Let's Do This

In honor of MLK Jr., This:

2010-01-18T08:25:00.001-08:00

"Everybody can be great. Because anybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. . .You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love." --MLK Jr.

Every morning I dream of Coq-a-Vin

2009-12-12T05:09:00.001-08:00

If I have learned anything from this trip, it's that roosters don't say "cock-a-doodle-doo" or "coq-a-ri-co" or even "keek-a-ree-kee." They say, "I hate you. You will never sleep again" and they say it ALL DAY LONG.

Just a moment

2009-12-07T05:28:00.000-08:00

I am waiting for a handsome man to cook me my Tipofo breakfast of scrambled eggs, refried black beans, avocado, and fried plantains while I listen to a man hawking platanos at 7:30 in the morning by riding around town in the back of a pickup yelling "borato!" through a bull horn.

Tengo Sueño

2009-12-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamt that I was in the belly of a whale. I entered through its mouth and rode deep into the back of its throat. Its tongue was pink. I rode by its tonsils. They looked like party balloons. When I was deep inside its stomach, it was salty and I was not afraid.

Yesterday I broke some basic rules of traveling. I went into a new country by myself with no map, no guidebook, not even the name of a hostel where I could stay. I had the stupid idea of getting to "a beach," but I didn´t know which one. I found myself after dark on a bus leaving San Salvador towards a city that I knew nothing about, hoping to find a hotel where I could at least have access to the internet and find out where I was. I could not have told you what direction I was going in. It was stupid, and even though I kept telling myself that this was one of the stupidest things I had ever done and that I would never ever do it again, some little dark corner of my mind knew that I was full of shit, that I would absolutely do it again because I secretly liked it, that whatever was going to happen was going to be something that had never happened before.

On the bus, I sat next to a girl my age and we talked about what you´re supposed to talk about: I am from California, but I was born in Georgia. I am 29. I do not have children. I am not married. I have a boyfriend. I am traveling for 6 weeks. My boyfriend is working. I started my trip in Guatemala. I am leaving in a week a half. I do not know how long I will be in El Salvador. (I never get tired of asking or being asked these questions). But then the conversation changed into "Where are you going to stay?" and "Aren´t you scared?" and I told her that yes, I was scared, but that it wasn´t usually like this. When I asked her if she knew of any hotels in Son Sonate, where she was from, she told me "the only hotels I know of are hourly hotels." Then she offered to let me stay with her family. I hesitated and she said "if you trust me, then you can stay with me, but if you don´t, you don´t have to." In Spanish, to say you trust someone you say "Tengo confianza en ella" or "I have trust in her." Except "confianza" can mean three things: confidence, trust, or familiarity. I said yes, not because I was scared to look for my own hotel or because I was afraid of hurting her feelings, but because I knew it would be something I might not have the chance to do again.

So I went home with the girl on the bus. She was short and had red hair, pale skin, and freckles. She wore dark eyeliner and tight jeans like any run-of-the-mill Indie hipster in Oakland. One of the first questions she asked me was whether or not I used bronzing powder. The bus ride took about an hour, and while I was staring out the window, Rosalba was staring at me. We walked through dark streets to her mother´s house and we ate tamales that tasted like hot dogs and had bones in them. Her dog´s name was Beethoven, after the movie. She brought over friends and family and they laughed at my broken Spanish and were rightfully concerned by my stupidity at traveling alone after dark in a country that I knew nothing about. After they left, she and I talked about our novios and how handsome Leonardo Di Caprio is (she had a small picture of him hanging over her bed). We slept in twin beds in a pink room like she and her sisters had done when she was a kid. My bed had clean, thick white sheets, and I slept through the roosters and the dogs barking and the little kid with the air horn walking up and down the street all morning. Each was just the beginning of another dream.

Stories from Guatemala

2009-11-22T11:21:00.000-08:00

A few things I want to write about. They are not chronological. I didn't have time to proofread, either.

*I forfeited watching the sun rise of the pyramids of Tikal this morning (and paying $35 for it) in order to take a hot shower. I'm in the northern part of Guatemala at the ruins of Tikal. There are only three hotels in the 122 square mile park, and I forked over $40 to have my own hotel room and my own private bath with, yes, hot water in the morning from 6 am to 9 am. Forty dollars here is more than I usually spend in a day, sometimes two. My favorite hostals have only cost $4 a night. So I am living in luxury for a day. I had a fresh strawberry milkshake with my dinner last night.

*A few days ago, I was dropped off in what felt like the middle of nowhere at a hostal with no internet and no hot water either. We had electricity from 6 to 10 at night in a little open air pavilion with tables around it where we all ate dinner together. Afterward, we danced salsa in the middle with the guys who worked there. During the day we swam in a series of limestone pools that drop into one another or we went into caves holding candles that we had to hold above the water while we swam from room to room. I came down with a little bit of a cold and stayed an extra day.

*Last week, I was in Xela, a supposedly "European" city surrounded by volcanoes, but really it was full of exhaust and trash. I didn't like it, and it was really spoiled for me when, in the middle of the day on a busy street, a man came up behind me and put both his arms around me tightly, like he knew me. He wasn't drunk and he didn't grab my small backpack I was carrying. I think he was just fucking with me. I pushed him off of me, yelling at him. It sucked. I've lived in Oakland, I've lived in bad neighborhoods of San Francisco. I know how not to get my wallet stolen, how to live in a neighborhood alongside drug dealers and prostitutes, and how to say "no" to an aggressive beggar, but I felt like a target in Xela. I left early. I felt like it was a matter of time before something fucked-up happened to me there. I liked leaving.

*Guatemala makes me feel like I work for OSHA. I am constantly thinking "that is dangerous!" My grandpa would have had a field day here pointing out all of the dangers. I, too, want to put handrails everywhere. I stood on the edge of a very very very steep temple this morning, 1000 feet up, and could have easily fallen to my death. Last week I climbed an active volcano. People roasted marshmallows over the open coals. Big hot rocks were tumbling down the mountain a few feet from us. Chicken buses take turns so sharply they go up on two wheels. Let's go jump off this slippery cliff into the water!

Guatemala

2009-11-10T12:43:00.000-08:00

I have not written for months because, well, I didn't feel like it. This field has been lying fallow. Now I am in Guatemala on a six week trip through the country, and I feel like writing again. Here we are. Here are some things I want to tell you, somebody, anybody:

*Guatemalans get around on old US school buses that have been painted bright colors and christened with names like "Gracias A Dios" which are painted above the front window. The drivers play loud reggaeton and drive them much much much faster than Mr. Stackhouse (my old busdriver) ever did. Most of the riders on the bus are Mayan women who carry large bundles on their heads.

*How cool is it that there is a country where the majority of the population wears its traditional dress? Seriously. How cool is that? The indigenous population wins my World's Best Dressed award. None of these folks are intentionally or inadvertently wearing some some trickle-down runway fashion from a few years ago. When a Mayan wears a poncho, it's because her mama and grandmama and great-grandma did, and because she probably wove the cloth herself! And to make things even cooler, each region and town has its own particular design that they weave so families wear similar outfits, like the Scotish used to do with their tartans in the olden days. Everyone looks great, too. There is little better in the world than a 4-foot tall, seventy-year old woman in pigtails. Mostly women wear the traditional dress, but I have seen a few men wearing hot pink woven trousers and vest with gold thread. Google it. I like riding the "chicken buses" because I can check out the variety of cool outfits. If it weren't insulting for a Gringa to wear Mayan clothes, I'd definitely sport a huipul.

*As much as I like checking out the Mayans's suave outfits, Mayan kids like ogling my lip piercing. First they look at me out of curiosity, but when they notice the fake diamond on my lip, they all look shocked. They tug on their Mom's skirt and point. I never stare back, but I do keep my face turned in their direction just to let them get a good look.

*Yesterday I began my Spanish lessons. I'm staying in Quetzaltenango, or Xela, with a Guatemalan woman in her seventies and her daughter and three grandsons. Gloria feeds me well and is insulted that I only ate three pancakes for breakfast. Today I am going to my first ever yoga class in Spanish. Yesterday I bought three copies of Cosmopolitan en Español from the mid-1990s at a used bookstore. Eventhough my Spanish isn't good enough to really understand exactly what the article is saying, since all women's magazines basically just recycle stories every six months, I understand a lot more than I would otherwise. I can't really bring them in to school though, since I'd feel a little uncomfortable asking my (male) teacher to help me translate "Six Sex Secrets You Really Need to Know."

Update

2009-06-18T13:19:00.001-07:00

It's done. I finished my MA Thesis, packed up my car, and now I'm here in Big Sur. I've been here for over a month now. All I do is read, play the guitar, go to work, and drink martinis. I have never been happier.

I'd like to say that I'll write more soon, but we'll see.

...Oh, you know I will.

Taking (things to) a dump

2009-04-25T19:15:00.000-07:00

Today I was talking to my mother on the phone. I told I was getting rid of almost everything I owned. All my furniture, a trunkload full of clothes and household things, three paper grocery bags of books. I like my stuff; I'm not a packrat, I use most of it, but I'm moving on Friday and there's not going to be any room for all of it. This is a big deal for me.

My mom, who is a packrat, can relate. She said, "Wow. It's like a colon cleanse!"

How poetic: I am getting rid of a lot of old shit.

I'm a little concerned...

2009-04-21T22:20:00.000-07:00

Central Park

2009-04-15T20:58:00.001-07:00

I've been watching a lot of Woody Allen movies lately. One can only write/work for so many hours a day, and then one watches Manhattan or Celebrity or Manhattan Murder Mystery and is comforted by the fact that there is someone more neurotic in the world.

All these movies have reminded me of my two visits to New York City: August 2001 and November 2001. The first one was a graduation trip with my then best friend and boyfriend. We drove up in her car. I bought a cigar at the gas station in the wal-mart parking lot. That was retarded. I used the nastiest bathroom I had ever seen in New Jersey. I was stoned and driving through the Brooklyn tunnel and I thought I was accidentally going to veer off the road and lead us all to our death. This was the height of my heroin phase. Don't get the wrong idea; I've never even seen heroin, much less done it. Rather, I was listening to the Velvet Underground all the time and reading lots of books about junkies. It was the beginning of a nasty downturn in my life that crescendoed (or de-crescendoed) in November.

Tickets were really cheap in November, and I was thinking about taking an Americorps job there. My dad suggested I pay the $60 and go check it out again and see if I could make it work. I stayed in a hostel, ate broccoli pizza, and mainly just walked around. One amazing night included a phenomenally bad rendition of "Crazy" by Patsy Cline in one room at a bar, and in the other a streak of blind luck at pool that allowed me to hold a table and keep playing game after game with a bunch of dudes. I wore only bright colors then: a hot pink tank top, a green scarf, rainbow socks, and powder blue mary jane sneakers, and always always a string of indian glass beads I had bought in Amsterdam.

I was profoundly sad like I had never been and never have been since. I had a broken heart and I was very lonely. One bright moment of the trip was a simple, shy, sweet boy sitting across from me on the subway who I saw reading the title of the Ladybug Transistor cd I had in my hand. I blushed, and said something about the peanut shells on the floor. He got off and looked back at me, and it made me happy for weeks.

Yesterday, my boyfriend and I were talking about New York and I dug out a journal entry from that trip. I was sad, walking around, and I just decided I'd sit in Central Park for the day. I sat there watching these kids play soccer, and I couldn't understand why they were just happy.

11/17/01

I'm going to try to organize these thoughts that I've been thinking for a long time. I don't think I'm a good enough writer yet to convey what I mean, but I'm going to try. When things get really bad, I often have the same epiphanal realization that the way we think about life is just all entertainment. When nothing gives you pleasure, and you're searching so desperately for something to make you happy, it is easy and logical to think that sports, reading, school, even humanitarian work isn't motivated by your fate in life, but rather something to distract you from a recurring and overarching wish to die. Maybe this is true. Maybe life is like going to a shitty matinee. You would rather get up and leave, but you've already paid the money so you might as well stay. I know this is a shitty metaphor, but it seems like so many people enjoy the matinee. Is life only worth living because it is better than death? Because we're too lazy to just count our losses and skip town?

But, of course, it is far more complicated than that. It seems like so many people don't leave. And a lot of intelligent people really enjoy life. Perhaps if I had proper chemicals, I would too. I suppose I'm stuck on the question: what if it isn't all for entertainment? Not that there is necessarily a god, but what if there is some good reason to live and live well that I, in my small 21 years, have yet to realize? Is there such a thing as real love? Do children really change everything? Perhaps I was created simply to make the world a better place for others to live in. If so, then what can I do to realize this? I'm also aware that kids don't want to die. They just live and enjoy themselves and cry when they hurt.

I wish I could find peace with some way of thinking of the world. I know this: that there is something about love--humanitarian love--and Jesus, etc. were real nice guys. I know that restrictions do not make your life better, but more complicated, and I know that most people, nay, all people are doing the best they can. Most people just exist. And they're trying to do what will make them happy. I wish I felt more of a connection with humanity. I want my life to be dedicated to others, and not just a few people, but a lot of people who need me to be who I am. Maybe this is already the case and I don't realize it, but it's not the way I could hope it to be.

Does it get better than little girls playing soccer? What about the smell of Aveda pomade? I like how Biff Brount is in The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Decides to drink a glass of water and does it.

[heart]
Susanna

P.S. I moved to SF and everything changed. I've been, basically, happy ever since.

Names I Have Given My Cat

2009-04-12T13:08:00.001-07:00

My cat's name is Theo. That was the name they gave him at the Alameda SPCA, where I first met him. Actually, we met online. I saw his photo, and it was love at first sight. I went to meet him the next day, and he charmed me by hissing at the lady whom I also didn't like. He head-butted my shin, and the rest, they say, is history.

It felt wrong to change his name, but I filled it out. Theo's official name is:

Theodore Underpants Randolph Wonderful

You can write it "Theodore U. R. Wonderful"

Here's a somewhat chronological progression:

Thebes
Theebies
Handsome
Taco
Sweetheart
Theodorable
Old Deuteronomy (thanks to my brother's friend, Norm)
Dr. Cuddles
Puddle O'Cuddles
Doogie Meowser Kitt Dee

I'll add more when I remember them.

Update: April 14th.

I forgot about:

Fluffle-up-a-gus
Cuddle Me Timbers

Yes!

2009-04-06T21:54:00.001-07:00

see more pwn and owned pictures

I call it

2009-04-05T10:53:00.000-07:00

You call it coffee.

I call it writing juice.

Sing to me O Muse!

2009-04-01T21:04:00.000-07:00

Writing gods, accompany me. I am entering the beyond. Let me not appear too simplistic or too full-of-shit. May my research prove relevant. May my argument amuse and hold together. May I finish on time and not be fatigued. May my computer last through the month. May I not be redundant or too clever. May textual proof emerge and may scholarly justification exist and be something I have already read. May my readers love my work and yet give me good feedback. May my body stay healthy, my sleep be undisturbed, and my bank account remain positive. May I be proud even if only two people will ever read it!

I must learn this again and again:

Nothing is more important than a clear thesis and paragraphs that progress logically with clear topic sentences.

Recipes for Mama--#1

2009-03-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

My Mama has had a hell of a time these past two years. My mama married my father when she was 18. He died when she was 56. This has to be the hardest time in her life. Her life and her self have been torn apart, broken, split, shattered, what have you, and she has a major wound that she has to heal from. We all do, but I think she has it the worst. I know when she reads this, she's going to think that I'm announcing to the world that she is having a hard time. Actually, that's not quite true. Considering the degree of trauma that she had to endure, she has been able to get up in the morning, walk out the door, and walk through the world pretty damn well. I want to be clear, though, that returning back to life as normal after a traumatic event has nothing to do with personal strength and isn't really something to applaud. Sometimes it's wiser to stay in bed and cry. Americans forget this. Anyway, all I'm saying is that my Mom has had a hard go of it, as anyone would, and I'm not making any judgement good or bad as to how she has dealt with my father's nightmarish death.

Let's go to another topic: Am I really Southern anymore? The end of January commemorated my seven year San Frantastic anniversary. My accent resembles that of a news anchor more than a person on the street I grew up on. I actually leave the house regularly without drying my hair, and I only wear lipstick sometimes. I drink unsweetened hot herbal tea way more often than sweet iced tea, and my favorite fried food is a jalapeno. And yes, sometimes, when people are really friendly to me and I don't know them well I think they want something. But I still have long hair, use moisturizer religiously, smile at strangers on the sidewalk, park a linen chest at the foot of my bed, call my Mama "Mama," and--the one really matters--if someone is upset, sad, tired, happy, or at my house, I comfort them with food.

But out here in California, at least among the folks I know, food that comforts is also good for you. At home, comfort food is chicken n' dumplins, country fried steak, honey-baked ham, grandma's green beans, mashed potatoes and gravy, macaroni and cheese casserole, sweet potatoes glazed with brown sugar, black olives from the can, cornbread, biscuits and apple butter, pecan pie, and deviled eggs. (Actually, they're "aggravated eggs" because grandma, as a good Baptist, didn't like to even say the name of the evil one.) These are foods that I grew up eating, not every night, but regularly. And they are crazy (!) delicious, but if you are sick or sad, these foods aren't going to make you feel better, and they are going to hurt you in the long run.

I want to comfort my Mama with good food that makes her feel good and helps her body heal and be strong so she can walk around and do what she needs to do. Since I've lived in California, I have, over time, drastically changed my eating habits. Now I think of comfort food as food that's simple to digest, cooling or warming, satisfies your appetite and makes you feel good all day or evening. It's soup: veggie-heavy broth-based soup (noodles optional), miso soup with tiny cubes of tofu that you drink out of the bowl, pineapple-broth vietnamese soup with snapper. It's cold salads with gentle dressings like garbanzo bean salad with cilantro, corn, and egg and sweet miso dressing. It's sushi: cucumber sticks in the middle of rice rolled in salty, crisp seaweed. It's yogurt, fruit, and granola: the holy trinity of breakfast that tastes awesome, quells hunger, and makes you feel cold and good until lunch.

I know you're thinking I've got all "uppity" and gone fancy, but with the exception of the pineapple-broth vietnamese soup, these foods are easier to make than almost all of the Southern food I mentioned above.

Mama, I can't be there to cook for you, so, as I promised, here are some recipes that taste good, are easy to make with ingredients that you can get in Georgia, and are good for you. All I ask is that you put it in your mouth and chew.

Bean salad:
(I eat this all the time)

1 can S&W garbanzo beans (remember S & W because that's my initials; they are the best.)
1 can S&W kidney beans
3 stalks celery sliced (you can buy celery at any market. Make sure it's turgid, not limp, it's not super-dark green [that'll taste leathery], and that the ends aren't brown)
1 carrot, grated (Organic carrots taste better, and they're only slightly more expensive. It takes 2 seconds to grate a carrot, 1 second to wash the grater.)

Add some fresh cilantro (the cheapest, awesomest fresh herb) if available

Stock up on slivered almonds, currants (more delicious than raisins, not too expensive), and pumpkin seeds (way better than sunflower) at a health-food store with bulk bins (Whole Foods, I mean Whole Paycheck). Keep them in the freezer. You can add these three things to any salad and it's wayyyy better.

A chopped apple (fuji or pink lady, the rest are often mealy or too sour) is a nice touch.

That's probably good, but if you want to take it to the next delicious level, add a SALTED avocado and a SALTED hard-boiled egg. Please don't overcook the egg so that it gets that depressing gray ring around the yolk. If it's still orange-y clear in the middle, you are so lucky, salt it and eat half of it right then. It will flip you out with its crazy delicious power.

Dressing:
Don't do oil and vinegar, or any vinaigrette, it will pucker your mouth and ruin the sweet wonderful thing you have going.

You can find a SWEET miso dressing, or mix honey with one you get at the store
If you can find Girard's brand, they make a good "Champagne" dressing (there's no booze in it, though, sorry)
Or you can take that egg, that avocado, some plain GOOD yogurt (buy the fancy stuff on this one), some soy sauce, and honey and mix it up and that will work too. I mix SriRacha, or rooster sauce, a hot chili garlic sauce in there too, but I know you don't like spicy things.

Toss the hell out of it before you spoon it into your bowl. Leftovers are perfect for breakfast (try eating salad for breakfast and see how your day goes), but will keep for 24-48 hours.

You will love me for this one. I will become your favorite child.

"Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food" --Hippocrates

A weekend is four days

2009-03-10T23:40:00.001-07:00

This weekend my car got towed from a mall parking lot because I left it overnight. It cost me $457 dollars to get it back. I left the same car in another mall parking lot overnight four days later because I am proud and have a sense of justice. It was still there today and things are made whole again.

This year I have been waking up a few minutes earlier every day in order to have my brain be all spit-shiny fresh for longer in the day (I work better in the morning). I'm at 7:15 am now, but this weekend I woke up at 5:40 am one day, 1:00 pm another, 12;00 the next day, and 11:00 another.

I've been working at least two hours a day since January 6th on my masters thesis, but in the last five days I have read only one essay. I forgot about two quizzes I was supposed to take for Spanish class.

This weekend I kept forgetting to put my make up on. I let my hair air dry and I wore my boyfriend's ripped up t-shirt. A Smithsonian photographer spotted us behind the counter at the Henry Miller library and made me read to Eric for an hour while she photographed us.

I am not making enough money and I need more work but this weekend I went out to eat and it was on me.

This weekend I'm not afraid of what I'm supposed to do, write, or pay. I'm in love. I have been for awhile.

This weekend was perfect.

I can't help it, really.

2009-01-27T21:50:00.000-08:00

I'm just kind of in love with Jimmy Carter. I heard him today on the radio, touting his new book We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land and he was also on the Daily Show. He's so just Georgia. He reminds me of my grandfather (Papa). He's lovely. Really.

Our grandoldgrossfather

2009-01-27T07:08:00.000-08:00

So I am writing my graduate thesis now. My MA program is only two years long, and this is the beginning of the final semester. I have finished my coursework, and the only thing I have left to do is write a 60-100 page paper. Last semester I had to write three 20-page papers (plus a 15 page thesis prospectus) in about a month and a half, so three months to whip out 60-100 pages seems definitely doable.

I'm writing on the connection between James Joyce's Ulysses and Derek Walcott's Omeros. Everyone, with the exception of my professors and one other graduate student, hasn't known who Walcott is. He won the Nobel Prize in 1992 for this achingly, drippingly beautiful pseudo-Homeric epic Omeros.
(Walcott painted the watercolor on the front). He's a Caribbean poet from the small island St. Lucia. I like writing about islands because more often than not their cultural and national boundaries are determined by their geography. Culture seems neatly divided into little dots on a blue background. Plus, the authors are surrounded by the ocean, and isolated from whatever is "out there." Alienation bred in paradise? Sign me up please. I love it.

Reading Omeros makes you ache. You're washing a dish and poetry just falls out of your mouth. Here are a few lines, chosen randomly. Read them more than once:

. . .The river stops talking,
the way silence suddenly turns off a market.

The wind squatted low in the grass. A man kept walking
steadily towards him, and he knew by the walk it
was himself in his father, the white teeth, the widening hands.

***

And Istanbul's spires, each dome a burnoosed Turk,
swathed like a Saracen, with the curved scimitar
of a crescent moon over it, or the floating muck

of a lowering Venice probed by a gondolier,
rippling lines repeating some pilgrim's journals,
the weight of cities that I found so hard to bear;

in them was the terror of Time, that I would march
with columns at twilight, only to disappear
into a past whose history echoes the arch

of bridges sighing over their ancient canals
for a place that was not mine, since what I preferred
was not statues but the bird in the statue's hair.

***

Ahhhh, Walcott. He makes you sigh and ache at the same time. I think it's love.

BUT I am also writing about Ulysses. I was stoked to be able to reread this amazing book. I took a week off at the beginning of January to rest up my p(r)etty little brain and then I began reading a chapter every day. There are 18 chapters, but one of them is 180 pages long (I divided it into two days). A few weeks ago I actually wrote a carefully thought-out blog post about the experience of reading Ulysses, which I intended to type up this morning, but for some reason I have lost it. It involved ballerinas! How sad. Something about transcendence too.

I have hit the other side of that transcendence. For the past two days I have been locked in the drunken, absinthe-induced trip to the brothel that reads like a nightmare. It's absolutely filthy (probably why Ulysses was banned in so many countries for so long; interestingly, Ireland was the last country to lift the ban in the 1960s) and bizarre, and goddamn it that is exactly the kind of thing that I like. For some reason though, it drove me absolutely insane and I am seriously glad that it's over.

I read first thing in the morning, and by 11 o'clock the first day I was craving a beer. No, I am not an alcoholic and I don't just booze it up willy nilly before noon. At one point, Bloom, one of the protagonists, loses himself in a reverie induced by the red triangle on a Bass bottle which comes to represent the tongue of a panther, a ruby on the belly of a stripper, and his wife's dally hoo-hoo. Let me give you an idea of what it is like to read this by transcribing some of my reading notes:

p539 Bloom's middle name is Paula
p540 Bloom is a woman and a cow
Bloom likes anal sex
p544 "We'll manure you Mr. Flower"
(realization of sexual desires culminates in shit. Leads to thoughts of death)
p551 Nymph has no asshole
p553 Nymph splits apart
p569 Stephen talks about his "grandoldgrossfather" who made the metal cage for
Pasiphae ["to indulge her lust for the bull"]
p571 "dreams go by contraries"
fulfills dreams
p589 Stephen must kill the priest and the king
p590 King sucks jujube
p591 "you die for your country...let my country die for me"
p597 Bloom tells Cissy Caffrey she's the "sacred lifegiver"

I really like "p551 Nymph has no asshole. . .p553 Nymph splits apart." I didn't notice that on a first reading. Joyce is funny. Earlier on Bloom goes to the national museum to look at the marble statues of the goddesses ("aids to digestion"); he wants to find out if they have an anus. But Joyce writes it like, "I wonder if they have a." The period at the end of the sentence represents the anus. Tee hee hee.

I'm glad I'm out of the brothel, though. It was too much. But it looks like I'll be going back soon; I'm going to write about male characters in drag. Yay! Wish me luck!

Work Makes Life Sweet

2008-12-15T18:18:00.000-08:00

One thing, among many, many others I have learned this semester:

If you work really really hard all day writing, things become beautiful: the writing on the back of a menu, the gray ordinary cloud, the way the ceiling intersects with the wall.

"Work makes life sweet" That's what bell hooks's grandma said.

Poor California Boys

2008-12-11T16:07:00.000-08:00

Today I was sitting in a coffee shop working on my papers and this guy comes in in shorts, a trench coat and sunglasses with white rims. He kept whistling and shaking his leg while he was sitting at the table. After reading for five minutes, he tells the guy behind the counter, "Richard. I always forget what 'ontological' means. Do you know?"

One eyed Ulysses

2008-12-07T12:52:00.000-08:00

Consider these photos:

I got them from this webpage: http://eyepatchstore.com/_wsn/page4.html, which sells eyepatches "for medical and cosmetic reasons." Eye patches are sexy. They're like one-eyed sunglasses. I love the peek-a-boo mystery, we know that there may be something, er, "unsightly" under the patch, yet it's covered by this lovely debonair opaque monocle. You get part of the "I'm blind and therefore wise" on one side and full ocular action on the other. It's like a headband with a flap. I love them. I want one. I highly encourage you to check out this webpage's gallery of eyepatch-wearers throughout history. He's my favorite:

I spent my last $10 on fake glasses in 1998 when I lived at BYU:

And my coworkers at Barnes and Noble made fun of me when they found out. How did they know? I wouldn't let them try them on.

Maybe I could rock an eyepatch for "cosmetic" purposes, as the website says. I think that I might make people worry though; I'd have to explain it all the time (the most annoying thing about my lip piercing: "did that hurt?"). I could only wear the patch around people I didn't know, like when I went grocery shopping. Or on the bus.

One time my friend's Dad almost lost his eye. She went to visit him in the hospital, and when she was in the parking lot she looked down and saw an eye patch someone had crafted with a fake eyelash glued to it. She took it as a good sign (her Dad did not lose his eye). What was the most bizarre thing about this story is that a few years before that, when I went to visit my grandfather in the hospital on the other side of the country, I went to get into my car and on the cement there was a purple velvet eyepatch with a fake eyelash glued to it.

When in Rome, ignore the locals and do as you damn well please

2008-12-06T13:29:00.000-08:00

Does anybody else hear the idiom "When in Rome do as the Romans do" like EVERY SINGLE fucking DAY? Sometimes from your own mouth?

Seriously. Is it that true? I wish we'd start saying "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" more often. Or "little pitchers have big ears." Or "You always kill the one you love." Really people!

P.S. They even say the Rome idiom in Korea and Japan.

Me Night Nurse Never Want to Plant De Corn

2008-11-12T23:39:00.001-08:00

So Andy Samberg of Saturday Night Live recently made a music video parodying young white college boys who appropriate Rastafari culture. It's absolutely hilarious, but even more, if you go to this blog to see it you can read the lyrics, and even more importantly, read the comments from the readers who helped the blogger figure out what exactly Andy Samberg was making fun of.

I'm taking a Caribbean poetry class this Fall and for our unit on dub poetry I've done a bit of research on Rastafari. What is most interesting to me is the grammar, using "I" as a plural pronoun. Check out this wikipedia page.

What I think is so amazing about this video is the number of allusions in it that only a person very familiar with Rastafari and reggae culture would get. However, it makes people want to figure them out (look at all the different comments on the guy's blog), thus it becomes a kind of educational tool. So even though it is making fun of innocent/ignorant white folks, it is simultaneously educating them/us. It makes us question the validity of appropriating other cultures' customs without true knowledge of them, but, instead of demonizing the people who do this, it just makes them just look ignorant and therefore laughable. This is really powerful. When you realize that this video is primarily intended to make people laugh, it makes you think about what tools are really effective for social change. Satire works.

Besides, there's no way I would have even know that the word "bumbleclot" is an insult in Rastafari culture that means dirty menstrual cloth if it weren't for this video. (Thanks to my brother's blog to telling me about this video.)

A cool fact , a prediction, and a hope.

2008-10-26T19:04:00.000-07:00

Cool Fact:

Long before they were known to English speakers as avocados, they were called alligator pears.

Prediction:

In fifteen years rebel kids will co-opt Swiper from Dora the Explorer.

Hope:

Hip Hop will co-opt the Rebel flag.

One Handed Questionnaire

2008-09-25T22:35:00.000-07:00

So sometimes I cook myself a nice dinner and then I sit down at the table. I wish I were the kind of person who could just taste each delicious mouthful she has cooked and ponder how to describe the taste of shallots, but the truth is that I only do that kind of shit when I can talk about it with other people. Eating each bite mindfully when I'm alone makes me feel like an anorexic on death row. I want to ENJOY my meal, not deliberate on every morsel. So, as a compromise, I often read about food while I eat. Those crazy Italians say "The man who eats alone dies alone." I like to think that I'm just having a one-sided conversation with M.F.K. Fisher or A.J. Liebling or the authors of the The Joy of Cooking.

It doesn't make any damn sense to read about Parmesan Black Pepper muffins while you're eating fried rice, but I do it all the time. Problem is that I end up sitting there a few hours later still reading about creamed cauliflower or currants, and my should-be leftovers are congealing on the stove.

So that's what I did tonight, with my Thursday-is-the-new-Saturday grad student schedule. This time though I sat at the computer, and a few glasses of wine and a few extra scoops of fried rice later, I found this website: Eat Drink One Woman She has different folks fill out a food-related questionnaire each week. Reading them in succession helps distract you from your pretty unsuccessful fried rice.

I thought it would be fun to answer the questionnaire myself. I heartily encourage you doing the same in the comments. Maybe you could do it one-handedly while you are eating? If y'all all do, I'll make a new post just for them!

***
Name: Susanna Williams

Occupation: Grad student/ English tutor

Borough: In CA we call them neighborhoods, and mine is actually a small town called Moss Beach.

Relationship status: That has nothing whatsoever to do with food and is none of your damn business.

What did you eat today?

Half carrot/half orange juice on campus
Frozen banana, vanilla soy milk, almond butter smoothie
Veggie-melt sandwich from the local pizzeria I have never eaten at
Half a chocolate bar when I woke up from my nap (I had a bit of a hangover)
Fried rice I made at home

What do you never eat?

Restaurant Chinese food, mustard, relish, chicken breast, chicken nuggets, milk, chocolate and mint together

Complete this sentence: In my refrigerator, you can always find:

vanilla soy milk, carrots, celery, butter, frozen bananas (for smoothies), Hellman's mayonaise (y'all call it "Best Foods" in the west)

What is your favorite kitchen item?

My square wooden spoon. It's a spoon and spatula. And has notches in it from when it was once used as a drum stick.

Where do you eat out most frequently?

The food on campus at SF State is surprisingly healthy, cheap, and delicious. I eat the falafel plate on campus a lot or get a weird healthy burrito (I'm a sucker for bourgeois burritos).

I also eat burritos at the taqueria in Half Moon Bay that doubles as a fried chicken joint. It's SO HANDS DOWN the best taqueria on the coast. And I will fight you if you disagree.

And I guess I eat out in Big Sur a lot at the bakery for breakfast.

World ends tomorrow. What would you like for your last meal?

It depends on who is with me. If it's my love, then I would eat sexy food that makes me close my eyes and chew. Blue cheese, lamb, fatty raw tuna, artichokes, chocolate truffles from Recchiuti (it's in the Ferry building). If it's my family, then squash casserole, grandma's green beans she grew in her garden and canned, mama's mac and cheese casserole and chicken n' dumplins, my pecan pie, sweet tea, and Aunt Sherry's peach ice cream. There should be a bread, but I swear that nobody in my family (including me) can make a decent bread, be it cornbread, biscuits, or pie crust. I'd probably be happiest with canned biscuits (and apple butter). If I were alone, it's be Strauss whole milk yogurt and some maple syrup, a nectarine, a salad with kidney beans and garbanzo beans, pumpkin seeds and slivered almond, radishes and grated carrot and celery with sweet miso dressing. And a tuna salad sandwich with a lot of tarragon and mayo. And I'd bring back the artichoke and dip it in Hellman's with white wine and gigantic black olives that taste like soil.

Oh PLEASE tell me yours! PLEASE.

My Dreams (Are) Red, Gold, and Green

2008-09-23T12:08:00.001-07:00

Um, okay...sit back and relax. We're going to a time when even hot young people danced like nervous 12 year old boys shuffling back and forth from one foot to the other. And a pop singer could reflect the depth of emotion in his song by merely opening and closing his palm dramatically. My favorite part is the harmonica solo.

Why do they dance like old people? WHY DO THEY DANCE LIKE SENIOR CITIZENS? I'm sure their hips are still full of cartilege!

Kava Kava

2008-09-22T23:41:00.001-07:00

Once upon a time, in a galaxy far far way, this sailor-talking semi-whore was a sweet Mormon girl who wasn't entirely sure where the clitoris was located. This isn't a story about how she found that out; this is a different story. The place was Provo, Utah, and she and her friends had been invited to a "Kava Kava" party. All she knew was that Kava Kava was some sort of special tea from Samoa and that they were all going to sit on the floor and drink it out of the same cup. Now Susanna knew that Mormons weren't supposed to drink tea, but Kava Kava was herbal tea so it was alright and besides, the guys hosting the party were Mormon too.

It was a very small party. It was just her and her friends and the guys from Samoa. One guy mixed up a big wooden bowl of kava and he'd ladle some into a wooden cup and they would clap and go "Kava Kava" and then pass the cup around and everyone would drink it. And they drank cup after cup after cup after cup. And then everyone was brushing each other's hair and giving each other back rubs and they were all so close and comfortable and nice and it was all strange because they had all just met each other.

And the next morning, when Susanna woke up and was confused about why she let a guy she barely knew brush her hair and another guy give her a back rub, she found out that Kava Kava is a sedative with mild psychoactive properties and drinking 10 cups of it is akin to a large dose of Valium.

So now she buys it on purpose and drinks it at night while she is studying.

Opening Pandora's Box

2008-09-18T21:34:00.000-07:00

Mac, this post might make you cry.

This is in response to my brother's post, "Missing My Damn Pater Familias" about the online radio-ish station Pandora, which uses some sort of magic voodoo to accomplish its purposes. You can type in any artist and they will make a radio station that plays music similar to that artist. My brother wrote in his blog that he found himself wanting to email our Dad and tell him about it, and then realized that he couldn't. He thinks that Dad's favorite radio station would have been the Jimi Hendrix station.

When my Dad died, I got his iPod, and, after listening to the songs on it for a few weeks, I finally had to just move on and put my own songs on it. But I couldn't do it without cataloging every single song on his iPod, including his 25 most played. These were the top ten:

1. "Ruby Tuesday" Rolling Stones
2. "Me and Bobby McGee" Janis Joplin
3. "We've Only Just Begun" The Carpenters
4. "Don't You Want Somebody to Love" Jefferson Airplane
5. "One Way or the Other" Blondie
6. "Hurt So Bad" The Letterman
7. "Purple Haze" Jimi Hendrix
8. "Bad Moon Rising" Credence Clearwater Revival
9. "Southern Cross" Stephen Stills
10. "These Eyes" The Guess Who

Before I go any further, I need to explain to those of you who are just joining us that my Dad died last October 30th. He had a very rare brain disease whose first major symptom is psychosis. So my Dad quite suddenly went crazy, but we didn't know he was going crazy. My Dad presumably stopped listening to this iPod in early August right before he became bat shit crazy. I draw your attention to this fact because it makes absolutely no sense that my Dad would like Blondie. And I do not understand why Janis Joplin is #2 on his list. I never heard him listen to her.

Below is a list of every single track on the iPod in alphabetical order. The numbers before the tracks are the rankings in his top 25 most played. Jimi Hendrix didn't rank as high as we would have expected. I read this like a diary or a poem, especially the end, and it hurts:

Abba-Dancing Queen
Abba—Take A Chance On Me
Addicted to Love
Al Green—Lean on Me
Al Green and Annie Lennox—Scrooge Soundtrack—Put a Little Love In Your Heart
17.All Along the Watchtower
Allison Kraus—When You Say Nothing At All
Allman Brothers—Ramblin’ Man
B52—Roam
16. Back in the USSR
8. Bad Moon Rising
Beach Boys—Fun, Fun, Fun
Beach Boys—Good Vibrations
Beatles—Hey Jude
14. Beatles—Let it Be
Beatles—Michelle
Beatles—Revolution
Bette Midler—Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy
5. Blondie—One Way or Another
Box Tops—Cry Like a Baby
California Girls
Carly Simon—You’re So Vain
Christopher Cross—Sailing
4. Don’t You Want Somebody to Love—Jefferson Airplane
24. Drifters—There Goes my Baby
Elton John—Crocodile Rock
Elton John-Daniel
Elton John—Pinball Wizard
Fifth Dimension—Let the Sunshine In
18. Free Bird
20.I’ve Been Waiting for a Girl Like You—Foreigner—Foreigner 4
12. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
21.In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Jimi Hendrix—Are You Experienced
Jimi Hendrix—Foxey Lady
7. Jimi-Hendrix—Purple Haze
19.Kinks—All Day and All Of The Night
Kokomo
22. Leaving on a Jet Plane
Led Zeppelin---Stairway to Heaven (Rare Acoustic)
Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd—Whole Lotta Love
6. The Lettermen –Hurt So Bad
13.Magic Carpet Ride
Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terell—It Takes Two
11. Maybe I’m Amazed—Paul McCartney—Wings Over America
2. Me and Bobby McGee—Janis Joplin
23.Pink Houses—John Cougar—Scarecrow
15. Platters—Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
Political Grapevine: 7/25/07—Brit Hume’s Grapevine
Political Grapevine: 7/27/07—Brit Hume’s Grapevine
Political Grapevine: 8/1/07—Brit Hume’s Grapevine
The Radio Factor—7/25/07—The Radio Factor
The Radio Factor—7/27/07—The Radio Factor
The Radio Factor—8/2/07—The Radio Factor
The Radio Factor—8/3/07—The Radio Factor
Rocket Man
Roy Orbison—Crying
Roy Orbison—Only the Lonely
Roy Orbison—Pretty Woman
1. Ruby Tuesday—The Rolling Stone—Flowers
Sloop John B
9. Southern Cross
10. These eyes
3. We’ve Only Just Begun
25. Yesterday
409
5 Minute Newscast (1 PM EST 7/26/07)—FOX News Radio
5 Minute Newscast (2 PM EST 7/29/07)—FOX News Radio
5 Minute Newscast (4 PM EST 8/2/07)—FOX News Radio
5 Minute Newscast (5 PM EST 8/3/07)—FOX News Radio
5 Minute Newscast (7 PM EST 7/29/07)—FOX News Radio
5 Minute Newscast (9 PM EST 7/27/07)—FOX News Radio

The Disillusionment of Ten O'Clock

2008-09-18T20:18:00.000-07:00

The houses are haunted
By white night-gowns.
None are green,
Or purple with green rings,
Or green with yellow rings,
Or yellow with blue rings.
None of them are strange,
With socks of lace
And beaded ceintures.
People are not going
To dream of baboons and periwinkles.
Only, here and there, an old sailor,
Drunk and asleep in his boots,
Catches tigers
In red weather.

by Wallace Stevens

P.S. Wallace Stevens was a businessman.

On Not Eating Out in New York

2008-09-16T11:54:00.000-07:00

My mother came to visit me in July and she bought way too many sweet potatoes. We were going to make them for my former roommate who had been sick, but we ended up taking her out to breakfast instead. I thought I'd make some soup with them, so I did a search for "sweet potato soup" and I found the best website:

http://noteatingoutinny.com/

This woman decided not to eat out at all, akin to a media fast, for two years. Over the two years, she became a pretty rad cook. She's an omnivore, but she buys most of her stuff local. Also, her mom is from Taiwan and taught her a lot about cooking, so many of her recipes have an Asian influence. The number one thing I learned from her is that Sriracha hot sauce is always a good idea.

2008-09-13T14:13:00.000-07:00

Last time I wrote in this blog I was smack dab in the middle of grieving. As I've said 20 million times on this blog since my Dad died, grief is peculiar. It never looks like what you would expect. I do think I was right when I wrote at the end of July that this was the "dark night of my soul." Oh sure, yes, it's a bit dramatic, but fuck it all, life is dramatic sometimes. Plus, I was alluding to Joseph Campbell's heroic journey: I was passing through the dark valley, the unknown, where things don't make sense and you are confused and lost and alienated from others.

So I did what any decent hero would do, I went to Hawaii by myself for 9 days. I camped and stayed in hostels and went hiking and snorkeling and scuba diving and sat on the beach and made Austrian friends. The point of the trip, really, was for me to do something special for my Dad's birthday. The day before his birthday, I was driving through a rain shower toward a black canyon and the man on the radio said, "It's August 10th, 2008." Before I could think about how it's the day before my Dad's birthday and he's not here and I'm here alone on an island in the middle of the world, the man says, "The past in ash in the wind. The future is a seed germinating." Hearing that was profoundly comforting.

At my Dad's funeral, I spoke. One of the things I said was that my Dad is still alive in me. I have his eyes. He was there with me in Hawaii. I am a part of him, and he still exists because I and my brother do. And the next step of the heroic journey after the dark night of the soul is the atonement with the father.

Untitled

2008-07-29T16:08:00.001-07:00

It seems like every post I've written for the past six months begins with me saying that I haven't written in forever. I dread writing that sentence. I hate explaining why so much that I postpone doing it even longer.

But here I am, and I'm writing now.

My father died ten months ago, and I think I am really just now beginning to deal with it. This is a dark night of my soul. I am finally grieving...I think. The only thing I know about grief is that it looks completely different than you expect. I'm angry at everyone and I feel like things aren't going to work out happily. Life is more complex than that, surely, so I know that this is just one thing I can see right now. There's a million other things going on around me and within me, but right now I'm a misanthrope who wants to be left alone. Maybe in a minute or two I'll feel like playing ping pong.

Things Change

2008-06-19T18:43:00.001-07:00

Things might look retarded here for awhile; be patient. I use semicolons; you will not be disappointed.

Smoking Crack

2008-06-19T18:16:00.000-07:00

If you like reading my blog, then I'm sorry for not updating it for forever. I somehow, through some miraculous gift from god, managed to finish writing all my papers without nicotine or crack. Since then I've been gloating, prostituting myself out to any odd job possible, and laying out in the sun in a bikini that I bought when weighed 15 pounds less. (I go to the uncrowded beach with all the flies).

I hate it when people don't update their blogs, and I also hate it when web pages look old and retarded. That is what is wrong with this blog, and I'm either going to fix it or stop writing in it. I haven't decided yet. For my birthday my Mom gave me www.susannawilliams.com. That was six months ago.

This is my dilemmna: I want to write what I want to write, and not worry about who reads it. I don't want to go into a list of every debauchery I committed the first time I smoked crack, but I would like to be able to say "I smoked crack" trusting that the people reading this blog know me well enough to know that there is no fucking possible way in hell that I have actually ever smoked crack. And I just wish that I didn't have to say that so, well, explicitly.

The thing is that I don't really know who is reading this blog, and I truly don't want to offend anyone. I suppose that I could say that if anyone is offended he or she doesn't have to read it, but the thing is that several of my family's friends know about this blog through my brother's blog. At my Dad's funeral, while I was shaking hands and saying "thank you" and behaving like a lady who would have made my Dad proud, several people told me that they read my blog. I was embarassed. I don't think I am too overly personal, but I do use profanity and admit to not flossing and occasionally smoking crack. (If you still think I actually smoke crack, please read more closely.) I think it's rad that my Dad's friends and that my family takes an interest in me, but I hate to think that I am offending anyone, especially since so many of these lovely people are Mormon.

The other thing is that my students could potentially google my name and find me here.

I have to be able to write what I want to write; I don't believe in censoring anything truly creative, and this is more a creative endeavor than a public journal or a place to tell people about my life.

I guess the future of this blog is undetermined. It may continue, but it will probably be different from how it has been.

MAMA

2008-05-17T23:16:00.000-07:00

Well, this blog is sort of officially on hiatus until I finish my papers, but my brother posted this today to his blog and I was just so damn inspired:

My Mom is awesome. I reiterate, my mom=awesome. Here's a list of why I think she's awesome, updated from years past.

#1 For not giving me Fetal Alcohol Syndome
#2 For knowing my father´s name
#3 For never wringing my neck in spite of her repeated threats
#4 For having taught me that being racist is a bad thing
#5 For teaching me to say "sir" and "ma'am" after I say "yes" or "no
#6 For dropping out of college for 19 years to raise me
#7 For giving me an oatmeal bath when I was 16 & delirious from a chicken pox 104.7F fever.
#8 For letting my kids call her "Lala" instead of "grandma"
#9 For being an artist and not caring what others think about her
#10 For never saying anything negative about my wife. Ever.
#11 For being there with me when Dad died.
#12 For never making me post bond to get her out of jail
#13 For letting me go to Canada with my best friend for the Summer when I was 16
#14 For drawing a huge picture of my daughter and me at Mardi Gras 2004
#15 For Keeping my cat Paisley alive for 17 long years
#16 For that big scar across her belly where they excavated me from her blessed womb
#17 For calling me "Mac". I have a great nickname
#18 For teaching me to read before I went to public school
#19 For letting me fail on occasion
#20 For telling me I should be an organ donor
#21 For being Southern
and the most important thing is:
#22 THANK YOU FOR NOT HOMESCHOOLING ME! This one should be self-explanatory.

I agree!
And I'd like to add a few more:

#1 For dressing up like a chicken with elaborately-made, beautiful papier-mache wings for the church talent show, running around the stage to some famous piece of classical music while she squawked, and at the very end, laying an egg. THIS WAS BEFORE BJORK WORE THIS DRESS TO THE OSCARS:

#2 For coming out of a gas station in Savannah GA and, upon realizing that my Dad was the person blasting Jimi Hendrix, head banging completely seriously all the way to the car.

#3 For telling my girlfriends in high school not to worry about being fat because "when you get in bed, all they care about is that you're a woman."

#4 For not cutting her hair short and not letting me do it either...ever.

#5 For taking me to Walgreens and buying me a hand vacuum and face lotion and light bulbs and other things I thought I didn't need because they were symptoms of bourgeois excess. For snapping me out of hyper-political self-denial phase.

#6 For knowing more about technology than I do. For sending me my first text message. For having an iPod years before me.

#7 For giving me her copy of Joni Mitchell's Blue as an adult even after I made fun of Joni through my whole adolescence

#8 For spending more money at the arcade when I brought my friend along whose family was poor

#9 For liking "british crap" or 19th century novels made into movies

#10 For listening to Alanis Morrissette's SECOND album for an entire day when I drove back from Utah to Georgia. Not even her first album, THE SECOND ALBUM!

#11 For letting me rub her feet once

#12 For going to the dollar movie with me in 1990 to see some movie I don't even remember and then walking out and, on a whim, walking back in to see Edward Scissorhands.

#13 For driving me half an hour to and from work five times a week at Whitewater when I was 15.

#14 For being nice to all my boyfriends.

#15 For beginning the birds and bees talk by saying "Have you ever seen two dolphins swimming side by side?"

#16 For never wearing swishy suits, jeweled sweaters, or gold shoes.

#17 For building fires for years and years and years

#18 For teaching me how to love people

#19 For watching Beaches with me when I was a little girl and crying and crying and crying.

Nineteen is her lucky number.

[I'll be back in 10 days]

Random Blog Spotting

2008-04-10T16:12:00.000-07:00

Have you ever clicked on the "next blog" option at the top? It gives you a random blog. I'm all about random anything. I used to love the feature on Yahoo! that you could click on and it would give you a random web page.

Most of the random blogs are in other languages. Of the ones in English, about half of them are family-oriented, like for only your family to read. I like the ones that, like mine, don't really know what is going on and just write random shit.

Here are three that I found today that I thought were insanely interesting. I'd like to give a disclaimer that, unless you're the kind of person who will run across traffic to pick up a soggy page of a 13-year-old girl's diary and enjoy reading it, these pages might be really boring. If we're like-minded, I welcome you wholeheartedly.

1. http://elinegiovansily.blogspot.com/

This one's in French, BUT OH MY GOD THIS BABY IS SO FAT!!! Her parents seem so trim. France is strange.

2. http://ellasarah.blogspot.com/2008_04_01_archive.html

These people are from my hometown, and they began this blog to chronicle their adoption of a baby from China. As you might know, I tutor a lot of Asian people and I spend a lot of time talking about Korean and Japanese culture, and especially cultural differences. The tone of this blog is really simple; it all reads like the captions in a scrapbook. But what is fascinating is what they assume and what they leave out. Like they off-handedly mention visiting her town so they could learn about her culture and tell her about it. This is an obviously thoughtful and kind action, but how on earth could you tell a child about "her culture" to begin with even if you lived in the place for a year? What makes that her culture if she grows up in a completely different one? Plus, the blog concentrates on the little girl they adopt, but she has a 8 or 9 year old brother who gets these short snippets. At one point, after writing about the little girl for awhile, they say "we can't forget about Evan!" like they have to remind themselves.

Bonus: there's a serious subtext of anxiety about bonding with the adopted child.

The thing is, I totally respect these people. They've put so much of their energy, money, and heart in to doing this. And ultimately I don't really know how valuable it is to be aware of cultural differences in a situation like this. I'm not knocking them, but it is pretty damn interesting. And the SUBTEXTS! GOD!

3. http://kdense73.blogspot.com/

I don't want to give this away, just read it with a depressed Eyeore voice. I totally lol-ed.

And apparently this blog format is extremely popular. I'm so lazy. Whatevuh.

"I like a game of ping pong"

2008-04-03T22:29:00.000-07:00

YESTERDAY I LEARNED SOMETHING VERY VALUABLE:

Maybe it was that the bar was over-heated
Or maybe it was because I was still sick with a cold
Or maybe it was just that I felt guilty for skipping class

BUT it is possible to get all hot and sweaty while playing ping pong.

ONE THING I AM GRATEFUL FOR:

That cross-cultural onomatopoeia prevailed and "table tennis" is the term for boring Penelopes who have clean white panties and are xenophobic.

MY NEW FAVORITE SENTENCE:

I like turning my head to the side and showing a coy smile while I imitate my former Chinese students when I asked them what their favorite sport was. (You must draw the term out and lay on your best old-Chinese-lady accent.)

"I like a game of ping pong."

It sounds like it's straight from a Berlitz travel tape.

California. . .

2008-03-31T00:35:00.000-07:00

The only state where you can wear a bikini and wool tights in the same day.

Tell Me 'Bout the Good Ole Days

2008-03-29T19:50:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been over a month. How are you? I guess I didn't post for awhile because I didn't want to have to say that my grandpa passed away. He died on Friday, March 7th, and I went to North Carolina for the funeral. I really don't want to write anything about it, in part because I don't feel like I'm really able to express how deeply I loved him and what an absolutely amazing man he was. I'll say this, though, he lived so damn long that there was nobody at his funeral. He was 95, outlived all his brothers and sisters, his wife and her brothers and sisters, and all of his friends from church or the community. Everyone who would have been there if he'd died 20 years ago are either under the ground themselves or so damn old they don't leave the house.

Seven years ago, at my grandma's funeral, after we'd had the graveside service and they were going to lower her body into the ground, my Dad stood on the plot next to it, shook the ground like you do when you're testing the stability of a platform and told my brother "We'll bury grandpa here someday!" My Dad was perfectly irreverent and damn wrong.

Having people die is not at all what you expect. It's not as bad as you think it's going to be. I always thought that if someone close to me died, I'd tear my hair out, sit in my own shit, and not be able to get out of bed for months. It's not like that. Grief is so different than depression, and I've been fucking crazy depressed in my life. Grief can make you depressed, but alone it's its own thing. It makes you talk intimately with strangers, especially if you've been drinking. You all of the sudden don't care about stupid shit, like whether or not you look nice when you go to the grocery store. You lose your filter for what is appropriate to say to people and what is not. You forget that just mentioning something that has become commonplace to you, like your Dad's brain being flown to Ohio on Halloween, is not funny to other people. You feel guilty for not tearing your hair out, not sitting in your own shit, and getting out of bed everyday. It's like you wake up and the first thing you think is, "something is horribly wrong" but when you realize what it is, you remember "Oh right, I can deal with this." Grief can be very beautiful. It's intense, but it's real, and it comes from love. Being depressed is not real. Having a terrible breakup is a selfish hurt. Grief is totally selfless. At least in my experience. That said, I really really wish my Dad was still here. It fucking sucks.

My grandpa was old, but it still sucks too. I wouldn't have wanted to keep him here though. Living in a nursing home is just as bad even if they call it "assisted living." Bless his heart. Bless his sweet heart. I miss him.

So I wanted to share something with y'all that I think perfectly embodies my grandpa's character. Ten years ago, my mother finally convinced grandma and grandpa to move down to Atlanta from Asheville, NC. When she was helping them move, she found the equivalent of eight garbage bags full of Publisher's Clearing House contest mail. If you don't already know this, these guys are mother-fucking asshole cocksuckers who prey on poor old seniors who don't read the fine print. He owed them something like $600, but he didn't know it, because he was starting to lose his sharpness. My grandpa, like many men his age from where he's from, really believed in God and America and capitalism. He had an undying faith in the high quality of Dinty Moore Beef Stew. It was "the finest canned soup this side of the Mississippi." He believed what he read in Reader's Digest and saw on the news. And Publisher's Clearing House exploited this to the utmost absurdity. I'm sure these people have horrible sex lives and kill puppies when they're not at work. My mother finally convinced him to abandon his hope of winning the grand prize, but grandpa decided he should write them a letter first. My Mom never sent the letter, and I have it. This is it, written on a piece of paper from a pink legal tablet in his shakey, beautiful, nearly illegible cursive:

Skyland N.C.
April 7, 1998
To: Mr. R. H. Truller:

Please withdraw my name from the competition from Giveaway #555 due to medical problems within and without.
I consider myself unable to comply with P.C.H. rules that if I accept the gift I accept the IHC agreement to help P.C.H. with their advertisement for one year.
I must pay off any credit for which I am responsible. I will contact billing for help.
P.C.H. personel have been wonderful to me of which I am deeply grateful.
It would be a fraud to wait until the last minute to let you know.
I value my self respect and integrity above everything else. (my hands tire easy.)
I am not stoping everything.
Sincerely Yours
Raymond V. Buckner
P.S. Thank You All.

Someday I'll write about all the stories he told me when I lived with him. Until then, if you're interested, my brother has told his own version of grandpa's life on his blog, so if you'd like to read it you can at www.wuapinmon.blogspot.com.

Ret it out and ret it in

2008-02-28T14:39:00.001-08:00

In my defense for posting this video, I'd just like to say that I LIKE KITTENS AND RAINBOWS BERRER.

P.S. (This baby is Korean. Chris, listen to him *correctly* pronounce "ahn young ha say yo").

Only in California

2008-02-28T12:16:00.000-08:00

I'm doing traffic school on-line because I got a speeding ticket back in December.

Below is a question taken verbatim from my quiz:

6. The "Spirit of the Law" refers to the ____________________ of the law.

1. Actual wording of the law
2. The ghost manifested when chanting the law
3. Intent or purpose of the law

I was tempted to choose answer choice "2," but then I realized that this wasn't a Dickens novel. Instead it's a piece of text that says things like, "First you have to understand the laws of physics (nature)."

Carry On, Carry On, Nothing Really Matters

2008-02-26T21:16:00.001-08:00

My mother came to visit me last Tuesday and is at the airport right now on her way home. I love it when my mother visits because I am reminded of my cookey heritage (how do you spell the word "cookey," not like the American biscuit that rhymes with "bookie," but the one that rhymes with "dookie"?). Anyway, I really enjoy being around my mother, and I especially enjoy all of the funny things she says. Below are a few Laura-Ellenisms from our week together.

* My Mom is notorious for unintentionally saying dirty things in Spanish when she means to say something else. For example, she once told the wife of the Bishop in Costa Rica, "Mi esposo trabaja con computas" but the way she said it (and she said it very loud and in front of the entire family) it sounded like "Mi esposo trabaja con..con putas." For those of you who don't speak Spanish, she was trying to say "My husband works with computers" but instead said "My husband works with pussy."
Her first night here I had her wait in the car in the Mission district (the neighborhood in SF where there are a lot of native Spanish speakers) while I went into El Farolito and got a burrito. As we were leaving she asked me, "Susanna, what's a pusada?" I said, "do you mean pupusa?" and she goes "there's a sign back there for pusadas." But no, Mom had seen the sign for the Salvadorian fried cheese cakes you see on your right and thought "pusada." "Pusada" is not the Spanish dictionary and my brother is unavailable right now, but I just have a gut feeling that it might be the Spanish word for "santorum."

* We did a crossword puzzle on our second day together. The theme was double "k"s and one of the clues was a "well-known soy sauce." The answer was "Kikkoman." The next day I dropped Mom off at SFMOMA while I went to school. We met back up that night and she told me all about taking pictures and getting lost and her amazing lunch. She goes, "Susanna, what's Kikkoman?" I have no idea why (other than that I'm her daughter and speak her crazy language), but I said "do you mean jicama?" And she goes "it's a white vegetable and I had it on my sandwich at lunch and it was so good!" (She meant jicama.)

* Like my Dad, my Mom can talk to anyone about anything at any time. As a kid I hated going to the grocery store with her because she'd either run into someone she knew or just get into a conversation with some total stranger in an aisle and talk to them for 45 minutes. I'm certain this is why I started reading adult women's magazines when I was 10. I'm always shocked when she does this when I'm with her. I'll assume that someone behind a counter is busy or grumpy but my Mom will just start talking all about herself and her vacation in Argentina 13 years ago and how different it is here in SF than in Atlanta and how Wal-Mart hurts the local economy and has bad produce and the person will just listen and then thank her and tell her it was nice to meet her. And I'm fairly certain that they actually mean it.
One night she was looking through her pictures and she just offhandedly says, "these guys today let me take a picture of their feet" like totally normal, like she was just saying "these guys today got on the bus and sat down."
Later on she said, "I figured out how to take pictures of birds. You just put the camera in front of your face and walk toward them and they don't fly away. They don't know you're a person back there if you hide your face."

* Mom has favorite subjects that she revisits every twenty minutes or so. One is the conditions of her digestive system (my Dad nicknamed this the "BBU" or "Buckner Bowel Update"), her knee, and the absence or presence of feeling in her right hand. Another favorite is her old professor, Professor Robbins, who taught one of her art history courses and took her class on a field trip to New York. Mom's favorite trivia question is: "where's my wallet?" and every time she gets out of the car, even if the windows are all rolled down and we're at a remote beach with no other cars around, she says "do you have your keys?" before she locks the door. And she absolutely relishes any opportunity to say "I'm a visual learner."
For example, she told me "Today I asked this lady where something was and she said 'Do you know where the water is?' and I said 'Ma'am, I'm a visual learner and I'm so confused out here. I think I'm in Florida. The ocean is just on the wrong side.'"

* I made Mom promise not to say anything about love, marriage, or babies or any of my ex-boyfriends when she met the nice young man I've been seeing. It's one thing if she starts going on to me about how great of a mother I'll be and how I just need to find the right man who wants the same things I want, etc. (she ignores me when I say things like "I might not have kids" or "I'm in no hurry to get married" or "I just started seeing him"), but if I'm with someone and she starts asking what we're going to name our kids I kind of freak out.
We went down to Big Sur and we went out to dinner with Eric and a few of his friends. There were eight of us, and Mom was sitting at the far end of the table, at the head. The conversation went like this:
"So are they a couple down at the end?" she says
"Yes" I said
"What about them?" she said, pointing to the guy and girl sitting in the middle
"I don't know" I said
"Yes" Eric said
"So..are, like, y'all a couple?" she says
(Gee, Thanks Mom!!!) Luckily, Eric goes, "Well, I was thinking about asking her to prom."

So then Mom explained how pretty I looked at my prom and how my dress was dark blue and the sequins came up like this in the front and it came down like this in the back and how much happier I would have been if I had gone with him instead of the other guys.

***

Her flight takes off in ten minutes, and I may see her again very soon (my grandpa isn't doing too well), but I miss her so much already. My Mom's heart is huge. She smart and humble. She's oblivious but so deeply intuitive that she's almost keen. What a winner. I'm so fucking lucky to be her daughter. And so fucking lucky to be able to say "fuck" again now that she's gone.

(Read the title and sing the song!)

Valentine's Day--Love Is Here To Stay!!! (Rainbows!) (Puppies!)

2008-02-14T12:36:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is my absolute favorite holiday, with my birthday a close second. I love birthdays in general; we rarely have personal holidays and how wonderful is it to be able to celebrate the fact that someone was born, that they exist?

Valentine's Day is a creation of the flower-candy-Hallmark industry, but fuck them! I say let's subvert it! If it's all around us anyway, then let's make it a day not to feel guilted into buying stupid shit for our friends, family, and loved ones (like, say, oh Christmas) but a day to celebrate Romantic Love.

I love love! I love you!

My favorite part of Valentine's Day is seeing macho, tough guys on the BART train carrying around big ole' teddy bears that say "You're cuddly" or something else retarded.

Love and sex are great equalizers. (Almost) everybody wants it and when we get it, we get all mushy and soft. We listen to Celine Dion and we think, "Wow, she's really on to something."

But then there's the nasty side of Valentine's Day, when the heart-broken and the lonely-hearted get pissy and jealous and decry the whole stupid holiday. Bless their hearts. I've been broken hearted on V-day before--last year, as a matter of fact, but I managed to keep up my good spirits until about 10 o'clock, and then I just went to sleep. And maybe, maybe, I held a private pity party in my honor, but that's really none of your business.

One way I've celebrated Valentine's Day in the past is putting a little red table out on the street and giving Love Advice for 25 cents. I bring all my favorite poetry books, ask folks about their problems or situations, and then read them a poem that relates to their situation. The first year I did it, 2003, I made $28. I gave advice to a police officer, a former heroin junkie with a tattoo of his forever love, Lola, who had died of an overdose, a bell man who had finally, after a year of peeking in the window of the shop window next to his hotel, asked out the woman whom he had a crush on (for that night!), a couple who had bought a new car and sold the wife's old car that she missed (I suggested the have sex in the new car so she'd have fond memories of it), and a young woman whose boyfriend had just begun to be mildly psychotic (as in, bat-shit-crazy). There were many more. And two people brought me chocolates in addition to their shiny quarters.

I did Love Advice several more times, but, like crack, it was never as good at the first time. What was so wonderful about it initially was that it was completely spontaneous and none of my friends were "supporting" me; it had nothing to do with my identity. Now when I do it, I feel like "this is something I do" and it just rings false. That's why I'm not doing it this year. Instead, I would like to just share with you here three of the poems I read most often.

Poetry is infinitely more therapeutic than the best psychiatrist. That is, if your heart is open enough to hear it. (And I suppose a good psychiatrist could help you get there).

The first is the one I read most often:

I have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment, what is this then?
I do not ask any more delight, I swim in it as in a sea.

There is something in staying close to men and women and looking on them, and in the contact and odour of them, that pleases the soul well,
All things please the soul, but these please the soul well.

--Walt Whitman, from Leaves of Grass "Children of Adam: 4"

The next one is keen:

Chess

Because we were friends and sometimes loved each other,
perhaps to add one more tie
to the many that already bound us,
we decided to play games of the mind.

We set up a board between us;
equally divided into pieces, values,
and possible moves.
We learned the rules, we swore to respect them,
and the match began.

We've been sitting here for centuries, meditating
ferociously
how to deal the one last blow that will finally
annihilate the other one forever.

by Rosario Castellanos

***
The following is copied verbatim from my zine Here Are Some Poems I Like. I annotated this one, because it seems so simple on the surface:

This Is Just To Say

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold.

***

The love poems that hit you hard are the ones that are often not about love. This poem is like that to me. I think it may be the most romantic poem ever.

I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox

Back in 1934, people had iceboxes instead of refrigerators. The poem begins with a confession; he just comes right out and says “it was me!” He is confessing his sin. The plums tempted him and he succumbed.

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

Who is he talking to? I think it’s his wife. This being 1934, she is most likely the person who puts plums in the icebox for breakfast. Breakfast isn’t usually a meal where you invite company. She put the plums in there for both of them, for their breakfast. She saved them for both of them to eat them together. They weren’t saved for her breakfast, just “breakfast.”

However, he doesn’t know for sure that she was saving them for breakfast. He says “probably.” Read the line without “probably.” It kind of makes him sound like an asshole. It makes his sin greater. However, the small space that may exist, where he may not have committed a sin (she may not have been saving them for breakfast) permits him to have done it.

Forgive me they were delicious

He asks her to forgive him by telling her how much he enjoyed them. He assumes that she will forgive him because he enjoyed them so much. Darling, I couldn’t help myself.

This line is the only capitalized line in the poem.

so sweet and so cold

A perfect plum. A passionate, dark fruit. Sweet by nature, cold because she put them in the icebox.

The way I’m explaining this, you might think that this poem were some sort of code poem for a man committing adultery. “Forgive me, she was delicious.” After all, this poem is literally about forbidden fruit. However, it’s not that. The plums are irresistible because they are “so sweet” but also “so cold.” They are “so cold” only because she put them in the icebox. She put them there for both of them, as an act of love, to please herself and to please him. It pleased him so much he couldn’t help himself. She might take pleasure in knowing how to please him, in pleasing him so much he acts irrationally. He knows that she will forgive him, that’s why he comes out in the first line and just says how it is. Instead of justifying it in the most logical way, the way that most people would, the way that she would have to forgive him, by saying “I was very hungry” or “I didn’t know that you were saving them,” he admits the truth and justifies his indulgence by describing the temptation that she created just by doing what she liked to do. It’s a sort of reversal of Adam and Eve. She creates a temptation for him; he indulges and the consequences are benign and ultimately inconsequential. However the fruit and this situation serve to illuminate the nuances of their relationship.

There is so much understanding between the two of them that he writes a poem celebrating his temptation and her forgiveness. It is all so safe and benign but simultaneously passionate and intense. It’s their illusion that they play together.

How sexy is that?
***

Have a Lovely Day!

As the youngest of two children, I fully identify with this video

2008-02-13T23:58:00.001-08:00

One more New Year's Resolution

2008-02-13T11:26:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, I have one more New Year's Resolution to add to the four I've already created:

Eat Surf N'Turf.

Enjoy

2008-02-13T11:15:00.001-08:00

Finally, finally, the weather has relented and there have been several beautiful days in succession. Yesterday I read Saussaure, Propp, and Roman Jacobson on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Then I went on a walk that blew my mind. I will take pictures next time I go and post them. I'm so SO happy I moved here. For a high-strung girl, nature is the perfect counterbalance.

After my brief 2-day Bjork obsession, I decided that I should wear my hair in twin buns a la Princess Leia, but on top of my head, a la Bjork. I think this hairstyle unconsciously causes me to be kind toward other people. Maybe it's all the bouncing. It probably also has something to do with the nice weather and the exercise, but I still hold with the bouncing.

This is my favorite song to listen to right now:

Human Behaviour

2008-02-07T21:01:00.001-08:00

Today was gorgeous in Moss Beach. I have Tuesdays and Thursdays totally off so I drove down to Pescadero and thought a lot about what I wrote yesterday.

As I was driving, I listened to a very old tape I made of Bjork's Post. This is the only album of hers that I know. When we got cable, and therefore MTV, when I was a kid, I was absolutely mesmerized by her music video for the song "Human Behaviour."

I realized after I looked this up that the video was made in 1993, so I wasn't a kid; I was 13. But anyways, the thing that blew my mind above all were those little sequins under her eyes. I was like, "Wow! You can do that?"

So driving today and listening to Post made me remember that that just because you are very very good at something, or even the best at something, does not mean that what you produce is the best. Think about classically trained musicians who make solo albums. I would much rather listen to Iggy Pop, you know?

Just because I don't understand Kant on my first reading does not mean that I am a terrible person who has no redeeming social value.

I think I have been taking myself way too seriously.

The point of going to school is because I enjoy it, not because I want to be sculpted into some perfect academic who can hold her own in a theory class. I bet Bjork didn't or wouldn't understand Kant on her first reading either, and I think she's absolutely, imperfectly brilliant.

My First Blogging Rant

2008-02-07T00:25:00.000-08:00

My brain is absolutely fried. I don't know why I am writing a blog post, except that I like to make it seem as though I try to keep up with this thing. I spent pretty much all day yesterday trying to make sense of Kant. I know this is practically impossible to do on the first try, so I tried several times. I felt like I had a pretty good understanding of him, but tonight in my class we never really got to talk about it.

The reason why is that my teacher also assigned Aristotle and Plato. This is a theory class, and she wanted to give us a working background to begin our quasi-history of literary criticism. Rather than just regurgitate the information that she gives us, she wants us to engage with the criticism and debate it in class.

This guy in our class, let me tell you about him. Normally, I like to talk to the people in class who say things I agree with. Call me elitist, but really it's just a case of wanting to talk more about ideas that are interesting. More generally, however, I like to talk to people who are outgoing and have strong opinions. Unless they're idiots. I, of course, am an idiot, so I really shouldn't be judging others, but I do. At least I'm honest. So there is this guy in our class who seemed to be very composed and articulate and have strong opinions. I figured we would like each other (not like that).

But then I noticed that he held the door open for me when I came in. When he referred to what other people were saying he said, "this young lady." This guy may have a few fine lines around his eyes, but he's really not old enough, or rather of the generation, to refer to women as "this young lady." I also noticed that he was very impatient with our professor, who also has a few fine lines around her eyes but talks like a smart, over-enthusiastic, slightly spastic valley girl. I got the gut feeling that he was dismissing her.

There is another man in our class who was in my T.S. Eliot seminar last semester. He's old, like gray hair, WRINKLEY, either bordering on senility or of a different time when one expressed one's thoughts differently. I think I'm being too nice. He essentially dismissed all biographical reading of T.S. Eliot without good cause. Last semester, the cool, smart guys all agreed with him. This conversation deeply bothered me, but I couldn't put my finger on it.

Tonight the first guy disagreed with my teacher's proposition. She was arguing that one could relate Plato's metaphor of the cave to our current situation in Iraq. I raised my hand and argued that, like Plato, we are recreating a situation that positions us as the heroes of a contrived situation. Blah blah blah, right? The rest of the class did not respond to what I said. Then the old guy said he didn't like what she had said. The first guy agreed with her, calling it "anachronistic." Unlike my teacher last semester, this women argued outrightly and challenged him to prove his argument. I sat quiet. He fumbled on a minute point and she essentially shamed him. It was really tense. He responded to her very sarcastically at one point.

After the break, he didn't come back. I bet he'll like write a letter to the dean or something about how she's unprofessional. I was just happy to see him put in his place. And why? You know? It's not like she was right. She really did handle the situation poorly. If I were him, I would have probably gone outside and cried a little bit.

But I guess why I'm writing this (besides the fact that my brain really is fried and I must not be using my best judgment) is that I'm disturbed by this really subtle, almost unnoticeable sexism that exists.

But that is problematic, and I may be wrong. Because after he left, another woman sort of took his place. I said something about plot versus character and how I am one of those people who believe that whether or not something is fiction or non-fiction matters, and she looked at disapprovingly.

What disturbs me most is that I care. This really fucking disturbs me. I want so badly to succeed at what I am doing. I want to "get it" and I want to be able to articulate what I feel and think, and be able to support it. I understand that I am in grad school in order to be able to do this, and I can't expect myself to be perfect, but it fucking bums me out to not be heard and to not be understood. When I say things, I feel like people think I am a dumb girl. I know I am not a dumb girl. But why do I come off that way?

I think I am just venting. I remember feeling this way at the beginning of my T.S. Eliot class last semester. I think the best paper I wrote last semester was that paper, too. I think this is all just a part of the process. It's gnarly, though, to see sexism and elitism in person. I am not above these people, however. I'm certain--absolutely certain--that I am sexist and elitist myself. It just sucks, and I don't know how to get around it. I am sure, however, that I will.

If you've read this far, god bless you. Amen

We're Bringin' Sexy Back

2008-02-05T11:36:00.000-08:00

My professor in my Oscar Wilde and Henry James class was talking about how in the Victorian era, England was disgusted with the "excesses" of the French revolution, symbolized by the bare-breasted Statue of Liberty.

Then he asked, just rhetorically, what the modern day equivalent of this would be. One of the women in my class said, "Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction at the Super Bowl."

Oh yes, it is SO good to be among my like kind.

Oh, tell me I may sponge away the writing on this stone!

2008-01-29T19:23:00.000-08:00

First of all, I just have to admit that I simply don't have as much time as I used to to post on this blog, and I also don't have as much time to write good blog posts. I think that some of the posts I wrote when this blog was in its infancy, particularly the one about the theramin documentary and the other one about when I had my wisdom teeth taken out (see September and October of 2006) are of much higher quality. You would think that with all the reading and writing I do in my everyday life that I would have become a better writer. Alas, this is not the case. Perhaps I am better at analyzing the subtleties of Othello, but otherwise my skills are not very practical.

In my classes, I'm always amazed at how geeky, socially awkward folks may not be able to introduce themselves very well but have poignant analyses of A Christmas Carol. This is the joy of being an English major. I wonder if Computer Science majors have the same joy. I've heard that those folks are just annoying all the way around, but this is mere hearsay.

I did want to share this uncanny experience that happened to me last weekend. Since I'm horribly out of shape too, I decided to go on a long walk in my beautiful little town of Moss Beach. My landlord told me about a great walk along the crest of the hills that border the ocean. Here is a photograph:

So I walked and walked hoping to find a nice, dry place to sit down and read A Christmas Carol for my Victorian Afterlife class. Near the end of the trail, I saw this bench, which overlooked a beach where a few people who managed to teeter down the steep cliff were surfing.

Not a bad place to do some homework, eh? I decided I'd sit on the bench and read a few chapters about Ebeneezer Scrooge's transformation from a stingy, cold miser into a philanthropic, jolly, Christmas-ian with goose drippings on his chin. As you may remember, this change is engendered by his visits by three ghosts of Christmas past, present, and future. However, these ghosts are preceded by a visit from the grave from his old business partner, Jacob Marley.

So I went to sit down and this is what I saw:

Can you believe it?!?

(By the way, the title of this post is a quote from A Christmas Carol.)

O O O O that Shakespearian Rag!

2008-01-10T17:17:00.000-08:00

Well well well.

My semester is officially finished. I just clicked "send" on the last of my papers. This last one was a doozy. At one point I compare Othello to a woman on her menstrual cycle. Oh, I'm not kidding. At least it was in the footnotes. Twenty-two pages of me trying to prove that Iago is the most honest character and Desdemona is a hussy.

Boy am I thirsty.

Hey, did you know that the term "the beast with two backs" is from Othello?

From My Favorite Online Comic Strip

2008-01-07T17:49:00.000-08:00

Here's the link, cause it's kinda hard to read it this way:

http://www.catandgirl.com/view.php?loc=536

New Year's Resolutions

2008-01-02T12:36:00.000-08:00

Good New Year's Resolutions are things you want to provide for yourself but need a little structure and discipline to do. I would never dream of making a New Year's Resolution that I wasn't excited about. Having once been an uber-ascetic Mormon, I'm over masochistically willing myself to do shit. I think if you really want to do something, it doesn't have to hurt.

My New Year's Resolutions for 2007 were:

1. Learn to play Leonard Cohen songs on the guitar
2. Save $1000
3. Study Korean or Spanish
4. Go to Hawaii

Here's how they panned out:

1. LC songs

After learning "Lady Midnight," "Famous Blue Raincoat," and "Take This Longing," I spent the rest of the year trying to train my left index finger to bar the F chord. What a bitch. I love Leonard Cohen and it's comforting to play these songs. It's especially nice to be able to play a song that's slightly more difficult than what I've been playing. I used to play everyday, but since I started grad school, I don't really have time to do that anymore. However, I did write two new songs this year, and I'm very happy about that. For about four years, I couldn't write a song and it was starting to drive me nuts.

2. Save $1000

For someone my age, $1000 isn't really enough savings. However, I'm notoriously terrible with money and I figured I'd start somewhere. I just wanted to have enough to be able to fix my car if something broke or pay my rent if I lost my job. I did save the money, but it about killed me. I kept it in an envelope on my desk (if it were in the bank, I'd spend it), and whenever I'd hit another hundred, I'd cross off another number. I kept having to take money out and put it back, whiting-out my progress and marking it up again. It really shouldn't have been so hard, because I was earning more than enough to live on.

However, when I realized I might be able to move to the ocean, I got my ass in gear and kept track of every penny I spent for an entire month. I realized that almost a fourth of my income was going to taking other people out to eat. I curbed that I re-budgeted and managed to save a bit more. This money came in handy when my Dad died. I had enough money to cover my plane ticket and the income lost when I didn't work.

3. Study Korean or Spanish

I ended up devoting the summer to studying Korean. I was working at the Korean center and everyday during lunch I would sit next to someone and ask them questions. I also had two private Korean students, so before and after our lessons, I'd ask them questions. I didn't learn basic stuff; I still can't say "I'm hungry" or even have a basic conversation. However, I can pretty much read the language out loud (though I don't know what I'm reading) and I can write too. When I lived in Oakland, I lived near the Korean section, and I spent a large portion of the summer walking around. I'd try to read out the Korean signs. One day I realized that one of the signs I saw everyday said "Karaoke." That was pretty cool.

I thought I might go teach English in Korea this Summer to help pay off part of my student loans. Also, as a part of earning a PhD, you have to study two other languages. I thought it'd be pretty cool to study Korean, since I love what little I know of the culture so much. However, I talked with some professors about this, and although apparently there are a lot of Korean scholars who write about modernism, ultimately romance languages are the way to go. So next semester I'm doing an advanced Spanish grammar review and I think I'm going to go to Chile this summer to teach English.

4. Go to Hawaii

Well I saved up enough money to go (in a separate envelope from my basic savings). I researched the trip and budgeted it and everything. I knew I wouldn't be able to go in 2007, but I was pretty sure I could swing it during the winter break in January. Then my Dad died and everything went all to hell. I deposited the last of that money in the ATM yesterday to pay my January rent. Even though I didn't get to go to Hawaii, I'm very glad I had saved that money.

However, I did get a fortune cookie last week that I shared with my grandmother, Nanny. It said "You will be crossing warm waters soon for a fun vacation." And there's a likely possibility that I'll be going on a road trip in the next few weeks down South of the border and swimming at Rosarita beach. We'll see.

So not bad for these New Year's Resolutions. There were other things I wanted to get done this year, like quitting smoking and making straight A's, but I didn't make them into New Year's Resolutions because I don't like being an over-controlling bitch with myself. I figured they'd be extras. I did manage to quit smoking and it was for good, but I claimed at the time "I quit, and I've really quit, but I just know that if something bad happened to someone in my family, I'd start again." When my Dad went into the ICU, I went to the corner store. Smoking is retarded, but for some reason it's one of the only ways I know how to get through difficult times.

I had to take an incomplete in one of my classes, but I did make A's in the other two. Not A minuses, A's, and I'm beaming.

My New Year's Resolutions for 2008:

1. Write an individual letter to 50 different people I don't see enough
2. Go kayaking (preferably in the SF Bay at night)
3. Go teach English someplace awesome this Summer
4. Scatter my Dad's ashes into the Pacific Ocean off the old helicopter landing pad in the Marin Headlands

There are other things I would like to do too, like figure out how to do yoga and be a grad student, make straight A's, and yes, quit smoking, but we'll just have to see how that all pans out.

2007 was equally as good as it was shitty. I'm too shy to tell you ALL of the good and bad things that happened to me, but life is certainly dramatically different than it was a year ago. And for some strange reason, It's so much easier just to wake up and move through life than it ever has been. I'm constantly grateful for that.

A Holiday Query

2007-12-20T11:59:00.000-08:00

You know the turducken? It's a duck inside a chicken inside a turkey? A beautiful example of how American excess can lead to art. I would definitely want to sample it, though I want to apologize in advance to my animal friends. I wish they could make a vegetarian version.

But if a tofu turkey is called a Tofurkey, what would a tofu turducken be called?

They Say One Was a Sailor

2007-12-17T22:40:00.000-08:00

So my brother posted on his blog today that Dan Fogelberg died. He was one year younger than my Dad. My brother posted the lyrics to his favorite Dan Fogelberg song, "Forefathers." Just click here real quick and check it out.

Um, why did this post make me cry? It's Dan Fogelberg.

It reminds me of my Mom listening to this song in her car late at night driving back from the grocery store when she was super into genealogy.

Forefathers belong in faded black and white pictures. They have big beards and nobody except old people knew them. I don't want my Dad to be a forefather. I just want him to still be my regular old father.

I remember thinking that that song was off because those of us who don't have children don't become forefathers. I was wrong, though, because I'm Marley and Jack's Aunt Susanna. And my spinster Aunt Madge, my grandmother's sister, whom I would consider believing in an afterlife for just so I could ask her if she ever had sex, is certainly one of my forefathers.

I doubt I will be a spinster though, and if I end up with someone who is neither selfish, lazy, nor sexist, I might even consider popping one or two out. Consider. I do have excellent, sexy genes.

Now that I'm part of the dead-parent club (we have patches), I hear that many people, especially those who don't believe in harps and bubblegum clouds, find comfort in feeling their parent's presence in themselves. "Though the generations wander, the lineage survives."

I am quoting "forefathers" to prove a point. I have become a monster.

***

Study Break, Wait, Where's my Cardigan?

2007-12-14T14:28:00.001-08:00

I finished my Freud class yesterday. Now I can go back to using psycho-babble without fear of infamy. I can throw around fetish, projection, resistance, and sublimation just like I used to when I didn't know what the hell they really meant. My Freud class was alright, but we never really questioned his the authority of his giant phallus. I think I sub-consciously resisted this throughout the semester by drawing curve after french curve in the margins of my paper. Freud isn't what you think his is, though. He's not an asshole, just a pessimist. My main beef with him was that he admitted he wasn't trying to make people happy; he just wanted them to be normally unhappy like everyone else. That's so black-turtleneck-coffee-shop. I like kittens and rainbows.

I celebrated last night by watching a few episodes of the American version of the Office and eating too many cookies and an entire chocolate bar. I can tell I'm stressed out when I eat too many cookies, can't sleep even though I'm tired, and buy $50 Betsey Johnson cashmere tights that I can't afford because they have hearts on them(!).

I had a dream last night that I worked in an office and it was just me and bunch of men. We were doing some sort of team building exercise that required us to be wearing work out clothes. One of the guys was wearing a Hooters shirt. I told my boss very forthrightly, "This is discrimination. It's sexual harassment. I will not tolerate it, and I think to make it up to me all of the men should take off their shirts and serve me."

12 pages down, 40 to go! Onward Ho!

I hereby do solemnly swear:

2007-12-06T21:41:00.001-08:00

Today I have made a solemn promise to myself and to my fellow human beings. As my friends, family, and sympathetic subjects, I ask you to support me as I stalwartly uphold this solemn promise for the rest of my life. Should I deviate from this oath, I ask you to hold me accountable and take punitive action, including possible physical punishment, as recourse. If a person's word is meaningless, where lies the fabric of our great society? What can we rely on if not the solemn vows of a strong-hearted woman with sturdy hips?

I solemnly swear that I will NEVER EVER EVER title anything I ever write, including books, short stories, journal articles, crappily written term papers, even blog posts, with ANYTHING in half parentheses signifying double meaning. You will never see any "'World and Time': On the (De)Construction of Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress'" or "Feminist Rewritings of Early Modern Message Books: The (R)evolution of Desire" or "'What Dreams Are Made Of': Problems with Miranda and Caliban's (In)Equality in Shakespeare's The Tempest" or "'Met Him Pike Hoses': (Trans)Migration in Early Twentieth Century Ireland."

I also pledge that, no more than 5 times in my entire academic career will I identify an absence-presence myself, unless I am citing another author.

This I do solemnly swear, on the 6th of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand and seven, in the ninth hour and fifty-seventh minute, Pacific Standard time. Amen.

I got herbs and spices in my stomach

2007-12-01T12:34:00.000-08:00

I love Vic Chesnutt. He's one of the best song writers. Sometimes the bands he plays with are a little annoying, but usually if its just him, all is well. He's just so damn witty in the way that Southern folks are best at. And like a good Southerner, he can rhyme "epoch" with "got" and almost any vowel together. Mr. Chesnutt's been in a wheelchair since he was 18 and he writes songs making fun of people who patronize him for being so brave. And also like a good Southerner, the song isn't angry; it just makes them look like idiots. Chesnutt has a song about a eunuch who isn't one and who takes advantage of his job position to the delight of a whole harem. He has a song with the lyric "cotton briefs between her cheeks." One of my favorites is a song about how he should have died when he got into a terrible car accident when he was 18 that put him in the wheelchair he's in now. Part of the lyrics are:

"I should have been buried long ago
But they electric shocked me though
I oughta be pushing up the pine straw
But people can't die anymore

I'm embalmed
I'm a mummy
I got herbs and spices in my stomach
And I should be a dirty piece of solid red ground
But because of some cure they found
I'm still around
In amongst the millions
Cause people can't die anymore"

The song below is my little theme song for the next three weeks. I have a two presentations, two 20 page papers, and a 10 page paper due. Happy Christmas. God bless us all, everyone. Bring me some figgy pudding.

Deadline, it ain't moving
Deadline, stiff as a board
Deadline, end is ensuing
But I gotta get something done done done, done done done soon.

Deadline, under pressure
Deadline, it's gonna snap
Deadline, serious semester
And I gotta get something done done done, done done done soon.

Deadline, down to the wire
Deadline, it's bumming me out
Deadline, I'm already tired
But I gotta get something done done done, done done done soon.

Listen to it here:

http://www.rhapsody.com/vicchesnutt/10683059_lefttohisowndevices/deadline/lyrics.html

Gone Daddy Gone

2007-11-07T00:44:00.000-08:00

My father died. A week ago I flew home to Georgia and my family and I honored his wishes by taking him off life support. He ended up having Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare neurological disorder that attacks your brain tissue; my Dad had every symptom. First you have insomnia, then psychosis. Eventually you can't see and you can't walk, you startle easily and your eyes track over empty space like you are watching a bird fly over your head. Finally, you can't breathe. There is no cure.

He died at 3:33 pm on Tuesday October 30th. Three three three. I'm 27.

My entire life I have always had a visual picture of my heart. The first time I ever fell in love, I saw my heart pierced with a needle, being sewn ever so slowly to him. When it ended, I saw the strings cut and slowly fall out. I've felt my heart swollen and pumping outside of my chest. I've felt it sick and black. I've felt a double ended arrow lodged in it. When I am in intense emotional pain, I often imagine something piercing the left side.

Right now I feel like someone has held a shotgun and blown out the left side of my chest. Or like there's some sort of ethereal mimicry of my real heart floating in an empty space.

Yes, I'm being dramatic, but for god's sake my father just died. This IS fucking dramatic. I don't know who I am writing this too, and I feel strange to be so personal, and there's a very real chance that I'll be misunderstood and people will think I am fucked up (which I'm not), but I just need to say some things and I don't want to write to myself or to one person.

I want to crawl up inside my father's chest and coil myself around his spine. I see him wherever I go; he's sitting across from me in class, he's on the other side of the student center, he's walking up the stairs from the bookstore. I think about him constantly. I want his body full of fat and organs and blood to sit in his chair and get up and walk across the room. I want his eyes to open and his arms to move. I want him to wear out his shoes and put something in his mouth and chew it. He used to hear me and write me emails and sleep. Now he is literally a pile of dust. I was with him when he died. My hand was on his forehead. Moments later, I looked at him and thought, "that's not my Dad." I don't believe in souls, but I do believe in life. My Dad's body was not him, but it was evidence that he existed. There was comfort knowing that his body existed.

My Dad was a star who held me in the sky like the earth and the sun hold the moon. Everything is different now.

I've faced difficult, heartbreaking shit at least a few times before. I know how to get through this, and I will. There are fires that refine you. This is an awful, beautiful, terrible, awesome beginning of the rest of my life. I have never loved my father as much as I do now. That is precious.

I don't believe in God. It's not my fault. If you do, pray for my mother who put her father in the hospital today, who has to go back to the hospital after she was there every day for six weeks. Pray for my brother who is trying his best to be a good father. Pray for my father's mother and father who buried their son.

If you own a copy of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, put on track 5, the funeral procession, and think about how there's an uncanny feeling of freedom when the absolute worst thing happens.
I don't understand that. Let track 5 flow into this:

The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive
One evening 1945
With just her sister at her side
And only weeks before the guns
All came and rained on everyone
Now she's a little boy in Spain
Playing pianos filled with flames
On empty rings around the sun
All sing to say my dream has come

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And now we ride the circus wheel
With your dark brother wrapped in white
Says it was good to be alive
But now he rides a comet's flame
And won't be coming back again
The Earth looks better from a star
That's right above from where you are
He didn't mean to make you cry
With sparks that ring and bullets fly
On empty rings around your heart
The world just screams and falls apart

But now we must pick up every piece
Of the life we used to love
Just to keep ourselves
At least enough to carry on

And here's where your mother sleeps
And here is the room where your brothers were born
Indentions in the sheets
Where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes

***
If you'd like more details, including my Dad's obituary and eulogy, go to my brother Mac's blog.

My Angel is a Centerfold

2007-10-16T22:39:00.000-07:00

So, in case you've been in a coma (oh how darkly funny), I am obsessed with www.icanhascheezburger.com. This is a website for people who like cats; if you don't like cats, I'm sorry that life has proved so bitter and unfortunate for you. This is a website for people who like cats talking in bad grammar. It's Cute Overload mixed with Engrish. I kind of have a problem with this website: it's slightly less addicting than cocaine. How many brilliant essays on T.S. Eliot's Buddhist influence haven't I read because I have been reading "just one more page" of this:

I start to worry that Theo, my beloved cat, is getting jealous of me looking at other cats online. I tell him, "Baby, they mean nothing to me" and "They're just pictures" and "But you're real!" but he'll have none of it. I even made this piece of art to convey my utter devotion:

I mean, it's not like he doesn't rub up on other girls' legs. Sometimes he leaves and he goes out all night and doesn't come home until 2 in the morning. What am I supposed to do? Isn't it all just animal nature?

So I bought Theo a collar and a tag so that if he runs away, he'll find his way back home. Since he is originally from Alameda, and thus a sailor, I bought a nautical themed "beastie band" foam collar. The tag was a red heart, like my passionate, burning one for him. I put it on him one morning and he freaked out. He hid in the closet most of the day (which he never does) and cried ALL FUCKING NIGHT. It was like when your hijackers deprive you of sleep before they brainwash you. Finally, after several hours of epileptic spasms he managed to get it off, and I gave in. He wins. He can run around naked at the risk of getting lost and never being returned to me if it means he's happy.

I told my Mom this story and she jokingly suggested I get him an implant. I was like, "that's a good idea." They have those, you know. I came home tonight to this supreme manifestation of a mother's love:

That's Theo! And icanhascheezburger together! It's like when your wife takes sexy pictures of herself! Yay!

Stella Cathleen

2007-10-15T19:07:00.001-07:00

Last night I had a dream about my Dad. I dreamed that my mother was telling me over the phone that something bad had happened to him and something else about what my oldest cousin Cathy was doing. I was in a house with clear glass tea cups and pink carpet. There were a few people I didn't know in the house with me: an old woman with a camping hat on and a tall, naked grad student girl. In my dream, my Mom told me that Cathy and Hannah, her daughter, (not the people in the house I was in!) had bought The Lake House (the house I grew up in, that my Dad and his Dad built when my Dad was a teenager, the house my Mom and Dad still live in) from Nanny and Papa, my Dad's parents. I was overwhelmed with sadness. I couldn't control my crying; I was moaning with grief. I was trying not to cry in front of the naked grad student girl and the lady with the camping hat, but I couldn't stop. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to ever go home.

The Lake House:

(Look Mac, the elevator is still off the porch!)

***
A few days ago, my Dad was transferred to Emory hospital in the psychiatric unit. The specialists there quickly realized that he had been having a gnarly reaction to the head drugs he had been prescribed initially. This was good news, because it meant that firstly, they knew what was wrong, and secondly, given time, he would recover.

This whole shenanigans has been going on for about six weeks now. I've been doing just fine with all of this. I'm doing my homework and I'm paying my rent and I'm not upset. To be honest, it doesn't quite seem real to me.

But life is mysterious and things are at work that we don't understand. For example, this.

I don't believe in God, but I do believe in the Buddhist principle that everything is interconnected. Literally, everything is made out of the same stuff. I am a collection of matter. I'm a wave in a body of water. Oh, don't roll your eyes; it's not a good time to be judgmental.

Things ARE at work that we don't understand. Remember my dream? Well, last night my Dad had an emergency and was put back into the ICU; not to be all melodramatic, but he could have died. Let's cut the shit: he stopped breathing; it's fucked up. And my cousin Cathy, who hasn't been to The Lake House in maybe a decade and lives two hours away, stopped by the house because her husband was buying some tires from some guy nearby. I see Cathy maybe once a year; I'm not even sure if her name is spelled with a "C" or a "K."

More than thirty years ago, my Dad woke up one night and smelled smoke. My Mom and he searched their apartment and, finding nothing, went back to bed. That night his sister's house burned down. She, her husband, and her two young children were unharmed. Cathy was one of those children. This story doesn't make sense, but I have to tell it.

This is a picture Stella Cathleen holding my brother:

Cathy went to see my Dad at the hospital. She's a nurse. She told my Mom that she feels my Dad is going to come out of this okay. How could I not believe?

I really have no control at this point

2007-10-14T22:19:00.001-07:00

Just Look At His Eyes!

2007-10-09T23:47:00.000-07:00

...Mkay?

2007-10-08T17:10:00.000-07:00

My Dad is really, really, really sick. He's been in the ICU for at least 10 days now, in a half-catatonic state. One of his best friends came to see him and my Dad didn't even recognize him.

About a month ago, he started acting really weird. He was super anxious, paranoid, and kind of crazy. He stopped sleeping. He got so bad that he let my mom take him to a psychiatrist. My Dad is a Republican, Vietnam veteran, ex-football playing, Patton-loving, commie-hater. When we were kids, he would yell "front and center" to call us. He's practically an archetype. He's not the kind of man who goes to see a psychiatrist.

So the doctor diagnosed him as bipolar, in the midst of an "acute manic episode" and loaded him with drugs. Sleeping pills and some other stuff that's supposed to "level things off." He got worse and worse. At one point my brother and I thought he was faking because he was acting so absurd. I talked to him on the phone and he acted like someone who was very, very drunk and silly. He was concerned with how nicely the window of the car rolled up. I was pissed off.

Then he got worse. He started falling down, so they took him to the hospital and that's where he is now. They don't know what is wrong with him. They've done MRIs and tested him for everything except pregnancy. He's been looked at by a neurologist who told my mother he has no idea what is wrong with him. He told my Mom that maybe it was the drugs. My Mom said, "did they like fry his brain?" and the neurologist said "that's not the term we use."

Now I'm really pissed off. Most of my anger is blind and reactionary; I'm completely powerless and frustrated. But another chunk of it is directed at how doctors jack people full of drugs when they are mentally ill. I'm so fucking sick of it.

We all know that head drugs (and that should be their medical term) are helpful for a smidgen of the population. I have at least two friends who have been helped by them. I have countless other friends, however, who have been prescribed Prozac or Celexa or that other one because they were going through a normal, early-to-mid twenties existential crisis.

The Summer after I left the church I moved home and lived with my parents. I got into a funk, which is to be expected seeing as how I had just made a huge, life-altering decision. There were other factors, too, which I'm not going to go into, that contributed to me being depressed. I talked to my family doctor and she gave me a two month supply of Celexa samples she'd surely gotten from some pharmaceutical sales rep, a six-month prescription, and the name of a therapist. I never called the therapist and I never saw the doctor again.

I took it on and off for maybe two years. I don't know whether or not it helped; nobody ever really knows what works or doesn't. I do know that after two years, right after I finished school, I started feeling really, really, really fucked up. Crazy awful terrible bad. I really wanted to die, like every minute of every day for months. I went to New York for a weekend (tickets were cheap; it was November 2001) and sat for hours and watched these kids play soccer in Central Park and I couldn't understand how they could just laugh and be happy. I got to this point where I decided that if I were going to die, I would want to do it sober, so I stopped taking the medicine. And to my surprise, a fog lifted off of me. I remember sitting in my grandpa's living room and thinking about how much my family loves him and how valuable his life is to all of us and how that must also be true for me.

About six months after that, I was reading and expose of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly in Adbusters magazine. One of the side effects that the makers of Prozac (and other SSI inhibitors) have successfully played down is akathisia, or the sudden unexplained desire to die. This quote is from wikipedia:

Ironically antipsychotic drugs are many times prescribed as “mood stabilizers” but then have the opposite intended effect, which often leads to increased doses further escalating the symptoms when the intent was to ameliorate the symptoms.

Akathisia affects up to 10% of people who take Prozac (and presumably, other SSI inhibiting drugs). That's one in every ten. After reading this article, I realized that that was probably what had happened to me. It was healing to know that I was not innately crazy and fucked up, but it also pissed me off.

My Mom was given head drugs for a short period of time in the mid-80s. The doctor didn't tell her that they were addictive and she went through hellacious withdrawal symptoms. My mother's mother's personality changed completely when she started taking Lithium in the mid 60's. As a part of Kaiser's stop-smoking program, I took anti-anxiety head drugs a few years ago and also had a bad experience with them (mainly just a lot of crying).

I'm not crazy. My mother isn't crazy. My grandmother, both of them, aren't crazy. My friends aren't crazy (even the ones who think they are). None of us are fucking crazy. We're human beings who, as we move through life, experience inexplicable ups and downs. We are irrational, sensitive, quirky people who are artists and writers and musicians and cupcake bakers who have problems adapting to a world that wants us to iron and check our voice mail and have perky tits.

If someone lives in a cold damp house and smokes Marlboro Reds and doesn't wear a scarf
and eats frozen pizza and drinks too much and doesn't sleep, she is going to have a cold all the time. And if she goes the doctor, the doctor will give her antibiotics or tell her to get some Robitussin. And if she's really sick, she might really actually need antibiotics or Robitussin. But she also needs to take care of the situation that caused the cold in the first place.

So my Dad is really really sick, but I have no idea what he needs to get better. Obviously, drugs aren't the solution. This sucks.

Men Whose Heads Grow Beneath Their Shoulders

2007-10-06T22:38:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: This post is not for those who are sensitive to sickly-sweet-goody-goody-girl-sickness. If you become nauseous, click here

So, I have a whole new look, check it out:

I just have to say that I *love* grad school so much. I *love* all the work I have to do. I *love* that I have to read things that are almost too hard to understand. I *love* all the underlining and little stars in the margins. I *love* finishing my homework. I *love* it when my Freud class, my T.S. Eliot class, and my Colonialism class all allude to The Tempest and I had read three acts of it the night before. I *love* spending hours and hours reading everyday for days at a time.

I feel like those new mothers who go back to work and everyone tells them how it must be so nice to be out of the house and among and the living and they're all "I JUST WANT TO STAY HOME WITH MY BABY." I feel like that about T.S. Eliot.

I mean, I get to study weird pictures from the 15th Century from some book that some guy wrote who travelled god knows where and came back and told everybody that people out there looked like this:

I mean, what the fuck!?!

It should be easy for a man who's strong. . .

2007-09-24T19:50:00.000-07:00

My friend Audrey is a bitchin' photographer and she took these pictures of me in my old kitchen the day before I moved. These are taken on REAL FILM like the dinosaurs used to use! You can tell because, in the second photo just like Cindy Crawford my beauty mark is on the other side. Unlike Cindy Crawford, I had mine put into my face by 400-pound sadist at Mom's Body Shop on Haight street.

Her web address is: http://www.audreyjones.net (the hyperlink thing isn't working, sorry)

If you get the allusion in the title of this post, post it in the comments and I'll mail you something cool.

Hypocrite Lecteur! --mon semblable,--mon frére!

2007-09-24T18:07:00.001-07:00

So my brother, whose blog I'm copying, really, posted today about right-wingers who are afraid of all the "godless pinko commies" in higher education. The post is here: http://wuapinmon.blogspot.com/2007/09/liberal-bias-in-higher-education.html

My brother just finished his doctorate in Spanish Literature and right now he's scraping out a living as an Assistant Professor in some god-forsaken (or infested, depending on how you look at it) town in rural South Carolina where you have to drive 17 miles to go to a Shoney's. His male students are athletes and his female students were heavily influenced by the Spice Girls and Paris Hilton...and not ironically ("Whaaat?"). Let's generalize, shall we?

For those of you who just landed, I used to be Mormon. My brother, despite his high level of intelligence, still is (comments are welcome!). Unlike me, my brother was not the hairshirt-wearing-fascist-masochist-type Mormon that I was [see footnote 1]. He swore, he watched rated "R" movies, he skipped church sometimes, and he didn't tape moments of silence over the swear words in his Pearl Jam records. This, and the inherent patriarchy of the church (really, comments are welcome!) are, in my opinion, why he's still Elder Williams and I'm drinking coffee and beer MIXED TOGETHER. [Please see footnote 2].

Mac's post is interesting because he describes the epiphany he had on his mission where he realized that, although he thought he wasn't judging people, he was, and that there are a variety of ways to be ethical and moral in the world. One testament to his character and his intelligence (take note, there are only about four) is that, on his mission, he questioned whether or not the way he had chosen was best. That's pretty damn brave of him.

The point of his post is that if one has a set of values, or teaches one's children a set of values, those values are weak if one cannot participate in the world. In other words, conservative Christians who seek to isolate their children because they're afraid of the "bad" influence of society are really insecure about their values to begin with. I agree...BUT if I had a daughter reared on Our Bodies, Ourselves and whole grains, I'd fear for her safety if I put her in public school in Cherokee County, Georgia.

Our Mom and Dad (or Mama and Daddy, depending on how much I miss them) were big into values and ethics and morals. If our domestic scene were a play, the overall tone would be "self-righteous." And this was the case even before we converted. I believe part of the reason my Dad took so well to Mormonism [see footnote 3] was because of the impeccable moral structure [see footnote 4] and clear, well-defined codes of what is right and wrong. It's like the Jenny Craig diet where they give you all the food and help you along and, like the Jenny Craig diet, IT WORKS! I'm not being a sarcastic asshole here; if one wants to "get religion" (i.e. find purpose in one's life) and, especially, if one wants to orient one's life around the family, the Mormon church is excellent.

I agree with my brother. I agree that there are a variety of ways to live morally in the world. One of these, as shown especially well by my brother, is the Mormon church. Another one is showing kindness toward your friends by following this recipe:

* One pint Guinness Lager
* One shot espresso
* One scoop chocolate ice cream

Blend. Pour into a pint glass. Serve on tray with a Nat Sherman and a copy of The Delta of Venus. It takes all kinds.

* * *

[Footnote 1] Hairshirt: "A garment of rough cloth made from goats' hair and worn in the form of a shirt or as a girdle around the loins, by way of mortification and penance."

[Footnote 2] I should say here that our family converted to the church, staggeringly, between 1990-1994. I hold that those who were raised Mormon have different reasons for staying/leaving (such as, oh, belief). If you don't think I respect that, please reread this post.

[Footnote 3] I'm writing for the non-LDS person here. Mormons don't call themselves "Mormons." They call themselves "LDS," which is short for "Latter-day Saint" which comes from the name of the church: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

[Footnote 4] A definite case can be made against an "impeccable moral structure" in the church if one looks at the church's historical relationship (as opposed to its present-day one) with African-Americans. Also, one could argue that the church privileges men. However, one can also argue that church doctrine itself (as opposed to the people in the church) is not sexist and, in fact, privileges women. I'm on the slightly-disturbed-about-everything-concerning-Brigham-Young bandwagon (comments welcome!). Also, several people I know would never call anyone who knocks at their door wanting to convert them "moral." I don't agree or disagree.

Top Ten Ways to Avoid Doing Homework

2007-09-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

1. Blog-posting
2. Taking really long showers (exfoliating, deep-conditioning, etc.)
3. Staring at the ocean and trying to count how many baby seals are in the water
4. Daydreaming about the raccoon that got into my apartment and how Theo defended us
5. Daydreaming about all the witty things I could say in class
6. Daydreaming about how someone would look with a pompadour
7. www.icanhascheezburger.com
8. Calling my grandpa or my Mama
9. Walking to the post office and listening to the one Neil Young song I own
10. Vacuuming in between the tiles with the hand-vacuum

Rambo Takes the Stairs

2007-09-12T20:07:00.000-07:00

My favorite things about my new house in Moss Beach:

* Naked everything.
* I can leave shit everywhere.
* Cell phone reception is spotty.
* Theo climbs trees like a little badass.
* No sirens or car alarms or neighbors yelling.
* Local produce stands.
* AMAZING playground within walking distance with adult size swings.
* This morning I heard a man at the post office with a little puff puff Pomeranian tell his neighbor, "We always take the stairs cause Rambo is a macho man!"

My least favorite things:

* Recycling has to be separated and boxes must be broken down and tied with twine
* Population 400: Grocery store? No. Hardware store? No. Pharmacy? No. Mormon church branch!?!? YES!
* There's shit all over my apartment!
* Celery hearts cost $3.50 at the Safeway in Half Moon Bay.
* Rambo's owner was confused as to why I was laughing so hard.

Other than Rambo: Macho Pomeranian, this is my other favorite story:

Sunday I went to Farmer's Daughter, a local produce stand. I asked the older lady there if there was a health food store around anywhere because Safeway does not sell Strauss yogurt, which further proves their connections with the dark forces on the earth. After I paid she leaned in and said:

"Can I ask you a personal question?"
I nodded
"Do you have a college degree?"

What a nice personal question! I'm used to hearing, "did that hurt?" (referring to my lip piercing). I told her I did have a degree and she tried to recruit me for the "very active" Moss Beach chapter of the American Association of University Women.

I AM SO a University Woman! Hayyy!

(I didn't take this picture)

Grace

2007-08-31T20:48:00.000-07:00

This Summer was hot. I walked everywhere and listened to songs on repeat. This Summer I wore out my shoes. I drank cup after cup of coffee. I sat in the shade and got paid to talk about Hegel, eventhough I've never studied Hegel. This Summer my brother sent me twenty postcards. I ate cilantro and sweet miso dressing. I drank every night and climbed ladders and threw bottles off of balconies. I walked to my friend's houses. I read Gunter Grass and The Master and Margarita and I memorized large sections of the Wasteland. I tried to walk to the Golden Gate bridge at 2 in the morning and fell asleep on the Marina Green. I studied Korean every day. I sent packages with no writing in them. I wore my mother's turquoise ring she got in Scotland when she was younger than me. I left it on the sink in a bar in Big Sur and someone stole it. I shook because I was nervous. I sat on a cold cement floor and read Tropic of Capricorn. I rode the ferry and asked strangers to take my picture. I ate seaweed and had dreams about elephant eels. I went swimming in a polka dotted bathing suit. I played Leonard Cohen songs on my guitar under a bridge on the edge of the world.

In the past two weeks, I've bought a car, sold a car, packed up my life, found an apartment, started grad school, quit a job, and had one hell of a cold.

And things are easy and fine. They've never been better, actually.

Today I gave a crochet lesson. It was like usual, but as she was paying me she told me that her mother had just died and her younger brother had just committed suicide. You never know where someone is at. We have a responsibility to each other to be kind and calm and a place for other people to rest.

If you love other people, you will take care of yourself impeccably so that you can do what you need to do in the world. I believe this, even if jaded people think I sound like Oprah.

Oprah's a badass. Fuck all.

I Was Just Wondering. . .

2007-08-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

How come nobody ever argues about whether or not the devil is a woman?

It hella be Arial font and shit

2007-07-31T21:28:00.000-07:00

Well welcome back to you too.

I was looking at my profile, in one of my frequent moments of self-absorption, and I saw that it has been viewed 144 times. Now, I know I may have looked at it at least half of those, so that means that at least 72 of those viewings were done by someone other than me. My question is, who are those people? I bet you anything it's folks I went to high school with who take sick pleasure in watching the super-judgemental Mormon girl go bad and swear like a sailor.

To them I say: I understand completely. Read on! Witness my descent! There's so much further to fall. . . I'm tattooless and I still care about other people's feelings.

***

So I decided to jump ship and move my sweet little ass down south past SF state (where I'm beginning my graduate work in less than a month). I'm gonna live next to the ocean and read dramatic novels and write papers with too many quotation marks. I'm a little English teacher bonsai. Clip clip. I'm growing into your worst nightmare.

In the meantime, I have to get rid of shit I don't need, which means going through my old "memorabilia." I opened up the dusty box of notes I passed to Tina in 9th grade and pictures of my 8th grade boyfriend (total fox with a shark's tooth [?] or jagged Corey Haim-esque stone dangling from his shapely little brown little ear), sappy, lovely letters from my way-too-nice parents, and old Gap schedules to find a poetry submission to the New Era magazine.

The New Era is a Mormon youth magazine. It's not as creepy as you think; Mormons aren't Southern Baptists. The tone is akin to a Landmark Forum weekly mixed with a real estate brochure.

On July 6th, 1994, at the budding age of 14 I mailed them a poem and I got this letter back. And you know it's hella in Arial font:

Dear Contributor:

Thank you for the your recent poetry submission. Your writing has merit and we wish to encourage you in developing your talent. We publish only one poem in each issue of the New Era except in August when we publish works from winners of the annual contest. Therefore, chances of your poems being used even if we purchased them would be remote.

We wish to encourage you (if you are between the ages of 12 and 23) to submit your poetry to the annual New Era Writing, Music, Photography, and Art Contest. The contest rules can be found each year in the September issue.

If you are over 23 years of age then we suggest you enter the Ensign contest. Rules for that contest are found in the July issue of the Ensign..

Again, thank you for thinking of the New Era.

Sincerely,

{Signature}

Diane Hoffman

***

Back in 1994, when those crazy computers were all new and shit, ladies named Diane who dotted their "i"s with fat little circles didn't yet know that what used to be underlined on a typewriter should be put into italics. And business letters had colons after their salutations. And, Diane, I submitted only one poem, so saying "poems" in the fifth line is unparallel with the rest of the paragraph, particularly because the letter is addressed to a sole "contributor." And uh-oh, Diane, your third paragraph has a double period at the end!

But really, Ms. Hoffman was a sweetie for saying my writing had merit (she did sign her letter herself). Especially since this is the poem I sent:

Song

The essence of a spirit;
A creation of God
Mistaken identitiy
A seed without pod

The soul's imbibement
The passing of time
A comforting friend
Misunderstood rhyme

Rhythmic consolate
Memory weave
Killer of time
Without leave

***

At least I didn't end the damn thing with an ellipses. However I did write "P. S. Give me a chance, not an apology." Bless Diane for ministering to hyper-emotional Mormon youth in the mid-90s.

Bless her and her fatly dotted "i"s and her convuluted final sentence in the opening paragraph. . .

I'm in a State, I'm in a State, I'm in a State, I'm in a State, I'm in a State

2007-06-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

I don't understand how I've been listening to the Pixies' album Doolittle for years but only recently have become absolutely obsessed with it.

I'm listening to it like Charles Manson listened to the Beatles. I'm not biking, I'm not driving my car, I'm walking just so that I can spend hours listening to my cd player. When the batteries run out, I go into some sort of primal psychological state until I can get to the next corner store and get some more. It's my blankie and I'm two.

I'm particularly obsessed with the son "No. 13 Baby." I don't have time (in part because I have to walk to where I'm going) to explicate the lyrics fully (oh but they are deserving!) but here they are:

Got hair in a girl
That flows to her bones
And a comb in her pocket
If the wind get blown

Stripes from her eyes
When she walks slow
But her face fall down
When she go, go, go

Black tear falling on my lazy queen
Gotta tattooed tit
Say number 13

Viva
Don't want no blue eyes
La loma
Want brown eyes
Rica
I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state

Choir in the yard
And the house next door
Where her grandma brought
Some songs from shore

Six foot girl
Gonna sweat when she dig
Stand close to the fire
When they light the pig

Standing in her chinos
Shirt pulled off clean
Gotta tattooed tit
Say number 13

Viva
Don't want no blue eyes
La loma
Want brown eyes
Rica
I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state, I'm in a state

***

I thought Muddy Waters' Folk Singer was the sexiest thing I had ever heard, but I can't handle:

Six foot girl, gonna sweat when she dig. . .Standing in her chinos, shirt pulled off clean, gotta tattooed tit, say number 13.

I think I'm gonna lose my shit. I feel like if I just repeat this song over and over enough I'll eventually transcend my body and go to a world where all women are six feet tall and dig trenches for pig roasts and tattoo their boobs.

Viva La Loma Rica

=Long live the Sumptuous Hill.

EGO, the coolest girl in Provo, Utah.

2007-06-12T22:46:00.000-07:00

Back in March, my old roommate Evonne Olson (now she has a different last name) posted a comment here asking if I remembered her. I wasn't able to write back to her because I don't have her email address. Evonne, if you read this, please email me at
susannawilliams@yahoo.com.

Evonne said:

I remember when you wore Gap clothes and had a postcard collection on our shared bedroom wall. I miss you. Do you remember me?

I remember Evonne very, very well. And I probably still wear those clothes! And my brother sends me postcards all the time, which I still tuck into my little book.

Evonne Gayle Olson (aka EGO) and I were roommates in Provo, UT, where I was going to Brigham Young University. Like many of my good girlfriends, Evonne thought I was an asshole at first because I got a little too competitive at Pictionary. [Oh, how many potential husbands I scared off in Provo the same way!] I won her over in the end, and eventually we became such good friends that I went into her closet and borrowed one of her dresses that she hadn't even worn yet.

Evonne was/is beautiful, with dark, straight hair, and dark eyes. She was olive-skinned and curvy and impeccably groomed. I used to love to steal her bath products from the shower. She and I liked to spend our time bouncing checks and borrowing money from each other to buy pajama pants at Old Navy.

The best thing about Provo is that nobody drinks. Now, I love to drink, but it's much more interesting when you have a town full of 25,000 young people who can't just get drunk and make out with each other. It's like the 1950's. People go out on dates--with people they don't want to sleep with! I lived there for a year and a half and I held one guy's hand the entire time and felt like a total whore. I mean I really held his hand, like really hard.

So instead of doing jell-o shots and dropping acid, people buy blocks of ice and slide down grassy hills. Here's a photo of us afterward:

Other people make short films parodying Mormon dating culture. Or go to ice cream socials. Or make fake fliers advertising piggy-back rides and hang them up. There is a lot of board game playing and skit happening. Or maybe, like, driving around and taking down oh, about 100 old yard sale signs and plastering them all over your roommate's room? Or wrapping up your roommate's possessions and giving them to her for her birthday? Or crashing AA conventions? Or starting a hair salon in your apartment even though you don't have any experience? Or anonymously and routinely heckling the boy who vaccuums the pool from behind the blinds in your living room?

This is a photo from our television theme-song/commercial medley skit. This part was The Facts of Life. I'm on the far left, playing Blair. (I wore that same sweater today!) Evonne is in the blue skirt. What a good sport; she played Natalie, and not very convincingly.

Have you seen Napoleon Dynamite? That movie was very BYU to me.

One April Fool's Day, Evonne had a make-up artist friend paint a perfect black eye on her. When people at work asked her what happened, she just looked down and said "I fell down the stairs. . ." Her co-workers were worried about her, but she never broke character, even the next day when it was magically healed.

At BYU, you have to wear shorts that come to your knee. You can't wear sleevless shirts and women have to wear one-piece bathing suits. But when I was with Evonne, it seemed normal to pretend to be Jenny in Forrest Gump, strumming (seemingly) naked behind a guitar to "I'd Like To Teach the World To Sing" in front of our entire ward (i.e. church) for a skit. I was Nell in Gimme a Break!, vaccuuming the fish tank in a tri-panel polyester mu mu with two pillows underneath.

Evonne and I drove to Denver overnight in a blizzard that was so bad, we didn't know if we were still on the road. We were the only car for hours and we had to roll the windows down and look for reflectors on either side of us to make sure we weren't in the median. It took us 12 hours and we were delirious, and when we got to Denver I spent most of my rent money at Urban Outfitters.

I stopped going to church a year after I moved to Provo. I finished the semester and then moved back to Georgia. You'd think people would have been super-judgemental and treated me like shit, but the majority of my friends there were great. My roommates were a little confused as to how I got so good at poker (I had recently learned how to play by betting clothes with my boyfriend back in Georgia), but other than one friend, everybody just treated me like I was going through a phase. And Evonne and I still had a very good time. I said goodbye to her in the Home Depot parking lot, and sang the words to "I Don't Want No Scrub" to her while I was driving away.

We stayed friends, but I changed a lot. I went through this really long, bitter, chain-smoking, contrarian thing where I shoplifted eyeshadow as a way of sticking it to the man. Bless my heart. I was so sad. In 2002, I waited outside the Oakland temple while Evonne was getting her endowments (i.e. like a super-important Mormon thing) in motorcycle boots with a hangover.

Since the one place that Evonne and I didn't meet was politics (the only time she ever pissed me off was when she told me I was overreacting to television advertising), as time went on, things changed and we weren't able to meet each other in the same way that we had before. She should have known I would go sour; I liked Alanis Morrisette a little too much. Below is the precursor of my descent into feminism, anarchy, and uber-liberalness, which (except for the anarchy) I still revel in: me burning a copy of Cosmopolitan magazine in the sink of my apartment at BYU. Note the pajama pants.

Last I heard, Evonne married a man named (god I love it) Beau, and has two children.

Those kids be hella lucky.

Rosalie's New Looks

2007-06-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday I woke up too early with a sudden desire to walk in North Beach and go sit in the poetry room in City Lights and read Eavan Boland's poem "Outside History." I love Eavan Boland. I saw her read her poems in the Herbst Theatre in downtown San Francisco three years ago. She had such a strong presence; she would finish a poem and the room would gasp.

But I didn't remember what "Outside History" was about, and I didn't understand why I wanted to read it. But I walked to the BART and walked to North Beach and bought the shittiest coffee ever at Cafe Grecco. DO NOT ever go to Cafe Grecco. Their coffee tastes like Sanka made with old Sanka water. I gave it to a homeless guy who said, "Sure! Why not?" like he was on vacation and somebody had offered him a bay cruise.

I still don't completely understand the poem, but here it is and I welcome all interpretations (which I will judge and dismiss heartily):

Outside History

There are outsiders, always. These stars--
these iron inklings of an Irish January,
whose light happened

thousands of years before
our pain did: they are, they have always been
outside history.

They keep their distance. Under them remains
a place where you found
you were human, and

a landscape in which you know you are mortal,
And a time to choose between them.
I have chosen:

Out of myth into history I move to be
part of that ordeal
whose darkness is

only now reaching me from those fields,
those rivers, those roads clotted as
firmaments with the dead.

How slowly they die
as we kneel beside them, whisper in their ear.
And we are too late. We are always too late.

***

Looking at it again, I believe that this poem is about the tension between associating herself with timelessness or with time, with myths or with history. Myths are timeless like stars, but History is "clotted as firmaments with the dead." And I'm pretty sure she's suggesting that "fields, . . .rivers, [and] roads" emanate darkness the way that stars emanate light, and that both reach us years after they happen.

[Which reminds me that a friend of mine cracked me up recently when he fake-justified not wearing sunscreen by saying that he didn't need to worry about it because "the light is all 8 years old and used up and shit."]

And I guess the darkness from history is reaching her now, and she's choosing to be "part of that ordeal." And she's watching things (is it just the "fields" etc.?) die slowly, knowing that because there is a lag between when things really happen and when they reach you. Thus, that's why "we are always too late."

***

So after I bought the book and I was walking down Columbus I saw a mural on the side of a building. Imagine a woman with a ponytail at the top of her forehead, and a waterfall of permed hair down the side of her head. Imagine her mid-80's purple blazer (shoulder pads) and an Italian guy in suspenders checkin' her out. I was shocked that this mural was not faded and old, but had been either recently painted or at least maintained, which meant that someone thought it still looked good.

Rosalie's New Looks is a wig shop/full salon that has been open since 1957. When I walked in, it was dusty and a large Italian woman was sitting in a barber chair reading a magazine. There was an enormously fat, long-haired, gray cat in the other barber's chair next to her. And an old skinny Italian guy with a cross around his neck. The shop was full of mannequin heads and wigs, sticky costume jewelry, and stuff. Rosalie told me about the $5 earring deals.

"How much is a haircut?" I said

I'm a sucker for getting my haircut in a weird, fucked-up place. I hate the hegemony/guilt/corporate feeling of most salons, and they cost too damn much. It reminds me of going to the dentist. For years I had my friends cut my hair, until my elder friend Billie (who got me half my wardrobe out of the Mercy Family Plaza dumpster) just went chop-chop randomly to the back of my head. I had my haircut at an Asian place that just sliced at it with a razor blade. My favorite hairdresser until now was the bad-ass, brave tranny lady who wore ocean-animal collage t-shirts with the sleeves cuffed just-so.

Rosalie charges $30, which is totally reasonable to me. I was ready right then, so she pointed at the old guy and said "Leo, can you wash her?" Leo took me into a crowded, dark room with a hair washing chair. I think Leo didn't talk, like, in general, because when he dropped a lid and it made a really loud crashing sound, he just like held his hand out and shook it, like "oops!". Right before I leaned back, I realized I didn't have any cash on me, and thank god I asked Rosalie, cause they don't take credit cards.

But I went back yesterday and Rosalie's daughter, who I thought was a drag queen at first, cut my hair. Maria was wearing a black leather cabbie hat and her eyeliner was shaped like two tildes that almost converged in a v in the center of her nose. Her skin was all leathery and she was wearing dark, heavy foundation and matte coral lipstick. And she was really nice and cut my hair excellently.

Maria worked quickly and she was not the least bit tender. She jerked my head around, pulled my scalp away from the skull when she brushed my hair, and clamped the hot iron so close to my face I'd flinch. At one point I yanked away when it touched my ear. She didn't apologize, and I admired her. I only had an hour on my parking meter.

The best part of the whole thing were the different photographs of Rosalie and her family throughout her life that were pasted on the mirror and in frames everywhere. There were pictures of Rosalie's grandchildren with her in the background, heavy and sporting a high, pyramid-esque ponytail. There was a memorial photo of her son who had died in 2002 at 31 "after a long illness" according to the obituary. There were photos of Rosalie before then, thinner and happier looking. An awkwardly written newspaper article ("So come to Rosalie's New Looks for your Saturday night party") from probably ten years ago with a photograph of Rosalie in a Marie Antoinette wig. A 40s-ish Rosalie with her husband, her sitting on a diving board in shorts with thick, great legs and, of course, perfectly styled short hair-sprayed hair. Rosalie in the early 70s, busty and shapely in an immaculate white pantsuit with a black-and-white polka-dotted collar, with long, thick, smooth hair. And then there was a thin, cute girl in a fur wrap and short heat-set curls with an older man's wrinkled hands wrapped over hers. And finally, baby Rosalie sitting still and expressionless in her mama's lap.

A friend of mine lived in Italy and told me that the sickest thing he heard about was "Sicilian Divorce." This is where a man, living in an uber-Catholic society that doesn't condone divorce, pays to have his wife murdered so that he may remarry. He explained that old Italian men spend their time sitting out on the street corner playing games and ogling ladies, but that he felt sorry for old Italian women. He said old Italian women turn into trolls. I told him that was mean.

But then I saw how baby Rosalie changed from a sweet little sharp-elbowed girl in pin curls to the the mother of a dead son and the matron of a dusty drag queen supply store.

***

And I guess now when I think about sitting amidst all the mannequin heads from different decades, and seeing how something like a woman's bone structure, i.e. her bones, can be trendy, I see why Boland would say:

Out of myth into history I move to be

It's the Year of the. . .

2007-05-24T23:16:00.000-07:00

My brother, who is much smarter and cooler than I would ever give him credit for, put a post on his blog just for me yesterday.

His address is: http://wuapinmon.blogspot.com/

It's about cats, and if you love me, you love them too. Especially fat ones with thought bubbles.

ESPECIALLY FAT ONES.

I have always associated people with animals. One day I just knew that my Aunt Connie WAS a raccoon. My first boyfriend was a duck, another one was a beetle, one was a bear cub/moth, and one was even some sort of large, carniverous cat, I swear to God; he'd nip the back of my neck like I was a weak gazelle he'd just run down and he wanted to be sure I was dead. Then he'd growl.

My friend Tristy? A sea otter. She agrees. I also think she could be one of the those cute sloths that live up in the trees is Costa Rica and sleep all day. Her husband is a polar bear (his last name is Hunter!).

My mother is one of those picturesque, beautiful seals, but she's also a rabbit. There are lots of rabbits. One of my roommates is also a rabbit, but a different kind of rabbit. My old roommate Brenda is a pretty, dope-y bunny. My friend Leslie is a foxy chipmunk. This girl who works at the local DIY co-op looks so much like a giraffe it freaks me out.

I once offended a very good friend of mine by telling him that I thought he was a monkey. Everybody wants to be a tiger or a deer or a shark or some sexy, strong animal--a barricuda, a snow leopard, a black widow. People want to be like basketball teams.

But there are beautiful and awkward versions of every animal. My Aunt Connie, the raccoon, is a lovely human being, but I wouldn't call her sexy. And I have seen some very sexy raccoons. Being a beautiful three-toed sloth is so much better than being an awkward gazelle. However, if someone ever calls you a hyena, they probably don't think much of you.

And I'm not sure if most people are really able to see what animal they really look like. I've been trying to figure out what animal I resemble most for a long time. I was starting to think it was a cat:

1. I have big, fluffy hair that I'm always tending to.

2. I don't like to take a bath or get my hair wet.

3. I like to run around the house when I'm excited.

4. I sleep a lot.

5. When I want to be left alone, I will walk away.

6. When I want attention, I will pester you.

7. I spend a lot of time staring out the window of my tall, tall apartment building watching people on the street and the birds on the power lines.

8. I SHED

9. If I'm really hungry, I freak out and cry.

10. I can be left alone for long periods, but after enough time I get mad and pissed off.

11. At crowded parties where I don't know anyone, I like to sit in the corner and watch.

I think I made a good case, but it all seemed too good to be true. In February, one of my Chinese students took a photo of me, and I realized that the animal I really look like is a pretty pink piggy:

(Sorry it's blurry. It's a digital picture of a picture. I don't have a scanner.)

I don't think I look bad in this picture at all, but I do think that I look like a pig. And that is fine with me. I don't particularly like pigs, but they are very intelligent, enjoy casserrole-esque food, and they're known to take a nice mud bath when it's hot. Plus, the South is full of pigs.

What's SO great is that below is the full photograph:

High Compassion

2007-05-23T22:48:00.000-07:00

Today, in a moment of self-absorption, I was thinking about what I would say if I were in some group situation, like a corporate conference or the first day of graduate school or some writing class and some group leader wanted everyone to name his or her greatest weaknesses. At the corporate conference, some douche-bag would probably say he was too much of a perfectionist and some witty, half-sexy lady would say "chocolate." And if it were graduate school, half the people would name something they thought was clever ("space and time") or slightly obscure ("Kraut Rock"). There would definitely be some girl who loves tea who tried to be clever ("the semicolon!") but then everyone who wasn't a complete asshole would kind of feel sorry for her. The other half of the grad school folks would be all witty and might even make you laugh and feel slightly intimidated: "my greatest weakness is gravity."

So this evening while I was driving in downtown San Francisco, I was just thinking about how I must be mildly retarded because I was fantasizing about how badly I would love to be able to say "I'm self-righteous and I talk like a 14-year-old girl in an internet chat room" (OMG, R U Serious!?!?).

Self-righteousness is integrity and compassion gone too far. It's idealizing a way of being right in the world so intently that ends up placing more emphasis on that than on the "beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh" who inhabit it [1]. In the New Testament, the Pharisees were so concerned with how Jesus didn't conform to what they thought the Messiah was supposed to be like that they couldn't see that he was him. It's different than being judgemental. It's wanting so much for the world to be full goodness that you are intolerant of people when they don't conform to how you feel you would act. It's some Mormons, it's some punks.

There's a fine line between having integrity and being self-righteous. I never knew this existed until today, when I thought about the poem "A Broken Appointment" by Thomas Hardy while I was driving. It's a poem about a man being stood up by a woman. What makes him sad isn't so much that she didn't show up, but that he realized that she didn't have enough character to show up and be kind, even if she didn't love him.

A Broken Appointment

You did not come,
and marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindess' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
--I know and knew it. But unto the store
Of deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?

--1901

In the third line of the second stanza Hardy says, "I know and knew it." What does "it" refer to? Is he saying he knew when he invited her that only love could "lend [her] loyalty" (i.e. that only if she loved him would she show up)? Or is he saying that he knew when he invited her that she didn't love him?

When you read it the first way, Hardy seems like he's testing her. Or like he's a martyr. This way is self-righteous. He creates a situation knowing that she will disappoint him and give him a reason to re-impose his view of the world on everyone else.

But if you read it the second way, that he invites her knowing that she doesn't love him, just to be with her, not expecting anything from her, then she is a fool to not show up.

And depending on how you're feeling at a certain hour of any day, either interpretation holds up. I think.

********

[1] That quote is from Walt Whitman "Children of Adam" in Leaves of Grass. Dear Lord, go read it. It's lovely!

Sharks and All That

2007-05-22T23:27:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading the book Devil's Teeth by Susan Casey. It's about the Farallon Islands, which are about 40 miles west of San Francisco. They're vicious. The Native Americans thought that was where evil people went to live for all eternity (and all along you thought it was Spokane, Washington!).

Nowadays, the islands are home to tons of seals and, due to this, a population of Great White Sharks that attack anything remotely resembling a seal (i. e. a surfboard). Sharks are so old they predate trees. Can you imagine a time when the world didn't have any trees? Or grass? But some giant fish with three rows of teeth was evolving its scale-y skin?

[Spoiler of the film Deep Water below:]

This woman I used to "work" for showed the film Deep Water on her 50th birthday. That's the film about the couple who was forgotten on a scuba trip and were never found. It's sort of assumed that they were eaten by sharks. Sorry I ruined it for you. It's based on a true story. If you get a kick out of imagining being eaten by large sea creatures, then this is the film for you. And I'm with you on that one.

I do think it's sad that a relatively "young" person (50 ain't old) tried to suggest that it's all over and the sharks are just coming to get you on your 50th birthday. Now, I may be only 27 (god's perfect number), but I do know A LOT of Senior Citizens and fifty seems so adolescent in comparison. I hope that I hit my stride by then and stop getting all pissy around 3:00 every afternoon.

Love ya,
Susanna

I Just Hope That

2007-05-09T00:35:00.000-07:00

That someday, someday, they publish a book about me, a book titled:

Susanna Williams: Mildly Retarded?

Yelena

2007-04-17T22:53:00.000-07:00

So since the last time I posted, I have become disgusted by dolphins. Whenever I see a photo of one, on a billboard, say, touting the innocence of children or the wonders of nature, all I can think about is some dude with a ponytail and a boner in a cove rubbing some dolphins' rubbery belly. Dolphins seem disgustingly sexual, like how I feel when I remember the drama club or I contemplate the furry phenomenon. I suppose in theory I support mutual consensual everything, but on a visceral level, it all just creeps me out. Like some dude with a cape on.

Instead, I have a new hairstyle. While trying to teach my friend Heidi how to change between D and E chords on the guitar, I realized that some part of me, essentially, is Eastern European. I have cramps and I smoke in bed*. I eat cold, leftover gefelte fish and I use vicks vaporub on a daily basis. While giving guitar lessons in my bedroom, I not-too-discreetly give a vigorous scratch to my crotch. I wear white eyeliner. I am YELENA.

Behold:

My favorite part of this new hairstyle is the bald spot on the left side:

She's just all about fun, really.

*Just in case you're not getting this, these things are not true for Susanna, although they are true for Yelena.

When California Goes Too Far

2007-04-08T22:56:00.000-07:00

I picked up this flyer at Rainbow Grocery two weeks ago. Can you believe this shit?

This is the text, verbatim, of the flyer:

Are the Dolphins calling You?

We are gathering a Bay Area 'Pod' to receive a remarkable gift. . .

the gift of Dolphin Consciousness

Get your flippers wet!

Attend Weekend #1

The Frequency of JOY!

April 27-29 * Fairfax, CA

Dolphin HEALING HEARTS. . .A Gateway to the New Paradigm

Study with these Masters of Consciousness & Joy

Receive the extraordinary Dolphin Attunements

Heal your heart & return to wholeness, joy, your true nature

Learn the Art of Dolphin Energy Healing

Create Unity-Community with a loving and supportive pod

And much more...

"Thanks and so much gratitude to you both for your courage to bring this incredible gift you offer to the world. I have been changed so deeply...!"

"Attunement #1 has been amazing for me. I feel I have access to part of my brain that I have not used before..."

April 27-29 (Fri. night, Sat. & Sun. days) ~ Circle Center, 17 Bolinas Rd., Fairfax, CA 94930

Tuition: $333 ~~~ Early registration by April 6: $300

For more information or to register, contact:

[contact information here, omitted just in case the guy googles his own name and finds my blog and I hurt his feelings]

www.dolphinheartworld.com

* * *

I've had this flyer on my fridge for weeks, just to frighten my students. Fairfax, where you are invited to get your flippers wet, is in Marin county, north of the Golden Gate bridge. It's so bizarre. I was lying in the park there with my old boyfriend and I heard *TWO* different people talking about their daily meditations for the week. They do have a bitchin' organic ice cream shop with flavors like lavendar honey.

And the most bizarre thing happened to me there. I went into a bookstore and there was a man watering the plants on the high shelves with a pesticide squirter thing. I said, "good idea" and he said "thank you." When I gave him the money for my book, I looked at his face and I was taken by him. I immediately loved him, like I had known him for years. I felt like I was looking at my boyfriend. But my real then-boyfriend was waiting for me outside, so I looked down and ran away like I was Joseph and the man was Potipher's wife.

I may be jaded about dolphins, but at least I'm an honest woman.

Graduate School

2007-04-06T16:03:00.000-07:00

So I have finally, damnit, received notice from San Francisoco State that I was accepted into their MA program in Literature. I was also accepted by Mills College. I did not get into Berkeley, but I didn't expect to, so I wasn't disappointed.

I'm 90% sure I'm going to State cause their program is bigger and supposedly better and it's lots cheaper. Mills has a beautiful campus, but it's lots more expensive and they have a skunk problem. San Francisco State has signs with font from the early 80s. Maybe I'll start eating donuts in the morning and wearing brown blazers with corduroy patches on the sleeves and making carbon copies. And ogling the newly liberated office girls.

Nuh-Uh!!!!

2007-04-05T17:11:00.000-07:00

AHA! So five or six or seven years ago, I was reading some web page about the weirdest web sites of the year. One of the pages was about people who do it with dolphins. That is where I got my crazy dolphins-have-14-foot-penises fact that shocked my friend Tonya (and made her blush, surely).

All any of you have to do is do a little google search on "dolphin sex" and instead of the big bad hippy porno sights you'd expect, you can still find the fucking craziest shit you've ever heard:

http://www.sexwork.com/family/dolphins1.html

This page contains no explicit photographs, so you can look at it on your church computer. However, if you are a member of what my brother refers to as "the sensitive Mormon set" you should really stop reading now; I hate to offend. The text below is taken from the dolphin website (I have bolded the parts that REQUIRE your attention):

Q3) What do I do if a dolphin wants to mate with me?

A3) Accept, if possible! I will go through the steps involved with males and females.

The Male: When a male dolphin is interested in you, about the only thing you can do, if you are male, is to masturbate him. (Unfortunately, I cannot speak for the female of the human species... it seems women just don't like dolphins enough... so I cannot say for sure if it is safe to mate with them. I would suspect not, due to a dolphins size, but then again, I cannot say for a woman.)

WARNING! In the considerations of safety, you should NEVER let a male dolphin attempt anal sex with you. The Bottle-nose dolphin member is around 12 inches, very muscular, and the thrusting and the force of ejaculation (A male can come as far as 14 feet) would cause serious internal injuries, resulting in peritonitus and possible death. Unless you are the masochistic type, you will have a hard time explaining your predicament to the doctors in the emergency ward....

A male dolphin's member is roughly S-shaped, tapered at the end. If you are in the water with them, it is best to support the dolphin on his side, just under the water, with one hand, and handle him with the other. Male dolphins, I find, tend to prefer the base of the penis to be gently massaged and squeezed, as well as gently rubbed along it's length. It feels very much like the rest of the dolphin (ie. smooth and rubbery to the touch, but firmer). It doesn't take long for the male to ejaculate, around 40 seconds to a minute, and this is usually accompanied by either shuddering just prior to ejaculating, and thrusting and tail-arching during ejaculation. The force of ejaculation can be powerful at times, so it is best to keep your face out of the line of fire, or keep his member underwater. You can attempt to lick and suck on the end of it while masturbating as well, but be warned, do not try to give full throat, and get the hell out of the way before he ejaculates! A male dolphin could snap your neck in an accidental thrust, and that would be the end of that relationship.

***
EWWWWW!!! I cannot accept this shit, no matter how open-minded I like to be. Alright, maybe if I lived on a deserted island and had lead poisoning or something. . .

Nah, not even then.

**I would like to note for my records that 14 feet IS a significant number in terms of dolphin penises.**

Dolphins have 14 foot penises

2007-04-04T23:32:00.000-07:00

So my dear friend Chris responded to my last blog post about Giant squid with an article on CBS.com concerning "giant squid" off the coast of San Francisco. I would just like to acknowledge that the "giant" squid talked about in article aren't the official, evil, elusive giant squid that make me go all weak in the knees. The author of this article is playing fast and loose with the term"giant squid." The measly creatures in this article grow to only about 8 feet long. Although they do attack people, which I greatly admire, the true giant squid have tentacles that grow to be at least sixty feet long. Stop. Pause. Look around the room. Imagine what sixty feet of squid would look like. Okay?!?! Okay.

I would also like to admit that, in the great Williams tradition, I greatly exaggerated the diameter of the giant squid's eye. They are, in fact, not eight feet across, but truly 12 inches. I didn't mean to misremember. Why, just the other day I claimed to one of my friends that dolphins have 14 foot penises. And I really believed it when I said it. I think I read it somewhere...

Annals of Susanna, Volume 1995

2007-04-03T00:31:00.000-07:00

And now a selection from the diary of 15-year-old goody-goody Susanna!

April 7th, 1995

I broke the law! Not really. Today I went out with Tina [my best friend] and we went over to her rich 18-year-old, owning-his-own-house Boyfriend's house. She let me drive her mom's car and since Travis [Tina's boyfriend] was in the car it was legal. My parents just would not approve of it. The way I see it is, there's lots of rules. I follow most of them. If I followed all of them I'd get tired of it and rebel so it's okay to raise a little hell ever so often so you don't die of boredom. As long as you don't hurt anybody, it's okay. [Was I Dutch?]

All of the sudden I feel really guilty that I betrayed my parents' trust of me [here comes Mormon Susanna] I'm thinking maybe I should tell them---nah. They'll just get mad and overreact. I guess I just better not do that anymore. What if I'd gotten in a wreck? It ain't all good.

Last night I was talking to Shane [my boyfriend] and someone called for my Dad and I asked him if he wanted me to call him back and he said sure. My Dad didn't get off the phone till 10:15 and he can't have calls past 10:30 (on non-school nights). I'm kinda sick and I was tired so I just went to bed. He was so cool about it though. He said he was actually kinda glad because he want to bed at 10:00. The sweet little thing is definitely in bed right now (11:30). Who knows, maybe he's dreaming of me. I love to lay in bed at night and think about him and wonder if he's thinking about me at the same time. He's such a good boyfriend. He treats me so much better than John [my boyfriend from two years before this, whom I broke up with because he slept with two other girls and I had only hugged him, once] ever did. Today I was thinking about the crap I used to put up with from him and it makes me sick. I was so naive. Shane is so nice. He would never go two weeks w/o calling me. I don't think he'd cheat on me. Me being older [I was six months older!] has a lot to do w/it. He's like "Wow, an older woman!" Tomorrow I'm going over to his house for dinner and then we're going to watch a movie. It would be so dang nice if he'd kiss me. If he doesn't, oh well. I like to just hold his hand. They're so soft and not really sweaty anymore.

I [heart] Shane

Susanna

Awwww....I just browsed ahead and the next night, after the credits were rolling for Stargate, I macked him. It was my first kiss, too. Looks like I was a bit disappointed:

"It kinda stunk. It was like squidish."

Surely I adapted, as I kept on making out with Shane for the next six months until his balls were so blue he went and dated a girl known to have already done it. I, on the other hand, maintained the law of chastity until I just couldn't damn take it anymore. But that took a lot longer than six months.

* * *

Now I love squid, especially The Giant Squid. They're sixty feet long; their eyes are 8 feet across. They have giant, powerful mouths that eat sharks and small boats. Are you fucking ready for that!?!? They live so far down and in such darkness that no one had ever seen one alive until last year, when a whole team of Japanese scientists finally nabbed a photo. Until then, we'd just found bits and pieces of the 40 foot long tentacles that washed ashore. The tentacles would be lashed and scarred from battles with great white sharks! Holy fucking shit!!! I *love* giant animals that can eat you just out curiosity!

Suzanne Holds the Mirror

2007-04-02T11:13:00.000-07:00

Yesterday my friend, Stephanie and I wore purple skirts with flowers on them. I wore a blue flower in my hair. My eyemakeup matched my earrings. She had on orange clown shoes and put her long dreadlocks up in a half bun on her head. When we went to the Mexican restaurant, she took the little paper Mexican flag out of the grapefruit margarita that we shared and put it at the crown of her head.

Stephanie (sometimes she calls herself "Steffy Sue") and I went to the carnival in the parking lot of the local community college. It was getting cold and as we walked under the shadows of the rides we would shiver a little bit. The rides were expensive, so we only rode a few: the kamikaze was like a boat at the end of a pendulum that hung you upside down. We rode the tilt-a-whirl (if you lean to one side you spin faster) and the zipper.

The zipper is a 30 foot high rectangle with a track that goes around it like a compacted ferris wheel. On the track are cages that can flip upside down and turn around 360 degrees. It was raise us up over Oakland and then we would flip backwards and fall forwards while it lowered us back and around. I love feeling like something terrible is about to happen, like you're going to hit the car in front of you, or you're going to fall out, yet knowing that you are completely safe and that someone has engineered this thing to not hit the car in front of you and that thousands of people have already been in this exact situation and have come out just fine.

Once, while we were walking around, a woman looked at us and said to her friend, "Are they the Charmed Sisters?!?!" referring to the TV show about witches. I wonder if I was Shannen Dougherty or Alyssa Milano. It's funny how you can only see what you already know.

How to Eat Food

2007-03-26T10:23:00.000-07:00

Growing up in my house, one of us would regularly eat almost an entire box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Cream Pies and blame it on someone else. One time, while my brother was babysitting me, he and I ate an entire 500 count bag of Hall's cough drops because there wasn't any candy and we just wanted something to eat. It's not like we ate a lot of fried food or sugar cereal. My mom even insisted that we eat wheat bread and drink 2% milk. However, we did eat a lot of fast food. The pizza guy knew our names. And everytime we went to the grocery store or the gas station, Mom let us get a candy bar.

Now my Dad, who is very heavy, has promised us that in the next six months he will make a good faith effort to lose weight. I'm very proud of him for realizing how important this is, not only for himself, but because our family needs him to take care of himself so he'll be around a long time to debate with us and make up facts to support his arguments.

If I'd been a guy, I'm sure that right now I'd weigh over 200 pounds. However, I had the hegemony of teen magazines to scare me into skipping lunch and doing push-ups before I went to bed. Over time, I have gradually transitioned in something of a healthy diet, largely because I moved to California. It's pretty difficult to live here and not eat well. The produce is fabulous.

So below I've mentioned a few of the secret diet tricks I have learned to trick myself into eating somewhat well:

1. Drink water, not diet soda. A lot of the time, we think we're hungry when we're dehydrated. If you don't like to drink water, then mix water with a couple of tablespoons of pure fruit juice. Or make herbal tea. Quit your bitchin' and just do it.

2. If you want to eat bad food, eat good food with it. If you want to eat a hamburger, then eat one, but eat some salad with it. If you want to eat an entire chocolate bar, then eat one, but eat it with an apple.

3. Instead of diet food, like the blasphemy that is fat free cheese, eat small portions of rich, fatty food like fancy bleu cheese with big portions of food that is good for you.

4. Eat your food on a plate at the table. Don't eat in the car.

5. When you make food that is good for you, like spinach or a salad, put little pieces of yummy things in it, like pine nuts and slivered almonds and chunks of fried something.

6. Spend more money for better food and eat less of it. Buy a nice piece of fish instead of a box of fish sticks.

7. Have a cutting board, a colander, a grater, and garlic press ready to use at all times.

8. Use spices on things so they taste good.

This is what I eat when I'm in a hurry:

Mix canned kidney beans with garbanzo beans. Cut up a few stalks of celery. Grate a carrot (you can do this really quickly once you get used to it). Maybe throw some radishes or cilantro in there. You can also add sunflower seeds or slivered almonds. Top it off with sweet miso dressing.

This is the best tuna fish ever:

Mix tuna with Best Foods (in the West) or Hellman's (in the East) mayo. No other mayonnaise is edible. Put a big ole pinch of tarragon in there. You can't skip the tarragon; it'll blow your mind. Add salt, black pepper, capers, sunflower seeds, slivered almonds, mustard, horseradish, grated carrot, raisins, grapes, chunks of cucumber, and any combination of these. Toast your bread, and eat it with a piece of lettuce and a slice of tomato (if it's in season).

Now go drink a glass of water and tell me your favorite recipe.

She Has a Special Sponge That Is Optional

2007-03-05T21:01:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, some man in Berkeley made a fortune and built a hot tub in his backyard. Not wanting to keep it to himself, he and his wife decided to share it with everyone. If you wrote to this man, he would give you a code to his back gate and you could go and use the hot tub anytime, day or night, except on Mondays, when it was cleaned. The hot tub could seat about 10 people, and it was very very hot (like 113 degrees). Men could only go if they were the guest of a woman. And you had to be naked, since detergents from your bathing suit could contaminate the water. Everyone had her own code, instead of just using the same one, so if someone gave her code out to too many people, or if some creepy guy got a code, the man could disable it. When people asked the man for donations, he just said "if some people gave, then others would feel like they had to, and it's not what it's about." His backyard was very dark, and since the hot tub was so hot, there were several platforms where people could sit or do yoga in between soaks. Because he had neighbors, everyone had to be completely silent from the time they walked in the gate to the time they left.

If you don't live in the Bay Area, you probably think this guy is a creep. But I know better, because I went there last night.

My inner Pollyanna was a nervous about being naked in front of men. I've been to Osento, the women's only naked spa in San Francisco, but I was sure that there would be some dude there checking out my boobs and I'd feel disgusted. Or I thought there'd be nothing but hot hippy girls and I'd be embarassed, but I was wrong. It was just a bunch of people and we were all naked and nobody had a boner. Plus, there were old and fat people, which makes everyone happy. Cause when there's some pudgy middle-aged guy standing naked in the changing room with you and he's both perfectly comfortable with himself and not looking at your tits, then something good is happening here.

Last night there was a woman off in the corner doing leg lifts. I thought there was a dog beside her, but it was hard to see. Then, it climbed a tree and we could see that it was a giant racoon!! It was bigger than my giant Maine Coon cat, with a big fat raccoon head and tail. Plus, it was NOT AFRAID OF PEOPLE. It started chasing the lady in the corner doing leg lifts. She got away (she didn't even scream, she was silent and she wasn't scared), but we all got back into the water. I felt like we were a bunch of nymphs in the river with the wild animals around us. It was so dark.

When I came home, I felt so blissed out. My friend Stephanie told me I would feel like I was drunk. I suspect they put drugs in the water, which I fully support*. I kept petting my cat and thinking, "he's SOOOO beautiful" and "I can't believe he's ALIVE!"

So I guess I've crossed over to the other side, to hippy-land, with naked hot tubs and reveling in my cat's existence. I like it over here, but a full conversion could never happen: I like Paris Hilton and cigarettes and a good dose of cynicism. But it's all about balance, right?

*This is a joke, just in case you didn't get that.

Three Funny Stories From Work

2007-02-28T16:08:00.000-08:00

Three funny stories from work:

1. When I showed my pictures from my trip to one of the senior ladies at the Korean Center, she puffed out her cheeks and said "You look fat!" Then she let out this long, evil laugh. I told her it was rude, but she just kept saying it over and over and pointing "You look fat! Hahahahahaha Vely fat!"

I tried to tell myself that she probably just meant "healthy," but this woman is one of my best students. She comes every day and her English is pretty good. I hate it when you think someone is really cooperative and hard-working and then you realize that they just have mild dementia.

I had the bilingual social worker come translate because I'm not above getting upset if some old lady calls me fat. It turns out that she meant that I looked fat IN THE PHOTO but that I wasn't fat in real life and she thought that that was funny. And apparently, in Korea, it's rude to say that someone looks nice in a photo because it implies that they are ugly in real life.

So Mrs. Bae is actually sane, but I still gave her a harder assignment today than I usually would have because she laughed so evilly.

2. I got some pictures back from when I taught the Chinese ladies how to play "Go Fish."

With my Chinese students, I enforce this "No Chinese (!)" rule during games because it helps them learn. However, it's kind of hard to turn off that part of your brain that knows it's wrong to yell "Speak English!!!" at old Chinese ladies. But if they break the rule, I'll take away one of their pairs!!! And I mean it!!! Good thing you can get through the whole game by just saying
"Give me all your ____" and "Go Fish"

I like this picture cause it looks like I'm teaching them how to count cards and take over the casino:

Lin Ruie Fen (on the left) is all "She's got snake eyes!"

3. Today, I taught a small Chinese class at a senior residence that also houses American seniors. American seniors are my least favorite, cause in California they're not even cute or cool like they are in Georgia. They eat canned spaghetti and hate foreigners ("they're taking away our spaces!). Plus, the old men are creepy. I'd rather walk past a gigantic construction site in a mini-skirt than walk to the bathroom if a bunch of old Californian men are in the hallway. Today this man WITH A WALKER approached me before class.

He's all, "I saw you drawing some pictures before of a pig and a cow. I'm an artist and I'd like to help you."
I said, "Thank you. That's great. What your name?"
"Ron"
"Hi Ron, I'm Susanna"
"Do you speak Chinese?"
"No, I don't."
"Oh, so, do you pantomime?"
"Yeah, a little...You don't have to speak another language to teach English"
"Oh, well, I just got my new teeth yesterday."
"Oh. They look good."
"Yeah, I'm ready to bite into things, like an apple, or maybe some young girl's neck if you know what I mean."

Is there a woman out there who would be swayed by the newness of dentures? This guy was not demented, just creepy. If he had been twenty years younger, I would have told him to mind his manners. Damnit, I should have anyway. I wish, OH HOW I WISH, I had just asked him how old his granddaughters were and how he'd feel is someone said something like that to them. But, of course, I didn't think of that fast enough, so I just ignored him and set out some expired Laffy Taffy for my students. (Which he COULD NOT have bitten into)

Marie, Marie, Hold On Tight

2007-02-25T20:49:00.000-08:00

I just got back from an excellent vacation. I spent the last week in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, skiing, snowmobiling, and hanging out with about 60 of my relatives. My grandfather sold an old piece of family swamp land and, instead of willing the money to us after he and my grandmother die, decided to take us all on a vacation together now. I'm the youngest of 10 grandkids, the rest of them are all married and everyone (except one) has kids. Thus, I have like a million second cousins and huge family.

My grandmother was born in Jackson Hole, and her grandparents helped settle the place. My great-great-grandfather helped establish the national elk refuge there, and supposedly even helped decorate the famous Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. Now Jackson Hole is an expensive winter tourist town teeming with hot guys who never forget their gloves and can get your snowmobile out of a ditch with one hand. It's a good place for a girl with a broken heart.

I love the snow! As long as you're wearing long underwear and a million layers, you don't really get cold. If you fall down, it doesn't hurt and you can just roll around in it without getting dirty. It's like swimming. It's like being a toddler.

And skiing is the most fun thing in the world besides doin' it and looking at pictures of cats. I swear to God, if I have fucked up some part of my grad school apps and I don't get in anywhere, I'm moving somewhere where I can ski all the time. Unlike every other sport I've ever tried or played, I was actually good at skiing right away. Mama was right when she told me to be proud of my big ole' strong legs ("those legs are going to carry you through life, Susanna").

Here's a photo of me going down a pretty steep hill:

And then wiping out:

Whenever I fell, I would laugh. I felt like a baby falling down on the carpet. Plus, my cell phone was in my pocket and it'd get jammed and go "De-Dah" everytime. When I'd go back on the lift, the guy would go "Did you fall again?" because my jacket and my pants would be covered in snow. It didn't hurt, though, even when I fell with my face in the snow and my skis fanned out behind me. It reminded me of the first time my old boyfriend and I put on our scuba diving equipment in this pool in Mexico. Neither of us could move without tipping backwards or getting our heads underwater. We were like little fetuses. Both of us looked up

at our instructor and said "Mommy!"

Another amazing thing we did in Jackson was go snowmobiling to these natural hot springs:

We rode in about 10 miles, took off the 500 layers we were wearing and got in the hot water. It was snowing and there was about 5 feet of snow on the ground. While we were swimming, our guides cooked us each a steak.

I put my bathing suit out to dry on the snow.

Then I pushed my mom down.

Snow is quiet. It's soft under your feet. It's also very, very cold.

But I think it's good for you.

She Was Born In Spring, But I Was Born Too Late

2007-02-10T02:37:00.000-08:00

So one of my all time favorite hobbies is breaking up with my boyfriend. I pull it out and jog with it every few months. Some others in my bag of tricks are quitting smoking, changing the litter box, flossing, and badmitton. I do these every few months as well.

We're all doing the best we can. I'm a very judgemental person, and this comes back to bite me when the tidy facts of my life-résumé seem a little fucked up. The best decision I ever made in my life (leaving the Mormon church) was decided in a vacuum, when everyone else around me told me I should do otherwise. For a week or so back then, I felt like there was a 50/50 chance that I would either be fine or I would live in hell (or at least without God)* for all eternity. That is a really fucked up thing to carry around.

Now, I feel like I'm in a similar situation. However, this time I'm choosing the sensible option, the logical decision, the one that makes sense to other people, and, most importantly, the decision that feels right in my gut. My heart is absent. I've silenced it. It's broken, really. And it's been a week or so, and though maybe not 50/50, I do feel that there's two possible outcomes: I will be fine, or I will be sad for long long time. I can't tell you how bad this sucks.

I'm older now and I'm not as scared as I used to be back then. I know I have done everything I could, and even though other people may think it's fucked up for breaking up and getting back together with someone over and over, I'm so glad that I did. I did my best to love him, and that was the right thing for me to do. My conscience is clear.

**Mormons don't believe in hell. I'll explain if you want to know.

Susanna's Helpful Hint Number 49

2007-02-07T15:26:00.000-08:00

When throwing a large party, invite your downstairs neighbors with a handwritten invitation the day before. Tell them they're more than welcome to come, and tell them to call you if it gets too noisy. They probably won't come, but they'll never complain about the noise, even when you and your guests are dancing and jumping on the floor at 1 in the morning. Plus, it'll help dispell the ice-bitch persona you've cultivated so well because you don't always shoot the shit everytime you run into someone in the hallway. They'll think you're the nicest person alive and you get to maintain your privacy!

Everyone Else

2007-02-06T22:41:00.000-08:00

In my opinion, the most humane way to walk around in the world is to assume that everyone else is suffering horribly. The woman in front of you in line to order coffee has just lost her mother. The guy serving it just learned that his bank account is overdrawn. The car in front of you in traffic, the annoying one, just left the hospital. The woman on the left is about to throw up. The man who passed in front of you on the way into your apartment was just betrayed by his best friend. Their house burned down. Her purse was stolen. He's been fired. She hasn't slept in two days. He wants to die. Her heart is broken.

And it's his birthday. The woman over there just found a $100 bill in her coat pocket. He's just had sex. She has a date tonight with someone she's been in love with for months. The man who walked by is almost finished with his novel. The woman on her bike is going to a surprise party and she doesn't know it. He had the exact same dream as you last night. The lady drawing her blinds met your grandmother in 1963. The man waiting for the bus is wearing identical underwear to the man waiting at the light. She bought the package of bobby pins immediately behind yours at Walgreens. He's just arrived from the airport. The woman with the duffel bag works the night shift.

Gotta Fill Your Cupboard

2007-01-29T18:16:00.000-08:00

The first cd I ever bought was the Dick Tracy soundtrack. I bought it at a used cd store in Marietta in 1990, when I was 10 years old. I believe the rest of my family had been shopping for Laserdiscs. I still love this cd. It's all Madonna singing big band music written by some Hollywood dude (with a pony tail, surely) in the late 80s. She's laying on the sexy. When my parents left me alone I would push all the furniture back against the walls and do a dance routine to the song "More," complete with imaginary canes and a chair as a prop. "More" was a celebration of excess: "Got my diamonds, Got my yacht, Got a guy I adore. I'm so happy with what I've got, I want more!"

I have no idea what the plot of the movie was, but Madonna wore a very low neck gown and she was bad (always making puns on Mr. Tracy's first name) and a singer in a night club. I loved her like any girl who was born in 1980 did, and I thought she was beautiful.

Warren Beatty was the male lead. Who cares? You know? He didn't sing and have back up dancers!

So I was tremendously disturbed to watch Shampoo a few nights ago, and discover that in 1975 Warren Beatty was hot! I've just seen him in the tabloids every now and then, and you'd have no idea that he was once a total, coiffed fox with tight jeans! Damn! If my hairdresser were that hot, I'd have much shorter hair. Good thing the guy who cuts my hair is stocky, pale, and gay.

SPOILER BELOW FOR SHAMPOO

Talk about weird sexual dynamics in the 1970s! Good Lord, they weren't kidding. And I didn't get my information from I Love the 70s or any other VH-1 special. My version of the 70s is informed by:

1. Spike Lee's movie Summer of Sam

2. Feminist Theory

3. Woody Allen

4. My Best of the 70s music compilation

5. Just imagining what could have gone on in between the 60s and the 80s.

I was so very satisfied that he didn't win the girl in the end, I can't even tell you. Goldie Hawn went off to Egypt, where she'd need a team of bodyguards unless she stopped wearing those uber-mini skirts. The other chick went off with the married guy (what about his wife and daughter? Nevermind them! It's 1975*!). Poor Mr. Beatty had to walk down off the plateau by himself; we can only hope he didn't chaffe.

*It was, however, set in 1968.

Twin Peaks

2007-01-19T17:51:00.000-08:00

{I'm having some trouble with uploading the right image, so please excuse the lack of them in this post}

When I was working at the Barnes and Noble outside of Atlanta when I was 17, my coworkers and I watched the entire Twin Peaks series on cassette. Every Thursday, we would go over to this guy Alan's house and we'd watch three episodes. Alan was slightly older than me, had bad acne scars and this poster of Marilyn Monroe hanging in his living room:

I had a huge boner for him, the same way I had a huge boner for any boy three years older than me who was skinny and treated me like I was pretty. I had a boyfriend and I'm an honest woman, so nothing ever happened. I just wore impeccable white socks from the Gap when I came over to his house in case I had to take my shoes off. Once he commented on how clean they were.

The other two people were Kim, a goth AIDS activist with horn rimmed glasses, and this guy Sean who I would now describe as an arrogant film guy but at the time just seemed really cool.
I loved these people. I had never met anyone like them. They were nice to me, even though I was Mormon, insanely naive, and my favorite band was 311. I swear to god Kim changed my whole life when she said in passing, "Jesus, half the people in the world are trying to pretend to be something they're not!" Her words were tremendously influential; it was like she was telling me something I needed to know that nobody had ever told me. It's nice to remember this, because if I overheard a 20 year old goth girl say that now, I'd be bored. At the time though, I was a girl who wanted each pair of her white cotton panties to be perfectly folded and the crotches to be impeccable. In fact, here is a photograph taken during this time, of which I was secretly very proud:

(I bought each pair of those with my own money that I should have been saving for college).

But Twin Peaks was great. I have the loveliest associations with it. I felt so cool at Alan's house. They'd drink a beer or two; I wouldn't leave like I normally would have with my high school friends. I'd sit far away but right beside Alan. After the shows one night, they played a Portishead cd. It was like Susanna Adult School.

I moved to Provo, Utah to attend BYU. When I came back during the summer, I had platform black patent leather Steve Madden strappy sandals, Victoria's Secret pantyhose and I had this new way of putting all my hair on my head so I looked like some sort of hip Roman goddess with baby barrettes. I kind of looked like I worked a salon in a mall in Atlanta, but I wore much less foundation and pinker lipstick. I went to work and flirted with Alan, but after a few days I realized he had this new creepy side that I hadn't seen before. I still don't know what that was.

I eventually took Kim's words to heart; I left BYU, the church, and overtime I even stopped shopping at the Gap. All of those socks are now lost, but I still have and wear many of the underwear. And yes, they are all still immaculate.

Kim got a job full time at AIDS Atlanta. Sean moved somewhere. Alan became a cop, but I didn't know that. He was killed at work in 2000 by a hit and run driver. My name was in his datebook, so they called my house and spoke to my Mom. When she told me about it, I couldn't remember who he was. I didn't know any Alan who would have become a cop.

I Am But Mad North-North-West

2007-01-16T21:09:00.000-08:00

KALX, the local Berkeley radio station, is hosting its "Best of 2006" week. Each DJ plays the songs he or she thinks are best from last year. Twice today I heard a track from a band called A Hawk and the Hacksaw. I recognized immediately that it was Elephant 6 related. At first I thought it was the Olivia Tremor Control, only with fewer members. Both times I heard it, the DJ said that it was former members of Neutral Milk Hotel and Beirut.

Beirut is indie-rock inspired by Balkan gypsy music. I eat that sort of thing up, all heavy layers and bells, but I think I prefer field recordings to things like this. I bought the Beirut cd only because Jeremy Barnes (the NMH drummer) was playing on it and I heard a snippet and thought that it was good. I'd like to emphasize that Mr. Barnes isn't a member of the band, he just played on the record.

So these DJs throwing around this A Hawk and A Hacksaw project as being from former members of NMH is mildly annoying. I think I wouldn't mind it if it was just "A former member."

What I do like is the name of his new project: A Hawk and A Hacksaw. What a great name for a band!

"I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw." --Hamlet, Act II, scene ii

According to T. Burton:

"Parrying Rosencrantz' and Guildenstern's clumsy inquiries, Hamlet warns them not to underestimate him, 'I know a hawk from and handsaw,'(II.ii.394) with 'handsaw' widely considered to be a variant or corruption of 'hernshaw,' an early word for 'heron.' He means 'I'm sane enough to know the hunter from the hunted.' "

I took a Shakespeare class from and Anthony Burton at BYU. I wonder if T Burton is him. Dr. Burton wrote a sonnet every morning for a year. I really think only a Mormon would or could do something like that. I remember one of them was in praise of toast. The others were more serious; I think one was about his wife, some nuanced understanding between the two of them. I wonder if she liked his poems, if she looked at him and saw him twenty years younger, when his hair was thick and it was cool to wear a braided belt, if she imagined herself then thinking of the future being married to a Shakespeare professor who wrote sonnets for her. I see him backlit in a brown field coat, and her looking straight ahead, loving him because he sees himself as the hero in his own text.

Some small part of me wishes that things like that would work for me.

Time keeps on slippin' slippin' slippin

2006-12-31T10:22:00.000-08:00

As a kid I held a kind of sacramental reverence for the first time I wrote the date of the new year. Like most children, I never wrote a date like MM/DD/YY for any other reason than to mark the top of my homework. In school, the date was linked to TODAY.

Whereas the days and months changed consistently, the year was locked in what seemed like forever. Toward the end of the year I would remind myself that I had once written the year before at the top of my paper, and even though I knew it was true, I didn't believe it. It had been this year for so long that the ones before had never existed. I would imagine going to heaven and God telling us all that he had programmed the past in our minds, that the only year that ever really existed was 1989.

At 12:01 on January 1st, 1990, I stood under the front porch in awe that I had lived an entire decade, that it was a new decade, that the 80s were gone and that I would never again write "mm/dd/89" at the top of my paper. When I wrote the "90" on the far right of the dashes for the first time, I almost felt like I had done something wrong.

Many people I know subscribe to the theory that we experience time as a percentage of the time we have lived. Thus, one day to a child is much longer than a day to a 94 year old man because the old man has lived longer. Although time does pass more quickly now that it did when I was a kid, I think our experience of time passing has much more to do with whether or not we are waiting for something to happen in the future and the length of our attention spans (which is tied to our ability to distract ourselves). For me, childhood was just biding time until I could have all the privileges that came with adulthood. I wasn't very good at distracting myself either. Now, when I can't wait for something to happen in the future, such as drinking the French champagne I bought for tonight, I am able to distract myself and the wait doesn't seem so long.

However, the sancitity of writing the new date has changed. It's not that things diminish with time. It's not that I've lived so many years (which I haven't) that one more is insignificant. I'm not so busy that I can't be bothered with petty things. The special feeling of writing the new year's date has been corrupted by credit card expiration dates.

Yes, I have already written or typed 01/2007 hundreds of times. My next payment on my student loan has been due 09/01/07 for forever. I've already mentally journeyed to 10/15/07 every time I consider my car insurance premium. Thus, it's not that being an adult diminishes the passing of time, it's that our contemplation of future dates is almost always embedded in when our bills are due.

It's Christmas Time in Tuscaloosa

2006-12-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

Greeting from Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where I've reverted back to being a whiny, grumpy 13 year old girl obsessed with how her hair has gotten too frizzy.

I'm sitting in the newly built lobby, in front of a flat screen monitor, with the local radio station and their 24 hour Christmas marathon playing on the right.

My parents, who are surely kinder, nicer, more interesting, and less annoying than I find them right now, sure do take forever to leave this Comfort Inn and their lack of non-decaffeinated coffee and no drinks near the computer policy.

According to the radio, Tuscaloosa is rich in African-American history, as the first black mortician was licensed here!

Bitchy? Check
Anxious? Check
Spoiled? Check
Hair-style inspired by Alabama? Check Check

Well It's About Damn Time

2006-12-18T11:21:00.000-08:00

No excuses, let us move forward. Onward Ho!

Personal Assistant/Social Secretary Top
Description: This person is responsible for keeping up with the social and professional demands of an employer. Duties may include keeping track of the family agenda, arranging for reservations of various events, travel bookings, event planning, some secretarial responsibilities, shopping and running errands.
Annual Salary Range: $50,000 to $110,000

--The Reimer Agency

In dealing with the wave of responsiblity I've neglected since I have been stressing about my grad school applications, I decided I needed to hire a personal assistant. The only problem is that I can't afford it. However, I realized that if I worked as a personal assistant then I could use the extra money to hire one myself. Or to hire myself.

And that is what I've done. I've hired Mindy, my alter ego. Mindy is detail-oriented, well-groomed, and emotionally detached from overdue library notices and forgotten jury summons. She puts things into piles and takes care of them.

She comes once or twice a week, and I pay her fabulously. The best part is that Mindy has also arranged for me to keep a housemaid (Marta), a laundress (Mrs. Gillagheey), a gardener (Jacques), a chaffeur (Henry), and even a groundskeeper (Mr. Purdue)!

The downside to this is that I now have to work not only as a personal assistant, but a housemaid, laundress, gardener, chaffeur, and groundskeeper. The work is easy, but I totally resent my employer. I just wonder, "why do I have to clean up her laundry and make her bed? Why can't she do it herself?" The maid work, especially, is really boring, but I just try to kill the hours before I can go get some beers with my hot boyfriend, Hank.

Even though the work is really hard, it's so nice to come home to my clean apartment after the maid has come!

P.S. Mindy is in no way related to or associated with my sister-in-law's sweet sister.

The Wild Rose

2006-11-06T16:37:00.000-08:00

I believe in my last post I said I was hardy, that I didn't get colds often and had good knees.

Well, the very next day I got a cold. This happened to me once before, waking up after a night of too much alcohol and feeling just fine. I told my friend on the phone, "I feel like a superhuman." That afternoon, I started coughing and was sick for two weeks, puffing on gauloises the whole time.

But this time, hopefully will be different, as there is no smoke going in these fine pulmonary organs, and I'm actually not crazy! Also, seeing as I'm taking the GRE very soon, it might be good to be, yet again, confined to my bed.

Although I've been immured by this sickness, if I remain assiduous and obdurate in my studies, I will not be plaintive. With steady acclivity, I shall rise to sing the paens of my GRE verbal scores and fulminate in a beatific, laconic neologism that will not obfuscate the truth of my magnanimity.

I think it shall be: She rose.