enough of this wild frivolity!

For all intents and purposes...

2010-04-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

I am here now.

Longer and more serious matters, plus poetry, will probably end up on blogger, but I'm so goddamn ADD that tumblr suits my thought patterns better.

The weight of emotion

2010-02-21T14:15:00.001-08:00

I've been thinking about this a lot lately... mostly after I listened to a story on This American Life about the worst wedding toast ever. In it, a man told the story of how he sentenced a man to death during jury duty. The only explanation the reporter could come up with was that he was measuring emotion by weight, and that his story was equal in weight to the happiness he felt on the occasion of his friend's marriage.

I started first by thinking about the weight of sadness. I determined that the true weight of despair is infinite, and something you cannot survive. I thought about the weight of my own sadness, and the sadness of my friends. I put us on a scale, a timeline, various ways of determining seriousness. I thought about the general weight of happiness, and who around me feels happiness that is equivalent in weight to the sadness we are all feeling for many reasons. The ratio is uneven. This makes us do things, it makes us get very drunk and cry, it makes us yell at each other, or sit in a room at night and not really say anything.

Everything feels very serious. Everything is actually pretty serious. I suppose the weight of the feeling I am trying to fight off right now is the weight of a certain kind of sadness, guilt, isolation, the feeling of moving into a room with someone else's possessions still in it, which I am. I have no idea how the next few months will sort out. I did, however, get into graduate school, and I now have a future and a plan that I am excited about. So I guess the weight of that happiness should at least equal the weight of the sadness. But it's Sunday, so things are a little off in my brain right now.

Things that are surprising even though they probably shouldn't be:

2010-02-17T12:42:00.002-08:00

That people are actually from Florida.
That cats and dogs have testicles.
That there are girls at this school who still get waxed and manicured.

I have been living on the East Coast for long enough that I forget people hail from warm climates.
I have been living with domestic animals for long enough that I forget biology.
I have been living among the poor and D.I.Y. for long enough that I forget these people exist.

Title?

2010-02-10T21:13:00.000-08:00

I suppose it would make sense to wish for a cure for one's biggest ailment. But what to do if the ailment is so vast as to make that impossible? I guess you have to work on the secondary "infections," so to speak.

If I cannot find a cure for general, occasionally crippling insecurity, I guess the thing I'd choose to cure first would be my tendency to get so paranoid about those close to me that I slowly foster contempt for them. Thus, when they inevitably disappoint me, or reject me, I have ammunition ready. I've been building up bad feelings for a long time. This kind of activity is pure poison for all that is right and good in my interpersonal relationships. Or maybe I'd just wish for the insecurity to be invisible, it casts a pall on everything.

I'm pulling myself together but I still kind of want to move into an igloo and live by myself for an unspecified amount of time.

Little Secrets

2010-02-05T10:20:00.001-08:00

This has been the kind of semester thus far where it seems that things are aligning in such a way as to make everyone as depressed as possible. Rightly so, in many cases.

My senior project adviser told me not to continue with the second project. This was humiliating and disappointing on about sixteen different levels, I did that thing I hate to do - cried in front of a professor - then she gave me a hug and told me she'll buy me a drink in a couple weeks when I feel better. She BROKE UP with me, actually. That is a breakup.

Upside: I already have one thesis done and graded and so I'm actually... done. I have three classes to take, but I am done in a very important way.

Over the past week I've had two different kinds of viruses, I think. The new one has caused me to cough and sneeze incessantly and sound like Clint Eastwood.

So here I am, sitting here, sounding like Clint Eastwood, trying to eat a grapefruit, listening to the same Boys Noize song on repeat because something about Electro House music sounds like the inside of a brain with no morale left to spare.

I hate the word "theses"

2010-01-22T12:02:00.000-08:00

IV. Avoid haphazard writing materials. A pedantic adherence to certain papers, pens, inks is beneficial. No luxury, but an abundance of these utensils is indispensable.
- Walter Benjamin, "Post No Bills: The Writer's Technique in Thirteen Theses"

All the lead sleeping in my head

2010-01-17T07:06:00.000-08:00

I think I need the hangover to clear out the excess mental noise to which I am prone, especially after spending a lot of time by myself. Something about the nature of drinking - the excess of it, the excess of words, the preparation for it, the camaraderie of the bar even if you don't know anyone there. It's the perfect environment to get your physical noise out, then something happens in sleep - the ringing ears, the dehydration, the strange drunken dreams - it comes in and sweeps up the mess of an overthinking psyche. I wake up in the morning in a good fuzzy mental place, the light is overcast, I have no desires except hunger and a need for quiet.

Jordan Catalano

2010-01-13T20:33:00.000-08:00

I've spent a lot of today googling old crushes and their affiliates. I'm not really old enough for this exercise to be all too surprising. The braindead middle school crush who wore the same t-shirt from 8th grade until graduation is still pretty and doe-eyed and, I can guess, still has that shirt. The much-older high school obsession is married, pudgy, seemingly settled, though oddly enough his online handle is still a line from a poem he wrote for me. The hippie girl who stole an an almost-boyfriend in high school is now fond of Bud Light and sparkles vs. bare feet and hemp necklaces. Someone I will always wonder about is proving to be more articulate than originally expected. The ex-girlfriend of someone potentially important is beautiful in an insane way.

Things are different in retrospect.

The perils of housesitting.

2010-01-10T19:26:00.000-08:00

The kind of wine that you don't mind spillin'.

2010-01-08T20:10:00.000-08:00

I haven't written in here in a very long time, so I feel the need to give some kind of broad-sweeping "where I am now versus where I was a month or two ago" update. But really, nobody reads this, there's no readership clamoring for this update, at least not anyone who I wouldn't have updated personally via emotive drunken text or something.

Then again, I suppose telling you where I'm at is, at this point, really not so much different than telling you what's going through my head. You'll see what I mean.

- All I listen to is pop, R&B, and all this silly electronia dance shit that I would previously only have enjoyed when intoxicated to the point of robotic, semiconscious head-bobbing. Blotto, I think is the best word for it. It requires no mental energy so it's perfectly suited for my current state, lethargic couch-snacking.
- In a state of deep isolation in the middle of the woods, housesitting for a professor. There are no curtains on any of the windows. The only other house I can see is through the bare trees at the back of the yard, and so I imagine that there is a creepy serial killer there observing me through the curtainless windows. I hope there isn't.
- I got an A- on my poetry thesis project... I'm very happy with it. It looks like a little book, I've named it Points of Contact. As of yesterday I have submitted applications to seven MFA programs. I'm also applying to a communications program. Realistically, I will probably end up in the communications program. At least then maybe I'll get to wear a power suit?
- I cannot decide if I want to be creatively productive or productively productive.
- I've recently become the victim of a number of seriously unexpected thoughts and recurring images. It makes you feel a little crazy when the same thing or person keeps popping into your head against your will. My instincts are usually right though, right?
- Edith Wharton has become very important to me.

Opening oneself up to rejection.

2009-12-19T07:38:00.000-08:00

Recently, I've decided to apply to grad school, and not to settle (both for a grad school I don't want, and in the sense that one typically means that word). The latter resolution, in its traditional usage, ended badly. We are still waiting to see how the former resolution pans out.

I guess the goal here is to somehow better myself, toughen up my easily-wounded pride, etc etc. I start to try to do these things and mostly I just want to go back to bed.

2009-11-09T19:23:00.000-08:00

The best cure for Sunday is, of course, wax facial hair.

Here's the thing:

2009-11-08T09:34:00.000-08:00

I disappeared for awhile, got pretty lost. I'm still there in a lot of ways. I'm sitting at my desk drinking coffee thinking about what I want to say about Lacan, who I'm allegedly writing this thesis project about but really I just want to realize myself as an unbound mess of desires, rather than any sort of specific want. Which is what the object of Lacanian psychotherapy is, so I guess I'm not all too far off. Realistically I am not doing all that I should be doing. I should be taking and retaking standardized tests to measure how literate and erudite and good at problem-solving I have become since coming to college, I should be applying to continue on and attain another degree with which I will not find a job. I should be writing this thesis, and finishing the other one that is due quite soon. I am actually doing these things, but it's out of a sense of duty. My mother wants these things, I (in theory) want these things, but I had a plan and then the plan fell away so this is some kind of poorly thought out backup, thus I'm unsure of how much to want it. Instead I'm writing this ghazal but I only know the last line and it is "Oh Olivia, stop fucking around."

The season of nostalgic smells.

2009-10-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

The smell of my flatiron when it first starts to heat up is surprisingly reminiscent of the thick, grainy plastic "skin" of my Samantha doll.

Many things have changed, some remain the same.

2009-09-19T18:59:00.000-07:00

Down with the sickness.

When you tell me you don't love me.

2009-09-17T01:21:00.000-07:00

The Apartment Tapes make me feel like Buddy Holly is in the room with me... "That Makes It Tough." Slow drawl, like he's spinning the song like a thread that trails off, leaves just a single strand that keeps snagging on you. Listening to him speeding down the highway, alone in my room. I have a meeting early tomorrow with my thesis adviser, she's tough, she'll be tough on me. I'm going to be tired, hungover from benadryl, hungover from my shock at finding an uneasy feeling in me that I didn't know I had. The deer's white belly exposed by the high beams, reflecting off the thousand silver blades stabbing up at midnight. My face was that white, my heart beat that fast, I felt like running that quickly through the dark. I still do.

Plenty of space to hang my stuff.

2009-09-15T15:50:00.000-07:00

I have somehow returned to school this year without any anchors to the real world, or motivations to join it. My very together, very zen summer has somehow transitioned well into me being very zen about doing essentially nothing, or the most inconsequential things, like washing dishes and spreading peanut butter on an apple. This is perhaps not the best way to be, as I have two thesis projects to work on, and have made promises to a lot of people about a lot of things. I am taking one class. I am not taking anything seriously. I feel like a helium balloon most of the time, bumping against the ceiling.

there is a light that never goes out, burning a hole inside of me

2009-08-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

Everything is so thoroughly middle-of-the-road that I can't come up with a thought vibrant enough to write about. That's why I loved the city so much. Even when things were idyllic (and they weren't really, most of the time, my heart was breaking every day) I could go out into the street and find some chaos. No chaos here! I try to shake things up but things continue on, fairly placid. Torrential rain, conversations in the dark, drinking Italian beer in the shower. Everything is infused with a strange gravity and nothing can be shaken or uprooted. I'm waiting until next month for that to happen.

I spend a lot of time in Wegmans.

2009-08-08T08:11:00.000-07:00

The organic foods section at Wegmans (especially the Good Wegmans down the street from this place where I'm staying) always has a sort of Archaic Torso of Apollo effect on me.

I become convinced that I will enjoy only the rawest veganest foods, take supplements, incorporate flax by-products into each meal, use beauty products that I would happily EAT if given the chance, keep a Luna bar handy for emergencies, and occasionally (but very infrequently) indulge in an organic frozen dinner of some kind. I picture myself thinner, sharper, my complexion practically radiating GOOP-esque superiority. It's a nice high, perusing the organic section.

Thankfully, at least in my home Wegmans, the organic section is right next to the bakery - extraordinary confections and warm, hearty baguettes. Standing between these two sections, I feel that I am at the nexus of the two sides of my aesthetic self.

We're not robots.

2009-08-06T08:49:00.000-07:00

Today I have an appointment with my neurologist so that I can keep being prescribed the good stuff - by "good stuff" I mean, of course, triptans which block certain pain receptors in my brain and make me feel wonky and stoned for up to 24 hours. Gr8!

Despite the fact that I am loath to continue needing migraine medication, the neurologist is by far my favorite doctor who I see on a regular basis. Maybe this is just because every appointment starts off with some "games" that I suppose are intended to test my brain's response to various things, and how it communicates with the rest of my body. Or maybe it's the fact that his office is decorated with pictures of various animals that he took himself, and also that he wears grandpa sweaters (a trait I find comforting in any person who is supposed to help me - my old counselor at Bard also wore grandpa sweaters).

While I know that migraine triggers are pretty much all external stimuli - for instance, mine are dehydration, flashing lights, or any kind of severely brain-jostling activity (i.e. being thrown from a horse, which happened once upon a time) - I'm starting to believe that mine happen sometimes as a way to remind me that the brain, or at least my own brain, is the most complicated and least reliable organ. Our complex brains make us more susceptible to conditions like depression, schizophrenia, and perhaps migraines and stolid indecisiveness.

A Found Recession Poem that will not be in my senior project

2009-08-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

Today:

ample sunshine, blue sky, many wives
glaring shell-shocked across the breakfast table,
little hands swift and frantic,
eyes like baseballs
flying at speeds faster
than cars on the highway

people are on wall street, agreed?
a serious mistake was made,
the reaction was…

sunshine
ripples in the pond

is anyone handing out towels
to this bloodbath?
can we still go out at night?

yeah, it’ll just be a little weird.

So, on Friday...

2009-08-04T08:55:00.000-07:00

I met my favorite band, Born Ruffians! As you can just barely see. But really, where better to socialize with people who make you nervous than somewhere dark, with booze, and no camera flashes to illuminate the true severity of your nerdiness?

2009-08-02T17:00:00.000-07:00

The sum total of this summer, thus far, is neutral and indifferent. Examples:

Brilliance and adventure in New York negated by love disintegrating beneath the wheels of city traffic.

A dreamy happy whirlwind trip North negated by four hours of standstill traffic and a blinding migraine.

There is more nuance to both of these situations, obviously, but that's what's blog-appropriate. All I know is that m'poor little heart keeps breaking and unbreaking so fast. I didn't think these types of ups and downs were possible for someone who is neither fourteen nor bipolar.

Song of the moment:
Frightened Rabbit - Old Old Fashioned

LET'S GO LET'S GO

2009-07-30T15:26:00.001-07:00

Okay well... flash forward to July of 2009 wherein I am back upstate, listening to Ritchie Valens doing the kind of silly half-dance one only does alone. A friend suggested a new blog, so I took some of my favorite entries, packed them up along with this picture of some Old English Sheepdog puppies (three of which Nate and I have determined have massive personality defects) and made this new thang.

Syracuse is not a place that people come back to. My social circle is miniscule. Yet, I'm doing well, mostly thanks to the albatross of my poetry thesis and the fact that the company that I do keep is, for the most part, adventurous. I do not have a job but I house-sit sometimes. I bought Rock Band. I go to the gym every day. This sort of respite is nice I guess.

Now go put some lemonade in your vodka and listen to this:

I really hope that recording a spinning record is a subgenre of youtube video that I have not discovered yet.

poor boys and pilgrims

2009-06-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

New York in a few words:

Poetry program is brilliant, I am in love with everyone in my class.

I often resort to a weird mental disconnection to escape the commotion. Valid modes of escape include, of course, "Graceland" by Paul Simon, and past memories of vast insignificance.

Money is and will always be an issue.

a webcomic is worth a thousand emotive blog entries

2009-05-25T19:40:00.000-07:00

marriedtothesea.com

Perhaps no webcomic has better encapsulated how I feel at the current moment. Not only because my eyes are overcome by allergies and I'm forced into my spectacles at all times, but just in general.

In a week I am moving to New York for a month and a half and I am no less than 85 percent unsure what to expect.

Juxtaposition of the week:

2009-04-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

On my desk, a moldering cup of coffee morsels, thankfully with the top still on, giving off the distinct yogurty smell of decaying dairy, next to a note from my local pharmacy declaring "Free antibiotics!"

wait till the sun shines, nellie

2009-04-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

I just spent about three and a half hours outside reading Memoirs of Hadrian for an imminent presentation for which I have by no means adequately prepared. I lunched on some raw broccoli and tomatoes and pickle slices from the dining hall, and sunburned my right but probably not my left shoulder. Despite the presentation, which I must stress I have really, by no means, come even close to preparing for, I cannot stress. I can't stress because it's something like 89 degrees outside, and today I went out in full spring regalia (disregarding winter paunch that I have yet to pack away). I cannot stress because stress makes me anxious, and mean, and full of stomach pains and quick breaths. I cannot stress because so many things are so far out of my control - for instance, my laptop died this morning from an apparent Law & Order: SVU overdose. I have been sick all week despite the need to do work (I am usually excellent about becoming sick only during sanctioned school breaks). I do not know if the summer programs I applied to (late) will accept me. I cannot control these things, and so I cannot stress about them. I have already done my share. All there is to do now is sit outside, smile at friends, alter my yes:no ratio favorably, and do what I have to do.

From the minute I declared it...

2009-04-08T13:45:00.000-07:00

... my work ethic was bound for failure. This isn't to say that I won't get everything done, it just won't happen as I'd like it to.

Case in point: Last night I resolved to study with a friend for a "midterm" we have tomorrow, which led in reality to the consumption of several rum and cokes and complaint. At 12:15 AM I run into a friend in the Mobil station and he witnesses my purchase of two cups of coffee, a bag of swedish fish, and a pack of Marlboro 27s. I come back to campus, hand one of the coffees off to Max, and proceed to eat swedish fish and make flashcards before falling into an SVU-induced slumber.

Now here I sit updating my blog and realizing that increased focus does little for me other than calling my attention to the crookedness of my underlines, forcing me to go back, erase my pencil, and underline notable passages with the strictest precision.

give me lovin', baby i feel high

2009-03-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

Library disgrumblement.

My most-played song on iTunes is, and has been for two years, "Scotch and Soda" by The Kingston Trio, which I have listened to 318 times. It is followed by "Center of the Universe" by Built to Spill, which I've listened to 210 times. The disparity in listens is not because I particularly like "Scotch and Soda" (I certainly wouldn't choose it over Built to Spill, who I think are pretty near-perfection, especially on Keep It Like a Secret, oh my god) but because once in freshman year, when I'd been too busy getting stoned and fucking around during finals, I listened to it 160 times in a row as I wrote a 10-page French paper on the relationship of Edgar Allen Poe to Baudelaire and Mallarmé. I got a B+ on the paper, which for freshman-year me was pretty solid. Since then, it's become my paper-writing song. Something about its sparseness, repetition and easy happiness (plus, probably, the fact that it addresses my creative bread and butter - love and hard liquor - but that's besides the point). Basically, when I'm in the zone writing a paper, or stumbling around for ideas, I put it on and hope that, magically, some brilliance will issue from my library-muddled brain.

That said, if anyone has any thoughts about Derrida, Faulkner, and the animal/Other relationship, please do tell.

done got hip to your jive, marcel

2009-03-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

I've been having a lot of Proustian memories lately (as always happens when spring starts to let up a little of that mud smell from under the snow) but i don't really know why. I only have 20-odd years from which to call up such involuntary memories, and it's not like they're even fond relics of childhood. They're from, say, spring break of freshman year, or this past June, or something. Maybe I've just become especially forgetful recently, so there's more to involuntarily remember.

On another involuntary note, as the college's radio station has made an effort to increase its online presence, my radio show has a home on the web. It is here, and though the show itself is unfortunately timed for those with Friday night social engagements (at least those at a civil time), you can see all my playlists. Last show was particularly great, even when my guest DJs staged a coup and locked me out of the booth. At least I got to play my new/old favorite song.

what one may sacrifice for love, in some situations.

2009-03-01T19:58:00.000-08:00

- dental hygiene.

- crisp, single-occupancy bedsheets.

- the regrettable hookup borne of "remorseful laxity."

- being invited anywhere as one singular person.