Red Phoenix Rising

2006-11-14T20:28:00.000-08:00

Guh.

This bit's been floating around in my head for far too long, and I'm throwing it down here so I can get to work.
--------
....
She pushed him too far with the last comment. He whipped around and she suddenly found herself pinned, her back against the wall. His face with its tired, weather-worn skin and three-day stubble filled her vision. She decided he smelled rather nice--the way a man should smell, of sweat and leather, and a faint hint of tobacco and mouthwash.

"So what are you gonna do, rape me?" she asked, casually.

"No," he replied, leaning in close to her, inhaling one long breath that she could feel the air rushing past her shoulders and neck. "I plan to seduce you."
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Cross posted at deviantART where most of these excerpts will be moved eventually. If you would like to leave a comment, go there.

2006-10-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

Stranger to Paradise

I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t know where I’m staying, who I’m meeting, or what I’m going to have for dinner. All I know is the road I traveled, the miles I covered. Yesterdays.

A thousand yesterdays pushing me forward to today.

I wish I could say I was called, that some mystic hallelujah summoned me to action and towards my destiny, step after inexorable step. I wish that this felt like an uphill climb, a race for a prize, anything, any exhilaration to fill my lungs and power my blood for some honorable end, a reward, a girl, a job, riches, anything.

Instead I dig my heels in while going forward, pushed by memories and circumstances and an insistent feeling that tells me, no, turn this way, don’t go that way, you need to BUY THIS TALISMAN, NOW.

Being possessed by a demon would be easier. At least demons can be disposed of: quaff a potion, pray to the right god at the right sanctuary or shrine, perform blood rites at every third crossroads in Melm. And even if all those fail, you have a last resort with the priests of the dancing feet, known for their skills in supernatural exorcisms. So what if they often kill one of their own in an attempt to get rid of the demon for good? At least their success rate is better than half and half.

But no, I am not possessed by a demon. Am I sane? I don’t remember. I don’t hold much stock in sanity, anyway. The norm is a hard quantity to measure.

Step after step after step.

At least the city will provide some distraction from the little psychic jabs. In this barren inbetweenland, with nothing around but some shrubs and the occasional highwayman robbery victim, there’s very little to keep the voices in your head—all of them—from crowding out the one voice that you want to listen to.

2006-10-14T00:21:00.000-07:00

Flash in the pan, nuthin'

It is a small thing, these events of the past few months, but perhaps we are finally getting Somewhere. Or I am, at least. And I am watching everyone else take their first few tentative steps in the real world, or preparing to, and mirrored in them I see a vision of myself at some younger age, or a possibility of a self on a different world under different circumstances. Some bound away like march hares; others inch slowly away from their origins, as if paralyzed by the vastness confronting them.

But above all, I feel the cumulative effect of several years' worth of preparatory work, of taking pains to build foundations under cloudy castles and staking locations in shadow empires, of going over and over and over again the possibilities and the practices. It gathers behind me, brewing a storm. All I need to do is let down the sails, and sail forward.

It has taken my whole life to get to this one place, and I have my whole life before me yet....

2006-09-27T14:16:00.000-07:00

In character?

The man is lying on his back, chest rising and falling with his breath, the scuffs and marks of a recent fight readily apparent. She picks her way over to him.

He looks up at her with his one good eye. A grin cracks his face.

"Hullo, gorgeous," he said.

She kneels down to say something, anything, but instead she gingerly reaches out to touch his swelling eye.

“You know, I can see straight up your skirt.”

She slaps him hard and stalks off.

She realizes later that he wasn’t anywhere near a position where he could have seen anything. The door is ajar when she stops by his office to apologize. She knocks anyway, and he calls from the bathroom, “be out in a minute!”

When he comes out, he’s still shirtless and towelling his hair. Then he spots her sitting on the windowsill, a bag of ice in hand, presumably as a peace offering. Before he can about face back from whence he came, she’s moved in front of him. She slowly, hesitantly, brings up the ice to his face.

He turns away a little. “It’s all right, sweetheart. Just a minor bruise.”

Her face falls. “I’m sorry, I’m no good at this.”

The phone jangles suddenly. He swiftly moves to pick it up, saving them both from an awkward silence.
******
I'd meant to have him tell her to "get a towel first, if you really want to play nurse" but the lingering tension seems to work.

But I don't think I've done enough to build up to the awkward silence.

I also don't know why he was in a fight, or why they're together, let alone names.

2006-08-17T21:29:00.000-07:00

An old man, aging fast. Alzheimers robbing him of his memory, his presence. The senility reduces a once proud and handsome man to a shuddering shell of a creature, always lost, always fearful. Little things bring him back temporarily, uncloud his sight for an instant. Young Danny, a throwback to his grandfather with grave eyes and trusting expression. The Sinfonie Fantastique in the golden afternoon. His wife's longtime favorite perfume of lavender and lemon verbena. Mostly, though, he is silent, recoiling from contact, guilty at being caught still alive.

She wakes up to his amorous advances in the middle of the night--all the old moves, the clear eyes, the desire written on his face as clear as day. He murmurs sweet nothings as he nuzzles her neck. His hands do not shake as they unbutton her nightshirt. They make love like they were twenty years old again, only a little bit slower. She falls asleep wrapped in his arms, dreaming of idle Sunday afternoons decades long gone.

When she awakes the next morning, he's gone again. Disoriented, lost. She spends
all the little moments of her morning crying.

He isn't even capable of putting on his pants.

2006-08-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

Papercut: it had to happen

-What happened to your hand?
-Deathmatch with a manila file folder.
-Ouch. Who won?
-The file folder.
-Ok. So how come you aren't dead?
-Humans have superior medical care.

Yep. Last week of work and I slice myself a bloody one. On my thumb, too, so every time I so much as twitch, it reopens.

2006-06-09T15:53:00.000-07:00

Rumours of my demise

It has recently come to my attention that people actually read this blog.

It has also come to my attention that although I have quite a few things on my to-do list, I hardly think to start any of them, or rather, when I do think to start, I put it off until some other time. Usually, this is due to fear of failure. But then, this means I am not doing what I have been meaning to do--not writing, not drawing, not reading, not exercising. Mostly, not thinking.

I have been, I am ashamed to say, reacting. This is Not (double-plus un- kind of Not) Good. Reacting is good for rabbits. Reacting creates roadkill. While I may be very far away from being roadkill physically or mentally or emotionally, neither have I been moving forward. Yes, I grew up a bit this past year. I don't feel older, though; I feel tired. And I think this is because I am no longer moving on my own steam.

2006-04-03T16:41:00.000-07:00

Once more into the breach

We've all heard it before--love is a drug, yes yes yes, go away and leave me alone now to wallow in my miserable solitude. But the truth of the matter? it is. The love-drug what makes people go on rebound relationships the same way that alcoholics cast about desperately for their next drink, downing even antifreeze in a pinch. Hey, what now, I know it hurts, but anything to make it go away, really, just the tiniest little bit. It'll hurt less in the way that matters right now. Just this instance. I promise I'll be good after today. I'll never fall in love again. It hurts. It hurts. And no one can kiss it to make it go away.

It's ironic. Once you stop casting for another and start enjoying the freedom of being single, something happens--bang!--and you're left holding on to what's left of your independence, naked and blushing (though not from the cold) and missing a heart. Well, not missing. You don't want the heart back, really, you just want them that stole it from you.

Dammit. Not again.

2006-03-27T16:58:00.000-08:00

I’ve become complacent

I’ve become complacent
And sick, and sad,
And scared;
Little me withdrawn into what shell I could gather
To protect against the big cold world outside.

I’ve become complacent
And not mindful
Not seeing with clear eyes and strong steps the path that I must take
But distracted instead
By birds, by bees,
By flowering bush and branching trees.

And

While these are not bad things
In themselves
They call my attention away from the end of the road
They draw my mind away from the one I must answer to
At the end of the day, the month, the year
Waiting quietly for my traveling self to pull together and arrive,
My one true self.

I must not be complacent.
I must not be distracted,
But mindful still of all I hold dear.

This is my song.
This is my path.
This is my self.

Walk with me.
Be not complacent.
Though we do not follow the exact same path
We can walk together still,
Side by side
Singing.

2006-02-24T17:19:00.000-08:00

And we shall rise again

Missing Will with a jolt of recognition
one long intermittent love affair

Textile language, woven interplay of meaning,
remembering one of only two men to Jolt me into breathlessness with the
realization that i could never attain that level of lucidity.
the sheer force of brainpower not gotten by wisdom garnered from years or experience
but the unadulterated flash of genius

one single line of iambic
taken completely out of context, trivialized to the point of ramming it through a blender and coming out with a hershey's kiss (what's black and white and read all over?)
enough to flood me with memories and the itch, the need to write again (it's like breathing)
cognitive braincandy (kira kira no--)

I believe in more than one chance because i'm afraid my one chance has

already passed

2006-02-14T19:53:00.000-08:00

Shock of Realization--

Fuck, I can't delete this. It's too good to move anywhere.

2005-10-20T17:32:00.000-07:00

Let's Play Pin the Story Fragment to the Character

Archive digging. A bit rough, but I really like the character emerging.
******
"Nick, please don't," I said quietly from the doorway. I heard a peculiar clearness in my voice, one that hadn't been there before. It gave him a bit of a pause before he grinned and slammed her shoulder and head into the wall.

I reacted instantly.

"Well, I didn't realize you were packing heat these days. Competition getting a little cutthroat there?"

"There's a lot about me you don't realize." I smiled a little, remembering the days when I was younger, when the clearer I tried to make myself, the more confused everyone around me became. "But then again, maybe today is your lucky day." I moved the barrel of the gun so that it was no longer aiming at his head, but his knee. "Yep, I guess it's your lucky day. Lana, come here."

He put an arm out in front of her. That's when I lost it, and I guess I shouldn't have. I aimed the gun at the wall behind his head and sunk three shots in. He turned his head to look, and Lana took the chance to wrench away from him. Good girl. He started to go after her. The click of another bullet in the chamber stopped him.

"Take one more step, my good man," I purred sweetly, "and I'll blow your kneecaps off, both of them." The look on his face told me that he had seen my work on his wall, heard the three bullets but saw the one hole. Heh. It had taken me quite a while to get that good, but less than twenty paces, it was a cakewalk.
Lana appeared at my side, eyes downcast. "Got everything?" She shook her head. "There's a cab up the street with a guy leaning against the trunk, reading the hotsheets. Take what you have now and give it to him. Ask him to come with you if you've got much more. I want you to take everything that's yours out of here, like we've talked about."

Nick gave a short bark of a laugh. "Oh, she's leaving with you, is she? Has she been fucking you, bitch?"

I raised an eyebrow, but declined to respond.

"I'm done."

"We're leaving now, Nicholas. Don't try to follow us, please, or set any of your funny little snoops after us. The last one is still in the hospital with a six pack.* Poor man, he's a borderline basket case. Wouldn't want that to happen to you, would we?"

Should have listened to instinct and hightailed it down the street back to where Danny was waiting, but pride kept me walking, head held high. I would have helped the girl with her luggage, but that other instinct, the one that had already saved my life a multiple of times, told me to keep my hands free. When the shot ricocheted off the railing next to me, I knew instantly what had happened. And I retaliated. The man's knees exploded in a flower of red like fireworks. The bellow he let out was like a wounded animal's, pain and rage in one extended scream. We ran down the street, even though it was impossible for him to run after us.
******
*For those less violently educated, a "six pack" is a technique employed by the IRA where victims are shot in the ankles, knees, and elbows. Similarly, a "crucifixion" is a shooting in the hands and the feet. The six pack has other violent associations: mistakes with beer and guns (they don't mix well, obviously) and a sad story: The rise and fall of the South African "six-pack".

2005-10-17T23:48:00.000-07:00

It has been a while, hasn't it?

New projects in the works, as always. Long overdue updates coming which may or may not kill this blog. (I haven't decided yet.)

There's never enough time, but even if there were, I suspect I might waste it anyway.

2005-06-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

Elegy

She writes,
...I think it’s just gotten to the point where he’s realizing that yes, it’s true, I don’t require a lot of maintenance because I always end up doing my own little thing anyway, and he’s afraid that some day I’ll get bored and end up doing my own little thing that doesn’t include him anywhere in the picture.

I can’t think of any way to reassure him. It’s true. I’ve been happy here because I can be a happy little busy bug and do stuff like this all day: read, analyze, organize, present. I’m good at it. Maybe it’s dry and boring stuff for other people, but I like it because it takes *just* enough energy to complete a task that will satisfy the obsessive-compulsive perfectionist personality that I’ve been trying to suppress since high school. I know exactly what’s expected of me, I know what I’m doing, and I can put my own spin on it to make it even better. And that’s a lovely, safe world to be in. I like the lawyers I work with because they know how to get at the core of an issue, grok it, and then turn it to whatever advantage is needed. There’s less of the confusing greyness of miscommunications and unclear statements. Our job is to tidy up that mess out there. Yes, relationships are part of that mess. I don’t intend to get anywhere near divorce and family law.

There’s a little shadow of a doubt in one of the dustier corners of my mind that sneaks out every once in a while. I’ll be off to law school in a bit, whether it be in a couple of months or a couple of years, and I’m not sure how this would fare next to the pressures of that all-important first year. I’m afraid that I’ll have changed, and somehow, things will be different....

But I can’t stop wondering what it would be like to build a life with him.

2005-05-31T15:28:00.000-07:00

600 seconds: lights in the sky

Every once in a while, he would look up from his tinkering and scrounging and general land-bound activities and take in the night sky. Since Impact there had been sightings of strange, different colored lights in the sky; after the exodus, when he had his little fragment of earth to himself, he had gradually become aware of the spectacular Technicolor sky shows. In a place where the only sunlight floated somewhere between sunset and fading gloom, the nighttime’s gem-like glittering was spectacular, and offered a parallel backdrop to the fascinations of the material in his hands.

Sometimes there would be streaks of aurora borealis splashed across the sky like the work of a celestial painter in pinks and purples and greens, and then he remembered the day They left—his mother and father and brother with them, and he, foolishly, ran back for the antique erector set he had accidentally left behind. The ship’s computer had already locked down the flight path, and the ensuing hyperspace jump through the nearby wormhole was one that could only be done once, according to theory. He had crawled out through the waste chute only to see his parents banging at the tiny view-port, shouting faces grossly distorted by the plastic shielding, sky streaked in a symphonic array of colors. When he got to his room he discovered the set missing, as well as the stuffed duckie that he’d promised to bring back for his brother. It was a few years before he finally worked out that his parents had made one final sweep through the room and, despite the strict luggage volume limits and restrictions against personal items, managed to squeeze in their children’s favorite toys.

But the ship was already gone.

2005-05-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

600 seconds: perpetual

I found a piece of paper in the desk drawer when I was cleaning it out. It’s an old desk that I dragged home from the dump—one of those old rolltop ones with lots of cubbyholes and places where letters might be hidden or forgotten. I’d been pulling stuff out of it since that morning: paperclips, forgotten marbles, bills dated at least a hundred forty years. And then, wedged in between one of the cubbyhole shelves and the back of the desk, nearly hidden at the bottom beneath the wood, I ran across the little nubbin of paper wedged tightly underneath the shelf. I had to use tweezers to get it out, and the voyeur in me that wanted to preserve whatever it was that was written on the paper decided that it wanted to waste half an hour with a set of tweezers and a hand cramp.

I love you, sang the paper when I managed to unfold it. I mean, literally. It was happy and cheery and electronic, and it was wedged into a desk. Why didn’t someone just throw it away before?

I love you. I folded it and unfolded it. I love you. I love you. I love—

An idea struck me and I took a sheet of paper, folding it lengthwise. I wrote carefully, clearly:

I love you, too.

and looked at it for a while. My handwriting was dark and bold on the yellowing paper. I unfolded my singing telegram one more time and lay it face down on my paper before it could say anything.

I swear it clicked and went “aah,” almost like a sigh.

In the end I rolled both of them up into a bottle and drove to the edge of the world, where the cliffs dropped off into the stars, and I heaved it all into the sky. It hung for a moment, suspended like a spider on a thread, and then fell precipitously into space. The reflection of red cliffs fading into night made it look like there were flames dancing on the curved surface of the glass as it fell.

I like to think that the bottle with its love-lost cargo landed somewhere on a distant shore of a planet, among the starfall and the space debris, and got picked up by whatever mercury-breathing, meteor-eating creature lived there. I felt a little less lonely after that.

2005-05-23T15:04:00.000-07:00

600 seconds: Love is not enough.

He came in when she called for him, his ear attentive to her needs even when she could attempt nothing more than a feeble cry. She was in the bed they shared, face turned towards the door, watching for him. He knew it was bad. She never called for him when she needed him. And it appeared now that she needed him.

Something inside him broke when she told him, but he fought to control himself. There would be plenty of time to indulge in himself later, and so he choked back the tears and just held her close. She rested her head on his shoulder and he put his arms around her like they had done since the very beginning and she closed her eyes, and he, trying to control his voice, began to speak.

“Remember the first time we met? At the park, with you in your pretty dress, with your hair flying back as you biked alongside the lake. I don’t think I could have forgotten you in that dress if I’d tried. And then you fell into the water after that giant dog got away from its owner and tackled the scarf you had tied around your waist….I offered you my coat because you were soaking wet and it was cold. Remember when Annie was born, and I said that she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen, except for you? And then there was the day she married Robert and even though all eyes are supposed to be on the bride, I couldn’t stop looking at you, and then I fell into the one waiter carrying twenty glasses of red wine?”

Remember? Remember? He kept on remembering, and speaking, and remembering, and with his arms around her felt her pulse weaken and her breathing slow, and then stop, but he couldn’t stop himself, and remembered the first movie they saw together, when they couldn’t stop holding hands, and she jumped at every little noise on the way home, remembered their wedding day and how she had managed to plan the most gorgeous wedding ever but had completely forgotten to order corsages and boutonnieres for the wedding party, and so they had improvised on the spot with paperclips and roses from the garden, remembered how she would straighten his tie for him every morning before he went off to work, remembered when she first got sick but could still sit outdoors, and so she asked him to build her a swing in the giant maple out front, remembered her shrieking laughter as he pushed her so high she felt like she was flying….

When he stopped, out of breath and almost blind with tears, he lay her back on the pillow softly, as if she were asleep, and drew the covers up around her like he had done so many times in the last few months. When he looked back over his shoulder before leaving the room, he saw that she was smiling.

2005-05-20T15:01:00.000-07:00

600 seconds: What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

I would marry him in a heartbeat.

It’s not that I wouldn’t now. It was the first thing I’d thought of, right before “get rich making movies for a living.” And my head is spinning with so many thoughts that it’s hard to keep track of which thread I want, searching for that golden needle in the haystack, the trail that will take me to happiness. Because that’s all I really want, is happiness, and I find it so often with him that I wonder now if it’s reciprocated at all. Certainly he says it, and certainly sometimes I spend time with him and I see him smiling happily to himself, but I can’t get into his head, Being John Malkovich-style, and experience it to know for sure. And part of that, too, is that I want to make him happy, and maybe that would include marrying him.

But I’ve been through too many relationship flameouts to really trust in the future. Trust myself. Trust him. I mean, certainly I trust him now, but what about one year from now? Five years from now? Ten? Twenty? Would he be happy if I were with him, but unhappy? Even if I weren’t happy? Being with someone includes a certain obligation to care for them, yet it’s so easy to hurt the ones who are the closest. A carelessly tossed out phrase because you let your own guard, your own personal thought-and-speech censor down. So easy for a cast-off branch to transform into the deadliest of weapons.

And also, isn’t wanting someone a form of selfishness in itself? I miss him. I think about him all the time, dreaming about lying next to him with his arm for a pillow, nose to nose, breath intermingling as we curl into each others’ warmth and drift off to sleep. The sensation of his skin next to mine. The expression on his face when he’s fallen asleep on the bed trying to stay up to keep me company. How he always looks so awkward holding something small in both hands, trying not to drop it, slightly confused at how things happened that way.

I love him. That much I know.

2005-03-04T00:37:00.000-08:00

I met a man

I met a man coming home today
Dressed nattily in a tweed blazer and green bowler.
Walking a very plump and aging Boston Terrier.
Actually, I noticed the terrier first.
He was a bit rounder than mine, and smaller, and considerably more grown-up, in the sense that he didn't bounce around like my little doggy at home. Tien-girl bounces. Galumphs about, rather. She's old, too, somewhere around ten years old, and grey as well. But Tien Tien pays attention. This old fellow didn't even give me a second glance.

But his owner did.

Green Bowler Hat looked up at me as I approached, coming in the opposite direction. I noticed he was a bit wall-eyed and had trouble focusing on me, and had a salt and pepper mustache to go with his hat. Then he asked me for six cents.

I wasn't carrying change. He apparently didn't believe me, and asked me again. I said I was sorry, and walked on.

Old Doggy stopped at the curb
and waited patiently
for the human at the end of the leash
to start moving on again.

I looked back a bit wonderingly.
I mean
How much can you do with six cents?
It's a nickel and a penny.
Or six pennies.
You can't even pay for bus fare in pennies.

Not even if you have a green bowler hat and a Boston Terrier.

2005-02-23T23:57:00.000-08:00

To Be Expanded

But this was what was in my head today.
******
“Derek, why won’t you believe me?” she pleaded, tears in her eyes. Crocodile tears. Two weeks ago she’d sold him out to Fat Jack and he’d been hounded by the sartorian’s sleekly groomed goons ever since. Not that they weren’t easy to dispose of, but it was a bit of a nuisance. And he didn’t know where that information was going, and there were lots more to be afraid of than a fat man’s trained dogs…

“You believed me once. I love you! I won’t betray you again...”

“I believe you.”
The sharp report from the gun echoed once, twice, from the surrounding buildings.

He remembered the softness of her breasts, the smoothness of her skin. The scent of her hair. But mostly, he remembered the way her eyes closed, and the soft sigh from her mouth shaped like an O, before she fell off the ledge and onto the snow-covered sidewalk below.

2005-02-09T04:04:00.000-08:00

Metaphor

When time got too sunny and sweet for her tastes, she would crawl into the hole in the closet, the one in the abandoned part of the house and had a crack that let out long gentle streaks of light in which the dust motes danced. She would settle for a bit until the house grew still around her and then, slowly, reverently, she opened up the cabinet doors of her chest and found the hard, shiny little thing, slightly smaller than her fist. Bringing it into one of the delicate shafts of brightness would reveal maybe the barest glint of a surface, the darkness that was mostly contained within the thing surging angrily underneath the smooth implacability of its shape. She would gaze at it, looking at it as she slowly turned it in the light. After a while the thing would be put back inside her and locked up again, and she would climb out of the hole and go about her day.

Before she learned to control it, it was a cloud that surrounded her wherever she walked, wherever she rested. Its opaque heaviness had nearly crushed her into oblivion once, twice, several times. But now it was kept safely locked up, and when she needed to remind herself of where she had come from and where she was going, she would go through her little ritual, and remember.

2005-02-02T16:51:00.000-08:00

Anniversary Entry, of sorts

The tree outside is blooming white and pink like cotton candy on dark chocolate toffee crunch branches. I want to eat it. It would taste like white sugar sunshine pouring in through the window, and leave sweet honeyed bouquets of butterfly kisses lingering on your tongue. And then I'd nibble on the sprouting mint-green leaves for dessert.

I wrote about this tree exactly one year ago. It wasn't planned. But I think I'll miss it when I move out.

2005-01-27T23:31:00.000-08:00

Mommy!

I'm beautiful. Thank you.

2004-12-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

Half-Assed Return

It seems wrong for me to be so happy with me and mine (grades, boy, family, health, weather, in no particular order) when so much is wrong with the world, I wouldn't even know where to begin. But rest assured, I take nothing for granted. Not all the time, at least.

The Lady in Red is slated for a return, simply because the blog needs something like her again. A sort of James Bond with a more feminine, noir-ish edge. And I do mean that in the full sense of the word.

2004-11-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

Quick update

Mood's been replaced by, of all things, boys. Those of you who I keep in contact with on a regular basis have been alerted. Those not in the loop, well, tough. I'll see ya around when I'm not busy with boys/boy/work/test/apps/papers/tkd/etc./etc./etc.

2004-10-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

“So what does it feel like? Tell me. I’m curious, I really am.”

She looked at him, remembering all the times he had talked about himself, all that she knew about him, weighing, gauging, considering. If she’d known him for longer she wouldn’t have had to take the time to do so, just make the decision on what her gut instinct told her about him. But he was a relatively new acquaintance, a friend so far. But relationships change.

“You know what it’s like when you cry? Well, you’re a guy, so I’m not sure if this applies or not. But it’s like just before you cry, with that tightness in your chest, wrapped up with that feeling you have after you’re done. The emptiness, the hurt that doesn’t quite go away even though you’ve managed to make yourself stop crying. It’s like this thick fog that’s wrapped around you so tightly, that lets the outside world in hazily with all the colors and noises intact, but none of the meaning. And you fight to get out of it, or you want to at least, but you’re not sure if you have the energy or even the desire to get out of it, and the fog imprisons you so tightly that you don’t even care when you’ve noticed that you’re putting yourself in dangerous situations like walking across a busy street at night when the light's red and you—“ She broke off suddenly, closed her eyes and fought to control some aspect of herself, some demon possessing her known only to her own mind. When she opened them again her face was a smooth mask of composure, her eyes impenetrably opaque and detached, the way they normally were. “I’m sorry. Maybe this isn’t exactly good to discuss face to face right now.”

2004-10-24T23:47:00.000-07:00

Currently fending off depression, disgust at self for eating too much, having lack of discipline, having lack of brains, dead end panic, and ennui. But mostly it comes back to the depression.
Went suicidal for a couple of minutes on Friday before common sense (and a solid dose of anger) got the better of me.
I'll see you all when I come back.

2004-10-21T01:31:00.000-07:00

What I did on Tuesday

Morning storm and a rainy day
Bits of puddle outside my door
Head down the street armed with umbrella
Made it to class almostly dry

Walked through the halls hearing squeaking shoes
Settled down and tried not to drip
Went down below to a warm dry room
Bit stuffy, though. Don’t wanna get sick.

Came up to see the sunshine clearly
Grey clouds moving off-sky fast
Keep up umbrella to avoid the drips
Take a friend home: she’s under the weather

Enjoy the day all cozy at home.

2004-10-20T23:55:00.000-07:00

Because it's been, like, over a month

I keep having little fantasizing moments. I can imagine myself in bed with him a little too easily. It’s a little scary. I see myself at his place, trying to play video games and failing miserably, cursing like a sailor. He’d be on the side, probably on the floor, nursing a beer and making disparaging comments about my onscreen performance. Then conversation will take a turn for the flirtier, when we start commenting on the dress of the female video game characters. I’d say something like, "I could give her a run for her money."

"Could you really?"
"What, shall I demonstrate?"
"You mean take your clothes off? Sure. I’m not stopping you!"
"You wouldn’t."
A beat.
"Well, aren’t you going to take your clothes off?"
The more rational side of me is being drowned out by the side that loves a dare. "Only if you take your clothes off, too."

Bit of a pause, as he considers.

"All right."
He takes his shirt off, lazily, while I stand, my arms crossed in front of me. He’s got a strong body...not completely toned, but muscular enough to be pretty apparent. He looks up, and grins when he sees me watching him.
"So? Your turn now."
"Right."
I take my shirt off, perfunctorily, as if changing in the gym.
"Aww, not even a strip tease?"
"What, you wanted a strip tease?"

I swing the shirt around once and let it fly at him, lightly. I bend over, ready to pull off my socks, slightly facing away from him, so he has a view of me in profile, from a sort of backward angle.
"Like this?" over my shoulder.
"Wow. When’d you learn to do that?"
“I just pick things up here and there. You watch, you know. And follow along and pretend.” I squat down so that we’re about level, move into a sort of half-kneel. “And sometimes…I can’t tell if I’m pretending...” I stalk towards him on my hands and knees. He’s fascinated, but he’s holding my gaze all the way. “...or if it’s really...” my body halfway over his “...what I want.” I throw a leg over his in a half-straddle and kiss him. Before our lips have even touched he’s reacted, leaning forward. I feel his hands at my waist, circling my back, gently moving up my stomach, and I give everything I’ve got for that kiss.
*****
Some people might call me horny.

2004-09-17T17:07:00.000-07:00

I had wandered off, as I so often do, to another corner of the bookstore. While he was wading through albums on the racks, pointedly ignoring the crisply packaged CDs, I passed by the cafe, lingering a little at the rich aroma of fresh roasted coffee, then went on to browse the comic books and leaf through the magazines. I was leafing through a copy of Blankets when I sensed that he was behind me.

"Yes?" I said, not bothering to look up.

We'd been flirting on and off for weeks, neither of us particularly seriously. He was just coming out of a long term relationship; I had no intention of starting one right before I went off to school. To make any kind of relations of a non-platonic nature was a near impossibility, because both our sets of parental units thought the other was "a good boy/girl". But when one is young and bored and in the middle of what appears to be an interminable dry spell, many things are easier done than said. It was a comfortable familiarity with each other that had led us to start, and it was that same comfortable familiarity that now to erode the boundaries of our friendship. It had suddenly become, for lack of a better phrase, a dangerous game, but we were both enjoying it too much to give it up.

"What would you say," he said, stepping up close to me, "If I did..." --I felt his arms go around my waist, hugging me to him--"this." There was a soft warmth on my neck, and then a gentle pressure.

All my attention--my general state of awareness which I had worked for years to achieve--shrank down into two diamond-clear points of focus: the feeling of him behind me, and the place on my neck where he'd just left a kiss. I tried to think fast.

"Well," I said slowly, turning a page of the book still in my hands, "I could do two things.
"I could turn around and give you a weird look, and then edge away, or--" and here I put the book back on the shelf, carefully so as not to belie my lurching stomach, "I could turn around and do--" I put my hands on his chest, and stood up on my tiptoes.
"--this." And I kissed him, hard, full on the lips, with all the skill I had learned over the years.

Under my fingertips I could feel him tense, and then he pulled me closer, kissed me back. Our tongues crushed against each other, tasting, testing. A sudden thought occurred to me, and I ground against him, curious to see how he would react.

He pulled away, laughing. "Dan was right. You're a hell of a good kisser."

[If only you knew what inspired this piece. Heh.]

2004-09-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

A voice out from the gloom

I am writing, really I am. I just haven't gotten anything quite polished enough that I'd be happy to put up here.

2004-09-03T22:50:00.000-07:00

Anger, frustration, disappointment. All useful tools in making yourself do what you've been putting off, because it wouldn't be 'nice' or 'polite' or because it was 'too selfish.'

It's not even something that can be channeled into physical activity. It's simply a means to turn on the methodical, cold-blooded killer instinct you've fought for years to control.

2004-08-20T03:06:00.000-07:00

A Portrait

I see her, everytime I go out, every time I stay in. She's my height, my size. She used to be heavier. Now she's at the other end, on the thin side of things. She's far more athletic than she ever was. The moodiness hasn't gotten better...I think it's gotten slightly more stable, but more dangerous when it swings. Her self-control disappears when she's under a lot of stress. Her confidence is as low as ever, but now that she knows that it's the problem, she's a lot more comfortable with it.

She's become a little ball of neuroses in the last few years, but she also smiles a lot more often, and says and does funny thing to make people laugh. She walks her own path but knows that her circle of friends and acquaintances is there if she needs a safety net. She hasn't really dated anyone seriously since coming to college, and the scars have had time to heal. They're no longer festering painfully, oozing guilt and anger and betrayal. They're almost faded, livid white marks and a certain resigned air of regret, sad experience, and empathy. She's become more selfish because she's realized that that was what she needed to do all along.

I see her in the mirror, and I realize that she's beautiful.

2004-08-19T01:16:00.000-07:00

There's a girl that works at the Starbucks on Fulton and Center. She's pretty. Actually, she was in my junior seminar last semester, and she recognized me when I went in to order coffee before I recognized her, which is rare.

She didn't do too well in the class, she said, the first essay messed her up. We chatted idly while someone put together my order, a grande Java Chip Frappucino because I was having trouble staying awake at 8 pm. She looked past me and her blue eyes smiled at the police officer who had just come in behind me. My frapp came out, already frosted with condensation, and I nodded my goodbye as I headed out the door.

I thought about her as I walked home today, remembering how she always smelled like cigarettes the few times she sat in the seat next to me in class. I don't like the smell of tobacco, but on her it smelled...right. I think it was because she reminded me of Lizabeth Scott, both girls blonde and beautiful with a voice made low and husky from years of smoking. She has Lizabeth's eyebrows, Lizabeth of the silver screen, the heroine who always played the bad girl, the one on the edge of good citizen and bad history, trying to be strong but still so vulnerable. When I passed the Starbucks today she was inside, sweeping. She paused and looked up as I passed, a glimmer of recognition before she went back to her task. Lizabeth would have looked into the distance, lost in thought, a cigarette in hand.

Once upon a time, I would've given anything to be them.

2004-08-15T02:24:00.000-07:00

But it is such a perfect place to start, my love

And yet at the end of the day, I wouldn't be anyone else but me, and be the result of the choices I've made, the things I've done, and the friends I've met along the way.

The rest of the world will just have to live with it, dammit.

2004-08-10T01:17:00.000-07:00

i saw a dream in my mind's eye once
and tried to capture it on paper
words, art, all failed me
and the dream slipped through my fingers

2004-08-02T15:28:00.000-07:00

While I'm still on a writer's high

I just looked out my window, and there's a little blinking ball of grey feathers sitting on the edge of the roof, not five yards from where i'm typing this. He's about the size of my fist, all puffed up, and his head is settled comfortably onto his chest. It's only three in the afternoon, but he looks like he's settling down for a long nap.

Actually, he just started spasming, and I can't tell whether he's eating or throwing up.
Edit: 4:37 and he's gone, leaving behind a small collection of seeds, some half eaten, and three pieces of birdpoop. Bye bye, birdie.

2004-08-02T14:14:00.000-07:00

Cloudy days have a charm all their own, but cloudy days in early August that bring sixty-some degree weather are annoyingly anachronistic. Coupled with a suprisingly low core body temperature that's either a result of the weather or an incipient cold, I now find myself bundled in two sweaters and clutching a mug of hot tea. My hair is down for once, to keep my neck warm. And I even got out of bed late today, at eleven, just to enjoy the warmth of my blankets awhile longer and in the faint hope that the sun would come out eventually.

It didn't, but someone dear to me bought me an orange sunflower today. While that doesn't make all the difference, it gives my room just the tiniest splash of color so that, when I am in need of something to smile about, I just look above the windows and see the simple face of orange and brown, gangly green stem entwined with the curtain rod.

Hot tea, good book, and an orange sunflower. Recipe for a cloudy day.

2004-07-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

There's such a human sadness with the passing of the time, when we look back at our lives, our experiences, our correspondences that have marked the years of our duration. I am young but I am old but I am young; I have myriad memories to look back upon, and many more such stuffs to look forward to. I see my father in photographs, young and spry where he is now old and grey and requires glasses for his evening reading. I see my mother, smooth and thin, weak in body though brave in spirit, the both of them gazing with a sort of puppy-eyed wonder at this, their child. Me. A small frowning bundle of cloths and cheeks, the exact length of my father's forearm from fingertips to inside elbow, sleeping in a blanket lined drawer because a crib was too expensive. We still have the blanket, and the drawer; the former tucked away in a box somewhere, the latter now cradling underwear instead of babies.

My grandfather calls my sister by my name and when corrected, calls her by my other name. My American one, as if I could and would reject the other which was given to me first despite my citizenship. But that is getting off the topic. It's a little strange and a little sad to hear him describe exploits which have never happened--not to me, at least. Will he call me by my sister's name next year, when it will be my turn to visit? Or will I have appeared to him two summers in a row, to listen to him ramble on about his philosophies and to learn his advice on how to live life, in the remaining years he has and I had left?

2004-07-08T03:24:00.000-07:00

Transaction.

“Do we have a deal, love?”
“No. These weren’t the terms of our agreement. Unless you change your mind in a hurry, this discussion is over.” I pushed away from the table and stood up with more confidence than I felt. “It was nice talking.” Strong, confident steps. Strong confident steps. Strong, confident steps. I made a mental note to thank Danny for all the stress training he’d put me through the last few days. “Good day.”
“So I see. A pity, I think.”
I stopped. “Oh? Why do you say that?”
A pause. Then three large men dressed in Fat Jack’s security detail suits appeared out of nowhere. The three of them stood stolidly in my path, flanking me on all sides except the one facing Fat Jack. I didn’t have to turn around to know that Jack had his fingertips pressed together with gleeful anticipation. But I’d prepared for this. I looked at the one in front of me who was grinning like a bobcat, hands in his pockets. Those were brass knuckles and boy, was he happy to see me.
“Jack.”
“Yes, love?”
“This your new man?”
“Yes, love.”
“Don’t you think you should call him off before he hurts himself?”
“And how would he hurt himself, love?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Some small—“ Swift kick to the crotch. My foot hooking his ankle. A sweet, satisfying thud as a man twice my weight hit the ground. The other two were no problem--they were testing their eyesight on Castor and Pollux before they could get their special issue pistols out of their holsters. I do love the Gemini; I had them made according to spec one day in Detroit, by a blind man whose sense of touch was so sensitive that his guns were said to be better than lasers. Straighter shooting, and prettier, too. The twins were crafted to be an extension of my hands. In anyone else’s, they’d probably blow a few fingers off.

Between the man on the floor and the two ducks facing off with Castor and Pollux, however, there was one target left unaccounted for.

Fat Jack began to laugh.

The two men suddenly slunk away, probably responding to a hand signal from Jack. Their downed colleague attempted to crawl after them. I exhaled slowly and closed my eyes, bringing the Gemini down to my sides with some effort.

“Come back to the table, love. Let’s talk some business.” He brought out a gold plated lighter and lit a cigar.

2004-07-03T20:48:00.000-07:00

"I took your sister to see Dr. Hong today. He asked after you."

We were walking along the cliffs looking over the ocean. The sun was just beginning to set, and the sky was washed the color of orange cream soda. I squinted a little against the breeze from the ocean that was slowly becoming a more insistent wind.

"Oh really?"
"Mhmm. Everyone always asks after you. They'll talk to your sister, but they want to know about you."
"So what'd he ask about?"
"He asked how you were doing in college. I told him...how you're graduating early, how you're preparing for law school. He was impressed. He always knew you were a smart kid, smarter than most if not smarter than all. Everyone knows you're a smart kid. They keep expecting great accomplishment of you, but you haven't done very much of that. At all."

I shrug. I had learned, once, not to care so much about the laurels. I would have stepped out of the rat race if I were brave enough. I wasn't, though. I stayed in, halfheartedly going through the motions, idly chasing the same carrot dangling at the end of a stick like everyone else. It became apparent. While I was slowing down and trying to decide which path to take, everyone charged full force ahead. It looked like I was retrograding, ultimately.

She was relentless. "Your father's worried about you, you know."

"Why?"

"Because you're the smart one. Because you've got so much going for you and we're not sure you're aware of that. Because you have so much potential to do great good...and just as much capacity for evil."

We walk on, in silence.
*****
Some conversations just stay in your head, burn into your heart. That one doesn't translate into English very well at all. The connotations aren't the same. The Chinese language, especially Mandarin, has a balance to it, a spare, austere elegance that doesn't carry over into English, despite the latter being my language of expression. It's a subtle difference, really. It's what makes Hero a Chinese movie and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon a Chinese movie produced for non-Chinese audiences. Both are very good films (even with Hero's slight tinge of Communist propaganda), but both films are very subtly distinct from each other.

...But once I realized I could surpass you, I became so frightened--
...He thought he was in a room--in moments of devotion, a temple--and that his light would be reflected from and display walls inscribed with wonderful secrets and pillars carved with philosophical systems wrought into harmony. It is a curious sensation, now that the preliminary splutter is over and the flame burns up clear, to see his hands lit and just a glimpse of himself and the patch he stands on visible, and around him, in place of all that human comfort and beauty he anticipated--darkness still....
...The quest now stands upon the edge of a knife. Stray but a little and it will fail, to the ruin of all...

2004-07-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

There are a couple things wrong with that last post, but at least they're fixable. I do need to post something else, though, as I'm too tired to correct them and a little sick of staring at something that's a little too prurient for most moods. My mind, my spirit, and my body's been a bit on the tired side, but hopefully I'll get some time to recharge soon. And at least I don't have class or a defined wake-up time.

Thank goodness I'm not heartsick, like almost everyone around me.

2004-06-26T17:33:00.000-07:00

I started awake, tense underneath the blanket. Dying fire in the grate.
Yesterday it roared and danced as we lay arms and legs intertwined
Rough hewn overhead beams, stained dark brown with age and weather.
And a gasp of breath as tongue touched skin
Something was missing--ah, that was it. Not something, someone. I wrapped the blanket around myself, not so much for modesty as for protection against the biting crispness of the mountain morning.

I found him in the next room, stark naked, arms outstretched to either side of the window against which he was leaning, looking out into the valley. The sun was just beginning to come over the hill, highlighting the mountain and its greenery in sharp relief. The honey colored light caught the edges of his hair and the outline of his body as he stood there watching the shadows recede.

I ran my fingertips gently down his skin, between his shoulderblades and to the small of his back, and further.
And I looked up into eyes dark with love and desire, the firelight dancing in them
Good morning, he said over his shoulder, eyes smiling as he ruffled my hair lightly before pulling me to his side. Look.

I saw the usual expanse of grass waving gently in the morning breeze. A badger was lumbering slowly, leaving a wake of trampled stalks in the field. Somewhere nearby, a bird went chit-chit-chit-squawk, but I couldn't locate him.

Noisy bird, I commented.
Not a bird, he corrected.
Here, he said, moving me in front of him. I backed away from the coldness emanating from the glass panes. Oh, sorry. His hands unwound the blanket from around me and drew the ends to include both of us in a cocoon of warmth. I snuggled against his heat gratefully, and smiled to myself when I heard a soft, sharp intake of breath and felt him stiffen behind me. His free hand, the one not holding the blanket, came around me and stroked my stomach while I reached around for the smooth skin of his thigh. Now look, he directed.

I looked. The badger was still there. Chit-chit-chit-chit--and then I saw a flicker of a furred question mark on the squawk. Watched, fascinated, as the squirrel barked its outrage at the heavy badger from the safety of an overhanging tree branch. Chit-chit-squawk! And suddenly an acorn-sized missile flew from the branch and hit the lumbering carnivore on the head. The badger shook his head and then lifted it, sniffing the air. The sky is falling, said a voice in my ear, and I felt his arms tighten around me.
A moan of pleasure and release
I laughed and watched as the badger wandered down the hilltop and out of sight.

I'm glad you're here with me, he murmured into my hair.
So am I. He kissed the nape of my neck. I squirmed against him. Let's go back to bed, I said, turning around to face him.
We're already in bed, he reminded me, giving the blanket a gentle tug.
Well then, I began, and then lost myself to his kisses.
*****
I remembered him years later, when I moved to a place in the city(!) that happened to have squirrels. A girlfriend spent the night on the floor of my room and we woke up at about the same time, much much later than I had with him. We lay there for a while, her on the floor, me in my bed, blinking awake and listening to the noise of busyness outside my window. In the middle of the birdsong and the rushing cars and squeaking buses, there was suddenly--chit-chit-chit-SQUAWK!

"What a funny sounding bird," said my friend, propping her head on one elbow as she reclined.
I was already out from my blankets and in my slippers. "That's no bird." I moved across the room to the window, where I knew I'd seen squirrels carefully walking the tightrope of telephone wires to get from tree to tree.
His arms tightened around me
Nope. Nothing. Just the leaves waving gently in the morning breeze. Chit-chit, I heard again, and saw the corresponding flick, flick of a furry tail, curved into a question mark. "See? Squirrel!" I announced to my friend, who had come up to the window to stand next to me, looking into the gravel yard.

"Aww, how fuzzy. Cute!" she said.
"Yes," I agreed.

But I wasn't thinking of the squirrel.

2004-06-15T01:18:00.000-07:00

Encounter

The Grand Hyatt Hotel in San Francisco is located just slightly northeast of Union Square, so naturally after six grueling hours of reading and scribbling and bubbling along with paranoid lawyer-talk bullshit, I spent the rest of the day wandering around all the stores. Victoria's Secret had a semi-annual sale that apparently began today; Macy's had jewelry and shoes; the Disney store had a couple of interesting things.

One of the things that I had noticed last time I was in SF after finals with Roomie J was a new store called Lush. It smells the way Bath and Body Works/The Body Shop/the perfume section of any department store smells, only stronger. The entire place is grooming products made from/produced to look like things that are usually meant to be eaten, like fruits or chocolate cake. Towers of soap are carefully stacked in the middle of the space, bazaar-style, or like the dessert bar at an expensive restaurant, all tiered platters and architected feats of physics. J had mentioned something about it being couture-ish (my word, not hers, and not in the sartorial sense) and superexpensive. We didn't go in. Today, however, I was guided far more by pretty colors and smells instead of a single-minded mission involving $120 (approx.) Seven Jeans--or was it the pink As?--so I wandered in through the doors.

Strong fruit smells make the back of my throat kind of sore.

I got past the sampler packs of mini-soaps, noticed that things were priced at around $30 a lb. and sold in packages of a little more than a third of a pound, chuckled to myself at a crate of lemon-colored spheres called Bon Bomb Bath Bombs and was near the back of the store, curiously examining a pink goop the consistency of old yogurt that proclaimed itself to be some sort of peppermint-scented foot lotion. I was poking tentatively at it with a popsicle stick tester/applicator that had been helpfully positioned nearby the oobleck, when a skinny figure suddenly materialized on my right.

"Have you ever tried any of our products?"

Blonde. Platinum. Short hair--shorter than mine used to be! Cute, dark framed, nerdy/indie glasses. Plaid shirt, red. If I hadn't heard her first, I would've written her off as a young male.

"Umm, no. It's my first time in here, actually."
"So what do you think?" A wave at the merchandise stacked in piles and up against walls before busying herself with loading up more things for display. Why and what for, I couldn't tell you. There was plenty on the shelves already.

The Elf will tell you that his fallback technique is to be a smart ass. I do the same thing, but it's somewhat unintentional the more out-of-it I happen to be.

"Lots of smells. Kind of overwhelming."
"Haha, yea, there's that."

She stepped around me to work on my left now, neatly avoiding my backpack but still managing to brush my arm in the process. I watched her out of the corner of my eye while pretending to examine the effects of pink peppermint foot goop on the back of my hand. She started to say something else when two women, possibly a mother and her thirtysomething smoker daughter, possibly two not-so-well preserved California women in their mid-forties, accosted her.

"Hi, we're thinking of buying something, but we really need to go to the bathroom..."
"You have to go to the hotel, around the corner..."

The women jabbered on. I continued my slow circuit around the tiny little space, trying not to knock anything over with my backpack but still looking, smelling, reading. Taking my time.

I stopped by the door to pick up a newsletter and glanced back, briefly. She watched me, a little wistfully, as I headed down the street.

The two women were still talking.

I put up the collar of my jacket, not because it was cold, but because I preferred the look, and continued walking to Market Street.

2004-06-14T10:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm off.

Wish me love.

2004-06-07T19:08:00.000-07:00

Apologies.

Have been cramming for June 14th's LSAT. Madly cramming. So not ready...but life will begin again on the 15th.

Now, back to cramming.

2004-05-25T03:52:00.000-07:00

More crappy poetry, gomen

Write down your dreams, they said,
armed with pencils and pens and papers divided into sections with a million blanks for the unwitting victim to fill in.
Favorite Subject?
Book?
Movie?
Artist?
Hobbies?
Heroes?
A million lines squashed in between a few dozen words, printed on colored paper because that's what the office had and didn't need to conserve since all the white paper went to "official" things like tests and papers and bulletins that no one paid any attention to. Purple blue and yellow sometimes green, and always those few dozen words, always the same ones, spaced out with the long thin underscore lines meant for you to put your answers on, or maybe even without the underscores, but definitely in Arial font. Once in a rare while it would be in Times New Roman, but mostly Arial.
On colored paper.
Handed to you by a smiling lady with clumped mascara which you noticed because she put her face so closed to yours, either more than a little plump or stick-thin and rather old maid-ish, whatever her actual marital status

Write down your dreams, they said,
in workshops of aspiring writers,
dreamers in training, really, learning to weave their teenaged fantasies and adult fancies into something more tangible to keep themselves warm at night and even colder times.
They don't know that to dream is not enough, that the tenuous craft they weave with their words only lasts as long as the tide is out, that the next wash of words and waves obliterates any trace
They don't know that to give form to their dreams and weight to their words they need to go out into the world and learn and know and experience sights and sounds and tastes
I don't know that I should be the one to tell them.

Write down your dreams, I said
to myself, slowly, half believing, though I know the instant I set those butterflies down on paper they become charred shells of what beauty they once were.

2004-05-20T00:37:00.000-07:00

Galatea

At last he presses his lips to hers
To lips that once were cold as stone
And now melt warmth, respond to his

The maid feels kisses on her lips
She rouses from her marble slumber
Raises her eyes to meet her lover's

And sees both his blue and the skies

2004-05-16T00:51:00.000-07:00

I see a girl, undressing at night
Halfway in the shadows and halfway in sight
From the light of the lamp as the evening dims
She thinks she’s too fat and wants to be thin
Stands in front of the mirror and sucks herself in

2004-05-15T21:55:00.000-07:00

As if Louis Vuitton bags weren't bad enough

I'm a bit of a fashionista.

Not quite enough of one to go out and stock my wardrobe with This Season's Must Haves!^TM, and not quite obsessed enough to read endless volleys of Vogue, but I like to keep up on what's going on. Trendspotting is a bit of a hobby when I've not got enough to do (which happened an awful lot this semester and my first semester here) and what's more, I like to have my own opinions on things. My mother's got an impressive fashion sense, yes, but I prefer to take my own image into my own hands. After all, I can't be Mommy's little girl forever, can I?

That said, I tend to dislike things with logos displayed prominently. Yes, I understand the appeal for commercial branding--after all, I market myself much the same way--but there's no need to have a gigantic logo stamped onto a tee shirt, and then make some poor dumbfuck dole out at least an Andy Jackson just to advertise for the company. I find the hip-hop community to be especially misguided in this respect. But then, what do I know?--there's probably a social/sociological reason for peacocking. Clique mentality baffles me.

There are exceptions to the rule. I like the fcuk collection because I laughed the first time I saw one (Miss Strawberry-Cucumber, way back in high school) and because I liked the ploy--the double-take potential in a minimalist design, nothing that screams out its commerciality (Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein, I'm lookin' at you). Sports clothing seems to know how to do it--small logo, noticeable enough to anyone taking a serious look, but otherwise inobtrusive--but once in a while a giant Nike Swoosh will show up on a t-shirt, and I've lost my faith again. College branding is fine with me; the fake vintage shit that Abercrombie puts out is not. Finally, for some reason high-profile logos on backpacks, purses, sports duffels, etc. don't usually bother me. It's the strutting around like a damned rooster with bebe emblazoned across one's mammaries that makes me derisive on good days and disgusted on not-so-good days.

By now it shouldn't be too much of a surprise that I've always found Louis Vuitton bags slightly ridiculous. It's the combined factor of their being far more expensive than really need be, considering the quality of the material, and the fact that, plain and simple, they're UGLY. For that reason I've always felt that those that carry a Louis Vuitton, Jessica Simpson included, were...well, bourgeois. Having mediocre taste in fashion is excusable; advertising it with a bag that looks like it was inspired by cheap wallpaper and flaunting it is not. And then they came out with the Murakami variations, which are better, but only slightly. Candy colors do not a fashion item make.

Now, there's this: a Murakami soccer ball. At four Franklins apiece, at the very least I don't need to worry about seeing it in the streets until I feel like beating sense into someone.

But...the utter ludicrousness of the idea....

2004-05-10T10:08:00.000-07:00

Subdepressive? Nah.

Sleep, cold leftovers, no class to distract me from my paperwriting, and a Rachmaninoff concerto on the radio makes it all better despite having just barely missed Josh Bell's rendition of Camille Saint-Saens' "The Swan" from Carnival of the Animals.

Although I was a little afraid yesterday.

Work will make it all better, I think.

2004-05-06T05:07:00.000-07:00

Epiphany.

As much as I adore having the light bulb suddenly flicker on above my head, it's a tad inconvenient for these things to happen at 4 o' clock in the morning. It's rare enough whether it happens for papers or for my own creative process, but I still wish these insights would allow me to live a more regular schedule. All that work to train my body to get up at 8:30 in the morning or earlier, and to blow it all with one teeny little idea. Admittedly, I need more than ever to boot my GPA up, now that the Ivies are actually in my sights [damned if I don't sound like some niggling little PV freshman who thinks that it's easy...sorry] and so to have something like this is actually something of a godsend, because it ensures that if I execute it properly, I should be pretty well guaranteed the grade I desire.

Here's the main problem: I had my nice idea, I've sketched it all out. I could go to sleep now. But because I had the nice idea, I've now got adrenaline in my system, and I'm awake enough to do some more work, whether it be starting the paper, or some organizational stuff. The moon is still high up in the sky, but there are birds up and chirping already. I love writing at night, especially summer nights when the air is warm enough for me to sit at the computer in pajama pants and a tank top, playing a bit of jazz every so often when I run out of thoughts and need something to fill my head, but I have a taekwondo final tomorrow as well as a long day of classes. And I really shouldn't throw off my circadian rhythms now, of all times--I'm depending on my early rising times to keep me alert for the next few days, especially for the promotion test this Saturday, where I've volunteered to show up at 8 AM to register testers.

Mm, final decision: do some mental housecleaning. Goodness knows there's too much random things floating around in my head that need to be set down on paper.

2004-05-02T12:59:00.000-07:00

Virtual Reality

So when M brought up Pac Manhattan last night I had no idea what he was talking about. But it showed up at the top of blogdex this morning, and I must say...I'm entertained by the idea. It's the same kind of wackiness that made flash mobbing last summer so much fun. I mean, can't you imagine--

--A control room, banks of monitors everywhere. A giant map of downtown Manhattan dominates the room, and colored dots are constantly being moved around by people running back and forth from the desks buried at the foot of the monitors and the board. Focus in on one desk, mess of papers everywhere as the person seated in front of it shuffles through everything spastically. This is the CONTROLLER, wearing a hands-free headset, and he looks like a very harried customer service representative.

PAC MAN: Controller, controller! I'm at 3rd and La Guardia! 3rd and La Guardia! Turning left!
CONTROLLER: No, wait, man, you can't turn left! That's off the game map! Turn right, Turn right!
PAC MAN: Wait--I see a flash of red--it's Blinky!
CONTROLLER: Run. RUN! NOW!
PAC MAN: SHIT! I've been cornered! Inky and Pinky are right behind me.
CONTROLLER: Ok, ok. Try and keep calm! Make a left at 4th. Come on, man--beat Blinky! Hurry, hurry!
PAC MAN: [breathing hard] I can't...keep this...up...for...much...longer....
CONTROLLER: What's the status on Inky and Pinky?
PAC MAN: They're...nowhere.
CONTROLLER: What?!?!
PAC MAN: I don't know! They must've turned back!
CONTROLLER: Ok, now listen carefully. I want you to continue down 4th until you hit Sullivan, and then make a left, then a right on 3rd Street. There's a power pellet at the corner of 3rd and 6th. Can you make it?
PAC MAN: I...hope...so....AAAAH!
CONTROLLER: Hello? Hello?!? Pac Man, can you hear me?

[Screams filter through, along with the sound of blows and tearing and chewing sounds, all ominous. The screaming continues though static starts interspersing with the rest of the sound.]

[Silence.]

Every head in the room turns toward the Controller. The Controller slowly takes off his headset and sets it down on the desk in front of him. Rubs his eyes, then sits looking dejectedly at his papers.

[Sounds of an electronic signal filter through the headphones. Then--]

PAC MAN: Controller, controller, do you read me? I'm at initial location. Come in, please!
CONTROLLER: [pulls himself together and puts the headset back on] Roger that, Pac Man, I read you. I want you to head North....

2004-04-26T19:50:00.000-07:00

To the guy on the BART that was checking me out today--

You lost your chance when you tried to nonchalantly show me the book you were reading, dude. I don't dig guys who dig Ayn Rand. Even if they're tall, good looking, preppily dressed Asian guys.

On a different note, I saw (this semester's Cute Guy, aka) Red on campus today. Passed him on the way to class, in fact. He did a double take as I walked in front of him, even though I didn't acknowledge him...I guess the athletic tank top and nice pants gets his attention. Sigh.

2004-04-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

Please

Someone break me out of this fucking melodramatic rut.

Next one will be more fun, I promise. Smart, snazzy, snarky, spiffy-cool [but not squiffy].

Yesyes.

2004-04-24T08:05:00.000-07:00

That which makes this place all the more Google-whackable

Hmmm. Defenestration.

2004-04-23T13:05:00.000-07:00

He watched her undress herself in front of him, his face a carefully set mask. She shrugged the jacket off and tossed it on a chair already piled high with articles of clothing, took off her running shoes without reaching down to undo the laces. The tight-fitting shirt that she had worn underneath the jacket the entire evening turned out to be a tank top, which she divested herself of without so much as a hint of shame, arching her back slightly as she pulled it over her head. It wasn't that she was showing off for him, for she was neither turned towards him nor away from him; he felt as if he were invisible in the room, that even if he hadn't been there she would have done the same. The process of stripping down to her underwear was much more than that, now: it had become a ritual for her. Where once she had hated the sight of her naked body and barely tolerated the existence of mirrors that reminded her of her physical self, now she took the time to enjoy the process, to enjoy the physicality and the temporality of her flesh. The toned, taut musculature that she had acquired out of necessity had had the added benefit of tying her more securely to the three-dimensional world and not floating free in her own dreamlike state. He watched her flex and stretch an arm, tentatively; saw her watch herself and her reflection in the mirror with childlike wonder at the tensing and flexing sinews.

Saw her face change as she saw his visage in the mirror next to her own.

He knew the risk he was taking when he put his hands on her shoulders as gently as he could, and turned her around to face him. They looked at each other, with his hands still on her shoulders, and stood there looking for a good while before either of them spoke.

"Richard?" she said, her expression unreadable.

"Yes, love?" The old epithet slipped out, unbidden.

"Memento mori." She shrugged herself out of his grasp and left the room.

He thought he saw the glint of something in her eyes as she turned away. He couldn't tell if she had meant that sardonically or not.

2004-04-20T00:42:00.000-07:00

My Goodness.

So I've just realized, after going through all the little word documents that I've written down and then squirreled away somewhere random in my insanely hierarchical filing system that [pant, pant] I've really got what amounts to a formidable amount of writing.

Fairly decent writing, at that.

As in, even when I know it's my own work and my own words and now I have the time and distance to look back at it...I'm impressed. There's actually a reserve of good, solid, original writing that merits inclusion in the creative writing samples I will be submitting on the 20th. By way of example, check this excerpt out--it's just a little snippet of something, and was worked into something much more autobiographical.

One hot summer night a girl left her room on Durant Avenue and wandered into the world to look for love and fortune with only a full moon to guide her way.

She didn’t know where she was going or how she would get there or what she was looking for. She just knew, with the same unerring sense that told her which of her dreams would come true and which ones were just dreams, that she need to leave. And so she packed a change of clothing and a few days supply of underwear, closed her windows and turned off the fan, made her way quietly down the stairs without disturbing any of the household, and slipped out into the night, quietly locking the door behind her.

And then she started walking.

Sweet, no? That was dated July 13, 2003. I've changed a few words to make it just a tiny bit stronger and cohesive as a whole, but the basic structure is the same. Give me a bit more time in it and who knows? maybe it will become a favorite.

2004-04-19T20:50:00.000-07:00

Leap of Logic

"So violence is cyclical and affects each generation, creating a system from which there is no escape. Oh wait, here's where we can connect the Jesus Christ threads--that the only escape, the only possibility of changing things is through death and becoming a martyr."

I was a little unprepared by the reaction I got--"Whoa!" "Ohhhhh!" "That's so cool!"--but to be honest, I was pleased. I hadn't been contributing to the discussion in this class (or indeed, any of the other classes I've had) with the razor-sharp insights I like to think I have in other situations. But it felt at the time like the next logical conclusion, and kind of obvious as well. Which is true for most of the observations I make that are taken for brilliant points. "This is obvious! You mean it isn't? But see--yea, look here, here, and here. What do you mean you totally didn't see that?"

Which sort of leads logically to my next thought: the difference between me and most of my classmates is simply the difference between me and some intellectual or literary luminary--and sometimes the difference isn't even that great. The majority of intelligent people I run into think the same way I do, or vice versa. Some simply have the advantage of having more experience or time or organization skills (or some combination of these factors) than I do. Same goes for literature. Professor Weary (not really, but you could probably figure out who that is if you tried) showed me in the course of his lectures that I was headed for the same trends in my own writing. I guess that's a bit of a postmodern point of view, that it's all been done before (Barenaked Ladies, anyone?) but I think I've given up being jaded. It feels more like I'm in limbo right now, floating gently through various time periods and styles and histories, looking for the Next Big Thing.

Professor Fishbowl (who I had wanted call Prof Fish on account of the way his eyes are magnified by his glasses, but can't because that might make some confuse him with Stanley Fish [also a very brilliant man according to what I've read and heard, but I missed the opportunity to go see him speak last year] and so he will just have to be Professor Fishbowl instead), like I've said to some people, is quite possibly the most intelligent being I've ever encountered. The only other contender I can think of would be my father, who I'll cover another time. I've never had the experience of having the rug pulled out from under me intellectually, but that's the best metaphor I have to describe it. Most other cases it's my own fault for not having done the reading, or not having thought through a thing adequately enough to follow a theme to its conclusion, or (in the case of the sciences) simply not having worked hard enough. But Prof Fishbowl managed to make one point during office hours when I went to see him. One point. I was astonished. It felt like I'd fallen down the stairs.

You see, it was so blisteringly obvious after he'd pointed it out that I'll never be able to look at Macbeth in the same way again. And yet I'd read, and other people had read, the same thing over a hundred times and not seen this one tiny little gem of a metaphor that was woven directly into the speech. I'll look up the passage some time when my desk has room for my Pelican's Shakespeare tome. All I can say for now is that it. was. brilliant.

I wonder if I'll ever get to that point--not just to have a stroke of genius, but a whole series of them, like paintings, each as masterful as the one before and the one after.

2004-04-17T16:22:00.000-07:00

There she goes/ she's like a sexy rose

Ten-thirty Thursday night on the dark streets of the city. Steam issued in stacks like chimney smoke from the manholes, the only warm spots around. It had rained less than an hour ago, and the windows of the cab I rode were still beaded with water, each bead a tiny prison of light that reflected the world outside, captive within the half-sphere. There was an appointment to be kept tonight with a man that didn't know he had an appointment to keep.

"Here you go. Thirty-seventh and Stockton, ma'am."

My 'thank you' came out softer and huskier than I had intended. Beneath a grey cap a pair of eyes in the mirror looked up in sharp surprise, made contact, held my steady gaze. They were a clear blue now, irises in sharp definition as he searched my face. I slowly raised a fifty dollar bill in my gloved hand. The eyes shifted over to the right. He turned around and took the bill out of my hand, languid but with purpose. I checked my makeup while he examined the authenticity of the bill, slipped the compact back into my bag and snapped it shut when he reached for a wad of bills to get the change. "Just give me a couple tens for drinks and keep the rest for yourself. I have to travel light tonight." I didn't mention the other large bills that were in my purse, nor the handgun that kept them cozy.

2004-04-16T22:01:00.000-07:00

And Now For Some Important Messages

Between Big Fish and Kill Bill, I rush home to check my email. Today is the 16th of April, 2004, and today is the day I'm supposed find out if I've got what it takes to be an academic. The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship, a $2500 award...money which will enable me to stay in Berkeley and read all the cyberpunk I can get my hands on.

My chest thuds. It's the car going by outside, with its bass and subwoofer going at full volume, but it provides a pretty good external representation of what's probably going on inside my rib cage, if I could feel it.

The browser window with my official Berkeley email account inbox is still open. I haven't logged off, but I'm pretty sure the connection's timed out already.

Reload. Yup. Logging in....

Something about the login information being accepted, or activity resuming, or something. I've seen it so many times today it doesn't register anymore, but strangely enough I can't say what the words actually are, if asked. The page reloads again, this time without my intervention.

The left side bar appears, yellow on yellow. Blue and orange text. I have three new messages.

My browser chugs away patiently. Parts of the page appear

...and voila.
No message from the SURF panel or the Coordinator.

When people talk about anticlimax, they don't tell you this: that your brain crumples up inside your head like a piece of paper, and then rattles around like a can being kicked back and forth on the street.

Damn.

[edit:the following Wednesday afternoon--Have gotten message and award, yay!]

2004-04-16T03:24:00.000-07:00

The Familiar Cry

There are so many ideas bouncing around in my head right now that I'm almost in tears, or would be if I weren't so damn tired. As it is I'm looking at everything through a muddled thought process that's about twice as slow as it is normally.

To do:

-car chase
-dragon in the attic? or patchwork?
-femme stuff
-jazz. lots and lots of jazz.

That's all for now. This entry may be deleted as excerpts are completed.

You have been warned.

2004-04-13T02:47:00.000-07:00

Couldn't resist this one

...Even though I've been trying to restrain myself from doing stupid stuff like quizzes and other memes, how could I not put up a literature related list meme? Jacked from the kid sis over at El Fin. Italics are hers, mostly.

100 books. Bold the ones you've read. Since when was "bold" a verb?

1. 1984, George Orwell
2. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
3. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll - (A pig turning into a baby? Something about something that looked like a turtle but wasn't...) Other way around: a baby turning into a pig, and a Mock Turtle (that taught Ambition, Distraction--or was it Detraction?, Uglification, and Derision)
4. Animal Farm, George Orwell
5. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy - Started but alas, never finished
6. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery - It took me about five attempts, but I finally got into it. Montgomery's like Jane Austen for the kiddies
7. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer
8. The BFG, Roald Dahl
9.Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks
10. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell - Oh, the days when I dreamed of owning a horse, and read equine novels up the wazoo to compensate
11.Bleak House, Charles Dickens - I think it's on one of Booth's reading lists?
12. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley - Sis put my book through that rock tumbler that is her backpack. Good for polishing rocks, not so good for books
13.Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh
14. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding - Modern chicklit! Though not shopping-and-fucking, as BdJ puts it [maybe just fucking?] and anyway another Austen-type book, this time for people with short attention spans
15. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres - Hah. Nicky Cage movie. Bleck.
16. Catch 22, Joseph Heller - [*cries*] [pats lil sis on head]
17. The Catcher In The Rye, JD Salinger - Remember loving this first time around, at age...11? 12? Remember hating this next time around, at 16, when he came across as a whiny bugger that needed a good smack. Goes for a lot of protagonists I read about, actually.
18. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl - Muahaha. Bought a $.50 paperpack version for my mother and have managed to get her hooked on Dahl--the children's books, not the adult stuff. Don't think she's quite there yet
19. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens - Patrick Stewart, I say! Though the Disney version with the ducks [Uncle Scrooge!] and Mickey and Minnie and mini Mouses as the Cratchits is just about as ingrained...butbutbut--Patrick Stewart!
20. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel - Hot damn, yes. It's not great literature, but I kept thinking about it afterwards, which resulted in my reading the rest of the series that was available at the PV library, I'm sorry to say. Hey, at least I stopped and didn't buy whatever shite she's putting out now--not that it wasn't shite before. But I could see why they made a TV series out of it, and damned if it wasn't exquisitely researched, at least the first book. I wanted to make arrowheads after reading it, heh.
21. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons
22. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett - should really get around to reading Pratchett as well
23. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas
24. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky
25. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens - Read it somewhere around sophomore. Slow. Bit heavy handed.
26. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson
27. Dune, Frank Herbert - Fear is the mind-killer. Heh.
28.Emma, Jane Austen - Started (borrowed from Steph). Annoying protagonist that also needs to be smacked (see No. 17)
29. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy
30. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson
31. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy - On the list, on the list.
32. The Godfather, Mario Puzo - Muahaha, yes. And I actually read it before I saw the movie, too. Highly recommend, if haven't read/seen already
33. Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell - Shopping-and-fucking chicklit before you could read explicitly about shopping and fucking. Engrossing. Bit disturbing towards the end. Sort of a guilty pleasure...Rhett Butler goes on that list of doubtful significant others, with Edward Rochester and Heathcliff.
34. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman - No! Will get to it, somehow
35. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian
36. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake
37. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck - Rosasharn. 'Nuff said.
38. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
39. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald - Yummier and yummier every time. It's like the Cadbury Creme Egg of novels.
40. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett - Why is Prachett given the same weight as Dickens on this list?
41. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling - Yes, yes.
42. Harry Potter And The Goblet Of Fire, JK Rowling - No. And by this point, not until the rest of the series comes out and I can read the entire thing in one go. I have other things I need to get to.
43. Harry Potter And The Sorceror's Stone, JK Rowling - Now seriously doubting the literary judgement of whoever started this list in the first place.
44. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling - All right. Do all four titles really need to be here?
45. His Dark Materials trilogy, Philip Pullman - Now I feel dirty.
46. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Douglas Adams - That's better.
47. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
48. Holes, Louis Sachar - After my time!!!
49. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith - Anyone see the movie?
50. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte - Liked it as a girl, can't stand it now. Can't stand any of the Bronte's, actually. Maudlin tripe.
51. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer
52. Katherine, Anya Seton
53. The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, CS Lewis - Live action version coming out in a few years!
54. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott - Went on Alcott spree after reading. Not sure why. Probably really dug the characters.
55. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding - Doubt anyone from my group back then reads this now, but that simulation of the situation (schoolkids marooned on an island) that we did in class is my all-time favorite group activity. Ever.
56. The Lord Of The Rings, JRR Tolkien - Yes. Before the films came out, mind you. Twice.
57. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Really should read more Marquez....
58. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blighton
59. Magician, Raymond E Feist
60. The Magus, John Fowles
61. Matilda, Roald Dahl - I think this one was read to me first, before I read it
62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden - I have issues with this book.
63. Middlemarch, George Eliot
64. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie - It's under my bed, actually.
65. Mort, Terry Pratchett
66. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett
67. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman
68. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck - Best laid plans...
69. On The Road, Jack Kerouac - [guilty]
70. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez - [double guilty]
71. Perfume, Patrick Suskind
72. Persuasion, Jane Austen - I think I read it, when I was still on my Austen trip, but don't remember for sure.
73. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett
74. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving - No, although after reading The World According to Garp, I'm half afraid of reading any more Irving, for fear it might have an unnatural influence on my thinking. But damn, the man can create a character.
75. Pride And Prejudice, Jane Austen
76. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot - Writer of this list: probably at least four years younger than I am, less if they're slow (or rather normal, because most people are slow in terms of reading consumption, in my opinion)
77. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell
78. Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier - Confection of a Gothic novel (though written in the 1920s, I believe)
79. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett - Yummy.
80. The Secret History, Donna Tartt
81. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher
82. The Stand, Stephen King
83. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson
84. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth
85. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome
86. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens - The best Dickens?
87. Tess Of The D'urbervilles, Thomas Hardy - Really should read Hardy
88. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough - It's in my room somewhere.
89. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee - Yes. Although I'm ashamed to say I don't own it. I don't own the movie, either, wah! Cannot ogle Gregory Peck in prime whenever so desire.
90. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
91. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson - Yes. Fun. Made me wish I was a boy.
92. The Twits, Roald Dahl
93. Ulysses, James Joyce - Started...and that's as far as I've gotten... [more guilt]
94. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson
95. War And Peace, Leo Tolstoy - Also started...it's always the bigfat books that never get finished...like Les Miserables
96. Watership Down, Richard Adams - Redwall is for babies. This is the real McCoy.
97. The Wind In The Willows, Kenneth Grahame - Yes. Although the Disney cartoon disturbs me.
98. Winnie-the-Pooh, AA Milne - Once upon a time....
99. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins - Wait, why this and not The Moonstone?
100. Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte - Aagh! Bronte novel! Die! Die!

...If anyone wonders why I'm up so late, I've a two page paper I procrastinated on, and I'm also getting my classical music fix after two days of brain rotting pop music and no access to the KDFC stream.

2004-04-12T15:51:00.000-07:00

The squirrels are back, the squirrels are back!

I saw one walk the wire not two minutes ago.

The squirrels are back! It's almost summer!

2004-04-09T23:34:00.000-07:00

A Conversation

Two men at a small table, a full English tea service laid out between them.

-Hmm. [looks into teacup] Interesting. Take a look--what do you see?

[the teacup is handed across the table]

-What, you read tea leaves?

-Sort of, yes. Well?

-I see...a man, running. His body leans forward. I can't tell if he's running away or chasing someone. His knee is up, though, and he looks pretty athletic. [puts the teacup back on the table, where it is refilled] So? What's my fortune?

-[shakes head] Reading tea leaves won't tell you the future. It tells you about the person reading them...a kind of Rorshach test, if you will. At least, that's my interpretation. Maybe someone knows differently.

[they sip from their filled teacups, in silence]

2004-04-08T23:14:00.000-07:00

Apologia and Meditation (sort of)

I suppose I must acknowledge that the last week or so has been none too stable for my psyche. Certainly I've been unable to keep from inflicting myself on some of you with whom I interact in real time, and to the one person who knows what really happened Sunday, I thank you here. Sorry, A--now you get to join the ranks of those few who worry about my psychological well-being. I'll try to keep these episodes to a minimum.

While I am always aware of the shadows lurking in the background, waiting in the edges for an opportune time to move in for a killing, I often dismiss the necessary balancing force: those little things that can lift the spirits as suddenly as others can plunge them into darkness.

Yesterday, a vase of flowers appeared on the sink counter.

The flowers made me happy.

Granted, I am not normally a "flowers person" and I believe my usual reaction when given arrangements of inflorescence is a quizzical look of confusion, bloom(s) held at arm's length, and the sardonic inquiry--rhetorical, of course--of "These things go in something called a vase, right?" Which usually then leads to the hapless stems being dumped ignominiously, without arrangement, in a mop bucket or some other similar receptacle.

(Wildflowers, however, get special treatment, owing to the peculiar affection I have for those irrepressible blossoms. They tend to get made into posies and/or given away as gifts. And sunflowers. Such an ungainly plant, but their faces are always turned towards the sun. They radiate summer and joie de vivre.)

The flowers made me happy.

Yes. [nods sagely]

2004-04-06T02:04:00.000-07:00

Sigh.

Pieces of shit, those last two entries.

2004-04-05T01:29:00.000-07:00

Geoffrey's story, continued (though not contiguous)

She smiled back at him, even though her eyes were full of tears and pain. A genuine smile, one that summoned all her warmth and love for one brilliant, adamantine moment. Please don’t blame yourself for what happens. It’s not your fault.

And then she stepped off the edge.

The scream that echoed off the walls of the surrounding cliffs was his own.

He remembered bits and pieces after that, details quilted together. Doctors gathered over him, discussing his case in the detached clinical fashion that doctors are wont to have. His little son in the doorway, eyes wide. Raging voices in his head, mixed in with his own; the servants holding him down, trying with all their might to keep his writhing screaming body from injuring himself or one of them. It had taken six people, he once recalled with perverse satisfaction.

...To be continued, though hopefully in a less melodramatic fashion

2004-04-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

Note to readers who don't think I post often enough

I tried to write yesterday.

It took a while for the words to come, and when they came it was in the form of images. Not fun to try to translate that into a different format, but when it finally worked it grew and grew.

To use an analogy Darkelf brought up a few weeks ago, what was intended to be a smalll blurb for the purposes of this site became like the little shop of horrors plant that wants to break out from its original state. It might eat me alive this next week or so. But here's an excerpt to sate your greedy appetites.

--Long hallway, seeming to stretch out into infinity, hardwood flooring but covered with a dusty carpet somewhere between spring and olive green. Doorways, some open and some closed. A staircase somewhere behind him, curving down into what Geoffrey knew was now an empty foyer, uselessly grandiose for mingling afternoon parties and evening soirees that no longer happened. He padded down the hall, noiselessly; in his trail a small cloud of dust motes danced in the rays of the afternoon sun streaming in from the outside. The scene shifted, and Geoffrey found himself in the middle of an empty room. Gilt paneling from the Rococo, a bucolic scene above the mantelpiece, dust in the grate but no ashes from a charred log, not even mouse droppings to indicate that any life had actually ever been present to feel the loops and curlicues of the panel’s decorative flourishes, to look at the painting or poke the fire.

It is, of course, a work in progress, and please don't be too surprised if you see little changes in it over the next few days. I may post the entire thing when it's finished. Oh yes, and critical responses are always appreciated, but please be kind. My ego's been kind of delicate of late.

2004-03-31T21:29:00.000-08:00

Sometimes I get myself into things that I never would have otherwise

I've been asked to join the demo team for taekwondo, by people who I like and trust. To a certain extent, anyway. But that's more my fault than theirs and besides, it's getting off the subject.

Within seconds of being asked and realizing that it was a serious offer and not just a "come by and try out so we can laugh at you after we reject you" I went through a roller coaster of exhilaration, self-doubt, shock, and then complete and utter loss of confidence. Me being me, however, I ended on an up, if tentative, note, and that's where I've been ever since: a sort of I'll try my darndest not to let these people down.

I mean, I am very much flattered and honoured to have been considered a candidate as a mere green tip, but I'm also aware of the fact that this is probably more due to my sociability in tkd than to any innate talent on my part. I'm afraid that, like many of the activities I've gotten into, I won't be able to devote enough of my time and energy to taekwondo to really fully realize my potential. And unlike violin or quiz bowl or Chinese or any number of things that I've attempted and then moved on from, I really value the respect of my peers, higher and lower ranking, in taekwondo.

It's a bit juvenile of me to care so much in martial arts, a discipline that emphasizes individual development, but there it is.

I know I have this public facade of an outgoing person who blithely wanders her way through life, confident and harmless as a kitten. But the fact remains that my insecurities are large and oftentimes crippling, though hidden very well. I worry. I worry that people will take one look at my middle blocks or my side kicks and say, "she doesn't deserve that belt." I worry that I will lose the respect and the good will of all the higher ranks that I've gotten to know, mostly my TAs but a few others as well, and I worry that--well, that I won't be able to live up to what is expected of me, and that goes for things outside of taekwondo as well.

I started taekwondo because martial arts were something I had always wanted to do but my mother would let me; I was in it for the cool factor. No high-and-mighty concepts of discipline and self-defense for me, no sirree. But now...now I see it as more than an activity that lets me develop physical strength and stamina or an excuse to stay off the hamster wheel machines in the gym--it's all about the physical training and the mental concentration it induces. Taekwondo doesn't come nearly as easily as some of the aforementioned other things I've done, and perhaps that, along with the wonderful people I've met in the program so far, is what has kept me at it and wandering off and trying all sorts of other styles, inveterate dilettante though I've been.

Really, it's all part of the Perfect Person Plan. After all, wouldn't Lizard be so much cooler if she were Lizard: Now With Black Belt!^TM

Right. If only I could figure out how to do a left spinning hook kick.

2004-03-24T00:48:00.000-08:00

Plastic trees and a cellophane sun
I do not apologize for who I've become

I'm not sure if I'm more of a ghost when I'm in Palos Verdes than in Berkeley. Maybe it's just been this weird funk of the past month and a half, where I feel like I'm kind of just wandering in my own dream world, making brief tenuous connections once in a while before moving on in my own little bubble.

It's fitting, though, that I should feel that way in Palos Verdes, land of oceanside cliffs and summer fog and noisy peacocks sounding "help!" at odd hours of the night.

It's actually kind of funny when you wake up to their calls--"help." "HELP!" "help help." "HEEELLP." But then you get to thinking, why are they calling for help? Why all the calling, the communicating, the SOS repeated over and over again in the blackness and the fog?

And then it occurs to you just how lonely you are, awake in the middle of the night in a world of sleeping dreaming people, listening to peacocks calling to each other through the misty dark.

2004-03-17T17:23:00.000-08:00

In which she realizes that she is ridiculously Out Of It

The line at Intermezzo on Telegraph last night was freaking long, packed out the door and curled around the corner. It's a credit to the people that work behind the counter there that they've got the system so pat that there isn't even all that much of a traffic jam on either side of the partition. I placed an order for a salad and moved up to the cashier to pay for my meal, asked for a bag, and hung around waiting for my yummy salad to come out all tossed with homemade blue cheese dressing and delicious.

It came out. They called out the order, just in case. I went to the counter to grab it, and took it back to the front, where I had more room to bag the box to take with me.

"Do you do taekwondo?"

I looked up, confused. "Yes." And then looked down at my salad, wondering how he knew that, when I realized I still had my tkd pants on. "Can you tell?" I said, a bit sarcastic, a bit self-deprecating, and shook my left pant leg at him.

He was amused. "Actually, it was more the way you moved."

"Oh. Ok. Yeah, workout just ended." I finished bagging my salad, took two pats of butter to go with the thick slice of bread, and turned to go. "Have a nice day!" as I went out. He didn't have much time for anything much more than a smile and a nod.

I got about halfway down the block when I realized:

I took all of three steps, max, from where I was standing to the counter and back.
Is there even such a thing as a tkd "walk"?
I haven't even done tkd for a year yet, and I'm not all that good in the first place, so I couldn't possibly have a walk if it even exists!

OH. Oh my goodness. Hahahahaha.

Yes, I think I just had my first instance of "A Guy Was Hitting On Me And I Didn't Even Notice." And damn, he was cute, too. As in, if I'd met him in one of my classes, I would've instantly dismissed him as being out of my league (and spent the rest of the semester crushing on him) kind of cute, except he felt a bit older than a student. Short, closely cropped blond hair, glasses, cute smile, collared shirt, about 5'11"....

To the cute guy at the Intermezzo at approximately 7:20 Tuesday night: maybe two weeks from now, same day same time? Next week's my spring break, but I would like to see you again...and ask you exactly how you figured out that I do taekwondo.

2004-03-14T12:05:00.000-08:00

He thudded on the bed with a sigh and frowned at the pills on the dresser. He didn't really want to take them; they had a decidedly bad aftertaste and he was sick of gulping water like a fish afterwards. Then he thought of the job later that day, and frowned instead at the dresser, an old, dilapidated wooden piece that must have seen at least forty years, and maybe more, judging by the peeling coats of paint and the red-and-white-checkered contact paper that had peeled away from the edges, yellowing underneath, except for a few pieces of tape, yellow also except at the edges, where they too curled away from the painted wood and were grey with dust and grime. He sighed again, and moved towards the dresser. One--two-- three--four little tablets in all and all in the palm of his hand; with the other hand he broke the seal and unscrewed the top of the bottle of spring water that sat next to all the canisters and other assorted things he had taken out of his pocket and tossed carelessly onto the dresser. Four tablets of all different colors and sizes were simultaneously tossed into the back of his throat with the expert flick of the wrist characteristic of hypochondriacs and drug addicts, the bottle of water tipped up instantly to chase the pills. A grimace. The bottle came down into its place on the dresser, and he went on to his day's activities.

************************
She thudded on the bed with a sigh and frowned at the pills on the dresser. She didn't really want to take them; they had a decidedly bad aftertaste and she was sick of gulping water like a fish afterwards. Then she thought of the job later that day, and frowned instead at the dresser, an old, dilapidated wooden piece that must have seen at least forty years, and maybe more, judging by the peeling coats of paint and the red-and-white-checkered contact paper that had peeled away from the edges, yellowing underneath, except for a few pieces of tape, yellow also except at the edges, where they too curled away from the painted wood and were grey with dust and grime. She sighed again, and moved towards the dresser. One--two-- three--four little tablets in all and all in the palm of her hand; with the other hand she broke the seal and unscrewed the top of the bottle of spring water that sat next to all the canisters and other assorted things she had taken out of her pocket and tossed carelessly onto the dresser. Four tablets of all different colors and sizes were simultaneously tossed into the back of her throat with the expert flick of the wrist characteristic of hypochondriacs and drug addicts, the bottle of water tipped up instantly to chase the pills. A grimace. The bottle came down into its place on the dresser, and she went on to her day's activities.
************************
Is it just me, or does the change in gender suddenly code that passage for a different kind of atmosphere? I had wanted a female protagonist, but found that the male pronoun seemed to work more the way I wanted it. Is my writing voice, then, inherently masculine? And why? Why should it code differently with a female subject, and why am I sensitive to the fact that my main character wants to be male?

At least that last situation sort of clears me from being guilty of creating a Mary Sue. [While you're there, check out the definition of a GarFunkel. It made me laugh out loud--specifically the last line.]

2004-03-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

English novels, especially 19th century ones, have this recurring preoccupation with food. This is highly inconvenient, as while attempting to read it, one becomes decidedly hungrier and hungrier as the story progresses. The inconvenience is exacerbated by the singular situation of having no food available to alleviate the sensation.

Thus I am reduced to interrupting my reading in order to make dinner.

2004-03-03T11:54:00.000-08:00

Memories collected like pearls on a string

Lacing into a pair of old track shoes, beaten and shapeless and conforming to your sore feet like socks.
The Tree Outside, sprouting spring green leaves at its fingertips, flower bursts interspersed among the verdant foliage.
Waking up in the middle of the night to listen to the rain pour outside, warm and secure wrapped inside blankets and the radiator whistling happily in its corner.
Looking out the window at six o' clock in the morning, watching the sky brighten slowly as the faint golden glow in the east spreads across the sky after a long and lonely night spent writing a paper at a leisurely pace.

2004-02-25T12:30:00.000-08:00

It's raining cats and dogs and elephants

I do believe this is one of the first times I've seen the classic drowned earthworms on the sidewalk, all curlicued and banded with white.

Is it a bad thing if I wonder if they're edible?

2004-02-09T02:54:00.000-08:00

We speak of dreams in the middle of the night, tenuous futures arising out of the misty depths of what-might-be and what-might-come-to-pass. We toss around big name schools in conversation as if we were in grade school and this was show-and-tell, except a slightly older version that did away with the showing and simply went with the telling, because that was always the important part anyway, the talking the knowing something everyone else didn't or having something cooler than that kid that went before you who brought in her favorite book and you had a dead frog. Starting salaries for various occupations and degrees and levels of education are idly mentioned in passing, $120,000 $200,000 $53,000, statistics culled from memory at too easy access, belying the time spent studying the numbers charts. The possibility of staying together, staying in physical contact with one another instead of merely the electronic touch of lines of text on a window and not even a real window at that, a two-dimensional window on a cool screen radiating a dull grey hum. They're ephemeral, these passing fancies that construct themselves out of our thoughts that continue out through our fingertips and pass into signals and blips, the ones and zeroes of the electronic ether, and they'll be gone by morning, when the day-to-day banal reality faces us, and the future is but tomorrow's classes, tomorrow's quizzes, tomorrow's daily grind, the same before and the same after, punctuated by weekends and midterms and papers. But for now we talk of tomorrows not yet existing, and tonight is not the first night, nor the last night, nor any number of nights that can be counted, even in our short span of days, that we speak of futures, of dreams, of the American Dream, of going off to work in the mornings leaving our nice houses and our 2.58 children and and 1.6 cars, to teach or write or do battle against the big big world.

We are but children yet, at nineteen.

2004-02-04T01:55:00.000-08:00

O! Then I see Queen Mab hath been with you.

For some reason, when I was the most concerned about school for school's sake, I never dreamed about school, but about other, non-scholastic things. My nightmares were full-scale technicolor horror/science fiction/action/thriller films, plots garbled beyond any waking comprehension but terrifying nonetheless. I've run from both seen and unseen threats, been unable to move quickly enough because my limbs were mired in air as viscous as molasses. I've dreamed of being in knife fights. I've killed people with my bare hands. I've escaped from tormentors by flying. [I should note here that I never flew of my own volition in a dream, it was always as a last resort.] I've gotten trapped in mazes with an enemy hot in pursuit. My mother in particular got used to my whimpering "zuo meng" after a particularly frightening REM episode--I believe I woke her up several times, in the middle of the night, just to be comforted. Yeah, I'm kind of needy like that sometimes.

I never dreamed good dreams, at least none that I can remember, until I got much older.

2004-02-02T16:28:00.000-08:00

Sometimes on a rainy day, everything seems clearer.

I wish I could be the tree outside
Not for any specific reason, but just to stand, arms uplifted, and bloom with velvety white flowers that blush pink and purple at their roots, petals spread open to the sky.
Even in the rain that comes, intermittently, sometimes hard and heavy, sometimes soft and gentle
like a capricious lover
And then stand still full of strength surrounded by the drip-dripping of raindrops
as the birds come out, slowly, cautiously, sending messages across rooftops to each other--
Has it stopped yet? Is that really the sunlight? and not some gloomy diffusion of grey-blue mood

Clouds are funny sometimes, in a hurry to go somewhere else, or
towering tall to deliver some mighty thunderstorm to the hapless ones beneath.

2004-01-31T19:53:00.000-08:00

I'm running home for Valentine's Day.

Actually, the conscious reason for deciding to fly home that weekend was for President's Day. I'm homesick--due to a plethora of factors, the details of which I won't go into--and the Monday off adds a convenient free day to my three-day weekend. I'm being spoiled by my class-free Fridays this semester.

But yes, going home. At first it was a maybe; this semester's flood of reading has been a bit daunting so far, and it's only been the second week. But essays won't have to be due until later in the semester, and reading can be done anytime, and I definitely don't want to be all by myself in Berkeley when everyone else is hooked up and spending time with sweethearts for V-Day. Or should I say the V-Day weekend.

Home is a sanctuary, I guess. Berkeley is too, in a way. I guess it depends on which part of myself I'm running away from, but I've wanted to go almost the day I'd come back to Berkeley. All these unresolved issues that I don't know how to solve and so keep evading.

Some things I don't have to evade. Some things I just start all over. It's better that way, really. And so welcome to Red Phoenix Rising--my journal on the web. It's take two of my web persona, the second incarnation of the sleepychameleon. And why not? Chameleons change. They adapt to blend into their surroundings. The Phoenix is reborn every five hundred years according to some legends, but the point is that it gets a fresh new chance every once in a while. A new beginning. And it's a Red Phoenix, because it's time I finally stop blending in with the foliage.

Come on in, ye passersby,
For I have many tales to tell
Stop to listen and stay to hear
If you but have the time....