Spoon? Eating Utensils? Writing Utensils?

This is a slow tango that we're dancing. I don't know where it'll take us, but I enjoy the age-long grind.

0g trans fat

You're weird-tasting but that doesn't exclude the possibility that you'd be interesting.

I can have a hat party, too

Bleary eyed, I strained to look at my cell phone. 11:12. It's so quiet. Oh, a text message from Clay. That's nice of him. I tried to imagine him waking up early as he did this morning. He's now working the streets, dealing with the tourists. That's shitty. I turned over a couple of times, trying to think what I need to do for today before rehearsals at 4. I unceremoniously rubbed my pelvis. Not my underwear. I didn't have to strain to remember. Natalie's panties. I smiled at the thought of waking up in a hot girl's panties. I couldn't really churn anything worth muddling in bed for so I heaved myself up. The room rippled in my outer line of vision. Too much Jim Bean, Cindy, too much Jim Bean. I instantly remembered my little sick experience in the bathroom a few hours prior. Embarrassing. I opened my slightly ajar door and ventured out. No one in the living room. No one in the other room. Sofa is now unoccupied. They've all left. I stumbled around some more. Jim Bean on the coffee table. Beer bottles and shot glasses vying for space on the kitchen counter, and a more vast amount existed in the living room. A pair of gorgeous earrings laid among the beer, and its matching bangle lived in another ecosystem a couple of feet away on the side table with my records. Charlotte's camera sat in the lee of the coffee table on the floor, and I counted sweaters and scarves that had never belonged to me. And hats. Hats everywhere! My hats, Charlotte's hat, hats. That's right, we had a hat party. I ran into my room, and grabbed as many hats that I can. And we played spin the bottle. Everyone pounded me to the floor with their kiss last night. Boondock Saints. Cigarettes matches steamrollin' shot shot shot. As I cleared everything away, methodically, purposefully, I started finishing the bowl that got started last night. This is beautiful.

E.F. = Epic Fail

I want to cry from all of this anxiety. I don't know what I'm doing, and I feel so, so alone. I'm trying to sneak in writing between "working," but it's not alleviating this feeling of distress. I really want help.

When I was writing, I decided to direct my writing to someone who can be a good friend. Who better to choose than someone on the other side of the planet?:

Bryan,

I mentioned before you left that I wanted us to be pen pal buddies. You're completely capable of writing blog-like letters; would you mind if I write to you by hand?

I'm so glad that you're enjoying Thailand. I think I would experience a similar shock to yours - attempting to wind down from constant work, a heightened ever-present anxiety for tasks to do - if I try doing that at home, I couldn't go to sleep at night. I'm going to find myself in Thailand (among other countries) near this time next year. Though nothing has been decided yet, I want to take some time in between my studies to do some exploring. Maybe teach English in Saigon for a year. Grad school can wait.

I crashed the TCLT "graduation" party. There were some awkward moments (like me stumbling into their quiet circle), but as they unfurled themselves from their experience together, they infected me with this intense connection and mature kindness. It's safe to say that I don't usually experience this. In fact, most of the time, I'm not socially intact enough to hold a conversation for more than a couple of minutes within large groups of people. My anxiety prevents me from staying in the moment. I guess now I'm closer to identifying what I'm innately seeking out in people and myself. A true experience.

Have you tried reading the books I gave you? I know that both Kundera and Murakami are heavy reading. Miranda July is much lighter - mainly because her book is composed of short stories. I recently started reading a book on traffic psychology called Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (And What It Says About Us). I read it off a friend's coffee table months ago (you know I can't resist picking up a book), and was intrigued by what it had to say about the connection between your personality and the way you deal with traffic.

I want to be where you are. I'm plagued by anxiety and stress and yet I keep on taking more work and projects to do, because I don't know how to survive otherwise. I'm still lonely in the presence of others, and I still grapple with nostalgia and fantasies of anything to relieve the loneliness. I don't keep the same friends for very long; at some point, I feel compromised, so I stop continuing contact. Just recently, I stopped talking to everyone I know and have met at ASF.

In moments of sheer fear and anxiety, I kick myself to try and get help. I know I need to - I respond really well in contact with someone who can get me to talk. And as loose as a connection as ours, I would like to just be able to write to you. You don't have to respond. A one-way correspondence can be... medicating. Let me write, and reach out.

Thank you,
Cindy

The Mission District

To Mom -

Mom, please don't grieve over mortality. It's hard enough as it is to live, but I need to see your Will, too. The Will to struggle, to fight, to be. Seeing you try and give up several times growing up has its adverse effect on me, Mommy. You understand when I tell you it's hard, don't you? You understand that my sadness is yours, isn't it?

Sometimes I am lonely. The feeling of being alone is stronger on some days. I try not to let it affect me; I know it is weak because my loneliness stems from nostalgia. For instance, on some days, when I don't have human contact, I am lonely. When I see a black SUV, hear certain songs, laugh with a mother and her children, I am lonely. I'm scared to think too much on my childhood. Memories of your anger, or my father's affection. I don't like remembering lovers, but I've grown up just a little bit more to understand that I am stronger and separate from each of them, no matter how many times I've had to relearn. My loneliness seems likes evidence to my unrefined ability to connect with others; the connection isn't strong enough to bind them to a willingness to simply be, and to live from moment to moment - I succumb to a nostalgia that is stronger than Now. But sometimes, I am overcome with the opportunities of what will come to be. Those are the moments that make me feel hopeful, and I continue to Be, no matter what state that is. I want to be strong enough to hold onto that hopefulness. I don't want to be weak to my memories any more.

Losing Only Skin

Where is that pleasure to breathe? The ability to laugh cannot be compromised with the ability to love - I've seem to have lost that. I'm disconnecting-disconnected-who is this person? Where is Newsom's available feelings of intricacy? Where is that pleasure to feel music, to fly in fog, to open my pores to the grass where I can be connected to the Earth? I don't talk to Jesus, I don't strum the guitar, words are just that - words. To feel intricately, is this not the finest part of me? Where is my tender heart, how is it so cold inside and out? I can't - breathe.

Apply it gently
to the love you've lent me.

GVoice

This post is really for Aurash. Aurash and his new found love for Google Voice.

I had another vivid dream, which seemed like a fever dream, but I was only in deep sleep in the heat, which made it feel like one.

I'm at work in the bookstore. Behind the register, recommending books left and right, moving a line of people waiting impatiently with heavy books in their arms. My mom walks up from the line and asks me about which books in her stack she ought to get. As I begin to sort through them, the store's lights go out, and everyone ducks and disappears in the darkness of the store. My mom and I are the only ones left, it seemed. I wrench her behind the counter with me where we crouch, and I start dialing '911' on the store's phone; for some reason, it keeps reaching the intercom, despite using an outside line. No matter. I pull out my cell phone (which I never carry on the floor, dumb dream), and dial '911.' It runs straight to the store's intercom, and instead of getting someone nice and authoritative, I hear my own breathing all over the store. What the fuck? A dark shadow passes over our store's doors. Someone is trying to get in, and I can understand in the dream that this person isn't good. My mom hands off her phone to me; she is calm and doesn't share the anxiety over this dark foreboding presence that lingers inside and by the store's doors. In fact, she's talking about which books she'd rather buy when the store's lights are back up. I flip open her Samsung and dial '911.' The ring is dead. At least it isn't hooked up to the intercom. "Mom, your phone isn't working." "Try calling again." Her logic makes sense. I dial again. There is a tone. Success! This is no longer a nightmare! Then I hear a ringing. I look down at my phone. No. It isn't the store's phones. I strain my ears. The ringing comes from outside, right by the doors, where that someone menacing is struggling to break in. On the fourth ring, Menacing Someone picks up. He laughs into my ear. Heart racing, I drop my mom's phone. Frantically, I beckon my mom to follow me, and on our elbows and stomachs, we reach the back room, which has turned into a long and dark hallway, not unlike any horror movie I've seen before. I hear the man come into our store, and my fear is heightened. I spot a flickering screen in the corner of the room - it's a computer monitor. I leave my mom, flipping through her books (still) and scramble to reach help on the web. On the screen was my Google Voice inbox. I push back the keyboard with my palms, shocked. Every number that I have ever dialed with was hooked up to the account. And for some strange logic, this was the reason why every time I dial a number, it was either linked to the man at the door or the intercom in the store. I don't even attempt to dial '911' with the Google number. I am lost, no, we are lost already. This is when I realize that the walls are covered with my Action pictures a year ago - Walt Whitman's face peered down at me from yellowing paper, and I can see dying horses and mass Civil War graves, soldiers limbs poking up in greeting. This is the last straw. I grab my mom and scramble underneath a desk. Then he walked in.

The rest of the dream consisted of my mom being able to go home. My brothers had been away, and this affected my mom's ability to go the right home, but she was reunited with my dad, and that's all I ever wish for her. But I was stuck in that room with the flickering monitor, and three of my theatre professors. The dream also turned sexual, and I wasn't unwilling. Which is ... bizarre, seeing how my professors are old and so not attractive. But the point is - my cell phone SCARES me now. This is definitely one of those dumb horror flicks about the menaces of your mobile devices (and in this case, Google Voice), and I am freaked that it reached the movie screen of my feverish dreams.

Summer Blues

Every summer I do this, why is this one an exception?

Book Wish List 2009

1.

The Icarus Girl - Helen Oyeyemi

2.

House of Leaves - Mark Z. Danielewski

3.

Only Revolutions - Mark Z. Danielewski
(I'm allowed to have one repeating author...)

4.

Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
(My copy got fucked up.)

5.

Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe

6.

4.48 Psychosis - Sarah Kane
(Any of her plays would suffice.)
She wrote that she was attracted to the stage because "theatre has no memory, which makes it the most existential of the arts...I keep coming back in the hope that someone in a darkened room somewhere will show me an image that burns itself into my mind."

7.

Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) - Tom Vanderbilt

Read read read.

Monarch

World domination? I'll leave that to the religious nuts and the Republicans, thank you.

Babies Want God's Love

Fevers are not my best friends. It's not so much the illness - the hot and cold sweats, the heavy headaches, the dizziness, the want to sleep - but the dangerously vivid fever dreams. In the last 24 hours, I've had enough of these fever dreams; I've slept for 19 of those hours. Even the implications of my dreams caused me to wake up this morning imagining something so different, if I made the choice today, my life would be entirely different, but not at all if I don't give in to it. Last night's dreams led me from person to person - in terms of my relationship with them. I dreamed about my mom - and my father. I dreamed that he still knows how to take care of me, and he understands me completely, seeing me as I am. I dreamed about boyfriends, about my childhood best friend, and I struggled over the pseudo-memory of friends who have left me. It was like an evaluation of my life - through relationships. Lately, I've realized how reserved I can be, how intimidated I become around certain people. Now I see that I was always a quiet child, scared of people and judgment and happiness. It's only recently that I found out that human connection is key to my self-discovery and a fulfillment stronger than anything else, which I've completely denied. The change is happening, and I will take these dreams and save them in my box of knots.