smileyjess

hey! can anyone find my updates? i know i left them around this server somewhere....

ohhhhh, internets. you slay me.

the days neatly tuck themselves into one another and are placed in closed drawers beneath kneesocks and tank tops. perfectly structured, creases at the folds, the occasional wrinkle that refuses to be smoothed. all is ideally organized but terribly messy nonetheless. color coded in a nonsensical fashion. sometimes it's so overstuffed you have to slam it shut.

spring break, hurry up and get here. i need you.

i'm leaving the country in less than two days but it seems like forever between now and saturday.

spring break is upon us, but i think mine really started sometime last monday. i barely survived the week - well, no, that's a lie. i more than survived, i just did absolutely nothing. and you know what?

it was wonderful.

matt and i resumed our thursday evening rendezvous this week, catching capote at the cable car and rounding out the evening with some hashish dessert at pastiche, per tradition. philip seymour hoffman did an absolutely brilliant job in his portrayal of the the inspiring author. (in fact, i'm already 50 pages deep into in cold blood and hope to finish it on the plane tonight. it's positively spine-chilling, but i'm loving it, soaking up each description and savoring the dialogues.) at one point in the movie - when describing his expectations of himself for writing the book to his best friend and close confidante (harper lee, author of one of my all time favorites to kill a mockingbird), he says "when i think about how good my book could be... i can hardly breathe." wow. just... wow. gives me goosebumps just to imagine what that must feel like.

i couldnt sleep thursday night - dreams of bears and baby lions and dormroom makeovers and speaking in spanish ("no puedo recordar las palabras!!" - una otra vez!) clouded my mind and i didn't trust my subconscious enough to shut my eyes for very long on the pillow. cursed insomnia.

yesterday i had about 90 minutes worth of classes, then called it a day by one. packed up and had a lovely afternoon with the madre. bought a very much needed northface denali fleece, shipped ines' present to valladolid, picked up some stuff for the trip.

spent a most enjoyable evening in steve's company last night, tagging along for a hat-buying, shoe-browsing, food-consuming expedition to the mall before returning to cunningham and saying adios to all the vegas boys. quote of the night? teddy, on his self-inflicted cigarette burns that read "t-unit" on each arm: "i don't know why one healed faster than the other. i'm not my body!" hilarity. steve's off to sunny florida in a few days with the lax team. we'll all be back by next sunday, and i for one cannot wait to hear/tell amazing tales.

suppose that's all for now.... i guess i'll catch you on the flip side.

we pregame harder than you party.

i cant stand to hear myself talk.

most of the time, actually.

i hate feeling this way. there's no fucking excuse for it. i do this to myself and then there is no one else to blame for it. i create this impenetrable darkness, these awful terrifying mindnumbing depths, the immensely overwhelming bouts of wallowing in muddy puddles of shallow self pity. no one drags me down but me. what do you do when you are your own worst enemy and you know it? you have come to grips with it, accepted it, but chosen to ignore it anyway?

all i want to do right now is escape from everything and everyone. break loose all connections, render myself rootless, start over.

i don't deserve these roots, these sources of sustenance who put up with me day in and day out while i complain my life away and do nothing but take up space and air and pollute the world with negative karma and a bad aura.

maybe the new time around, i wouldn't be so useless. so helpless. so utterly defenseless.

lately i've only half expected to see my relection on shiny surfaces. in frighteningly precise mirrors, in freshly cleaned car windows, in glistening pools of water, in the ripples of my cold coffee.

i'm still in awe over my superlong shadow limbs, stilt-like legs balanced precariously on the path ahead, sunset behind me.

i hate the darkness and the darks.

i want so incredibly to seek happiness in early morning pink sky sunrises and long colorfully woven scarves and playground swingset laughter. instead i'm so stressed my shoulders are perpetually hunched. i fear walking with my head up. i avoid making eye contact. i only look forward to sleep.

sparkie1530: i'm just going to throw this out there; i want to tup you.

love of my lifffffeeeeeee

Man is a growing gestalt.
Every day new things are to happen.

Every day you have to absorb the new and to make a place for the new;
the old has to be gone.

The old has to be said goodbye to, with all thankfulness.
-Mahendra

nothing fits, especially me.

he sat across from us on "the" ripta (rant about that some other day...) with wragged torn clothes - a plaid flannel shirt with cigarette burns on the collar, dirty, wrinkled khakis with bottom fringes dragging beneath the slender soles of worn out shoes.

his topmost coat layer was a faded army green, borrowed or stolen or bought very cheaply. at any rate, it was not something he primarily owned. the cuffs ended abruptly just short of his bony wrists, exposed the deep blue demin shirt he was wearing underneath, two topmost buttons unbuttoned, even in the cold of the late evening.

he had a silver ring that i noticed right away. from its shine under the fluorescent light i knew he took especially good care of it, certainly better care for it than the clothes he'd been wearing for what looked like at least three or four days.

not even knowing his name, we learned that he had lost both parents and three sisters. tears sprang into my eyes.

how could he deal with all of that?

he surreptitiously reached inside his jacket, straightened his back and shifted in his seat, faced away from the rearview mirror of the bus driver, and took a swig.

oh, i thought. that's how.

the glass bottle's cap was unnaturally red against the muted tones of his garments. he raised his wiry eyebrows and tipped his head and signaled to keep it our secret.

the tears in my eyes reflected across from me in the altered image of the oversized tinted bus window, as shiny as the silver of his most treasured possession. it had been his mother's.

so unhappy yet so pleasant.
such a private struggle.

i am watching the squid and the whale and depressing myself .

"i wish i could live under water. maybe then my skin could absorb the sea's consoling silences. "

when my plans for friday night fell through and i wanted nothing more to do than tuck myself under my covers in the fetal position and allow the artificial night of my room envelope me, i forced myself to toss back a few of the blue and whites with a tall glass of coke zero and headed out the door, determined not to waste the high of a post-haircut excursion.

sometimes i just need to lose myself in the bookshelves of the garden city borders. i know my inner nerd is emerging, but i highly recommend it. you don't even have to like to read to try this - shelf upon shelf of dvd's, magazines, colorful and glossy children's books from Back in the Day. i love sinking into one of the hidden/randomly placed smooth black leather armchairs and taking off my shoes and curling my toes within my snowman/kermit and miss piggy striped/polkadotted socks, feet folded like a work of origami, knees bent and hugged tightly, book in hand.

read fifty some odd pages and realize i'm a little parched, buy a mint chocolate chai in an off white mug with extra fluffy whipped cream and a miniature silver spoon, settle back in my inviting, chair, allow the porcelain to turn my fingertips a soft pink-ish red, surreptitiously sip and try not to slurp. burn my tongue - i will never learn to be patient.

i contemplate. i look a lot more serious than i actually am. i judge books by their covers, and hope that the people walking by me do also.

guilty pleasure: i eavesdrop. i fabricate lengthy tales for the other equally nerdy patrons. i wonder why they are there - is anyone here with the intention of actually buying a book?

it has been so long since i've gone to a bookstore with a particular book in mind. it is hard for me to remember what it is like. i much prefer my way - this utter relaxation in a secluded corner next to a movable ladder for those oh-so-hard-to-reach novels. (i want a library in my home for the sole purpose of owning one of the smoothly gliding ladders. very... beauty and the beast, i think.)

i never wear a watch, and i leave my cell phone in the car. i allow myself to lose track of time. i am surprised when i leave and night has fallen.

i am happy. i have done something for myself. i blissfully turned pages of leatherbound joyce (not understanding more than three words per page, but still!), i lost myself in the text of an old favorite, i flipped through the stark black and white images of an ansel adams compilation.

my mind wandered and i was able to forget - momentarily - just how fucked up i am. and it was nice. for a change.

stuck in my head for - literally - days.

That's when I knew I could never have you
I knew that before you did
Still I'm the one who's stupid
And there's this burning
Like there's always been
I've never been so alone
And I've never been so alive

I go home to the coast
It starts to rain I paddle out on the water
Alone
Taste the salt and taste the pain
I'm not thinking of you again
Summer dies and swells rise
The sun goes down in my eyes
See this rolling wave
Darkly coming to take me
Home
And I've never been so alone
And I've never been so alive

jane says, "i'm done with sergio... he treats me like a ragdoll..."

preoccupied with imperfect reflections in pristinely clean glass windows and mismatched parts, unfinished wholes. what are you worth when you're the only one looking, though? what happens when you don't want to, can't bear to look anymore? what are you worth when no one is looking?

nothing makes sense (does it ever, though, i wonder?)

days pass like seconds but somehow manage to seem longer than they actually are. (nope, it doesnt. ever. this i know for sure.)

i desperately try to see the light's reflection in puddles but some days are just so. much. more. difficult. than others.

last week in lab we submerged minute organisms in a molasses-like liquid and i can't help but wonder if sometimes that's what we're occasionally subjected to at the whim of some unknown and un-understood. not mis-understood because that implies a level of understanding, albeit a wrong level. no, i mean un-understood, as in no level of understanding whatsoever. completely incomprehensible.

i catch myself and wonder how is it possible to feel as thought everything is spinning entirely out of control yet simultaneously stuck in the same repeating cycle? that no matter what i do, i always end up back where i started? feeling as though i should be somewhere else but decidedly not?

looking at the view from the same place but a different perspective? maybe from a little lower than before? maybe from an inconceivably low valley?

there are so many more questions than answers. but that, at least, is something all too familiar.

i want my needs to be congruous with my wants and vice versa.

"I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask them where they're goin', and hook up with them later."
-Mitch Hedberg

The whole foundation of meditation is to make you so alert that you can see the forming of seeds and desires and drop them.

Osho

i love when i wash my face and then scrub my eyes so hard it takes a minute for my pupils to adjust again. black spots with little coloured centers dance and expand slowly.

things are good, bio exam tomorrow, is this goodbye?

when i'm fumbling for the right words, grasping at invisible straws infinitely out of reach, drowning in the cold depths of silences and sighs, my strained eyes scan the entirety of the darkness, settling on minute dust particles resting on picture frames, crumbs burrowed in the bristles of the carpet, dirty dishes half filled with soapy water after an abandoned attempt to return the room into some semblance of order.

i became dizzy, disoriented. not only at a loss of words, but also just plain lost. directionless.

this was supposed to be my cue to leave. cut, end scene, that's a wrap. my grand finale. oh, so grand, indeed. i willed my lead-laden legs to take me to the door. my hands suddenly seemed too heavy to lift up to the height of the doorknob. the set hazily floated above my spinning mind.

and then.

then his hand took mine. no, i couldn't leave. my finale is probably a situation much like this started, but it seems i had been duped for the time being. something in me told me that althought this scene was just ending, the next act was right around the corner.

i couldn't possibly make my nonchalant exit only to return with a curtsy and a beaming yet humble smile. the script continued, the show went on.