It's not like I really need an outlet to talk about myself

That "25 things" is going around facebook and I really really want to do it. However, I don't really want to tag 25 people and doing it and not tagging people seems vain, so I thought I would just do it on here which is my outlet for vanity.

1. I like bread products a lot. I used to work in a building behind Breadsmith and it was the best thing ever. Then a charter school came in, making it way harder for me to get my bread fix.

2. I don't like to eat cows. They don't taste good. I also don't like to eat pigs very much, but I love bacon.

3. I almost never wear pants. I think my legs are clausterphobic.

4. The truth: I did not understand very much poetry until last year, when something just clicked and now I am a frequent poetry reader.

5. Phones make me very nervous. If I call you I either really need to get ahold of you or I really like you a lot. I like texting though.

6. I am scared of almost everything.

7. My dad is one of my favorite people in the whole world. I'm not sure if he knows this.

8. I love the German language and I am slowly trying to learn it.

9. I like a lot of poetry by feminists of color like Dawn Lundy Martin and Cherrie Moraga because I can relate to it, even though my skin is quite white. I think I relate to the feelings of alienation.

10. I have been working at the Art Academy since I was 15. I will probably continue working there until I'm 95.

11. I have good technical art skills, but I don't usually create emotionally meanful visual art.

12. I have really vivid dreams almost every night and they often include many of my friends.

13. I can't dance or sing at all, but I really wish I could. I like going to dance shows, but I get really bitter because I can't do what they are doing.

14. I get told to relax a lot, but relaxing just isn't my style. I like to do things. Do things with a plan.

15. After I graduate I want to go live in Germany for a while. I want everyone I know to come with me, especially the people I know that speak German. Honestly, if you want to come live in Germany with me, we'll do it.

16. I like snakes a lot. I want one as a pet. I also kind of want one as a tattoo, but I want it to be a pretty snake. I like it that they are both a phallic symbol and indicative of women. Also, they like to lie in the sun a lot like I do.

17. One time when I was six I wondered what would happen if I bit my brother, so I bit him and he started screaming and my mom couldn't figure out what happened.

18. I try to live by altruistic values.

19. I am not good at moderation. I don't really do things in small amounts.

20. I have a cabin on an island that was homesteaded by my great great great great great grandfather, William Coryell.

21. I like to be outside a lot. I get cabin fever in the winter and then I try to go outside and my body parts turn numb.

22. I take a nap almost every afternoon.

23. I like to sleep in the fetal position or as a spoon.

24. I don't like to play video games because I feel like they are socially isolating.

25. I'm not very happy when I'm on the computer and yet I spend a lot of time on the computer. I'm not sure why I do this.

Lilies

Once in Italy
two Romanian men gave me a flower.
They asked me if I slept alone
-Si, si, ma mi piace solo dormire
They smelled of the street
I let the flower die,
It turned black on my desk.

Once I made a skirt out of tulle.
My legs stuck out of it like poles,
my top shrunken.

And I beg,
please, please, please don’t forget me.

The things that happened with men would not be what broke her heart

I should not do group projects. I am so much better at working by myself.

It's late, I am crabby and defensive, and still need another discussion question for one of my classes. I hate writing discussion questions.

I have a counselor's appointment on Tuesday. Somehow I think one is not going to be enough.

We are not socialists because we want less, we are socialists because we want more

Hey Sara, if you are reading this you aren't doing your homework.

My room is reading absurdly warm on my half lofted bed and kind of almost cold while I'm sitting at my desk. I watched a very depressing German movie tonight, "Der Tunnel." I cried, but I tried not to, so most of my tears came out in one giant tear. If I am ever trapped behind a wall, I hope someone digs a tunnel to come get me out. I also hope there are no guns. In my communist utopia there will be no guns, because guns cause a hierarchy between the gun holder and those without guns. There will also not be a wall in my communist utopia.

You know it has been winter too long when your nose hurts

I have recovered from my bout of crabbiness. Long day today, but Germany club has tea and cookies. I also am going to try and go to the German movie tonight. Basically it's a very German day with some Chicana and Victorian lit mixed in for fun.

Everyday I eat my bagel and think that a little bagel is not enough for lunch, but somehow I always fail to buy more food.

Ich verstehe nichts

My teeth hurt I am grinding them so much. I hate midterms and the fact that everything else in life always becomes stressful when I have midterms. Today sucks because I have to study for a German test that I don't understand and tomorrow will also suck because I actually have to take the test I don't understand. Then I have to write a paper. Next week should be better, besides the fact that I am going to the first funeral of my life. I'll be glad to see my family.

Now I know why it is beautiful (A poem to my Grandpa Rex)

1.
The oxygen was forced through his mouth
and out his ears. For the last few weeks
all he heard was the steady rush
of air.

He was bald in the way a comb-over
couldn’t cover. He informed me that
osteoporosis wasn’t just a “gal’s disease”
His back bent over, even in bed.

He was best defined at the World Fair:
giant, green, with huge teeth.
Or as a dog; the navy approves
of those same values of loyalty.
To state it that way makes it sound like obedience.
But we were all always very good
at following orders.

2.
When I was five he was
approximately ten feet tall.
I thought it was silly
that he was named after a lizard.
He built me a sandy beach on our island
with a little green bench that I abandoned
at the approach of a wild Michigan centipede.

There is a swing that I can no longer fit
my legs through. And a long metal pole
that original I was meant to flip around on
but all I could do is dangle.

They are the only people that make an outhouse look nice.
Pictures framed on the wall.

3.
My father said:
I guess I was never very close to my father.
The black sheep of the family,
it’s middle child syndrome.

He called me three days later,
what filled that space?
It is hard to part with the distance.
I have let go of nothing solid.

Now I know why it is beautiful

My grandpa died on Thursday. My dad didn't tell me until today. I don't know how to feel about it. He had a peaceful death. My Uncle Eric was in the room and apparently right before he passed away he said, "Now I know why it is beautiful," and those were his last words. It's hard to talk about because I don't want people to feel bad, because I don't know how to deal with that either.

I read an article at work this week about an eight year old boy who lived with his dead mother for six day and whenever anyone asked where she was, he said, "She's in a better place." While under the circumstances this is creepy, it's strange how an eight year old boy can deal with the death of his mother, but I have no idea how to deal with the death of my grandpa, who I did not spend that much time with in recent years.

I'll be going to Milkwaukee on February 6th to the 8th for his funeral.

And everytime we kiss I swear I could fly

I had such a good night! I just ate and drank and spent non-awkward time with single girls! And then we went and danced and typing is really hard so I'm going to stop now. But it's just a good night. Nothing complicated. The way a single-girls night should be. Oh my goodness. I keep typing the wrong letters in the wrong order.

I might as well move to Florida

I haven't felt like wearing clothes lately. It makes getting dressed very hard.

Somethings that I thought about last night

1. Knox brought in a deaf performer and he was so funny! It was such a good time. I'm going to try and go to more events that the school has.
2. I also went to ATP informal recruitment. It was a good time, which kind of scares me, because that means I could end up joining a sorority (even though it's still a colony and isn't very sorority-like) and I didn't think I would ever consider that. I'm still thinking though. I'm going to attend a meeting and see what I think.
3. I saw from Martin's facebook status that the Planned Parenthood in St. Paul got hit by an SUV (intentionally). After working through all my horrified thoughts I thought, "he needs to read more." I could go into a long discussion with myself right now about how abortion should be legal, but I am going to refrain.
4. Single girls night tonight! Yeah! There are a lot of couples on the second floor of the townhouse and it gets a little bit overwhelming, so we are going to watch a movie, eat a lot of food, and have a good time being single. As to be expected of single girls night, only single girls are invited.
5. I'm halfway through "Bleak House!"

The internet is down, everyone panic

The Knox computer center flooded today and they had to shut the internet down because everything was flooded. Let me tell you, it was a panicked three hours. People were running around screaming, "I can't check my email! I can't check my facebook! Someone could be leaving me a comment right now and I won't know until approximately 12:30 or 1:00PM!" All of the staff in the PR office were wondering whether their meetings were still scheduled, the phones weren't ringing because the phones are connected to the internet. Students couldn't find out how many meals or dining dollars they had left for the term. It was utter craziness!

Not a liberal before thirty, no heart, still a liberal after thirty, no brain

Sometimes I wonder if I'm lacking in some social ability when my roommate is on the phone with her girlfriend. They constantly talk about getting married and how in love they are with one another and how beautiful they think the other one is, and argue about who loves each other more. Things like this scare me. I would blame it on being a child of divorce, by my roommate is also a child of divorce. It's not that I lack the ability to have strong feelings for someone, that is definitely not the case. These are things that come inside my head and then I make them leave because it is too overwhelming. I've never been a writer of love notes or even love poems unless it's unrequited. I only write about relationships when they are over.


After class today I came back and slept for a few hours. I woke up and checked my emails to find that the German movie "Die Fetten Jahre sind vorbei," was playing which I had seen before, but I took different things out of it this time. In the film there are two guys who like to break into the houses of the wealthy and rearrange their furniture and put their valuables in strange places (like the refrigerator) and then once they are done they leave notes that say "Your days of wealth are numbered," or "You have too much money." Well one time they get caught, along with the girlfriend of one of the guys and they kidnap the wealthy man and take him to the mountains. The whole film is kind of a commentary on how to start a revolution in the modern world when nothing gets a reaction anymore. How not to become a conservative capitalist once you have a career. The film deals with a lot political issues I try to work through. How do you live your life and not sacrifice your beliefs? I'm making the movie sound really political (which it is), but it's really well done and everyone should watch it. The English title is "The Edukators." When I was done with the movie I was so conflicted about every single thing in my life that I went and worked out for an hour. Maybe if I had more homework this term I wouldn't worry so much.

My thoughts were so loud

I watched the inaugeration while I was at work today, with the members of the public relations office and several deans of the college. During Obama's speech they kept throwing in "as I learned when I was giving the commencement speech at Knox College..." between sentences and pointing out every politician wearing a purple scarf (purple is one of the Knox colors) as if it represented our school. It was interesting watching with a bunch of old white people and then going to my literature by Chicanas class which has considerably more diversity. Of course, everyone was impressed with Aretha Franklin's hat. My Chicana lit professor pointed out the connection between her hat and the great African American women Sunday church hat tradition.

I've become too cynical. Nothing that is being done politically feels like enough. Yesterday during the Martin Luther King Jr. program that Knox held, one of the speakers quoted Martin Luther King Jr. talking about the label of extremist, where he says it's okay to be an extremist as long as you are an extremist for the right causes. I have to agree. Most of my views would be labeled as extremist (the word extremist often follows words like communist and feminist), but to me they don't seem extremist at all, they seem logical. I've reached a point of no-empathy, which is bad. I don't understand conservatism. People with extremely conservative views have become an unreachable other. I'm not saying that is okay or people should think that way. I've just been in too many liberal bubbles. Maybe as an experiment I should immerse myself in conservatism.

You are a porcelain god

Once, in my hand
a bottle of whiskey
I told you I loved
you. Convenience,
because you had a bottle
of whiskey too,
convenience, because
we were warm
even though it was
snowing, because
everything felt like
the lovely, lovely
love.

I want to write something happy

I looked for writing I hadn't posted yet, but everything I liked mentioned names that I didn't want mentioned and everything else I don't like or I have already posted. I want to post a happy post though, so I am going to talk about the books I am reading.

1. Bleak House (Charles Dickens): Bleak House is getting better. My professor said, "Everyone likes Bleak House." I still have 624 pages for me to become one of everyone.

2. Someone Like You (Roald Dahl): Roald Dahl has fantastic stories. They all have some sort of twist at the end, but the twists are plausible enough that they could be real, but they are crazy at the same time.

3. James and the Giant Peach (Roald Dahl): What a good book.

4. Henry's Fate (John Berryman): These are unpublished poems by John Berryman and as per my usual Berryman experience, some of them are the most amazing thing I've ever read and some of them I do not understand.

5. Selected Poems II: Poems Selected and New 1976-1986 (Margaret Atwood): The first volume of selected poems is one of my favorite collections of poetry, so I am reading the second one.

Maybe I will post some writing soon? Maybe I will continue to write about writing? It's a mystery!

Henry under construction was Henry indeed

The weekend seems anticlimatic. I want it to be better than I expect it to be. I am placing abstract verbs upon how I feel. I tend to verb myself when I feel less than satisfied. At that point I must ask myself: what will make me satisfied? I always answerer: nothing here, but that is dooming myself.

I started a story about a boy, a bicycle, and a blizzard.
I bought wine glasses, champagne glasses, and martini glasses. These are tools towards being social.
I keep thinking that I can control how I feel, so if I just keep thinking happy I will be happy.

Coryell Island

I wrote this last spring, it is most definitely unfinished.


There are two ways for islands to be swallowed:
by water and by land.
My Island is being engulfed by the latter.
But engulf—like swallowing—seems indicative of moisture.

We never had a sand dune before the water started sinking.
(Is this how water sinks, into the solid?)

We made a joke that old Horween needed to park his yacht
that he sailed in from Chicago,
and he took his sand and put it onto our property
(He took our water.)

Old Horween is dead.
The old Walkers too, have abandoned
their Island cabin for one on the shore.
There is a picture
of my father and young John Walker
standing shirtless with long hair
in front of the old Hotel as they were dismantling it.
We still have the postcards
of people standing barefoot on the docks that now are half on shore
with fish hanging on strings.

The old post office is still there,
spider webs line the walls
and giant ant hills covered the path around the outside.
When I walk by, the ants crawl in my sandals
and bite my feet. At night, in bed,
I stare at the spiders that cling to the walls.
The only ones I can identify are the daddy-longlegs
with their long spindly limbs and red ball of a center.
When I think about them, I can feel them
crawling up my arms and down my legs.
I worry they will go inside my mouth.

The tennis court is still there as well;
water damaged and covered with slugs
and sunbathing snakes.
There is a lock on it now.
There are stories of the younger generation
having tennis court battles every summer.
The five Coryell boys—
Bruce, Jim, Scott, Jeff, and Eric
All but forgotten, except to the history
books in the old boat museum.

They still have the Old Salt’s race,
every year in July.
One year it rained, and they gave my Grandpa Rex
the prize, because he entered so many times and never won.
But what will happen, when the boats start brushing the shore?
Our Loonfeather is trapped at the marina, her blue covered
snapped all the way up. Our other boat,
the Dread Knot (because my father dreads driving it so),
was smashed again a dock, the night our extension dock broke off.
That would never happen with a real dock, one that was built
before the Island started sinking.
The one I used to paddle under in an inflatable raft.
And the seaweed creature, I was sure was going to eat me
is hidden under the thin new replacement boards.

A request

How would you describe the best coffee you've ever had? The worst coffee? Mediocre coffee?

I only have one thing to say

Mmmmmmm guacamole. Okay, it's caf guacamole, so it isn't nearly as good as say Danny's guacamole, but it's still pretty good and fills that avocado void in my life.

I guess I have more than one thing to say. I will write for real things like prose and poetry soon. I tried last night, but I wrote a poem I am not comfortable posting and some terrible prose. I am going to start a story about a boy and a blizzard though as per the request of Colin and Martin. As for the moment, I will continue to write blogs that say things like "Mmmmmm guacamole," because I like the pointless blogs of others and I am working off the golden rule (I would like others to post lots of pointless blogs and so I do this myself).

Your candy cane makes it look like you are compensating for something

Colin said I wrote a lot of blogs while he was gone and he is not going to read any of them.

I said, "But what if one of them was all about you?"

He said, "You would've told me about it and asked if I had read it yet because that's the type of person you are."

I then tried to lie and I told him I wrote a blog about him, but I am a bad liar. I am writing one now though, because I am vindictive.

I want to ride a bicycle part two

I want to ride a bicycle on a sunny day, but not too hot day. I want to be utterly blissfully happy on my bicycle in the sun. I will not get tired on my bicycle. I will not fall down or have to stop at stoplights. An ocean will appear in Minnesota and I will ride by it. I will think, "Remember that one night when it was three degrees outside and you were writing a German aufsatz, when really all you wanted to be doing was riding a bicycle?"

Aggression

I once tried to tell a man
he budged in front of me in line,
"Excuse me sir, but-"
He punched me in the face,
leaving me with a black eye.

I should change the title of my blog to passive aggressive

I am a very passive aggressive poet.

More so when I have a blog. Otherwise I am a very confessional poet, in the aggressive sort of way. Like, this is how this makes me feel and this is who made me feel it. Instead of, this is sort of kind of how it made me feel and there are these vague ideas that made me feel it, but I kind of want you to understand what I am feeling without actually saying, "I feel this and this person made me feel this way."

It's like posting a note on the refridgerator that says "Clean your mold out."

I don't even know what people look like

What do people look like? I don't know. I was thinking about it today at the gym when I walked in and there were a bunch of big muscley guys and this tiny girl. Average has no definition for me anymore. I am confusing how girls in Italy look, how guys in Italy look, how people in St. Paul look, and how students at Knox look. I change in every place. Everyday my opinion of self changes. I am so confused.

My stomach is making noises like a dinosaur

I dropped the powercord to my computer on the floor while I was lifting my laptop up to my bed and now I don't want to get out of bed to get it, because I am quite comfortable where I am and when I am comfortable pretty much nothing can move me and so now I sitting here, getting no work done, trying- yes! Sara came back and I asked her to get it for me.

A note on being comfortable: sometimes, actually quite frequently, I question why I ever got up from extremely comfortable positions of my life.

Are you looking at me from your treadmill?

I decided to start working out to see if that will make me happier. Up until I went to Florence I worked out fairly consistantly and in Italy I walked enough to make up for my lack of working out. Then I got back and everything stopped. I'm starting slowly again. Eventually I want to be able to run 3 miles several days of the week. I'm so out of shape this is something I have to build up to. Hopefully this will help make me feel better and if nothing else, take up some of my empty time.

"But what of passion? I hunger to ask. There's got to be something more than hand-to-mouth survival"

I get confused where I am in my dreams. I dream about Florence and St. Paul. On Friday I dreamt we were in Mexico instead of Galena. I wake up and find myself still in Illinois and surrounded by entirely different people. The whole experience is surreal and something that shouldn't happen outside of fictional situations. People don't really have dreams like the kind that I have.

I just deleted a paragraph. Maybe somethings shouldn't be said?

I want to ride a bicycle

Let me explain: people in Florence made bicycle riding seem so fun with their perfect outfits on top of shitty bikes and as a result I became really excited about riding my bike. However, my bike isn't good-looking in the falling apart sort of way like Italian bikes are, as it is not actually falling apart and I would wear a helmut because I worry so much about everything, including falling off my bike and breaking my brain. So basically I'm really excited to ride my bicycle, but it's the middle of winter and my bike is in a different city.

Uprooted

She was alone. This was not a state which was unusual, but one which was almost always equally discouraging. Whenever this occurrence happened she got the uncanny feeling that almost no one else on the planet was lonely. However, she was aware of the absurdity of this feeling.
She was sitting in her room, in front of her computer. She was supposed to be studying German, but she wasn’t. The amount of German she knew and the number of books she read was simply incredible when the time spent staring was taken into account.
She wanted to write something fictional and genius and she wanted it to be easy, but it was not easy, because her mind focused too solely on things that she didn’t want to write about.
She wanted to be happy in a spiteful way. This was the kind of happy she desired when she had become complacent in her state of discontentment, but felt others would like her better if she were happy. She felt this way because long ago a boy told her that no boys would like her if she were unhappy. Now whenever she was sad her sadness increased exponentially because she became upset that no boys would like her through her minor depressions.
But really, she wasn’t all that unhappy. Mostly she was longing. They had talked about longing in her German class. Sehnsucht was the word the professor wrote on the board. It was in reference to a poem about trees. She liked to write about trees a lot, but often found them to be too emotional and thus rarely liked anything she wrote about trees. In the German poem the pine tree was longing to be the palm tree, but the palm tree really wasn’t very happy either. Like the tree, she was rather apathetic towards movement, but was starting to become desperate enough to consider being uprooted.

When I fell from the cliff it was the purest move I ever made

I want to write a story. I have nothing to write about. Give me ideas. If you have any, any at all. Even say, "me," but if you do that you better pick one aspect of yourself.

Why you are not

To make you too happy
would be like finding the goldfish belly up
in his bowl, stomach swollen.
Not in the death sense, but in that of overindulgence.

But you did, you were a glutten
and I question why you never became larger:
I must not have been a large enough bowl.

So your boat has been there awhile...

I'm working on being more assertive. However, this is really difficult.

But I guess when things happen because I am too passive, they are my fault.

Phonies

The dismembered people only become appalling
when one sees them put back together again
-through a false connection
The kind of glue on fingertips
as children do in art class.
We could glue our bodies together that way
Pull them apart and see what kind of fingerprint they make.

We are stuck together,
this implies force.
More freedom exists in the bodies still whole
to know life without a missing arm
-I have given away six of my fingers
all from the left hand.
Every four years my body has a reunion
and it reminisces over tools
(such convenient shapes)

An outside view: you are disgusting

Only men have the luxury of secrets

Class today was fantastic.

I discovered I have a deep love for Chicana literature.

Also, I rediscovered a deep love for German.

Fantastic.

(Maybe now I can stop worrying about things.)
(I have this circular train of thought where I think about how I shouldn't worry about certain things and then I wonder if other people worry about these things and then I worry more.)
(But I'm not going to worry. I'm going to concentrate entirely on Victorian literature, Chicana literature, and the silly German stories that intermediate German learners have to read.)

I still don't have a love for Victorian literature, but it makes sense in the capacity that parts of it make no sense, because in the Victorian era they realized life makes no sense and thus a crazy story actually makes more sense than one that is too logical. The problem is that they were repressed, so craziness in the Victorian era is like.... hold on I'm thinking of a good simile. I can't think of one, can anyone help me?

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

I can't believe I've only been here for two days.

Things we have done for fun:
gone to Target
drank pink champagne
gotten water to drink (I did this by myself)
checked facebook 5924784782748 times
gone to Target again
went to class twenty minutes early (I did this by myself)
walked to the mail room (I also did this alone)
studied German
hid under a blanket and made wookie noises
made hot chocolate

Time is moving so slowly...

Fermenting Apples

There is no meaning in this apple.
It could be sustenance and I imagine it
breaking down and becoming energy
like sparks of light in the stomach,
but energy too has no meaning.
It is something that moves forward,
but never comes to a conclusion.

This has no conclusion.
Therefore it has no meaning.

As a child I gave my teddy bears personalities
and they became various renditions of black and white
Snuggly bear's nose is falling off.
His eyes are scratched. This would be tragic in a human being.
He is under the bed of the floor I am not at.
He is like an apple in the sense that an apple is like a human being.

Apples are exactly like human beings.

It always feels like forever

1. I am far too sensitive and I always forget about that. My sensitivity hides sometimes or it hides during all the wrong moments and I forget about it. (I might be wrong, I think I might actually be too much of too many other abstract concepts instead).

2. I hate leaving home. I always do. It's like going to the gym or doing the laundry. School isn't that bad when I'm there. Sometimes it's a good time. It's so strange though because through the beginning of high school I hated living at home and I just wanted to leave and now I like it here far too much. It seems juvenile to like it this much, only that's wrong, because when I was younger I didn't like it.

3. I don't write when I'm happy. I haven't written much while I've been at home. I have nothing to say. Happiness sounds too cheesy and sincere. It's simple because it's satisfaction and when you're satisfied there is nothing to say. The only bad things that arise come up with my mother and sometimes my brother.

4. I have to finish packing, but I'm too tired and leaving doesn't seem real because I feel like I just got back.

5. When I look sad that I'm not going to see you again, it's probably sincere and not an attempt to get you to go to breakfast with me tomorrow.

Here we go again

I've been really busy, which is why I haven't been posting often. This will change when I go back to school (tomorrow).

I had a really good break.