, so now I can be warm while I pee.

Story two
I went to the dentist today for a teeth cleaning. Who did I see there? Larry (my mom's boyfriend). Coincidentally, my mother was also at the dentist. I've noticed they like to schedule as much of the Coryell/Lamberto family at one time as possible, probably so they have to deal with us less. We all have bad teeth and hate the dentist. Larry asked if I could pick her up and I reluctantly agreed, knowing my mother was having a root canel, probably fell asleep on the chair, and thus would be half asleep and in pain. So after I have a horrible teeth cleaning, in which my gums bleed an excessive amount and somehow half this blood winds up all over my face, I wait around Border's for awhile reading knitting and baking magazines (I know, I'm about eighty years old), and then I go back to the dentist's office. Who did I see there? Larry. He said, "Oh, Dollene forgot her keys so I thought I would pick her up just to be sure." That man has no logic. I have keys. I have had keys since I was five years old when we first moved in. He just wanted to be sure that I would let her inside the house and not just run off to one of my friend's houses. Yes, because I am a complete bitch of a daughter and would leave my half asleep in-pain mother outside in the freezing cold.

Okay, I'm done ranting. Now I am going to make lunch and figure out how much German I have to study each day.

It's in the special way we fuck

I will post new things eventually. Not things I wrote when I was seventeen years old and absolutely absurd. Granted, I am still absolutely aburd. I keep meaning to post fiction, but I look at it and it's all so long and unfinished. Does anyone have any idea how I can post fiction anywhere from 5-75 pages long without have it be overwhelming?

(Home is excellent.) (I knit a hat. I will post a picture.)

Remember

I wrote this when I was seventeen. It reeks of that age.

Do you remember? That day on the beach. You must remember. Me, leading you down to the water. It was cold that day. You looked at me when I said I wanted go to the beach, you looked at me and I could see the worry in your eyes. You shouldn’t have been worried though.
You remember don’t you? Driving us down there. I didn’t talk much, even though I knew it would upset you. The intent of my silence was not to sadden you. I just wanted to look at the leaves changing colors in the trees and you know you wanted to look too. I tried to show you, remember? When I leaned down and picked the leaf off the ground. It was my favorite kind, the ones that turn vibrant red. I picked it up and handed it to you and you nodded and dropped it back onto the ground.
And remember? When I took off my shoes and dipped my toes in the water. I told you to take off your shoes as well and join me and you said no; that you didn’t want to get your feet sandy. I laughed at you and pretended that I didn’t care, but I wanted to show you. I wanted you to feel the chilly water rushing against the nerves in your toes. There are a lot of nerves in toes you know, and when the water crescendos and swiftly recedes, you can feel it. The cold sneaks up through your legs and stomach and your body shivers instinctively, and then the cold evaporates, coming out as a tickle in the nose.
Do you remember when I kissed you? I think it surprised you when I just ran up and kissed you like that. The sand was cold underneath my feet. You watched as I made shapes in it with my fingers. I told you to help me. That we could build a sand castle. You said no, the sand was cold and wet and dirty. So I made a castle by myself and watched it until the waves overcame it.
I made you stand with me by the water’s edge. I held your hand, even though I could feel it shifting uncomfortably. I wanted to feel you. I wanted the shocks to move from your hand to mine and I wanted us, for one moment, to have serenity.
The wind was sharp that day and when it blew through me, I wondered if I was hollow. If all of the bone marrow had been sucked out of my bones and I was as frail as a toothpick statue.
Do you remember when I picked up a seashell and put it in my pocket. You asked me why I wanted an ordinary seashell. I told you to look, to examine the flawless ivory surface. You tried to feign interest and then you handed it back to me, without saying a word.
Do you remember how our silence feels? How it wraps around us in all of its uncertainties. Do you remember? When I told you that if the sun froze at that moment, that we would be stuck, holding hands along the water, and when they world warmed again, they would find us like that. You laughed and told me that I was weird, that you didn’t know how I thought up such things. But it is not like I spent several days or even hours or minutes thinking about it. It just occurred to me, that they would find us like that and they would believe it to be perfection. I just wanted to show you.

Peter the Vampire*

Peter wanted to be a vampire. This seemed silly, "Peter the vampire from Australia." But nonetheless, Peter wanted to be a vampire. Peter tried as hard as possible to be a vampire. He moved to Florence, Italy, where time seems to stretch on forever (as it would if you were a vampire) and got a job handing out fliers (which is almost the same as sucking blood). Peter spent his nights with many women hoping he would find one that was a vampire, but sadly they were all vapid tourists that only wanted sex and not blood. Poor Pete. He started working in a bar hoping alcohol could fill his cravings, but it was not enough and now he spends his days earning money so he can go find vampires in China.



*A completely biographical tale.

I wrote something on the airplane

I struggle with this idea of being "in-transit." It is easier in the car, staring down at the white lines and the green mile markers or even on a ship, which despite its rocking it still feels firmly anchored to something.
But airplane travel. This could be equated with limbo. The plane takes off from the runway (I still don't understand how and will not understand how) and it is lifted into nowhere. On the flight from Rome to Jersey they had diagrams showing the position of the plane in the sky, but the scale of the plane was about one eighth of the Atlantic Ocean, rendering those images unbelievable. A dot might be more appropriate, but a dot small enough to portray the airplane over the world would not be visible on the screen.
Halfway through the ten hour flight I began to question the reality of flying. How did I know that the airplane, the size of one eighth of the ocean, was actually flying midway trhough the Atlantic between Canada and Ireland? I had no window, this added to the perception of an illusion, but even when windows existed I considered the possibility that the things seen out of them were only images on a television screen. I felt about flying the way some people thought about landing on the moon; that it was far too fantastic to be real.
I was nowhere for approximately thirteen hours that day. I might as well have stayed where I was in Florence and sat in my room for those hours. I would've gotten equally as much accomplished and at the end of the day I could've stepped out of my room and beam-me-up-Scotty style been in St. Paul.
Flying would be more real if airplanes didn't have roofs. I have this vague suspicion we would all be sucked out and memories of a movie I watched long ago with my mother where half an airplane had lost it's top and everyone was screaming. My mother said this was the smoking half of the airplane. But still, it would be like driving a car with the windos open in an area relatively void of oxygen. I should be sick: I am moving hundreds of miles per hour and can't feel it.
The Rome airport is a good reflection of Italy itself. The train was alright, besides just missing the one which would have delivered us to the airport at the recommended two hours ahead of time. We arrived at the airport to find we had to take a bus to get to the correct terminal and of course we had just missed that one too. While on the bus I began to blame the entireity of Italian culture for our tardiness and decided they probably wouldn't let us check in at that point. However, timeliness is not an Italian habit and much of the plane seem to be in the check-in like with us. We got to the counter and they announced that our flight had been booked with their airline by a different airline. We went over to the counter for the other airline with the assistance of an old Italian woman who spoke to us in half Italian and half English (at that point I was so worrried I couldn't understand either- I just nodded). She handed us an abundance of tickets- six to be exact - and we got through security, rode up and down a mulitude of escalators only to be confronted by another bus, which took us to yet another building. Once at that building we rode up and down several more escalators before reaching our gate and then rode down one more escalator to board. I must've been wearing my worried wrinkled face; everyone kept calling me "sweetie."

When I was nowhere I forgot about my hatred for Italy and started to complain about the lack of Italian written on things on the airplane- Spanish and English written instead. It's easier to love everything that's somewhere and exlusively hate the airplane when you are nowhere. The noise of airplanes makes me fall asleep, just like the noise of overhead projectors. My neck, which has been equated to that of a giraffe, addes to this, finding it no trouble to lean over and rest on my shoulder while I slumber. It hurts when I wake up, but I simply shift it to the other shoulder. I didn't dream on the flight from Rome. I tried not to think about Florence; it was already giving me culture shock on the airplane.

Everyone has a special relationship with their home airport. The first time I ever picked my dad up from a business trip he remarked that it was a sign that I was getting old. After 9/11 the baggage claim is the meeting place. I have yet to see the baggage claim in movies: airport rules don't apply in nonreality. There is very little that is romantic about baggage turning in circles. i imagine running through the airport to see my dad and my brother. I will not do this. The way I imagine them greeting me is accurate though. My dad's smile, somewhat like mine: naive and excited. My brotjher will be sassy. He will lecture me about my terrible time int he Rome airport. Tell me my legs will be cold because I have no clean leggings and it is warm in Rome. We willb e happy, in the way I was never able to be with my family untilI started leaving.

The woman next to me is reading a book about riding hourses. I looked over her shoulder a couple of times in order to learn that, "If you think your horse will freak out it will." Our flight is small. The boy across and up one from me is doing high school homework. He is making of those carts with all the connecting circles. The solo flight attendent sounds like a woman. I stared at him for a long time trying to decide if he once was, but the male-pattern baling gives his masculinity away. He sits in a sit that faces the entire airplane cabin. He doesn't looked at me. I imagine that other peopel are looking at him as well.
The clouds from New Jersey to Minnesota look like ice. A giant lake with snow drifts on it, the type one can find in February and March in Minnesota. Everytime I leave home I decide that no one understands the concept of lakes like Minnesotans., something integral to live in simple ways. I always appreciate stationary water when I am away from it.
How strange. I went up into nowhere and will come down at the Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, where it is fifty degrees colder and everyone is pale and many of them are fat. We need eduction on airplesn, an instructional video that reminds us where we are goign and where we came from. Perhaps statistics, such as, Minnesotia: land of 10,000 lakes with a capital city of St. Paul. It has the Mall of America and lots of snow. Some parts have farms, others are heavily wooded. Some areas used to have prairies, but I suspect this is where the farms are now. There are a lot od cows, which makes for good milk. Tasha Coryell grew up here. She has a strange tendency to idealize it when she is gone.

Funny story

Neither Danny or I have access to a car, so breakfast is being postponed until one shows up at Danny's house. I will post in the mean time. I really should be doing laundry.

There is too much pressure for a clever title

I'm home. It's fantastic and shocking all at the sametime. It was really nice to see my family and my friends, even though my mother lost a tooth and started crying (she lost a tooth the day before I came home and cried when I came home, everytime I come home she gets a little crazier). It's weird though. I am in a completely different place with completely different people. The life that was my life on Friday isn't my life on Monday and I bet there are some people that are thinking, "But Tasha, that happens to my life every weekend..." I'm not going to worry about it though, instead I'm going out to breakfast with Danny.

I have a lot of things to post. I will do this later.

Last blog post before I am in Saint Paul (I think)

I leave today and I am considerably happier than last night. However, I haven't said goodbye to Jeanne and Fabio yet, which will be really sad. I wasn't very close with them, but they were always very nice to me, despite me coming back drunk in the middle of the night many times and probably making lots of noise. I will miss Fabio trying to force me to eat more when I have already eaten vast amounts of food. Last night I had seven and a half pieces of pizza (little ones, but still, seven and a half is a lot).

Here is my traveling schedule:
3:30: train to Roma. (We don't have tickets yet, I hope we can still get tickets...)
We have a hostel in Roma and then we have to be at the airport by 7:45 in the morning, which will probably mean leaving the hostel by 7:00, but I will be really nervous so probably 6:30.
Our flight from Roma leaves at 9:45AM and from there it's a ten hour and ten minute flight. We get into New Jersey at 1:55PM, East Coast time. We have a two hour layover and then we fly out of Newark to MSP, a three hour and twelve minutes of flight. Then I will proceed to run through the airport to the baggage claim where my dad and my brother are meeting me. Then we are going out to eat and then I am going to Border's to see people (Colin is working). Then I will go to my mom's house and fall asleep in my wonderful bed with my down comforter.

It's good I'm leaving. I am excited to see everyone at home. Most people don't get home for another week and a half, but I am going to visit Blair at Gustavus and Martin, Greta, and Tessa at Morris with Danny.

Now I am going to make one last attempt to find my dad an Italia bicycling team shirt.

Always coming back home to you

I have an overwhelming amount of emotions right now. On the one hand, I am really excited to go home. I really need to leave this country and go back to the Twin Cities. On the other hand it's sad leaving people, but at the same time a lot of the people that I am sad to be leaving I also resent for a lot of things. These things are all very conflicting, and thus out of frustration, happiness, and sadness I cried, and then I took a shower, which is what I normally do after I cry, and then I cried somemore, and then I called Bobby, who was sleeping, which makes sense as it's 2:30 in the morning (he didn't pick up). Between calling Bobby and Bobby calling me back I decided once I leave things will be okay, because once I get away from this place and these people that make me crazy I have to be okay. When Bobby called me back I had changed my mind and I started worrying that things wouldn't be okay. Leaving is so hard. It's even hard when you hate the place you are leaving. Okay, I don't hate Florence. I hate living here. I hate how it and the people here make me feel. I want to be with people that love me again. This is all very presumptuous as I am assuming that people somewhere love me, but whatever. I am just going in circles. This is terrible. I should go to bed. I will post something more comprehendable after I am sober and more awake.

Gender (poem #10)

The skinny girls in their boots don’t have eyes anymore.
They have lids, greasy and glazed with eye-shadow
and black line of eyeliner and a veil of lashes.
The skinny girls in their boots don’t speak;
I don’t anymore either.
The middle-aged women at the dinner table
with their lip wrinkles like a corpse
with their mouth sewn shut.

Jeanne had an afternoon off from helping Fabio in the store.
“Maybe I’ll bake something!” she exclaimed with enthusiasm.
I watched as she did three loads of laundry, hung the sheets,
and ironed the pants. She baked a torte and apologized
when dinner was late on the table.

Paolo can’t get a girlfriend
because every night he stands in front of a door,
smoking cigarettes and creating more dents in his face.
He waxes his eyebrows and his hair is glued upwards.
I wondered why the Italian men hit on the American girls
until I opened my eyes wide and he offered me a free shot;
“You know what I love most about this girl,” he said,
“She always leaves me speechless.”

Generosity (poem #9)

Sometimes in Italy your stomach is full,
but your mouth is not and when that happens
you must listen to your mouth. A common
weakness this seems; the hunger of a mouth,
a desire to feed. Mangia, mangia, mangia
a repeated command. Something applicable
beyond food, because sometimes in Italy
your mouth is still hungry long after your stomach
is full.

I caught the feeding sickness of Italy
on the second week in Firenze; a special Tuscan strain.
Mangia, mangia, mangia, this repeating refrain.
It started with a beer, and then a shot, no two, three
And the bar-tenders love to give those pretty-easy American girls
something to suck on.

Expulsion is the next symptom:
it comes in spurts, often starting with the mouth
and ending with the eyes.
There is evidence of this on the street
In stale dog shit and streaming lines of piss.
For one week and one half I found myself
Expelling liquid lines down the face,
for no reason at all outside of the feeding.
Like in a bar, when a man fresh out of the army
tells you that he just killed a man and when your eyes
open in shock, he says how beautiful they are.
My ego has been stuffed until it purges, and I am worried
that this might be chronic.
Mangia, mangia, mangia
No, basta! But my cries because irrelevant
for even when the mouth is full, things are shoved in any ways.

Can you feel a little love?

Okay, here's the deal. I have ten poems due on Thursday. I have written eight. I need to revise all ten of them and make connections with the Decameron.

How you can help: read the numbered poems. Comment/message/IM me (poeticwankery or darkbrokenstar on AIM)/fly to Italy/call me and tell me what sucks or what you would like to see.

What you gain from it: I am not posting the revisions until after an open-mic. I will send them to you. Or if you are in Italy I will put you in a poem. If you are a man in Italy and you have hit on me, you are probably already in a poem. Do not let this discourage you.

Thank you or I'm guessing it will be "thank Colin" because generally he is the only commentor (however, I recognize Amelia commented on one).

Faith (poem #8)

It is easier, waiting for no one.
Ask me what Florence is like in the afternoon
and I will tell you about the strip from Via Nazionale
through the underground tunnel, where there are holes
in the ceiling which water drips through and the same carabinieri
watch me walked by everyday,
emergence only to be assaulted by umbrella salesmen,
even on the days when I have an umbrella or it’s not raining.
The store on the corner changes its display every couple of weeks:
the mannequins always emaciated and they usually wear purple.
Sometimes a man is reproducing masterpieces using sidewalk chalk.
Sometimes an old man plays the violin.
Sometimes gypsies gather and sit on the steps of Santa Maria Novella;
even the gypsies have someone they are waiting for.
I passed by a bicycle store everyday and didn’t realize it until two days ago.
I take the slow route on days I am delaying going back home and days
when I hope to be waiting without waiting at all. Waiting with coincidence
is what bumping into someone on the street should be called.
I take the slow route everyday.

Ask me what Florence is like from the hours from four to six
and I will tell you about the different colors of sheets that I’ve had.
My favorite were the ones with the imperfect pastel polka dots
with the stripped pastel pillow. None of them match the green and red striped
comforter or the red, white, and black plaid blanket I put over the top
when it got too cold. I would tell you about the insides of my eyelids;
but you know what that looks like.

When I was waiting I could tell you what Florence looked like at night.
Too many people and all of them looked like they didn’t know where they were going.
Once I got stopped by two English boys asking me where to find a disco.
I must have looked like I knew where I was going.
I told them to go straight and take a left at the next big street they went to.
Often I would pass large groups of men and the key was to look straight forward
and pretend not to speak whatever language they were speaking to you,
because after all I was waiting. Waiting is terrible alone, when all those people
who don’t know where they are going are staring at you. When you realize
how many people have the same haircut. The drunk girls that sidle up to drunk boys
and somehow I always have the clarity to label them as ugly, but when you are waiting
everyone is ugly, everyone has a blemished face, a big nose, and giant grips of love handles. But when you are waiting, you become the penultimate flaw. Waiting like
in Santa Maria Novella, as if you are worth less.

Another Fucking Blog Post

I think they should make a computer that I can take in the shower with me. I would never leave. The water bill would be huge. No one else would ever have hot water. I also would get nothing done, but I would be happy. That's what matters.

Time: 11:46pm Pages completed: 2 Pages still to be completed: 1 Level of depression: 5
Scale that I am measuring my depression on: I am too depressed and apathetic to make a scale.

Things done while instead of writing paper:
1. Changed my facebook status.
2. Used incorrect form of "to" (too, two) and had to change it again.
3. Found the leftover turkey in the fridge.
4. Offered some to Bobby.
5. Thought it was really funny how baffled Bobby was about where I got the turkey from.
6. Ate some turkey.
7. Put the turkey away.
8. Looked at pictures of Venice underwater.
9. Called Mariel to tell her Venice was underwater.
10. Did a crossword puzzle.
11. Discovered Bobby and Josh are useless as classics students as they don't know the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet (the 7th letter of the English alphabet is G)
12. Went home.
13. Ate dinner.
14. Checked facebook a lot.
15. Took a shower.
16. Started to revise a poem.

(worked on my paper a bit.)

17. Complained to Dan.
18. Julie IMed me saying "I don't want to do anything."
19. I will now proceed to talk to Julie.

Another fucking essay

Thus far in my essay writing I have:
1. Looked through facebook pictures.
2. Looked through more facebook pictures.
3. Complained a lot.
3.5. (I forgot to put this in and I'm too lazy to change the numbers) Made hostel reservations for Saturday.
4. Pretended to be a nun.
5. Pretended to be a nun while singing the wedding song (you know; dun dun dundun, dun dun dundun, dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dundun)
6. Pretended to be a sith-lord.
7. Posted everything I've done while writing my essay.

Time: 6:24 Pages completed: zero Cups of coffee: 2

Wealth (poem #7)

In the beginning, they were artists.
In Fabio’s paintings were crazy women:
grey women with green hair,
it looked like somebody’s mother.
A woman with passed out on a bed
with all of her purple clothing pulled open.

Jeanne tried watercolor
and the colors of the oranges,
their reflection in the window,
matched the blue and orange fresco
they had left uncovered on the wall.

This is the beginning of all stories in Florence;
they all wanted to be artists.
Mateo looked like someone who knew about hash.
He did in fact, know about hash.
Mateo came to Florence to be an artist.
“Do you still make art?” I asked.
“Of course,” he replied.

Fabio now designs brassieres,
which is almost the same
as painting crazy-haired women
who have passed out from drinking too much,
smoking too much.
He runs a store, which is almost the same
as the picture of the crazy clown
wearing a ruffled shirt.

Jeanne cooks dinner
and lunch
and she puts the coffee out at breakfast.

The truth of the matter

That was on this week's postsecret

Friendship (poem #6)

"I know every single person in this goddamn city
and I am still alone."

A statement condemning.
Even with electricity these buildings are dark.
The windows have shutters that let through only slivers
and I am surrounded by silence in the form of a person.

I read books:
Vonnegut, Alice Adams, Joyce Carol Oates, Joseph Heller, Anthony Burgess.
It got worse:
I read chick-lit for company,
books that are turquoise and pink.
I learned about relationships with shoes,
something intensified by stepping out onto the streets,
staring downwards.

"I see you walking by everyday,"
hunched over, perhaps unfriendly.

It is best described by the three Italian couples
we met sitting at Santa Croce;
couples like, "she's my best friend's girl,"
and they kiss and scream, "dormire,"
sticking tongues in each other's ears.

Friendship like being hit in the back with rocks,
when you are otherwise invisible.

In my life the furniture eats me

I don't want to hear that I am going home in blank number of days and it's so close. I don't want to hear about being optomistic or how lucky I am that I am in Italy. I don't know what I want to hear. I simultaneously want everyone to talk to me and no one to talk to me.

Today was very strange: I went to Pisa and had a very good time. I got a picture of me holding the tower up. I ate a very nice pizza. I even had a decent train ride back. I got home and started re-reading things and taking notes for the essay I have to write and everything crashed. I did not want to read, I did not want to be in bed, I wanted to do what I do when I am really upset and cold; I took a shower. This is what I did. My mood continued to sink however. I don't know why. I didn't do anything. I was trying to work, be productive and all of that went away and I want to talk about it, but I feel like I will get lectured.

I am reading "Norwegian Wood," by Haruki Murakami. This is all I want to do.

I also have "Timewarp," by Kurt Vonnegut. I also want to do this, but I am saving it for the plane ride.

I have a poem to post, maybe I will do that.

Ignorance (poem #5)

Demonstrative:
Blonde hair (there is a reason it's colored like gold).
English (money has a language).
There are worse things that can happen
other than being robbed three times.

Less appealing:
Big eyebrows (the stereotype; like caterpillars).
He was just an old man (as if at a certain age the penis falls off).
She said later," It was only a soup kitchen, I got free sandwiches."
There are worse thing than eating with the poor.

The couple in line at the Colloseum.
GRAT-ZEE, they said.

Like that time the guy pissed in front of him
and he stepped in it, and the guy yelled,
“Yo, dude, you saw me pissing there.”

Maybe they are just content to peek inside your head every once in awhile

I had a dream last night that I was pregnant. I never saw the baby, I gave birth (something I was also not present for) and then immediately went to the gym to work off my pregnant belly. Sadly, I forgot my sports bra at home and was going to turn around, but time jumped and if I wanted to make it to yoga class I had to go in at that moment. We had to take a train from the parking ramp and the gym and for some reason I was naked in front of a lot of men on the train. They kept smiling at me and I kept apologizing, because I was trying to put my clothes back on and it wasn't working. I went to yoga class and everyone had a sports bra but me. An old black woman told me if I put a carabiener (that is definately spelled wrong) on my locker keys, then I would fit in. I was much thinner in the dream than I am in actuality. I ran into some people I knew. All of them had babies too.

If you want to sleep with me and talk about existence, we'll need more than fifteen minutes

I want to write better poetry. I'm not sure how.

Love (poem #4)

I went for a walk,
the focus that comes from moving eyes
away from the still-life on the kitchen table—
pears, oranges, bananas, and apples—
these images, the myth of Italy.

I was walking by the Arno.
This is how I know the word sporco.
A man behind me on a bicycle:
a hand on my behind: a squeeze.
I gasp, try to think of what to shout,
but I can’t decide which language to speak in.

I rode on the bus.
All I could think about was my backpack:
I was wearing it on my back; what a terrible idea.
In Italy, the bus doors can grow arms
and unzip zippers.

I was riding to the train station,
a direct bus- a man shoved his way on.
I was being pushed too rhythmically-
with the wrong body parts.
Sporco.

And they ask: have you found an Italian lover?
I have gotten approximately ten marriage proposals.
“I see you walking everyday.”
Hunched over, perhaps unfriendly.
A man on the bus invited me over
A Sunday morning, Church service?

Beauty (poem #3)

I have gotten approximately ten marriage proposals.
Each one declaring, “I love you.”
I (might as well strip down) (those eyes peeling)
the breath (my breath) like the bedroom.

I realized (one day)
sitting on the Duomo steps that
every man who passed by
had looked up my skirt
(I see that head dip, peer)

These are out of proportation.
The David, his head, this is unrealistic—
The Italians with their grease sculpted hair
and grease (this imagined) seeping
from their pores, grease too, expulsion
through the mouth, skin.

My body as well (in comparison)
My hips (these women so small),
as if I were a sculpture
(Donatello’s David is my favorite,
his drooping butt).
Her hips are too large.
They cannot eat the meals that are laid out before me.

I always seem to be going home in ten days, never more, never less

I keep getting good grades on things and I don't understand because it takes me like two hours to write painfully bad pages on papers right now. Any ways, I thought I would update my list of things I have to do in order to make myself feel better about having to do work.

Here is my original list:
1. Creative project or paper (I am going to try and write a series of poems for this, but I have to call my professor about it).
2. Short paper (500 words.)
3. Short paper about Lorenzo (2 pages).
4. Test about Medici things..... (too hard).
5. Paper about the Spanish chapel in Santa Maria Novella (I forget how long).
6. Test about art and politics in trecento art..... (too hard).
7. Italian final.

Now all I have to do is:
1. Half of my creative project (six more poems.)
2. Test about Medici things.
3. Test about art and politics, but this test includes two take home essays that are several pages long enough.
4. The palace walk, which I've already done, turned it, but I did so poorly on it she gave it back to me and told me to do better.

That doesn't actually look that bad anymore. Maybe I will actually post some poetry later.

Here is what the inside of my head looks like: "Home, home, home, home, home, home."

Last night I called my dad and my brother to wish them a Happy Thanksgiving and they were betting how many drinks I had. My brother guessed seven. That probably wasn't that far off, but the large majority of it was wine.

I wrote something on the bus

You think: there might be something wrong with me, some disease. Those rumors of those crazy girls.
You think: am I one of them? It must be so. I sing and dance (this no metaphor) then go home and cry. Bipolar disorder does not shift this fast. I must be borderline.
I think: maybe I'm just alive, but then
I think: is this it? Is this living?

If you like everybody, your friends don't feel special

I have a lot to say, which turns into nothing at all because it becomes overwhelming when I try to type it. Thanksgiving tonight. My entire program is eating together, which sometimes is a pleasant experience and sometimes... shit I can't say what I was going to say. It's not mean, it just sounds too angsty.

I finished Slaughterhouse-Five. Vonnegut always wholly depresses me. Why do people always say he writes comedy?

My brother and dad are eating Thanksgiving dinner alone. They got food for eight people.

I try and say: this isn't how I am. But I get worried that it is.

What I Own

It's my body. Not your body. My body. Therefore, while I'm walking down the street it is completely inappropriate to ride by on your bicycle and GRAB MY ASS.

Intelligence

This might be unfinished. I could see it getting a lot longer.

Steve did not believe in intelligence tests. He thought they were irrelevant until questions were added such as, “A girl comes up to you and start to flirt, what do you do?” Nonetheless, he found intelligence to be quantifiable and he awarded most people with very little. He preferred his opinions on this to be described as “accurate” rather than “unfair” or “cruel.” After all, not everyone can be intelligent. As for the idea that there are different kinds of intelligence (i.e. “street smarts”), he found this to be ludicrous as well. If a person was intelligent enough, they should be able to manipulate every situation to their advantage.
The-girl-Steve-was-in-love-with thought Steve was stupid. (He also thought she was stupid, but that was another matter). She thought he was stupid because he had cheated on her.
“But I just wanted something physical,” he argued.
The-girl-Steve-was-in-love-with thought that if a person was intelligent, they could use their logic to out-weigh the desires of their genitalia.
“But I was drunk/high/drunk and high,” he argued.
The-girl-Steve-was-in-love-with thought that if a person was intelligent, they would not be drunk/high/drunk and high around someone that would increase the blood flow in their genitalia, though she didn’t necessarily find being drunk/high/drunk and high unintelligent in itself.
The-girl-Steve-was-in-love-with was very liberal and she thought that in order to be intelligent, a person must be very liberal.
However, lots of people found the-girl-Steve-was-in-love-with to be stupid because she was a socialist. In return, she thought these people were stupid for their enthusiasm about an economic system that required a large lower class and a small upper class. She also thought that altruism was part of being intelligent. The people that found her love of socialism to be stupid often claimed that she didn’t understand economics. This was true; she only understood the social repercussions of said economic systems.
Steve thought she was stupid because she studied things like the social repercussions of said economic systems. Steve liked science and math. The-girl-Steve-was-in-love-with told him that most of the things he studied involved level-one learning (i.e. memorization). This caused a lot of arguments between the two of them, which caused both of them to have stupid yearnings for other people.

I hate it when people are vindictive simply to be vindictive

I need an outlet. Not like a wall one, like the other kind of outlet. You might be thinking, "Gee Tasha, what about poetry?" Poetry is more like a wall outlet.

I have two more poems written for my poetry project, but they need some revising before I post them. I am writing two more tonight. It's becoming a collection of hate poetry. (I hate feeling hateful and thus hate the people who make me feel that way even more than I already did.)

All hearts float in their own deep ocean of no light

One paragraph to go.

One paragraph to go (I am on the 5th page). 1:50am. Cups of coffee: 3. Am talking to: No one.

If you want to end your life end it, you don't have to kill yourself to do that

I am so excited to go home. Only I will be completely broke. I will be walking through the snow in my new boots, which is part of the reason I will be broke. That's okay, I've been broke every winter break, even the winter break I had a job, because I hated my job, so I never tried for hours. That's part of the charm.

Atleast 3/4's of a page to go. 11:54pm. Cups of coffee:2. Bathroom breaks due to said cups of coffee: four? Am talking to: Jenny.

This is what I feel like: this sound of glass

I think I get more depressed with every sentence I type. I hate art history.

At least one more page to go. 11:00pm. Cups of coffee: 2. Bathroom breaks taken from said cups of coffee: three?

"It seems like very desperate procrastination"

I am now procrastinating by brushing my teeth. I have approximately zero sentences more since my last blog post.

Sometimes I confuse myself with fictional characters

I need to stop reading trashy novels about witty Irish girls. I start to think like a witty Irish girl that drinks too much and spends too much money on shoes. While it's debatable whether or not I drink too much and I just bought a pair of purple suede boots, this is not actually my personality. Also, I start thinking that people can read my thoughts like I read thoughts in books, and no one is actually reading my thoughts, therefore there is no reason for my thoughts to be witty other than the fact that I quite like to tell people what I'm thinking.

Atleast 1 and 3/4 pages to go. 9:58pm. Cups of coffee: 2

Florence Nightingale was a cannibal you know

I always feel there is some injustice in that even though my life appears to be falling apart to some degree I still have to write these stupid fucking papers.



Two pages atleast to go. 9:21 pm. Cups of coffee: 2.

Fortune (poem #2)

The sky is raining on my clothes,
an act that is spiteful at best.
But it is endearing, that colored line of underwear
that flaps in the wind. Endearing in the same manner
as stepping in dog shit in the rough stoned streets
(but look at the streets, they are old! Stone! You can just feel
the history).

But it’s not all bad, I ask you,
And you say, “The worst thing?”
"Having to ask prostitutes for directions,”
But no really, the worst thing:
“Being locked out of my house at four in the morning.”
Like that time the guy pissed in front of you
and you stepped in it, and he yelled
“Yo, dude, you saw me pissing there.”

It all seems to be about falling:
off the curb in Cinque Terre I scraped my knee
and now I’m left with a quarter shaped scar
and in Venice I slid like sledding and laughed and laughed,
and the last time, the worst time: the worst time,
the time I don’t remember and I woke up in the morning
with blood on one knee and a giant bruise on the other
(but it’s a matter of pride not shame.)

The next time I worry they are going to take more:
my wallet, my camera, my notebook.
Things that are valued more than the skin.
It always comes back to: one pound of flesh.
I've given three.

Nature (poem #1)

It can be articulated in the building blocks on Happy Street.
But to call it either happy or street, would be to award too much.
Happy is an Indian man with a liquor store, on the street
that should not be called a street at all, but something in progress,
something becoming that never becomes. A series of stones,
pounded into the dirt, and it seems—removed again—only to be
replaced. Three months, at least, three months of this apparent regression.
Happy too, is inappropriate, better suited with “Creepy” or a name such as
“Trickster,” “Swindler,” “Takes advantage of ignorant Americans.”
Instead of “Happy’s Liquor Store,” it could be named
“At Least You Think You Are Getting A Good Deal.”

The hard persimmons taste like vanilla and the soft ones
taste like sweet potatoes smell. They grow on the trees in Florence,
almost a contradiction in itself—excuse me, trees in Florence?—
Yes, they are behind the walls, like the grass at Santa Maria Novella;
surrounded by the un-building blocks. Glory can be found in something growing.

Once, a man came to dinner that resembled Lorenzo il’ Magnifico.
He had a wide greasy nose, hard brown eyes, and a giant stomach.
His wife was small and the verb, “crushing,” came to mind.
The next week Julius Caesar came over. He had a little skull and olive
skin dotted with black heads. His wife was small, her nose not large enough
to belong to Cleopatra. The women stopped eating after the second course.

At some point, Michelangelo stopped finishing his work.
They are called “Prisoners,” this romanticized idea
—figures trapped in stone—
The un-building blocks, and everyday the workers
pound forth, but there is still a pit at the end of Happy Street,
which is not really happy at all. Scaffolding, scaffolding, everywhere
like the “Prisoners,” set in stone, and these things are labeled with
“Masterpiece.”

I need your help

For "Fortuna e Nature," my class on "The Decameron," I am writing a series of ten poems in ten days. Because I am writing ten poems in ten days they will be extraordinarily shitty, thus I need your help to make them better. Everyday I am going to post a poem (maybe two today because I am behind), and I want you to tell me what you don't like about them. Thank you. Be mean.

I wonder if I can leave things untitled

Okay, I'm still sick or convinced I'm sick. I didn't go to class this morning, which is a first for me, but I'm going to the Accademia (where class was), with Allison this weekend any ways and I felt far to dizzy to stand up for an hour and forty-five minutes. I'm going to try and be productive. Here is what stands between me and home:
1. Creative project or paper (I am going to try and write a series of poems for this, but I have to call my professor about it).
2. Short paper (500 words.)
3. Short paper about Lorenzo (2 pages).
4. Test about Medici things..... (too hard).
5. Paper about the Spanish chapel in Santa Maria Novella (I forget how long).
6. Test about art and politics in trecento art..... (too hard).
7. Italian final.

That looks like a lot more than I thought it was.

Stop

I am an open person. I share pretty much all of my feelings on everything all the time, so when I say, "I don't want to talk about it," I should hope that would be respected. If I don't want to talk about something, it's for a good fucking reason.

This is what I get

I feel sick. By I feel sick I mean I: slept for twelve and a half hours yesterday, I'm dizzy, I am either very hot or very cold, and sometimes I feel naceous. Shit, I always spell that word wrong. The problem is, from elementary school through high school I pretended to be sick so often that I no longer can even trust my own evaluation of my illness. I am not actually sure if I am sick or not, so I am going to continue to go to class unless this gets worse.

Nymph

My Professor said the nymph looks like me, except my head is bigger. I don't entirely disagree.

How To Write

She is sitting under a bridge. She is not sitting under the bridge because she wants to be sitting under the bridge, but because she wants to tell people about sitting under the bridge. In fact, she distinctly does not want to be sitting under the bridge, it is cold and there are goose bumps on her legs where the skin is revealed between where her socks end on her calves and where her skirt begins by her knees. She is smoking a cigarette; she does want to be smoking a cigarette, though she claims that she is quitting. Most people who smoke are quitting, she believes.
There is graffiti under the bridge. It is not good graffiti, as the only people who ever see it are the people that sit under the bridge smoking, and no one who is any good at graffiti would waste their time spray-painting there. Sometimes trains go by at the very bottom of the hill underneath the bridge. When the trains go by, she runs. People aren’t supposed to sit there, under the bridge; it is too close to the trains. Sometimes the police come. When she police come she runs as well; she is too young to be smoking.
She brings a moleskin journal with her under the bridge. She likes moleskin because Hemmingway liked moleskin, even though she doesn’t like Hemmingway. It is conducive, she thinks, to writing things. Just as sitting under a graffiti covered bridge and smoking a cigarette are conducive to writing, effective only because these are things that writers do. She would not label herself as a writer though; she only imitates how writers act. She isn’t yet effective at doing these things, for instance, she is cold, and she wants to go inside and watch television, and often she smokes cigarettes until they burn her fingers and she drops them in surprise, and she hasn’t yet perfect the absentminded look on her face, as if she were thinking of one million other things (when in actuality, she is thinking that it’s cold, and she is thinking about the one boy that she had sex with the other day, but she really only had sex with him because she wants to be a writer, and having sex is one of those things that writers do. She didn’t tell him that though; he wasn’t interested in her writing).
She rubs her feet against the rocks on the pebbles on the ground because she likes the sound that it makes. It reminds her of hiking through the woods and her cabin, where she also sits outside pretending to be a writer, only she doesn’t smoke a cigarette because she doesn’t want her dad to know that she smokes.
She is sad. She is never sure if she is sincerely sad or if she is sad because she wants to be a writer and writers are sad. Hemmingway was sad. Hemmingway and Dostoevsky, and Sylvia Plath, and John Berryman, and probably everyone in the Victorian age (think of what all that repression must do to the personality of a writer), and Mark Twain was sad, and everyone, everyone was sad. However, she does not think they were sad why she is sad: because of the boy she had sex with—because she is trying to be a writer and writers have sex with people—hasn’t called her in several days, and she feels fat and bloated, but these things are inarticulate and miniscule, so she does not write about them in her moleskin notebook, with her expensive pen. Instead she writes about being under the bridge, and the feeling of the sharp rocks that she sits on, and the sound of the train in the distance.

Splintering

The skin becomes concave
where it is pierced- deflated
without the frame (but I was
stretched still and nailed down.
Reconstructed in a new place.)
A view of the stomach, but that
is all. Bleeding later- my knee
like a child's, one bruised,
one bleeding. Places unmentionable,
what stretches open while the mind
swims on the floor. I fell,
just stay down here, tiled. I say
Finito (things out of order-
the toilet, floor, bed, kitchen,
these things rearrange themselves).
Where did I start? Whole, pieced
together, compared to
the naked nymph in Piazza Signoria.
Look at those legs, those legs, those eyes.
And even earlier, ciao bella, I love you,
You don't have to be Cleopatra everyday.
Ma ho finito, naked nymph.
Toilet, floor, bed, kitchen, how these things
Rearrange.

I don't know what to say right now

I can't deal with this. (Even though I said this morning, I said, "I can get through this, I can deal with this," but I can't.

I stole this from Chris' blog. I feel like it kind of describes our first night in Amsterdam.

Heute ich werde auf deutsch schrieben.

Hier sind dies alles mein Geheimnis. Nein, ich erzähle eine Witze. Nur Colin und Dan können dieses Blog verstehen, aber muss ich deutsch betreiben.

Leben ist traurig. Ich weiß nicht warum. Jeden Tag weine ich. Ich lese und schlafe nur. Nichts anderes. Ich vermisse Freunde. Ich bin zu müde für blog schrieben... später vielleicht.

Ho visto...

I now own almost the entire postcard collection from the Uffizi. Okay, not the entire one. Most of the Carravaggio's, Gentileschi's, and Bottecelli's though. I went and looked at the Carravaggio's today. It was wonderful.

All of you suck at commenting. Just so you know. This is of course assuming people read my blog, which I think people do because they mention it.

How I became more radical in approximately five minutes

"You have absolutely no sense of self-worth do you?"
"Nope."

I went to say hi to a friend, and I was walking home and I suddenly understood radical feminism. I always thought that some tenents of radical feminism, more specfically radical lesbians were extreme, such as claiming that as long as women have relationships with men then sexism will persist. I looked at it the wrong way. I thought they meant society as a whole. I had an epiphany on the rain in the Florence streets: it is men that destroy me. Saying men sounds weird, but boys sound innappropriate. How about "it is humans with penises somewhere in their twenties or late teens that destroy me." I don't think I'm ugly or stupid or fat, but two people have said I have low self-esteem this week. The first, one of my professors who said that, "You're an intelligent girl, there is no reason you need to act like a ditzy female, you need to have enough confidence to say what you want to say without being silly," and the second the friend I went to see who said I had no self-worth after questioning whether or not he actually likes it when I come to say hi to him. They were both right. I didn't argue. I know I have low self-esteem, I know I come off as having low self-esteem. But why do I have low self-esteem if I can look in the mirror and think that I can look okay and I don't need to radically change my appearence or diet compulsively, and I know I am atleast somewhat intelligent? It's because of how "humans with penises somewhere in their twenties or late teens" make me feel. They make me feel inadequate, as if the attributes I have are not good enough, like I will never look good enough, never be thin enough, and oddly enough, never lack enough intelligence to appeal to them. I bet you want to argue the last part, but let me explain. Intelligence is good in a long term relationship. Intelligence is not good when you just want to have some fun and the person you are just having some fun with overthinks everything and then goes and write poems about it and can name several books and short stories that remind her of the situation. I don't want to stop having relationships with "humans with penises somewhere in their twenties or late teens" though. I am not sexually attracted to women. I'm not sure what to do. I'm sick of "humans with penises somewhere in their twenties or late teens" having the ability to do this to me, but I don't know how to stop it, if outside the realm of relationships I am a confident person. This reminds me of something that Robin Metz (a creative writing professor at Knox) said of the characters in one of my stories, that was actually me: "She's completely capable in every aspect of her life except with boys."

Geometry

Question the idea of shape.
A square.
It has four points.
It doesn't mean anything,
but yet we label people as such:
squares.
Thus the squares become personified
as being immovable, confined by corners.
I for example, am spiraling.
The spiral is different than the square.
It is not predefined, it can come to a point.
It can be a column.
I am spiraling outwards.
This could be engulfing.

(Picture by Colin)

Riding the bus in Roma

I don't know why I didn't say something, either while it was happening or after it happened. I've never been told what to do in that situation; it's always hypothetical. In circumstances of sexual harrassment, it become a question, "Why did she kick/scream/punch/yell?" It becomes a statement that, "Yes, she was wrong, but she could've done more." We say these things from a position of education middle-class safety in a classroom, but no one ever told me what to do on a city bus in Rome when a middle aged man pressed his crotch repeatedly against my leg. I wanted to yell, to tell my professor, but I was worried I was imagining it. Even though when the bus came to a stop the rhythmic pushing did not cease and I swear I could feel his erect penis through his pants. He got off the bus a stop early even tohugh it was an express bus to the train station and the stops were intended for entrance rather than exit. Still, I felt such an accusationw ould sound vain, that a man on the bus could become erect because of me. So I didn't say anything. I got off the bus, walked into the train station and gor on the train. I hadn't been taught what to do afterwards either. I tried not to think about it. I tried to make it sound lesser: it was just a man on the bus for ten minutes, it might all have been imagined and I was fine.

Songs should be under three minutes long

It is a rhyth-
mic death as if
through music. The
pounding: the beat
of a drum. A
pulse that goes on
far too long. The
ears feel warm (the
ears are percep-
tive, almost more
than the-)

I love the women that Vermeer paints

I have decided that all of lifes perdicaments can be described through food.

Why am I doing worst in my one English class? After awhile I become apathetic.

Instead of

If I could only eat an almond,
but no, chestnuts, walnuts, and pistacchios abound.
I eat them anyways; I'm not full yet.

I will remember to remember to forget you forgot me

I will post about Rome when I am not so fatigued. I've been so tired lately. Being tired with a parent with narcolepsy is like forgetting things with a parents who has alzheimers: an ordinary thing that becomes threatening.

It's only fun on stage

Sometimes I play the disappearing game. I disappear. This is different from the "I'm not talking to you" game and the "I'm completely indifferent to you" game. The word game is used incorrectly here. I play it alone, I don't do it to fuck with people. That's the problem. In all of these circumstances it's a spiteful act, a passive aggressive way of showing that I'm upset, but usually I am upset with these people because they are indifferent towards me. This seems to be a common thread in my life. If it's not one person, it's another.

I'm going to Rome. I didn't decide this, my whole program is going, but it's good. I can disappear. And I can say I'm going to Rome on my blog, because all of the people I'm disappearing from don't read my blog, and I think many of the people that I play the "I love you very much and want to see/talk/hear from you as much as possible" game with do read my blog.

How to Make a Mask

First the head is inflated,
a rubber balloon.
The skin is cut into strips
soaked in the paint
and applied in layers.
Sometimes there are bumps:
these must be smoothed out
before the paint is applied.
Once the skin is dry,
the base of the head is popped.
A face is applied
with tan color painted,
pink circles of cheeks
and holes where the eyes belong.

Driving to Arts High

At the freeway exit
a homeless man with
dreaded hair and a dirty beard
held a sign that said,
"Smile, it will make you drive better."

At the freeway entrance
a man in a tattered
army jacket and big brown boots
held a sign that said,
"Shit happens, it could happen to you."

Things to remember for today

1. Barack Obama is going to win. He has too.
2. I need to not cry. I've been crying everyday. This is because of my birth control and/or lack of birth control.
3. I am not a doormat. Sometimes I get confused and think I am.
4. Be happy, no matter what.

But still, it bothers me, because everything does

One time in kindergarten another girl in my class took my scarf. I laughed, she was joking. I tried to get it back. She ran around the entire playground with it, and we had a massive wooden play ground. She ran around with it, until she was standing on a bridge dangling it down and I was on the ground trying to jump up and get it. I started crying. She laughed at me and everyone who was watching my struggle started laughing at me too. I feel this is indicative of who I am as a person.

Spite

1.
It happens
In the shower, bare naked
the worst, in bed
I gag, in the street
I smile, smile, smile

2.
This is the second stage.
I do it like the sun shines.
Not everyday, but too bright.
I do it.
This is what is important.

Love

Amelia is fifteen years old.
She has always been fifteen years old,
besides those two days where she was
a forty year old man with a beard.
But generally, she is fifteen years old.

The brain is not fully formed.
It is irrational.
Just wait until you're eighteen.
No, actually it is somewhere in your twenties.

Amelia knows from the two days that she was
a forty year old man with a beard
that formation and decay are used as the samething
in this context.

She pictures hormones as fireworks that go off
in her brain, the feeling, the moment
the drugs hit the system.
Standing after drinking for an hour.
This happens to Amelia several times a day,
and then several more times
the moment the drugs hit the system,
when she stands up after drinking for an hour.

The brain is not fully formed.

She only sleeps between the hours of five and twelve, less
when the fireworks go off.
The feeling the moment the drugs hit the system.

It is irrational.

That's why it's fireworks and not a rock.
Things go up and then come down.
This is not a unique concept. Cannot be
evaluated by an equation.

It is irrational.

It is all consuming, like a cannibal.

Things I need to do before Tuesday

I want to have fun on election night watching Obama win, but Italy is seven hours ahead, which means I want to have fun all night long watching Obama win. So I have to get everything done before Tuesday.

My to-do list:

1. Read day eight, stories 2, 3, 5 in The Decameron.
2. Write something about virtues (this assignment vastly confuses me, I think I have troubles distinguishing what's virtuous, as I try to live altruistically, rather than virtuously), around 500 words.
3. Write a five page paper about the Sassetti Chapel, comparing it with the Strozzi and Tournabouni chapels. Technically due last Wednesday, then technically due on Friday, and now technically due on Monday. My entire class is turning it in late. Good.
4. Finish my 77 slide power point. I have all the images. I just need information. For 77 slides.
5. Prepare to lead discussion about day eight, story 8 in The Decameron.
6. A worksheet for Italian, due last Wednesday, but only a couple people turned in it on time.
7. Normal reading homework for my politics of art class and Medici class. This might not get done.

So I have two days to do these things. Positive. I need to work better and sleep less.

I'm a grown-up person capable of taking care of myself, I cannot literally be abandoned

Often I feel like an infant. I cry, scream, and throw fits and I have to guess as to why. Do I need to be fed? Burped? Put down for a nap? So I take a guess, and do things until I feel placated, but really I never know what's wrong or what will make it better. I feel like so much of life is composed to trying to guess what we want and hoping we get it right.

I hate hormones

How am I supposed to get anything done, when my body decides I need to be emotional and bleed sometimes? Huh? Huh? I was upset all day, for no reason and then it just hit me like a menstral cramp, and I was like "Oh, I know what's wrong with my life. My fucking uterus." And I'm sorry if you're a boy and this freaks you out, deal with it. You know what women have to deal with? Having blood come from places you never want to see blood come out of and stabbing pains in their abdomen. That's what. So I can complain all the fuck I want.

Okay. That's all. I'm done. I think I'll go to sleep.

Even Nice Boys Want to Penetrate Something

Other circumstances: such as needle in the arm (injection, necessary), during this too, eyes shut.
Does the skin make it insincere? We got it switched around when lack of flesh made it not.
Skin doesn’t mean anything.
Other circumstances: Nothing outside the body. All of it requires removal/insertion. (Sometimes during surgery tools are left inside, they infect, rot.)
Oh, so you like my skin, do you?
Let me tell about my—
Other circumstances: Burn victims; that would be the worst. They’ve lost the only thing.
Bruising seems to be an apt word.




*Note: The title is a quote taken from a friend. I've written another poem with the same title. I find it very inspiring.

The Refrain

Feet on the doormat:
it used to say something, but it has been flattened.
The choice moment:
key in the lock.
Eyes closed, deep breath:
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.

Red, at the stoplight.
A glaring red, they are situated so.
The countdown, too slow.
Street corners were meant
To put people on display.

In bed, with knees and stomach.
Three blankets are not enough.
This becomes like:
trying to push the last of the toothpaste
to the end of the curled up tube.



Side note: sometimes it's really hard to do things you really want to do. I need to stop being passive.

Thoughts in the Morning

I have a question. This is just a question I was pondering, not something that has serious implications in my life, or even very many implications at all. At least right now. It's going to take awhile for me to state this so bear with me: How much does the number of times a person says something or the number of people a person says or feels something for, affect the quality or sincerity of this thing? For example: let's say (and this is real), I have friends at home and friends and school, does having friends in lots of places take away from things I feel for people in other places? Example two: "You are the most beautiful girl in the world," "Have you told that to other girls?" "Yes, but that was before I met you." Does that mean the statement isn't true? This is just something I was thinking about, because I tend to disregard a lot of things people say, on the basis that they've probably said it to a plethora of other people, making it less true, and I don't know if this is a logical thing to do or not.

I'm sorry, this is going to be terribly cheesy and I am going to laugh at myself in the morning

I am a bit tipsy. Only a bit tipsy though, because the plan for the night was to drink one shot (of whiskey, because whiskey makes me warm and happy and it was cool this evening), and drink one beer, and then go home happy, and that's exactly what I did. On the way home I thought these terribly cheesy thoughts about how I love so many people so much, and it's really not just the alcohol speaking, even though I'll claim it is tomorrow, because I laugh at sincerity, I make fun of people who say things like this, because I am a cynic. But really, I was feeling kind of shitty about my life and about myself, and without saying much it's like everyone knew and made me feel better, but they probably didn't even know at all which makes it even better. I just worry, you know, being single, that if someone doesn't tell me that I'm beautiful, then I will cease to be beautiful, and if someone doesn't tell me they love me, then I will ceased to be loved, and really that's the problem with the world. We don't tell each other enough that we love each other and that we are beautiful or you are beautiful, and I know you are beautiful, because I think all of my friends are beautiful. And I know I care too much what people think, but people mean everything to me, people mean too much too me, and oh god I'm going to regret this in the morning.

But I'm never really satisfied

The best moments in life are when you are completely satisfied with where you are and who you are with. I need to work on making this happen, but first I need to reverse my thinking process. Instead of thinking, "I wish this person were here right now," I need to think, "I'm glad I'm with these people right now."

What about the bond between mother and child?

So I took a long nap today, like three or four hours, and I woke up and wrote this. It's nice when that happens. Except this was really depressing and I cried for a bit. I've gotten really defensive about crying lately. I cry a lot. When I get emotional, I cry, and I'm a very emotional person. I have lots of good emotions too. Sometimes those make me cry as well. See? Look how defensive I am. But it's my blog, so I can say I cried all the fuck I want to. Any ways, this is nonfiction, and it's about stuff I don't talk about a lot because it makes me cry.


I didn’t talk about it, even though it might have gotten me out of something (another F in math, the fifth hole in my ear, my long sleeves). It seems strange to me now that I treated it so casually, though that might have been a response of my disgust. My mother was in detox. I did not know what she went there for (they told me valium, but this was a lie). Later she told me that it was nothing illegal, and I told her that I did not care about legality, dependence was dependence, a concept I understood so well (at that time I was not being driven by the normal teenage vices of marijuana and alcohol, but things much more taboo). Everyone, I thought, simply had their own vice, and society generally insisted on removing these things.
As usual, my brother and I were condescending.
“I can’t believe she’s in detox,” we scoffed.
“I can’t believe she expects me to take care of her dog,” my dad said.
We got Caramel when I was ten, when my parents were still married. My dad never liked her; she interrupted his yoga. Caramel belonged to my mother and I. Like most dogs, Caramel was tragically in love with us to the point where she would not eat when no one was home. Thus, while my mother was in detox, I stayed with her.
I don’t remember going to school during this period of time, but I must have. I was also in a school play: The Skin of our Teeth, but this too exists in separate memories, as if I was leading two different lives at the time. The only thing that exists in my memory of that week (or was it weeks?) is lying on the floor with Caramel. I must have watched television, but I don’t remember what, or even the TV being on. I just remember feeling lonely, and thinking that soon, someone would realize that I was fifteen years old, my mother was in detox, and I spent every night alone with my dog.
It was almost the optimal situation for me; an excuse to be alone and depressed. I preferred the word wallow. I didn’t talk about it, or if I did it was vague and joking. I did not eat, but this was not something I mentioned either. I vaguely recall in The Skin of our Teeth, I volunteered to try on a skirt suit that was too small for the rest of the cast. I got a dubious glance from the costume director: I never looked like a skinny girl, but when I tried on the suit, it fit, miraculously. There is a picture in the yearbook of me wearing that suit. I looked at it and thought, “My god, was I really that skinny?”
Caramel seemed to understand we were in mourning. She stopped eating as well, and we curled up together, a fleshy pile of bones and a golden mass of fur, until my mother came home from detox.
I expected, not unreasonably, that she would go back to work, and that I would return to my transitions between houses and my normal dramatic range of emotions, rather than the quiet loneliness that I had inhabited. But no, she was sick. I assumed this sickness was physical. She stayed in bed, she didn’t eat. Her voice sounded strange as if her throat was raw. Instead of going to school, I decided to act sick as well, claiming that I had caught her sickness. As usual, I stayed up late knowing that I didn’t have to get up early the next morning, so I was sleeping when my dad came over to get her.
My dad recounted this story later, never once questioning why I was home with the supposed illness my mother had. He took her to the hospital, and she just kept repeating how bad she felt, over and over again, but never specifying. Finally it came out that she was depressed and they admitted her to the psychiatric ward. This was the day that my brother became so angry with my mother; he thought she tried to kill herself.
This period of time doesn’t exist in my head besides the phone calls. She would call and talk about how everyone else was in group therapy and I wanted to ask why she wasn’t in group therapy as well. Otherwise, there is a void. I don’t know if I went to school, ate, slept, or cried. I just remember when she came home (that’s when the narcolepsy hit, that’s when my mother ceased to be herself, and became this bony, shaking woman), I did not want to be there anymore.
And so I made myself leave.

Cecelia, you're breaking my heart

I've spent a lot of time by myself recently. Okay, I've spent the last four days virtually alone besides class. This is a really long time for me to be by myself. My coping technique for atleast the last five years or so has been making sure I have something to do of every minute of everyday. Part of it was because I had a midterm due, that ended up being fourteen pages long and required long periods of procrastination. I decided some things. That's not true. I decided one thing. I decided I'm not going to spend time around people that make me feel bad. Which sound ridiculous, I know, I mean, really how hard is it not to spend time around people that make you feel bad? But sometimes you like the people that make you feel bad. Also, I'm not quite sure who makes me feel bad. I'm still considering it. There are a couple people on the maybe list.

Side note: most of the people I am friends with don't make me feel bad. If you're reading this, you're probably not one of them. Most of the people that make me feel bad are the ones listened a few blog posts ago, the ones who are indifferent to me.

I'll make him smile just so I can kill it and eat it

I think I wrote this when I was 16 or 17.

Your number is still sitting next to the phone. Written on a scrap of notebook paper torn out of your math notebook. Part of a math problem is scribbled on the side. I recite the number to myself to see if I still have it memorized: I do. You gave it to me under the guise of working on a homework project together, under the guise of going to see a movie.
The movie was terrible, an action movie with no plot. Upon telling you this you exclaimed, “It doesn’t need a plot, it has action.’ When you asked me if I wanted to go see it, I said yes, not because any interest in the movie, but because I wanted to sit next to you in the movie theatre. I wanted you to grab my hand and we would look like all the other perfect couples scattered about the theatre existing solely so others can envy them.
You didn’t buy me popcorn or pay for my movie ticket. When we sat down my arm sat alone on the armrest, hoping the air felt as cold on your hand as it did on mine. When we said goodbye you dropped me off my house, said, “see you,” and drove off without waiting to see if I had gotten inside.
You drove me crazy then.
Your number is still sitting next to the phone, on the dry, dusty wooden shelf. I can see you inside of your writing. It’s slanted and ambivalent, like when you would sloppily run your fingers along my side. There is an open-ended future written in the numbers. A suggestion of what if.
I have scribbled out your picture in the yearbook. Your face is now a black oval with little white dots where the marker didn’t cover. The necklace you gave me broke. I wore it to spite you. To remind myself that I was merely an investment of a pay check, one that didn’t work out, but I could keep the leftovers.
Once in desperation I thought of calling you. My hand was on the phone. The tips of my fingers touching the scrap of paper containing your number. We were, we are friends, or so we said. But I realized just in time, just as my finger pushed in the first number, the phone admitting a jarring tone, I realized that you don’t care. That I only mattered for a moment and I was left as a freckle.
So I leave your number be. I expect that someday soon my dad will pick it up, ask me if I need it. I will pause, trying to mentally to define the line of what I really need and what I just want. I will tell him no, that I don’t need it, he can throw it out. I would appreciate it if he threw it out.

She'll make him smile for the simple fact that he needs it

I was reading Julie's blog this morning. I am now going to quote Julie's blog. I'm sorry Julie. If you wanted me to unquote your blog and vaguely reference it I can do that too.

"This year is Life Boot Camp for me, I think. All of my negative and inactive habits and tendencies will be beaten out of me, and I will be a responsive, active performer and person. All my classes are boot camp. My personal life is boot camp too. The only thing that truly upsets me about all of this is that there's no room in it for cynicism. And I like my cynicism. But, these things happen."

Julie was able to say, more eloquently than I, what is going on in my life. It's hard for me to say things like, "I feel like I'm changing," even though that's in my head, because it's too cheesy, too insincere. But it's more like, I have to change. I sat down this weekend and asked myself what I did before (you know, the things I did before that weren't detrimental and self-deprecating). One of the things I used to do on a regular basis was walk down the Barnes and Nobles (this was in ninth and tenth grade, before I had a car), and read the stupidest, most vapid books I could find, until I didn't think anymore. That's what I did this weekend, besides writing my politics of art midterm. I am now on my fourth book of the last four days. These books are starting to anger me though. Do people really think that way? I mean it would be nice. They think about shoes and boys, and when they are sad they eat a carton of ice cream. I do this too. I think about shoes and boys, and when I am sad I either eat a carton of ice cream or nothing. But in between all of that, there is something raw and painful that a carton of ice cream doesn't actually help. I thought most people felt this way. You know, confused, hurt, sometimes extremely happy or extremely sad for no reason. But there are all these books, bestselling books, where life is more black and white than a picture book.

Side note: A really good children's book is "Sad Book," by Michael Rosen. Julia had it last year when she was evaluating children's books. I think everyone should read it to their children. Okay, I think everyone should read it. It has the same illustrator as Roald Dahl's childrens books, which I also think everyone should read.

The problem with my life

I'm in love with everyone.

Thus my heart breaks several times a day.


I'm not sure if I'm joking or not.

I'll make you smile just so I can sit and look at it

It's nice, in a strange way, to know that there are people I can count on to not read my blog, in the same way it's nice to know there are people I can count on to read my blog.

Even though it drives me crazy that most of the people I write about are completely indifferent towards me.

Bittersweet Heat

He awoke me those mornings
If only to say, “It’s hot in here.”
Those mornings he drank black coffee
At a broken wooden picnic table
And woke me those mornings
To whine about how his tummy ached
How his head hurt the night before
He was eating ice cream, it was cold,
Orange flavored and the ends tasted like wood
The sun was too bright, it hurt his eyes
He groans about the customers
Grouses about his feet, his back
Tells me, “A woman just masturbated in the bathroom”
All I had were those mornings
The gripes of the sun rising
All I had of the nighttime was a picture
Of his beaten, bloody, lip

I told him one of those mornings that I loved the heat
And I liked to walk shoeless along the sidewalk
Watching my reflection as I went to work
And I bought two hard French rolls
To crack open and eat the gooey insides
Black coffee was too strong and I bought
Steamed milk and vanilla, barely tainted brown
He replied “It’s too hot in here.”

Loneliness

I wrote this when I started college.

She opened her mouth and found
Oh, her lips would not open
As if bound together with glue
And oh, the air she breathes in
Suddenly does not fill her as before
Oh, what a catastrophe it is
Lips firmly pressed, tongue against teeth
The air is not so pure as before
It was not malicious intent she smelled
But oh, such loneliness lies in that of the unknown

Art History and Me: Why I Fail At It

Okay, I realize I'm in Florence on an art history program. It didn't occur to me until I started working on my midterm for, "The Politics of Art in Renaissance Florence," that this was a really bad idea. I suck at art history. I love art. I do. I love to draw, and paint, and make kids into color mixing robots at the Art Academy. I love to go to museums and look at art, especially the art I feel like looks like me on the inside (which I've decided actually looks like the pit of a peach). But I fucking suck at art history itself, especially how it relates to Christianity. I don't know who any of the saints are. I don't know the life of the Virgin. I don't really care to know these things. The art history class at Knox has been my lowest grade in college so far. I started going to the counselor because I was so depressed about the low grades I was getting on papers I thought were good (among other things). I've been avoiding working on this midterm, because it scares the shit out of me. I have to write four essays and so far I have part of an outline for one. It's going to be a long weekend. I'm considering shutting myself in my room for most of it. I think it will do me good. It's strange though, I've forgotten what a good distraction homework is. It's what I did last year: I worked on schoolwork until I forgot about everything else. That's why I understand German and not Italian. In Italian I sit, staring out the window and think about what's going on in my life. When I was in German I sat making and memorizing German flashcards, and not thinking about anything else. I started to dream in lists of German. As much as I complained about the work, it was kind of nice. That's the other thing; I've hated doing the readings here. I mean, no one really likes reading non-fiction about anything (or atleast in my opinion), but this is terrible. At Knox I get to read things about feminism and sexuality, and terrific things like that. I've never felt so stupid as I have while reading gender theory, but I don't mind reading it because it's interesting. People don't believe me when I tell them how interesting gender and women's studies is, but seriously it's amazing.

This is why I am going to stay in school forever.

Self Portrait

I wrote this in the spring of freshmen year of college. It was an exercise for my creative nonfiction class. I would say it's still accurate.

I move my life through words. In the winter my world was vague. The walls appeared to be vague, the scenery around me vague. Galesburg, I felt, was not a real place at all, but a dream world from which I needed to wake up. I then moved into a state of confliction. At meals I would have to choose between cereal or a more substantial meal that was doused in oil and fat. Choose between working out and going home and curling up in my bed. These choices blossomed into larger choices, ones that I was not sure I could make and so I settled into a state of ambivalence. The trouble is that confliction is an ever arising emotion that I can feel curling itself around my ribcage. It settles in the bags underneath my eyes and the dip in my skin where the collar bones meet at the throat. Confliction is what awakens me from my ambivalent state of sustenance where I hide in the winter. It rises with the flowers and the buds on the trees and it brings with it razors, scales, and bleeding fingers.
It started with a state of boredom. Not the boredom of a humid summer day spent lying in the grass eating a Popsicle, but restless late night boredom spent staring at the television screen. This boredom was baffling to me. A type of boredom that traveled with me in the pocket of my jeans and crawled into my eye sockets when it was time to go to sleep. I lay there with boredom until boredom pushed me out of bed and onto the quiet St. Paul sidewalks to trample it away. I would wake up in the morning and find boredom written across the notebook pages at school in the morning, not realizing until I was sitting in the doctor’s office with scabs across my arms that boredom was a synonym for anxiety.
It was most often a he who made me anxious. A he who did not look at me the way I wanted him to, a he who became built up into my head until he was more than any he could ever aspire to. The he who didn’t see me because I had too much fat around my thighs, too many pimples on my forehead. Because I cried too much, yelled too much, and because I simply needed him too much. It was this group of the ubiquitous he that stood me in front of the mirror at night. I would stand there, picking at blemishes on my face until gashes formed, grabbing handfuls of flesh and thinking that I was too much. If only I were lesser then he would love me. It was the other group of he that left the red and white scars that crawled up my arms. This was the he that aroused confliction. The kind that told me how often they thought of me, but left out the context under which this thought occurred. The kind of he who forgot to call or never once uttered the word beautiful. It was him that left me wandering the streets at night.
Ubiquitous was the word that became associated with him. He was in my mind always. I carried him around, dangling from my fingers like a coffee cup. Occasionally he would change. His hair would get shorter, lighter, he would get taller, heavier. This ever coveted he, a more abstract concept than anything real. Despite my ideals of feminism he became the one that was supposed to save me from my anxiety that was eating away at my wrists and thighs.
It was not a he who saved me, but diversion. I got a job. Instead of curling into my remorse ball at night I would call people. I started crocheting and doing embroidering and so instead of a he in my mind it was counting stitches and rows. I ate three meals a day and went running at night. I filled my mind with schedules and lists and lined up my case of oil paints in rainbow order. He still rests in my ear amongst the long row of earrings and at night I still pace around trying to fill the boredom. During the day I emulate the word distraction. I took it apart and tried to discover exactly what it meant. As I washed my face and brushed my teeth to get ready for bed one night after working on homework for several hours I realized that distraction was sustenance. Concentrate on eating, sleeping, cleaning, and little else.