Egress/Regress

Postcards from the stars

While lying in bed today (sometime staying home sick just needs to be done), I reread Carrie Fisher's Postcards from the Edge. Seriously guys, aside from the whole awesome Star Wars thing, she's a brilliant writer. Scaldingly funny. I was in a terrible mood when I started reading, and then I was snort-laughing like a dork.
-

"Don't you remember me?" asked Tom.
"No," said April blankly. "Should I?"
"We dated in the Hamptons a few summers ago," Tom said, then waited expectantly for her flash of recognition.
April looked quite embarrassed. "I'm afraid I don't," she said.
"Did you have sex?" Rachel asked Tom.
"I believe we tried, but I was..." He searched for the right words, then snapped his fingers as he found it. "Impotent!" he said brightly, as if it was a good word, like "tan."

-

She always ended up with guys like this, in relationships she likened to being partners on a school science fair project. She always felt like calling them up afterward and saying, "You left your beaker and your petri dish here. Do you want me to bring it to class tomorrow?"

-

not even near the funniest parts, just pages I flipped to. oh how I love this book. go read it. Also, my birthday is November 23rd.

9,023 words

I've been looking at photography for the past hour or so. mmm. I can't tell if I'm more put to shame or inspired.

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/6202426/
Gun Metal II - Elisa Lazo DeSantos

http://brucesilverstein.com/Vintage/LartigueRennePerle,Paris,1931.JPG
- Jaques Lartigue

http://brucesilverstein.com/Clarence%20John%20Laughlin/Passage%20to%20Neverland.JPG
Passage to Neverland - C.J. Laughlin

http://brucesilverstein.com/AK/Kerteszdistortion157.JPG
Distortion #157 - Andre Kertez

http://brucesilverstein.com/WernerBishop/PAR78756.jpg
Zebra Woman - Werner Bischof

http://brucesilverstein.com/Bill%20Arnold/ba12.JPG
-Bill Arnold

http://www.cindysherman.com/images/photographs/UntitledFilmStill33.jpeg
Untitled Film Still #33 - Cindy Sherman

http://www.temple.edu/photo/photographers/arbus/arbus_teenage_couple.jpg
Teenage Couple on Hudson Street, NYC - Diane Arbus

http://brucesilverstein.com/BarbaraMorgan/BMKick.JPG
Letter to the World (Kick) - Barbara Morgan

I miss you.

this is the first time I can ever remember being seriously ill without having my mother at my bedside. She's in California on a business trip with New York Sea Grant, she'll be gone another six days, I think.

I need someone to take care of me, I'm a very sick little girl right now and I want to cry. This is the first I've been out of bed in 24 hours. Hold me.

.

I am too alive to think right now. I wish I knew how to skate.

pi ARRRRR squared*

woo! took the SAT I today, it wasn't as bad as I expected, and I emerged from it to find an abso-fucking-lutey gorgeous day. glenn, yowzaface, and I made voyages to Cedar Beach (yeah M.S.) and some random-pothead-shack-in-the-woods in Shoreham. I spun around in circles with my shoes off drinking a 40 (okay, technically a 32) of root beer.

but i'm running on three or so hours of sleep (just could not sleep last night) and I'm supposed to go out with some people now. ::cries with exhaustion::

also, there was a pirate math question on the SAT. awesome.
* I know, that was bad, but I love it.

thank you persephone

I just woke up from a dream about a drunken stairs party with a bunch of pirates. awesome.

The media arts show was quite cool. I got five red dot stickers (they're like gold stars, only... not.) and some nice evaluation comments. Although I was really pissed off at myself for leaving behind my crazy photo manipulation, it made me all warm and fuzzy to know that bad-smelling photo teachers and cross-eyed fashion photographers like my stuff. And there was some really cool student work too. The photography by this guy, George Kalivas, was really awesome, using camera tricks and painting on the actual photo to make dotted outline people alive. Crazy.

I'm taking the SAT I at 8 o'clock tomorrow morning. I should be freaking out? or something.

Also, it was relatively nice out today, actually spring-like. Yes.

she sang...

Tomorrow I'm going to the Media Arts Show for HS students at Five Towns College. I'm just now getting my shit together, printing out nice copies of the pictures I'm showing on my 3'x6' space. Here they are:

also, I officially have no sense of direction. I wandered helplessly around SUNYSB looking for Noodles' dorm until he found/rescued me. I need to start carrying a compass (or my mother) with me at all times.

you said you almost dropped me

so then I did, and I got mud on my shoes.

(click for a larger image)

Today was a red and black day. Aside from egomania, I wanted to document this outfit in my slippery memory. Photographed while blasting the White Stripes, as I'm a sucker for obvious appropriate..ness. Two days of proper school attendence for the first time in two weeks. Mono may just have to give up the ghost before I do. Fortunately there's only next week to get through, then vacation. But I have lots to do before then.

overheard on the bus:

"So I said to her, listen lady. I'm not running a fucking mile. I smoke. Do you want me to hack up a goddamn lung out there? So I walked it. Eighteen minutes and twenty-four seconds, and that bitch had to wait for me."

things I learned today:

- British accents are hot. very hot. Even when found in bad Sandra Bullock rehab-romance-dramatic-comedy films watched in health class.

- Amy reminds me of Ms Kirshner, and vice versa.

- When one agrees to go to prom, it would help if one could find out when said prom is. *

- Taft got made fun of a lot. no big stick for him I guess.

- most of the flashes from my photo class are broken. bah.

- phone sex is? considered cheating in some circles.

- gaussian elimination and matrices are fun!

- the paintings on the ceiling of the cave of Altamira, Spain, were actually first discovered by Don Mercelino de Sautuola's daughter, Maria, in 1879. She looked up. It makes me wonder how often/rarely ceilings are really looked at. Unless I happen to be there. I tend to stare at walls/ceilings of a room I haven't been in before.

- I'm taking the SAT on Saturday, and maybe I should study?

- lists are not as entertaining as they theoretically seem. I think I abandon this plan ...now.

* breaking news. senior prom is june 24th. which seems really really late. like, whoa. dunno if I'm gonna go to junior prom. the theme is las vegas. I'm tempted to make a trashy dress of cards. woo.

bend to squares

I should be angry with myself for not going to school today. I am. But I still didn't go. Instead I lay in bed, listening to the roofers working above my head. Hammers pounding thirteen feet away. Footsteps hovering over me while I half-dreamed in animation about the Dead Marshes and escaping elves.

Time is slipping away from me, so quickly. I need to change my ways, somehow. Become one of those enthusiastic people. I want to learn. I do, I do. Repetition for emphasis, a stylistic device. But I don't know how to take this situation and mutate it to my will.

I am going to find a way. I need to, so I will.

In the mean time, I am here with my Death Cab for Cutie and mountainous piles of paper, trying to think of things to say.

no time no time no time not i me.

Lately my mother and I have been on the verge of strangling each other, Homer Simpson style, at the slightest provocation. I'm trying to understand why this is. We usually get along really well. My mom's a cool lady. But we both seem to be in kind of a slump lately, looking around at our lives and questioning the validity of it. She is faced with another ten years (at least) of working, and attempting to find a way to afford the college...ing of Pasty Amazing and myself. I'm just a pissed off teenager.

I keep thinking the light in my room is flickering. My brother is learning about electrons while singing "Killer Tofu" by the Beets. The magic of learning.

School again tomorrow. Fun. It's 11 p.m. Sunday night. Coming to that sickening Sunday realization that I have so much work to do before I can allow myself sweet, sweet sleep. Augh.

low.

destruction and introspection ride in on the same breed of white horses razed in pussy ranch dilattante plantation
like conceptual art, but not.
a new thought wave of purple seas and chocolate shortage overflow, clinging clinging clinging not to rocks of reason but of the ebb and tides of loss of thought of this mystical allusion to mental capacity. struggling so hard to make nonsense with proper spelling, fantatic fantatic.
guns n roses on my radio...

... that awkward stream of smudged eyeliner across my knuckles. pins and needles, let me prick you clean, let me pick you apart like this fucking drama queen you want me? an empty wallet and a hard place. goodbye again? how are these monitorings sliding in ice cube confectionaries- like eels or like shunned exes?
Oh, god. (no capital g for you babe)
I need to find my way to warmer nights. To forge fire in blackened skies, let stars burn under my skin. Change and shake these dusted frosting mires from my limbs enfettered. give a toasty midnight superglue fix to the heart in mine. my sonic beat is tuned so close to frequent frequencies of

I can hear it, and it makes me cry. drizzle pre-coital tears along my cheeks, apologetic for this... broken. no more? dyslexia is funny, when it isn't you.

I am going to scream, you are going to hear it. I am going to scream, you are going to know it. Me.

I believe in a thing called Love.

this welcome message is configurable. My enter key stops working from time to time. Metallica is screeching through my speakers, there's nothing I can do about it. (this is no longer true. Interpol now soothes my still-waking ears.) Ross is twenty hours away from leaving again without seeing me, the bastard. I feel the urge to go bowling, and my mother just came home with the ingredients for White Russians. She's sneezing all the way upstairs, I can always hear her. She screams like the end of the world. Today is the first day of spring, there is snow on the ground, this is somehow infinitely sad to me. I should be outside, my coward boots are stifled by the crunch and slushel. That's the sound that sloppy snow makes. Slushel, slushel, and a whine in my child head. You don't realize how many line breaks you make until your enter key dies. Oh well, oh well. (at the bottom of the ocean she dwells... Stella.) When I was young I wanted a different name, I still want a different name. I made lists. Lists with little dashes before each name. Stella, Elana, Lisette. I've always wanted to start introducing myself with a new name, see how well it worked. I haven't heard the name Samantha spoken in my ear enough times. I am going to put on my philly-skinhead-thrift-store-steel-toe boots and Do Something. I need glam rock and loud excitement. Too many cobwebs in my soul.

beware bulleted lists

due to my increasing sense of .. futility/cynicism/boredom with high school, I'm going to try and document something(s) I learned each day that I actually found interesting, relevant, weird, etc...
or maybe I won't, but I like the idea.

timore e verità

Last night my Italian class at SUNYSB went to a lecture by Stefano Vaccara, on the state of the media/journalism in Italy, and the incredible extent of political parties' control of such. The media system has essentially remained the same since Mussolini, who, I learned, started out as a journalist. It's scary. The Italian Prime Minister, Burlesconi, has such control over the media... it's scary. But Vaccara made a point of saying that if Burlesconi suddenly decided to take off, spend the rest of his life on some Pacific island, the problem would not go away. The system of "editors of responsibility" that remains violates the Italian constitution, written in 1948.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/3324569.stm

a memory

I was about eight years old, which would make my cousin Kate around fourteen. Maybe we were a little older, a little younger.
We were in the driveway of my grandmother's old house, talking while I played with something with wheels from the garage...

This was pretty rare I suppose. I was a shy little kid, and Kate was probably in the leave-me-the-fuck-alone portion of adolescence.
"You have nice eyebrows," she said.

One lifted in slight confusion. "Thanks," I mumbled. I was always mumbling.

"Really. Don't pluck them."

I wondered to myself why I would ever want to.

"Well, maybe in high school a little. They're nice." Then one or the other of us found something better to do.

A few years later is when I started having mild (self-proclaimed anyway) trichotillomania. Compulsive hair pulling. Photos of me from middle school show eyebrows thrown out of whack, drawn away from the bridge of my nose by anxiety's fingernails. I've toned it down quite a bit since then. Periodically I look in the mirror and realize, I need a break.

In the next few years, I will defeat this, don't worry. I will hide the damn tweezers.

rebels from birth

last night my mother presented me with some awesome old pictures. This is of Lea and I, in 4th and 1st? grades respectively. Her brother and I were in the school orchestra concert, which took place at the high school I now attend. aren't we cute?

Here's the story of a lovely lady,

...Who was bringing up three very lovely girls.
All of them had hair of gold, like their mother,
The youngest one in curls.

Here's the story, of a man named Brady,
Who was busy with three boys of his own.
They were four men, living all together,
Yet they were all alone.

(the brady bunch theme)
-
something that was, something that will be, something about someone, something about me.
-
He was singing to himself as we walked by, this music city in the shadowed afternoon. I thought I recognized the tune. A walkie-talkie full of static pressed to dark sweating lips. Small white children, frightened and suburban, gathered near a van, near a park, near hysterics. Mumble mumble strange looks (don't give those eyes to me! no no sir) unlike this ...mitigated panic.

I skirt-walked past, pretending not to see. Pretending to be lost in hip conversation, hip conversion. in this heart the social gospel dies.

Hours later, short term memory is a lost cause. If I were more cruel (read: more mindful) I would've walked on the other side of the street. He isn't singing now, not to himself, not to nobody no-how.
I keep walking. A small distance taps me on the shoulder, quietly lets me know, my companions have been mired, snared.

Sometimes, he whispers, I think about killing myself.

{insert her awkward glance and attempt at cheerful... ness.}

I am frozen with my icecream cone. Unexplained like his clean blue shirt, I am somehow four feet tall. My favorite purple jelly sandals, empty Belle pocketbook, while Cappucino Crunch dribbles on my dirty fingernails. Regression, baby. The sight of those stuttering desperate eyes hurts my head. Let's not think about it.

She's doing her best, maintaining a sunny disposition in the face of a demented weatherman. Asking the questions, dancing that pinprick razorblade line of a conversation with instability.

I'm waiting, a safe ten feet away, and I wonder how long this takes.

code crack

Editing is addicting. Lines of unimportant html slide themselves behind closed eyes. Maybe I should get good at this, simply to justify this dependency.

un nouveau chapitre, une nouvelle page

yet again, I pack my babble bags of misguided words and ship out for new adventurous islands. Sean gives camp-counselorly advice, telling in hushed tones of "total artistic control over your blogging." So here I am. Let's see how this goes.