exmas

Christmas was the usual affair of swear words and swapping insults. Also! No one is allowed to have problems or feel any emotion other than OH GOD I AM SO GOOD TO SEE YOU because it ruins mom's ridiculous, made-for-tv-movie of a perfect Christmas. However, we all survived.

I am very anxious to get back to Boone and back to my life. aaaahhhaaaaahhhh. Tomorrow, tomorrow.

Happy Holidays

Yesterday I quit my job... again. Walked out with absolutely no warning this time, with the realization that nothing I do for that man will be right, so why bother? Uh... yeah... so I decided self-respect is worth more than $12 an hour. So, once again I am unemployed. Though I have been sending out applications! Optimism!

hmm

So I'm about 85% sure my employer just asked me to commit insurance fraud. Hmmm.

Dear HMR: Please call me ASAP and give me a job so I can quit this madness!

IN OTHER NEWS...

Leaving on Christmas Eve (hopefully). Will (hopefully) finish my brother's quilt. Present swapping with Dan tonight (thankfully I just got him his present yesterday, which means I haven't had time to get wiggly and spill the beans about what it is. Other than that it came from downtown, fits in my backpack, and is something he will like. Though that last one probably was assumed.). Part of my back tooth fell out and I accidently sat on my glasses and broke an arm off. But I'm using industrial glue to put them back together.

All in all, besides this job fiasco, I'm feelin' pretty good, pretty good.

alrightalrightalright

I think I am going back to work for CrazyFace today, provided he responds positively to the email I just sent him. If he says something mean or nasty, I'm gonna say 'fuck it.'

I was about 75% sure about this decision, and then yesterday a large chunk of one of my back teeth fell out, resulting in what I am referring to as DENTAL EMERGENCY '09, Y'ALL! It doesn't hurt... yet... though I went to the drug store yesterday to get that tooth spackle shit to see if I can keep the rest of it together. I think I had a filling fall out without realizing it, and then shit got in there and caused MADNESS AND DECAY. Which is going to cause MADNESS on my wallet to fix. So! Time to deal with some bullshit to get paid by Uncle Moneybags.

This weekend is supposed to be the Great Boone Blizzard of '09 or some ridiculous shit like that? Right now I am just seeing evidence of a wintry mix, however it is only 9am. One positive about working for CrazyFace is that his office is a scant three blocks away, so I will be walking this afternoon because I am afraid of driving to an icy death. I'm not so much excited about the snow as I am excited about being snowed in with someone and working on collaborative art projects/writing/quilting/watching movies/making out like 15yrolds.

HCP and Espresso Christmas parties tonight. I told Dan I'd go with him. Espresso should be fun, though he's said HCP is usually a trial, ha ha. One in which we'll be forced to sing. It's my belief that if we just do it loudly, off-key, and with gusto, no one will have to sing next year. I think the most depressing thing is, considering my gimp tooth, I will not be able to consume as many delicious holiday treats as I should. Down for the count in prime cookie season... shame, shame....

WHOA WHOA WHOA

Jesus Christ it's been an eventful few days.

SO, I ... uh... quit my new job yesterday. I have NEVER in my history of employment just plain walked out on a job before with no future prospects and no notice. Monday my boss FUCKING EXPLODED on me over the phone because he couldn't find the house of one of his potential clients. So, even though I printed out two sets of detailed directions (one from mapquest and one with visual markers specifically from the woman's mouth) and a map, I needed to "get my head out of my ass." He "didn't understand why [he] hired me if [he] was going to have to fucking do everything" blah blah blah blah blah. Cue more obscenities. This is just one of several episodes of verbal abuse from him. SO! I decided my self-respect is worth more than $12 an hour.

HOWEVER, I received a very professional and conciliatory email from him today, asking me to return and that he'll leave my job open until the end of business Friday in case I decide to reconsider. SO HERE IS THE SITUATION:

* I could come back Friday, have the weekend to chill out, and then return to work Mon-Wed until the office closes.

* The office re-opens on the 4th, BUT my boss will NOT be back in town until the 14th. The 15th is payday.

* SO, I could work the next 4 business days, then work 9 more without him and only 1 with him, and then get paid a solid chunk of change and decide THEN if I need to quit again.

* IN THE MEAN TIME, I can still be applying for jobs and seeing if I get a better offer (ie something with BENEFITS).

thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts thoughts

hahaha

seriously? easiest. breakup. ever.

I can't believe I worried so much about that.

Lately! Copious amounts of Twin Peaks. Dunch yesterday with Dan, Cannon, Katie, and Sophia. Enough to convince me I want to put off kids for, you know, still a few years yet. Definitely.

Dan and I went to the antique stores in a fruitless attempt to find either an old badass knife or some sort of mounted dead animal for my brother for Christmas. Mainly we just went "ooh, cool! that's so neat!" a lot and I tried on funny hats, one of which MAY POSSIBLY BE MINE when I get paid, provided it is still there. Because it is BAD-AAASSSSS. I took pictures of a couple ridiculous objects and had more fun than I've had in a coupla weeks.

Now! Showertime before my jorb. Apparently when my boss leaves for Christmas he will not be back until Jan 14th or so, so if I can stick it out for like the next week/weekandahalf I might have a whole 2-3 weeks of working without him... mwaahaahaa yesss...

provided I don't get fired today or something. sheesh.

OH MY LORD

My life is getting more and more complicated every day. Bad complications and some very very incredibly unexpected awesome complications. IN SUMMARY, I NEED TO:

* Take care of the problem mentioned in the last post (uh... yeah... still haven't got around to it... but it's pretty obvious action needs to be taken...)

* Apply to YET MORE JOBS because my boss is insane. Like, I know I've said that before, but this man is. INSANE. christ.

* Finish my portraits.

* Try to make sure my head remains on my shoulders.

THAT IS ALL.

skinny love

Something's different, he can tell. We spend longer moments in silence; I don't feel like speaking at him, and he never feels like speaking. He plays with my side, my thigh, making motions of light tickling though he knows I'm not ticklish. He doesn't look me in the eye, except once every few minutes, sideways. Something's different but he refuses to say it. We kiss with our lips closed, even as we say goodbye.

I've only seen him twice in the last week; well, three, if you count this afternoon's brief meeting. ohboyohboyohboy.

But everything else about this last week has left me incredibly optimistic, about myself and the future. The air has shimmered and I've felt the tiny cells right below my skin expand until I was itchy in a good way. I just don't know if I really need anything beside myself.

superess

Tuesday I get to start my real, terrifying jorb. HOO-YAH. Only one more week of Hot Buns.

I had today off, though. And had a pretty nice day overall. Got lunch with dantheduck at Cha Da Thai, and he introduced me to Thai Iced Tea which tastes like camping. Good talking times! Thankfully my brain recognizes him as an actual friend now so times were significantly less awkward and more enjoyable. Besides my perpetually accidental insults. Afterwards! Coffee and a letter to Emma and watching BK be adorable with Sophie. Then! Mi Madre is completely finished as far as the happy holidays are concerned, so now I just need to figure out something nice to do for my grumpy-yet-lovable older brother.

Now! I'm baking peanut butter cookies to take to the Collective as an offering of good will.

Later! The taking of said cookies? The Nth? first friday usualities.

.

(note to self: please stop being attracted to older men. kthx.)

calenduhr

Work today. They set the schedule so we all have to come in a half hour earlier for all our shifts, thus creating some sort of overlap so when people are late I don't have to throw a bitchfest because I have training somewhere else in a half hour. (I mean, that's probably not the specific reason why, but you know, an example...ish.) Thus... I have to get up a half hour earlier. sad, sad panda.

Went to the doctor yesterday and found out I don't have cancer, AIDs/HIV, herpes, syphilis, etc. etc. etc. Not that I felt there was a really strong chance I had any of those, but it is nice to have the professional reassurance that, no, you aren't going to die anytime soon from some embarrassing venereal disease. I also lost 6 lbs, which I'm attributing to walking 5-7 miles a day at work, and of course forgetting to eat, which I've been doing a little too much lately.

Last night! Ben's going away party-sortish-get together at the s'looon. pool, beer, hugs, yadda yadda yadda. strange social dynamics. I wish him TEH BEST, and hope to see him soon because, as we all know, you can never *really* escape this town... mwaa ha ha...

Also! Playing 'let's get to know each other' with a new friend. I have this... thing... called Being Extremely Socially Awkward, Particularly in Regards to New People and Social Situations, in which I ask really stupid questions in an attempt to engage people in conversation. Like, really stupid. Because I am incapable of normal person "small talk." OH MY LORD I AM SO AWKWARD. I feel like I should just start walking up to people and going "HEY WILL YOU BE MY FRIEND FOR REALZ? LOLZ!!!!!"

Also! Apparently none of the bartenders can spell my last name, so my new name at the bar is "SHA-KA-LACK-A." Thanks, papa.

from the vault

great grandpa's sweet ride.
great grandpa

aunt collette, uncle steve, mom, aunt paula, aunt lydia
grandpa, lydia, mom, grandma, aunt paula, aunt collette, uncle steve
grandma in her wedding dress
grandpa and grandma on their wedding day

great great grandpa with great grandpa

illest illness

I must have had too much fun this weekend because now I am sick. I feel like I shouldn't be too upset since I can't really remember the last time I was sick (perhaps not since before I graduated?) but perhaps that just makes me less used to it and therefore more inclined to complain.

ANYWAY.

I am at a point of mild lucidity right at this moment, which has not happened for most of the day. Mainly I've slept. Tate came by and cuddled for a second, and then left, which is good because I'll feel like a shit girlfriend if I infected him. Even though he was warned.

ANYWAY.

Naked Gods show Saturday night was fun x45498589459. The other bands were also very impressive. I'm really really really glad I went.

MATT AND GARY CAME INTO TOWN LAST NIGHT!!!! I cannot express the excitement accurately. Those are my two favorite boys on the planet. JESUS CHRIST. Pizza plus Red Haus plus Bar (where I didn't drink anything, because as the night wore on the sicker I got). Talked to Matt and I may have some future plans for after my lease ends (around May) which would involve a BIG MOVE. So, I am really hoping to hear from Mr. Lawyer (who was supposed to call today and didn't, big surprise) so I will have a good job which will allow me to save up some dolla dolla bills for bigger and better things.

work tomorrow, work wednesday, driving to greenville to see my mom and brother, back friday, work saturday.

i am a bad spy

ENOUGH!

OK. ok. OK. O-K.

ENOUGH! I call shenanigans on myself for just choosing to be lazy rather than be more active towards making myself the person whom I wish to be.

TODAY!: I had a second interview for the personal assistant job to that crazy lawyer. Which went rather swimmingly. As in, he said he would definitely get into contact with me Monday. I'm about 85% sure that I am going to get this job. I don't want to throw that other 15% out there because he may decide something stupid over the next few days like I'm too young or something lack that. I have chutzpah! Who needs age and experience when you have chutzpah?!

(Besides, I'm like 83247398 years old on the inside.)

So maybe I will no longer be destitute and bemoaning my existence as a minimum wage calendar slave. Hooray!

Today I have also put forth considerable efforts toward making my brother's Christmas present. He told me not to get him anything and to save my money. This is in complete cohesion with his character, as last year when I asked him what he wanted, he replied for Christmas "...not to happen." So I am making him a quilt, and I am starting now so if I fuck it up reeeaaalll bad I still have time to figure out what else I could do for him. He is difficult. But I love him.

RIGHT NOW!: I am at Espresso News where I am sitting across from Mister Mathis, who is finishing some sort of paper. He has old man 'I AM THINKING VERY HARD ABOUT THIS' face on and there is a really deep line on his forehead right between his two eyebrows. It leans to the left (or the right, depending upon your perspective). Sometimes he looks like The Grinch and I told him this, but it is highly complimentary, I assure you.

Cannon is here too behind me. FRIENDS!

MELODRAMA

Another vacant afternoon in which I find myself lurking for hours at Espresso News, fruitlessly sending out my resume with ever-dwindling hopes that I will receive some sort of interest in myself as a future valuable asset to some nameless, vapid company.

It seems like so many people have the Boonetown Blues lately. “Seems” because the majority of this information is derived not from actual conversations, but micro-electric-infobits from facebook, blogger, etc. Textually described are states of frustration, ennui, and jaded realizations that the lives we lead poorly nourish the potential which we wish so dearly to release.

Though when meeting people face-to-face, the customary lip service is always given. “fine, doing well, oh you know, ok.” Why? The suspicion that the other party doesn’t give a shit? The reluctance to share one’s anguish with another? The frustration and shame that we cannot solve every problem ourselves? The desire not to feel weak in front of another? The fear of being perceived as weak?

Blah. Let us all lie alone in beds built of our own reluctance.

(Tate says I think too much. That’s probably true. I’m happier when I’m working full time not because it reinforces any false notions of importance, but merely distracts me from my own insignificance.)

(MELODRAMA! DISCONTENT!)

my weekend so far

I'm feeling a little better than I have been.

and some more

last night.

I dreamed I was driving down King street in the middle of the night and I wanted to take a short cut I thought I knew so I took a right turn and ended up driving around this neighborhood and I had no idea where I was and it was pitch black and I couldn't see the road so I felt like I drove up a hill and into someone's driveway and there were these two gangsta looking white teenage boys sitting on a big rock and they were lit up in my headlights and I asked them if they could tell me how to get back to King street and they came up and pulled me out of my car and one of them hit me in the face and the other stomped on the instep of my right foot

and then

I was at a big hospital trying to leave but they wouldn't let me until they had a chance to examine me because they said I had been raped. all I wanted to do was go home.

in the mire

more terrifying dreams last night. not 'terrifying' as invoking a sense of pure fright, like when your heart starts pounding and you wake up covered in sweat, but more like the slow sort of terror, the sense that something is horribly, horribly wrong, yet in your dream this is life.

We were living in a small, shitty, white house in a really poor semi-rural area. Sort of like some of the places I pass by in Kinston when I drive to mom's house from Jacksonville. There was a small, freshly turned field out back (1/4 of an acre?), and there was white powered sprinkled all over it. "dream mom" (who was black, interestingly enough, and I think at this part of the dream I was a little black girl, about 5 or 6) told me to go back and stamp it into the ground, because the neighbors would know it was lye and that Don was trying to cover up the bodies of the kids he'd killed.

earlier in the dream, at a different part of it completely disconnected from the aforementioned, there was some sort of camping trip or outdoor expedition or something, and an unrequited love was there. he looked older than he should. I was standing and he was kneeling, and I held his head against my chest and I was crying a little, and he was telling me he wanted to be with me, and I remember thinking I wanted it to but what about a family? what about kids? he would be so old when they were born. but I still wanted him so badly.

ugh.

anyway.

Got an email from Hawksnest. As soon as it gets cold enough they're going to start making snow. Which, as much as I don't want it to get cold, I really really want to start a better job. Calendars suck.

I think most of my frustration lately has stemmed from not working full time. I hate feeling as if I am not useful, intelligent, or a hard worker.

The BF has put up with my moods lately in a most honorable manner. It's nice to date someone who sees you as more of a person than an object.

liar

all right. maybe I was wrong. but it's not like anyone actually reads this besides me anyway so who the fuck cares what I say, right?

This morning at Sunrise Grill I did not receive the grits which, according to the menu, I should have received. The waitress told me I was not supposed to receive the grits. However, according to the serial comma and wording which they used on the menu ("hashbrowns or homefries, grits, toast or biscuit") it was indicated that I should have received said grits. I did not prevail.

And then I'm mad at myself for being so upset over something as trivial as the aforementioned situation, but I think this is because it adds to the overall feeling I've had of life not making sense or lining up in the way in which it should. It was wrong. My life is filled with things that are wrong.

I am not happy and each day I spend in this town I feel more and more of something inside of me die. But I'm afraid that by leaving, I will discover the only thing which has really changed is the landscape.

Pretty much I'm impotent at living my own life and feel lonelier than I have in a very long time.

murp

ok, ok, I'm done feeling so fucking emo. at least for a little bit I guess.

I talked to Tate for a while about a lot of different things last night and ended up feeling a lot less like a complete waste of a human being.

Party tonight at his place. Ugh, lots of people I don't know = social anxiety! There'll be a few people I know there though. And Amanda might come. Which would be good.

Today I have spent upwards of 5 hours embroidering a zombie sock doll. True story!

nrg

so, life's a game, and everyone else got the rules to monopoly, while I got the ones to parcheesi, and therefore nothing I do seems to (a) be right and (b) make sense.

I don't understand why I consistently make things difficult for myself.

Please sweet jesus someone call me about a full time job. I don't want to move.

What I'd like to do is crawl into the bottom of the other bottle of pinot I have, but since I have a sleepover guest it wouldn't be very seemly.

(Plus it would probably freak the shit out of him.)

(People are fine as long as no one gets involved with others' real problems.)

.

I'm having a hard time right now.

.

But I'm sure I'll get over it. Right?

I keep fucking sneezing

In another sluuuump. I started my shitty MINIMUM WAGE mall job yesterday. Y'all... really... I haven't worked for minimum wage since high school. And it's only part time. I took it under the theory that 'Oh, well, you know, it's just for now, so I don't go completely broke before december rent is due.' But still. Fuck. And I hate how disorganized everything in the store is, they don't know where shit is, there are piles of things everywhere, and the store manager is rude to the customers. She's a BITCH, how the FUCK do you get to be a store manager if you're a complete fucking BITCH?

I just don't understand anything.

So, I'm waiting to hear back from HN, this personal assistant position, sugar, etc.

The PA interview was the weirdest interview experience I've ever had. But Jesus Christ I don't think I've EVER wanted a job as badly as I do this one. (I actually got to the point with the guy that I told him 'If I work another job answering phones for sad, boring people, I will shoot myself in the face.' But he seemed to appreciate that sentiment, and told me "[I] didn't want to be one of those people!" and then I was all like "I KNOW RIGHT?!?!" I'm still trying to decide if that was a bit much. Whatever.)

DEEP BREATHS, Y'ALL.

Emma sent me some books and for some reason they're all REALLY FUCKING SAD. So I got real emo and mopey and shitty feeling last night. But then Tate came over. He always says really nice things to me to make me feel better. The good part is he actually means them. Fancy that.

ANYWAY, calendar slave from 12-4. Then I'm off until Monday, which, even though I need the money, is pretty fucking fantastic since, with the exception of the NOLA excursion, I haven't had a weekend day off since April, much less the whole thing.

Tomorrow: camping out in Espresso News, applying to EVERY FUCKING FULL TIME JOB I'M THE LEAST BIT QUALIFIED FOR.

Now: shower, work. oh and my landlord would probably appreciate it if I paid him his money for rent.

titles are overrated

I want to pull the whole world close to my bosom and cradle it until everyone feels better. I know people may not think I mean it. But I do.

Pretty much I've decided that everyone except those who I really really care about can go fuck themselves.

Two interviews today.

I felt like writing but now I don't.

vomit comet

I feel sick. They feed us here before GT and I think I ate too much mac&tweese. The vomit, it shall surely come. Hopefully after I get off work though (christIneedthemoney).

Last night was Rocky Hoorrrorrorororororr. Kristi, Emma, your absence was palpable. Kristi, you would have been pissed. Those kids at Dragonfly have NO IDEA what the fuck they're doing. Don't advertise props if you're going to give them all to the first show. Panties were worn, face was painted, be-boa-ed. I was really tired though; perhaps after 5 years it has lost its appeal.

I don't know. A lot of things have lost their appeal lately.
(Don't mind me, I'm just going through another one of those 'moooooods' again I guess).
It was good to hang out with Danna and Leah and Lela and Evn though.

Before we went to a zombie dance party at alal's. Oh sweet lord the kids there looked disgusting. After my own heart (er, brains I guess). Got told I was pretty. Panicked, then awkwardly replied "Thanks. You look really... dead." I am SO SOCIAL SMOOOOTH Y'ALL.

Started a new painting. I don't think I like it. We'll see I guess. I think I might try some portraits. whynotwhynotwhynot?

I should try some writing soon.

2 and a half days of this shitty job left.

the wild rumpus

five months.

My last day of this job is the 1st. I got hired by Waldenbooks and will be a slave to the calendar kiosk if nothing else comes up. I am driving out to Sugar and App ski mountains on Tuesday to try and get a job. I think Sugar is hiring for the office. I have office experience.

(If I get hired full time by a ski place I will probably stay in Boone until the end of my lease, as originally planned.)

The January goal was if I had nothing going on here. However, if I have a full time job I will stay.

(Christ I don't want to move back in with my parents.)

I'm still applying for big kid jobs in the real world though.

...
(oh btw I have a boyfriend)

you big mucky muck

Got up at 6 to drive back to Boone. Five more hours of work, living on caffeine and fumes.

Got new brakes + oil change, thankgodthankdonthankgod. Now I don't have to worry about losing stopping power and going careening off the mountain.

(not that that wouldn't have been an epic way to go.)

Got my birthday present from mi madre. ELEVEN new canvases + paint. One was too big to fit in my backseat, so it's still at her apt. Which is good, because maybe I can get better at painting before I attempt something so large.

Best day ever with the old gang. Played dressup at the Halloween store, chineeesey food, frolicking together at the park. It's amazing how you can not see certain people for almost a year and be able to fall completely back into step with them. (This was one of the rare occasions when there was no drama between anyone. hooray!) We decided if we started a band it would be called "The Minorateam and Some Honky."

I saw my grandparent's wedding picture for the first time. Apparently right before my great grandma died, one of my aunts borrowed some pictures from her. After she died, my aunt just figured she didn't need to let anyone know she had a shitton of old pictures. So, she brought them to the family reunion in August, and everyone freaked the fuck out on her. So now they're in the posession of my grandparents, and my mom and aunts and uncles all have copies. Mom said she'd copy the CD for me.

If you knew anything about my family situation you'd realize how important this is.

j(action)ville

I am leaving tomorrow afternoon to visit the fam and the beautiful, beautiful coast for a few days. I have an interview at Bath&Body Works at 5pm, but if I leave right after that I should be in Jacksonville by midnight. Don is taking my car to get new brakes and an oil change on Wednesday, hurrah! I would resist but considering that I am (a) broke and (b) he likes to play dad by doing things like that, I will let him.

The weather is supposed to be very warm - mid to high 70s. OHTHANKYOUCHRIST! I will probably borrow his seabring if he still has it and drive out to the beach, hopefully with James and Mark and Nicole, and maybe fly a kite and take pictures and breathe in the air of the ocean and feel content.

deep set chill

SO, it is officially a chilly morning in my apartment. I slept in sweat pants and a thermal shirt last night, with two blankets in various states of coverage, and neglected to break a sweat. Right now I am sitting in said pajamas wearing my fuzzy fleece and feeling the cold from my tile floor seep through my black socks and spread like roots of discomfort through my body.

grooosss.

I need to get that plastic shit for my windows (I hate that stuff). Or maybe thermal curtains? Or maybe I should use my 3908098 yards of scrap fabric to stitch together delicious quilt-like confections for window coverage?

I have had a few inquiries about subleasing my apartment but so far no serious leads. If anyone in Boone is looking for an efficiency for the spring, let me know please kthx. I'm in the process of s-s-s-serious organizing. I am incapable of throwing away even the most mundane of objects. I need to start a letter-n-note binder. Yesterday I found the scrap of paper from my lip piercer where he wrote his home and cell number, online contact information, and "please call me." ha ha ha. He had filed teeth. BAD-ASS.

Unfortunately, I still don't know where I am going in January. I just know that I have to.

mmnngg

I hate how nobody in this goddamn office gives a shit about any of the other employees here.

Oh, so-and-so fell down the stairs after coming up to give us bread his wife made us? Shit, how much is this going to cost the park? Who are we going to get to cover for him?

blahblahblah.

To be fair, perhaps they've all seen it so many times that, besides death, it doesn't really bother them. (Though I'm not sure if that's excusable.)

At any rate, what a great start to an already shitty morning!

amnot

I am not I am not I am not I am not

office material.

Another night workin' the GT, another night of my youth sliiiiiippppiiiinnnggg away.

I never realized how much I like to work with 'the public' until I have a job where I am locked up in the tower dungeon for hours a day, never talking to anyone except over the phone.

blaaaaahhhhhh

Boone is wearing me thin.

centurion

Last night I got burned in the face with a cigarette. I'm not quite sure what the sequence of gestures was -- I think he was holding on to me with his other hand, on my waist maybe, trying to pull me closer to him to tell me something or try and tickle and then moving his other arm the wrong way and then *psshh* (the sound of flesh burning) and I pushed him and covered my nose with my hand and ran to the bathroom?

I mean, it was all accidental. But still, the way in which a sweet gesture suddenly sours.

I still gave him my key, and he came in later, after I had already fallen into half-sleep. But not long after. He lay down next to me and I turned towards him and he reached out and his hand cupped my face, gently.

This morning I have a small oval burnt into the side of my left nostril. It burns, but only just.

baby baby baby

You know you're old when you stumble across a Facebook group entitled 'White Oak Moms' ...

... and recognize a lot of the girls you graduated high school with. Christ.

I miss Tim. I am walking around as if I am missing a limb or an eye or something very important. Perhaps one of my kidneys. You don't necessarily need both of them, but it makes dealing with all the shit a lot easier. I mean, I'm sure New York's great and all, and I know I'm going to be there soon (uh, hopefully...), but still. Best friends are hard to come by. And now Gary's gone too, so pretty much everyone I love with all my soul (the aforementioned, Matt, Emma, Kristi) has departed Boone.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I really like hanging out with the friends I have right now. But it's not the same as family.

My favorite postcard from today's postsecret:

b squared

Today is the fourth day I successfully worked out. I told mom I was feeling gross so she sent me two of her old Billy Blanks DVDs.

Billy kicks my ass hardcore.

The first day I was like 'yeah, alright! I can do it!' and I did the twenty and thirty minute DVDs. The next day just the thirty. Yesterday I slaved through the thirty while screaming obscenities at my computer screen and giving Billy the finger. I did jumping jacks instead of some of the kicks because my legs hurt. Then I felt bad so I did 25 situps and 15 girly pushups. I think I bruised my tailbone on the floor though (yoga mat over concrete still feels like concrete), so no situps today. Thirty COMPLETE minutes of BB, then 20 girly pushups and 50 jumping jacks.

I also have smoked significantly less in the last few days. Yeeeesss.

I will feel better about myself. I will feel better about myself. I'm good enough, smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me.

poem from a poor sleeping

Last night I dreamt that I could fly

or, rather, glide across the sky.

I also dreamt my mother died

and that I cried, I cried, I cried.

sad panda

Today feels like it is going to be a sad day. I am draped in a feeling of general malaise. This isn't going to be a sad day in a very active form - someone dies, bad shit happens, blah blah blah. More like everything is coated with a see-through, saccharine varnish and I feel like my body is pushing against a great wall of water. Nothing feels real.

I am far too maudlin and it is far too pretty a day.

Last night I dreamed about one of the stars in my galaxy of lost loves and woke up feeling hollow with the knowledge that we are stranded in two different lives that will never run parallel in the way which would allow anything more than the thin threads of friendship we currently find ourselves tethered with.

le sigh

My fingertips will whisper secrets into my typewriter to be sent halfway across the state and the world, and I'll feel better.

and then maybe I'll work on some real writing.

booooooooooooooobs. I mean boots.

Seriously, who's dick do I need to suck for a pair of these boots?

1001 Books to Read Before You DIE

Looks like I have some work to do.

Also: SERIOUS LACK OF AYN RAND. I don't care what your ideology is, Atlas Shrugged is spectacular.


2000s
Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro (Starting this soon, actually)
Saturday – Ian McEwan
On Beauty – Zadie Smith
Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee
Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson
The Sea – John Banville
The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble
The Plot Against America – Philip Roth
The Master – Colm Tóibín
Vanishing Point – David Markson
The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd
Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair
Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle
The Colour – Rose Tremain
Thursbitch – Alan Garner
The Light of Day – Graham Swift
What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon
Islands – Dan Sleigh
Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee
London Orbital – Iain Sinclair
Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
Fingersmith – Sarah Waters
The Double – José Saramago
Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer
Unless – Carol Shields
Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami
The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor
That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern
In the Forest – Edna O’Brien
Shroud – John Banville
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
Youth – J.M. Coetzee
Dead Air – Iain Banks
Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon
The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster
Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi
Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald
Platform – Michael Houellebecq
Schooling – Heather McGowan
Atonement – Ian McEwan
The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen
Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini
The Body Artist – Don DeLillo
Fury – Salman Rushdie
At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill
Choke – Chuck Palahniuk
Life of Pi – Yann Martel
The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa
An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma
The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho
Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda
Under the Skin – Michel Faber
Ignorance – Milan Kundera
Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace
Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy
City of God – E.L. Doctorow
How the Dead Live – Will Self
The Human Stain – Philip Roth
The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood
After the Quake – Haruki Murakami
Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande
Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard
House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski
Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates
Pastoralia – George Saunders
1900s
Timbuktu – Paul Auster
The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra
Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson
As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli?
Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy
Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb
The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie
Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee
Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami
Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq
Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi
Amsterdam – Ian McEwan
Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks
All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom
The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis
Another World – Pat Barker
The Hours – Michael Cunningham
Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho
Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
Great Apes – Will Self
Enduring Love – Ian McEwan
Underworld – Don DeLillo
Jack Maggs – Peter Carey
The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin
American Pastoral – Philip Roth
The Untouchable – John Banville
Silk – Alessandro Baricco
Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard
Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker
Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels
The Ghost Road – Pat Barker
Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse
Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace
The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin
Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood
The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro
Morvern Callar – Alan Warner
The Information – Martin Amis
The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie
Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth
The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald
The Reader – Bernhard Schlink
A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
Love’s Work – Gillian Rose
The End of the Story – Lydia Davis
Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster
The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst
Whatever – Michel Houellebecq
Land – Park Kyong-ni
The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami
Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi
City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol
How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres
Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor
Disappearance – David Dabydeen
The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm
The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx
Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh
Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy
Operation Shylock – Philip Roth
Complicity – Iain Banks
On Love – Alain de Botton
What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe
A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields
The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd
The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood
The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald
The Secret History – Donna Tartt
Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar
The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch
A Heart So White – Javier Marias
Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker
Indigo – Marina Warner
The Crow Road – Iain Banks
Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson
Jazz – Toni Morrison
The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje
Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg
The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe
Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates
The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín
Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)
Black Dogs – Ian McEwan
Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud
Arcadia – Jim Crace
Wild Swans – Jung Chang
American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis
Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
Mao II – Don DeLillo
Typical – Padgett Powell
Regeneration – Pat Barker
Downriver – Iain Sinclair
Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres
Wise Children – Angela Carter
Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard
Amongst Women – John McGahern
Vineland – Thomas Pynchon
Vertigo – W.G. Sebald
Stone Junction – Jim Dodge
The Music of Chance – Paul Auster
The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien
A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham
Like Life – Lorrie Moore
Possession – A.S. Byatt
The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi
The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle
A Disaffection – James Kelman
Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson
Moon Palace – Paul Auster
Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow
Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker
The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway
The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago
Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving
London Fields – Martin Amis
The Book of Evidence – John Banville
Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood
Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco
The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White
Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson
The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie
The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst
Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey
Libra – Don DeLillo
The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks
Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga
The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams
Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams
The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble
The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke
The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy
The Passion – Jeanette Winterson
The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind
The Child in Time – Ian McEwan
Cigarettes – Harry Mathews
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe
The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster
World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle
Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul
The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae
Beloved – Toni Morrison
Anagrams – Lorrie Moore
Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Marya – Joyce Carol Oates
Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons
The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis
Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt
An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro
Extinction – Thomas Bernhard
Foe – J.M. Coetzee
The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi
Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel
The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann
Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez
Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson
The Cider House Rules – John Irving
A Maggot – John Fowles
Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis
Contact – Carl Sagan
The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Perfume – Patrick Süskind
Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard
White Noise – Don DeLillo
Queer – William Burroughs
Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd
Legend – David Gemmell
Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?
The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago
The Lover – Marguerite Duras
Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard
The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter
The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera
Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker
Neuromancer – William Gibson
Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes
Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis
Shame – Salman Rushdie
Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett
Fools of Fortune – William Trevor
La Brava – Elmore Leonard
Waterland – Graham Swift
The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee
The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing
The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek
The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus
If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi
A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White
The Color Purple – Alice Walker
Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard
A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro
Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally
The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
The Newton Letter – John Banville
On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin
Concrete – Thomas Bernhard
The Names – Don DeLillo
Rabbit is Rich – John Updike
Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray
The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan
July’s People – Nadine Gordimer
Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin
Broken April – Ismail Kadare
Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee
Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
Rites of Passage – William Golding
Rituals – Cees Nooteboom
Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
City Primeval – Elmore Leonard
The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera
Smiley’s People – John Le Carré
Shikasta – Doris Lessing
A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul
Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer
The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll
If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan
The World According to Garp – John Irving
Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec
The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch
The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell
Yes – Thomas Bernhard
The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt
In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee
The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter
Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin
The Shining – Stephen King
Dispatches – Michael Herr
Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o
Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison
The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector
The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke
Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo
The Public Burning – Robert Coover
Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice
Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg
Amateurs – Donald Barthelme
Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf
Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez
W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec
A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell
Grimus – Salman Rushdie
The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme
Fateless – Imre Kertész
Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan
High Rise – J.G. Ballard
Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow
Dead Babies – Martin Amis
Correction – Thomas Bernhard
Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow
The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle
Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee
The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré
Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Fear of Flying – Erica Jong
A Question of Power – Bessie Head
The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell
The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino
Crash – J.G. Ballard
The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene
Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon
The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch
Sula – Toni Morrison
Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino
The Breast – Philip Roth
The Summer Book – Tove Jansson
G – John Berger
Surfacing – Margaret Atwood
House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson
In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul
The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson
Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll
The Wild Boys – William Burroughs
Rabbit Redux – John Updike
The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima
The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark
The Ogre – Michael Tournier
The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison
Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett
Troubles – J.G. Farrell
Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson
The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard
Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado
Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover
Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines
Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles
The Green Man – Kingsley Amis
Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth
The Godfather – Mario Puzo
Ada – Vladimir Nabokov
Them – Joyce Carol Oates
A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec
Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen
Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal
The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch
Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen
Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick
Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry
The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz
In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan
A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines
The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf
Chocky – John Wyndham
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe
The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa
One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez
The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov
Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson
The Joke – Milan Kundera
No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson
The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien
A Man Asleep – Georges Perec
The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West
Trawl – B.S. Johnson
In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
The Magus – John Fowles
The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras
Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys
Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth
The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon
Things – Georges Perec
The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o
August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien
God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut
Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor
The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector
Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey
Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme
Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson
Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe
The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras
Herzog – Saul Bellow
V. – Thomas Pynchon
Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut
The Graduate – Charles Webb
Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré
The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark
Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess
The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn
The Collector – John Fowles
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey
A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess
Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov
The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard
The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing
Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges
Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani
Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein
Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger
A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch
Faces in the Water – Janet Frame
Solaris – Stanislaw Lem
Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark
Catch-22 – Joseph Heller
The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor
How It Is – Samuel Beckett
Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino
The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien
To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
Rabbit, Run – John Updike
Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary
Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee
Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse
Naked Lunch – William Burroughs
The Tin Drum – Günter Grass
Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes
Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow
Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll
Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote
The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe
A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon
Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe
Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico
Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan
The End of the Road – John Barth
The Once and Future King – T.H. White
The Bell – Iris Murdoch
Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet
Voss – Patrick White
The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham
Blue Noon – Georges Bataille
Homo Faber – Max Frisch
On the Road – Jack Kerouac
Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov
Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak
The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber
Justine – Lawrence Durrell
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon
The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary
Seize the Day – Saul Bellow
The Floating Opera – John Barth
The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith
Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen
The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett
The Quiet American – Graham Greene
The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis
The Recognitions – William Gaddis
The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini
Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan
I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch
Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis
The Story of O – Pauline Réage
A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia
Lord of the Flies – William Golding
Under the Net – Iris Murdoch
The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley
The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler
The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett
Watt – Samuel Beckett
Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis
Junkie – William Burroughs
The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow
Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin
Casino Royale – Ian Fleming
The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt
Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison
The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway
Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor
The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson
Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar
Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett
Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham
Foundation – Isaac Asimov
The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq
The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger
The Rebel – Albert Camus
Molloy – Samuel Beckett
The End of the Affair – Graham Greene
The Abbot C – Georges Bataille
The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz
The Third Man – Graham Greene
The 13 Clocks – James Thurber
Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake
The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing
I, Robot – Isaac Asimov
The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese
The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk
Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford
The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge
The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen
Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier
The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren
Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani
Disobedience – Alberto Moravia
Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot
The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene
Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton
Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann
The Victim – Saul Bellow
Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau
If This Is a Man – Primo Levi
Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry
The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino
The Plague – Albert Camus
Back – Henry Green
Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake
The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?
Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
Animal Farm – George Orwell
Cannery Row – John Steinbeck
The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford
Loving – Henry Green
Arcanum 17 – André Breton
Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi
The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham
Transit – Anna Seghers
Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges
Dangling Man – Saul Bellow
The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Caught – Henry Green
The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse
Embers – Sandor Marai
Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner
The Outsider – Albert Camus
In Sicily – Elio Vittorini
The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien
The Living and the Dead – Patrick White
Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton
Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf
The Hamlet – William Faulkner
Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler
For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway
Native Son – Richard Wright
The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene
The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati
Party Going – Henry Green
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Finnegans Wake – James Joyce
At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien
Coming Up for Air – George Orwell
Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood
Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller
Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys
The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler
After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner
Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson
Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler
Brighton Rock – Graham Greene
U.S.A. – John Dos Passos
Murphy – Samuel Beckett
Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien
The Years – Virginia Woolf
In Parenthesis – David Jones
The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis
Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)
To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway
Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner
Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley
The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West
Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell
Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell
Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson
Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner
At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft
Nightwood – Djuna Barnes
Independent People – Halldór Laxness
Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti
The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy
The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen
England Made Me – Graham Greene
Burmese Days – George Orwell
The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers
Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht
Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev
The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain
Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller
A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh
Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald
Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse
Call it Sleep – Henry Roth
Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West
Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein
Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain
A Day Off – Storm Jameson
The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil
A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline
Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
To the North – Elizabeth Bowen
The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett
The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth
The Waves – Virginia Woolf
The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett
Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham
The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis
Her Privates We – Frederic Manning
Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh
The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett
Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico
Passing – Nella Larsen
A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway
Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett
Living – Henry Green
The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia
All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque
Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin
The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen
Harriet Hume – Rebecca West
The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner
Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau
Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe
Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille
Orlando – Virginia Woolf
Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence
The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall
The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis
Quartet – Jean Rhys
Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh
Quicksand – Nella Larsen
Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford
Nadja – André Breton
Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse
Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust
To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf
Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson
Amerika – Franz Kafka
The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway
Blindness – Henry Green
The Castle – Franz Kafka
The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek
The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence
One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie
The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein
Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos
Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Counterfeiters – André Gide
The Trial – Franz Kafka
The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky
The Professor’s House – Willa Cather
Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville
The Green Hat – Michael Arlen
The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann
We – Yevgeny Zamyatin
A Passage to India – E.M. Forster
The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet
Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo
Cane – Jean Toomer
Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley
Amok – Stefan Zweig
The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield
The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings
Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf
Siddhartha – Herman Hesse
The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton
Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair
The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus
Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence
Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis
Ulysses – James Joyce
The Fox – D.H. Lawrence
Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley
The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton
Main Street – Sinclair Lewis
Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence
Night and Day – Virginia Woolf
Tarr – Wyndham Lewis
The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West
The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad
Summer – Edith Wharton
Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen
Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce
Under Fire – Henri Barbusse
Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke
The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford
The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf
Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham
The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence
The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan
Kokoro – Natsume Soseki
Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel
Rosshalde – Herman Hesse
Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell
Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence
Death in Venice – Thomas Mann
The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens
Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton
Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre
Howards End – E.M. Forster
Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel
Three Lives – Gertrude Stein
Martin Eden – Jack London
Strait is the Gate – André Gide
Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells
The Inferno – Henri Barbusse
A Room With a View – E.M. Forster
The Iron Heel – Jack London
The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett
The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson
Mother – Maxim Gorky
The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad
The Jungle – Upton Sinclair
Young Törless – Robert Musil
The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy
The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton
Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann
Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster
Nostromo – Joseph Conrad
Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe
The Golden Bowl – Henry James
The Ambassadors – Henry James
The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers
The Immoralist – André Gide
The Wings of the Dove – Henry James
Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann
Kim – Rudyard Kipling
Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser
Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad
1800s
Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross
The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane
The Awakening – Kate Chopin
The Turn of the Screw – Henry James
The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells
The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells
What Maisie Knew – Henry James
Fruits of the Earth – André Gide
Dracula – Bram Stoker
Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz
The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells
The Time Machine – H.G. Wells
Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane
Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross
The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Born in Exile – George Gissing
Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
News from Nowhere – William Morris
New Grub Street – George Gissing
Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf
Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy
La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola
By the Open Sea – August Strindberg
Hunger – Knut Hamsun
The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson
Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant
Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés
The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg
The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy
She – H. Rider Haggard
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson
The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy
Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson
King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard
Germinal – Émile Zola
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain
Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant
Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater
Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans
The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy
A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant
Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson
The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga
The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James
Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert
Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace
Nana – Émile Zola
The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Red Room – August Strindberg
Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy
Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
Drunkard – Émile Zola
Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev
Daniel Deronda – George Eliot
The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy
The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert
Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov
Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne
In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu
The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Erewhon – Samuel Butler
Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev
Middlemarch – George Eliot
Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll
King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev
He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope
War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert
Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope
Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont
The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins
Little Women – Louisa May Alcott
Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola
The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope
Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne
Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens
Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu
Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley
Les Misérables – Victor Hugo
Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev
Silas Marner – George Eliot
Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev
Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope
The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot
The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Max Havelaar – Multatuli
A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov
Adam Bede – George Eliot
Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell
Hard Times – Charles Dickens
Walden – Henry David Thoreau
Bleak House – Charles Dickens
Villette – Charlotte Brontë
Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell
Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe
The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby-Dick – Herman Melville
The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne
David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
Shirley – Charlotte Brontë
Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë
Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë
Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë
Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë
Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas
The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe
Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dickens
The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe
Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac
A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol
The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal
The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe
The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens
Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
The Nose – Nikolay Gogol
Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac
Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac
The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo
The Red and the Black – Stendhal
The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni
Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper
The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg
The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin
Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin
The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott
Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott
Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen
Persuasion – Jane Austen
Ormond – Maria Edgeworth
Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott
Emma – Jane Austen
Mansfield Park – Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth
Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth
1700s
Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin
The Nun – Denis Diderot
Camilla – Fanny Burney
The Monk – M.G. Lewis
Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe
The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano
The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin
Justine – Marquis de Sade
Vathek – William Beckford
The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade
Cecilia – Fanny Burney
Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Evelina – Fanny Burney
The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett
The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie
A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne
Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne
The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith
The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole
Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot
Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rasselas – Samuel Johnson
Candide – Voltaire
The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox
Amelia – Henry Fielding
Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett
Fanny Hill – John Cleland
Tom Jones – Henry Fielding
Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett
Clarissa – Samuel Richardson
Pamela – Samuel Richardson
Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot
Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift
Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding
A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift
Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift
Roxana – Daniel Defoe
Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe
Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood
Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe
A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift
Pre-1700
Oroonoko – Aphra Behn
The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette
The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan
Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe
Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly
Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais
The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous
The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius
Aithiopika – Heliodorus
Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton
Metamorphoses – Ovid
Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus

stasticity

I'm reaching some sort of stasis with my stasis, if that makes any sense. I'm not necessarily happy, but I'm more willing to accept that this is all temporary, if a long stage of temporary.

An improvement, I suspect. I still haven't heard from any other jobs though...

Next week makes about 4 months of celibacy, hurrah. The longer it goes the easier it gets to recognize what you really want and what you think you really want at the moment. A lot of the interactions I've had with people before came more as a reflection of how I wanted other people to feel, and not necessarily what was in my best interest.

I kissed a boy the other night. I felt like I had dropped a stone into a deep well and put my ear up to listen for the splash, but I waited and waited and waited and the splash never came. So I pretty much just pushed him away after a minute or two and went home. That's pretty much been every male interaction I've had lately.

I've got hoop dreams, y'all. I've got hoop dreams real bad, and I don't need no man standing in the way of my SLAM DUUUNNNKKK!

Alice in Waterland

This is just pretty much amazing.

life would be so much easier if my brain stopped talking

I finally saw him again last night. It had been... almost two weeks? Since I've seen him. Well, you know, I've *seen* him, with my *eyes*, but since we shared our peaceful camaraderie. I didn't realize how much I missed it until we were together. About an hour in, we were playing pool, and he cracked some joke and I laughed, finally, so hard I couldn't shoot, and he goes "Thank God! You know, that's the first smile you've cracked all night," and I didn't want to tell him that it was the first I cracked all day.

It was good. All we talked about was bullshit, thank god, because sometimes he slips in the most ridiculous thoughtful crap that I don't want to talk about, but mainly it was making jokes about each other and him telling me the history of punk/pre-grunge while he played examples on the jukebox and we both chained smoke, as usual. I went into the whole situation in a pissy mood, wanting to be angry at him (which, I didn't realize I was until I saw him, I told myself I was just busy, but I think in the end I was angry with him), and coming out of it totally relaxed.

I felt good and un-conflicted, for once. I got a good-night hug and that was that. And I was totally ok with it.

And then I tried to sleep. And the dreams started. And I don't know where we were (as if it mattered), but he was leaving, for somewhere, and I was saying goodbye. 'I just want to touch your face,' I said, and I took it and cradled it in between my hands, staring at him. And he kissed me, and he held me so tight and I began to cry. He kissed my face and I kept crying. I was overcome with sadness and longing like I haven't experienced in a long time.

And I woke up, and the last vestige of those feelings are still coiled tightly about my body like tendrils of morning glory, the full blooms shying away from the changing afternoon sun, but the vines still wrapped around my skin. And no matter how many times I tell myself to shake off the residue left by dreams, crazed landscapes of the subconscious, all I can think about is the how sweetly we touched each other's faces.

I refuse to confuse loneliness for a need for his affection. It's bad timing and it wouldn't end well.

never get so attached to a poem

you forget truth that lacks lyricism;

never draw so close to the heat

that you forget that you must eat

...

song lyrics are so seventh grade

rage rage rage

rage rage rage

sometimes I feel like all I do is rage violently against the bars of a self-imposed cage, but do little to make said cage actually disappear, because what if, when it's gone, all I still do is want something better?

das boot

Today I was an hour late for work because I had a boot put on my car. I tried to park on King St after work last night, but even though it was just after 6:30, because it was a Saturday there were NO spaces. So, I get up this morning, ready to go, walk out to where I parked -- and there they are, sitting on my tire.

$60 down the whole. "Hey, well, maybe this will cheer you up. If you had waited just another hour, you would be paying $120." I told him it might as well be a million, in that case, because I couldn't afford to pay it.

I AM BROKE, y'all. Broke broke broke. And bills keep coming.

When I was younger, I was told that if I was smart enough, and I worked hard, I could get scholarships and go to college and then get a job, and it really didn't matter what my degree was in as long as I got one, because then I was proving that I was a capable, intelligent hard worker, BLAH BLAH FUCKING BLAH, and I'd get paid and everything would be ok.

LIES LIES LIES FUCKING LIES.

So, essentially, this morning any naive hopes of being able to stay in Boone have pretty much been shattered.

Fuck, I do not want to move back to Jacksonville. I do not want to ask my parents for money. I just want to pay my bills and write and live in PEACE.

Money = root of all evil, y'all.

THERE IS SOMETHING WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE.

Richard Avedon - Dior 1957

Richard Avedon - Dior 1957
Originally uploaded by myvintagevogue

family

Today I have a bad attitude (quelle suprise, no?).

I feel broke and whiney and I miss my mom and my brother. I want to go visit them and eat belated birthday cake and watch movies. My brother always makes fun of all the sentimental parts, effectively ruining them, and mom and I yell at him. We also get into shouting matches over games of trivial pursuit and especially monopoly. But then someone says something ridiculously funny (usually Stephan) and we all end up laughing so hard we turn red and start to cry.

If I work hard at saving, I should have enough in the next month to buy new brakes and rotors and finally see them again.

resolutions

SO.

HP (no, no, not Harry Potter) and I had very long conversation last night, which has led to a mutually-agreed stasis-of-anything-regarding-the-S-and-R-words. However, this just-friends attitude will probably be beneficial in preventing myself from becoming distracted at a point in my life where I need to get all my own shit straightened out.

ONWARD, AHOY!

In other news: after I pay rent tomorrow I will be more broke than I ever have been since leaving my sheltered teenage life. this does bother me, but not as much as I expect it would. I think it's gotten to the point where I have so little money that it doesn't matter how much it is, because it's essentially nothing. so I went out and had a few drinks last night because, at this point, that extra $5 really makes no difference, ha ha ha.

thank god I have a sense of humor. I'd like to think I'm taking everything that's happened recently fairly well.

The Tweet has finished its 7-day schedule, so I'll be losing 2 paid hours a week, about $50 or so every month. groooooossss. hopefully I'll get an NYC job soon.

on deck: new brakes and rotors, when I can afford them (HAH! right now $420 seems more like a MILLLLLION).

six-and-a-half-hours-til-the-weekend

(ALSO!)

(I'm going to kidnap sommer and her kittens and her cupcakes. plz don't tell ben kthnx.)

I think I lack the skills for pattern recognition that are necessary for being able to write an evocative and meaningful piece of work.

shit.

Or, perhaps, I just lack enough experience from which to make patterns.

hmm.

mr. lonely

Today I sort of feel like someone has taken an ice cream scoop and scooped out all my insides, leaving me just a waffle cone with only the melting dregs of frozen cream inside of me.

I finished Sputnik Sweetheart in three days. I think I feel such a strong bond with all of Murakami's works because all he ever writes about are people who are incredibly lonely and, for some reason, are unable (either emotionally or because of outside factors) to ever be truly connected to the people they love.

However, this is tempered with overarching themes of interconnectivity between all beings in the universe. Peace is only achieved through the idea that we are all connected in ways which we may not understand, so even if in the corporeal sense we cannot be together with those we wish to, we are all wrapped in a cocoon of silvery threads which unite us all together.

So, even though I feel lonely, I'm really not alone? Hmm.

Today I am wrapping up some flash fiction and prose poems to send in to a contest. Everything submitted will be considered for publication. Fingers crossed y'all....

I should be getting letters from Kristi and Matt soon, hurrah! I need to mail a letter to WV and Germany, and then Durham, yadda yadda yadda. Perhaps those will all be written at work today, hah.

box in a cage

More and more I feel the strong urge to say 'FUCK BOONE' and get the hell out of here.

Soon, soon.

I have applied for a few more jobs in the NY area. GOAL: To be there by January!

ALSO! rescheduled my GRE exam for a month later than the date I originally decided upon. no way was I ready to take it Tuesday. however, a month from then? yes.

working on some writing. working on not hating life. bleh.

NOLA felt like coming home to a big, hot, sweaty best friend. I am in love with that city and am also considering moving there. I don't know if I would like it forever, but I think I would love to live there for a year or two.

possibilities, possibilities.

I have to open myself up to the world like a flower to the sun, before I fall prey to a false winter.

double deuce

For my birthday I received:

* seven noise complaints
* but no tickets! thanks BoPo!
* a six pack of Blue Moon
* a 40 of King Cobra
* a fifth of Stoli (ohgodyesplease)
* hilarious flash cards (oh god, kristi, that one of that girl crying. I have to find a place of honor for her in my apartment)
* my favorite of Matt Keefer's drawings (FUCKING LASER BEAMS Y'ALL)
* an attempted make-out session (yeah... I put a stop to that pretty fast)
* another awesomely awesome heartfelt conversation with my best friend TIIIIIIM

I think it's funny that the people who I wanted most to give a shit didn't really seem to (with a few exceptions, it is to be noted), and the people who I didn't think would care put in a really big effort. So thanks to those people who went out of their way to make me feel all SPAY-SHUL.

in other news:

* today I applied for 4 jobs in NYC
* in a scant five days I will be on my way to NOLA

Murakami

"Each of us possesses a tangible living soul. The system has no such thing. We must not allow the system to exploit us." - Haruki Murakami

dream

I dreamed about you. You were around my apartment, coming back from the bar or a party or something. You walked in and shut and locked the door behind you. You walked over to where I slept, took off your pants and shirt, and crawled into bed with me, wrapping your arms around me.

In the middle of the night I rolled over and threw my arm out, my mind still expecting to find you. Of course you weren't there.

....

I think maybe I've been reading too much Murakami, heh.

meh

pulled another Howard Hughes today. the only person I talked to was the guy at the library who got me my new card.

yes... once again, I have access to sweet, sweet books...

all I want to do is cuddle in a big bed with someone and watch movies.

hmmph.

Wild Wild Wet

Another rainy day at the Tweets. I'm really glad it's raining, because it rained on every one of my days off, and if it was sunny and beautiful while I was working this weekend I was probably going to throw myself in front of the train. I hate people who get pissy when it's raining here; we are zoned as a temperate rainforest. This is a good thing. Last summer everyone was angry because it wouldn't rain at all, and now it's too much, blah blah blah.

r....a...i.....n......

Ignoring phone calls from the asshat. God I have bad taste. Or perhaps it's just the idea that "No, I'm sure somewhere, deep down, deeeep down somewhere, this person is really not a complete waste of space and time, truly!".

psh. whatev. I should fly solo anyway. I think the universe is trying to tell me this too -- I went out the other night for dinner with some coworkers, and we had a super cute waiter. Who I was sorta-flirting with. So of course I spilt an entire glass of water right in my lap, all over the booth, the floor, etc. He comes up, trying not to laugh, and hands me a towel. Which I then promptly smothered myself with (((kidding, obvsly))).

I've got more important shit to concentrate on anyway. Like not spending money. And the GRE. And my fucking WRITING (oh yeah, that...). And Grad school. And the above also needs to include trying not to think about hottie professor, with whom I've had near-daily rapport since he left for France. Mmm....

A week until my birthday, a scant two weeks until NOLA. Fuck yeah!