ester incapacitated

ouch. i've done something uncalled for to my neck and now my leftward mobility is curtailed. i can't lift my left arm, even to do my hair. this severely limits my options so it's a damn good thing it's already getting dark.

stefanie, daughter of a chiropractor and very much a true believer, informed me that ice is better than heat; that sleeping on more than one pillow is toxic and sleeping on your stomach is a death wish; and that i need to go get myself Corrected. she and eliz frequent a chiropractor about 15 minutes away by car so they don't see this as a big deal, but i find it a little scary. i mean, it looks like it hurts.

if by tomorrow i still can't turn my head to the left, i'll go with them. but ugh.

the rumors are true...

... parrish, my dorm, is eerily quiet. there's more noise outside my window at the rose garden/roundabout than in the hallway outside my open door. speaking of my door, why aren't people knocking it down? don't tell me this is one of those situations where i'll have to learn to be assertive again. you think i came to college to learn?

currently i'm eating leftover sesame tofu with my fingers, then wiping my fingers on my jeans and using them to type. this bodes well for the future, both in terms of hygiene and the condition of my keyboard. but i have no silverware. i have no roommate either, and no boyfriend (well, at least none within arm's reach). something, people, has got to give.

well, i have a pretty view outside my window, which is taller than i am, and my walls are so tall i can barely even see the ceiling. the ceiling is like a dimly glimpsed horizon. it may well just be a mirage. everything's white, except the furniture (light wood stained) and the floor (linoleum. what? who ordered linoleum? not that i'm complaining, mind you. the other dorms i've lived in on campus had cinderblock walls and floors made out of compacted grade F meat). (still, i could use a rug.)

if you are someone i know, or the sibling of someone i know, you should stop by parrish 246 and get the awkward first "oh hi!" moment out of the way. i swear i'm not intimidating: at the moment, i have sesame sauce dripping down my chin. mmm, sesame ...

one brother gone, one brother going

who is this man
and why does he start each day
by rolling out the white carpet
as though he expects a paint-covered god

what are the blue odorless flowers sprouted
along the carpet, following the banister up six
flights of stairs

why are rooms
changing tones like mood rings

she wouldn't understand
the books spat from shelves, either,
the knickknacks plucked from walls

she could have tried asking
the house, which
in twenty years had never before gone under
the knife, but the anasthesized house
could not have answered

she would have dashed
out the door every day the man
was painting it and crouched, waited for us
on the lawn to coax her back in
to what we'd reassure her was her home
still
the biggest shift to me
is not the bathroom, cornered
and stripped at last
of the paper i've hated for years, or my brothers'
suitcases piled in the hallway like oversized
building blocks the biggest shift
is having to imagine her
confusion, instead of petting it away.

i have a cellphone

i do. i didn't expect or ask for one -- that's always the best way to get something. my older brother's heading off to iowa, where his plan doesn't work. instead of cancelling the plan, the t-mobile lady (not catharine zeta-jones, sadly, but i guess she's at home nursing) convinced him to give the phone to me.

at the phone store the phone guy, who reminded me a little of our foreign study coordinator, and my brother badgered me into getting the best phone available for $50, instead of the $50 one that's less reliable but better looking. so my phone is sweet but ugly. hopefully it will grow on me. please feel free to say helpful things like, "don't worry, the good-looking ones break your heart in the end."

i have this phone for a year. in the best of all possible worlds, adam will return from iowa, and i'll head there, and we'll handoff the plan again. meanwhile, call me. i leave for swarthmore this weekend for my last year. i won't think about that. instead i'll play bowling and check my email on my sexy-ugly phone, for which i now need to think of a name.

no, eliz, you're just a follower

i haven't been in the dc public library in years. i would prefer to put the number at around 10; in fact it's probably closer to 3 since i came here to borrow the LOTR books instead of buy them. since i ended up never bringing them back, the guilt kept me at arm's length til desperation beckoned me in.

actually the reason for the gulf between the time i came 10 years ago and the time i came 3 years ago is also attributable to my library kleptomania. it's terrible, absolutely terrible. the only stealing i've ever done! i don't deserve to be a swattie, or at least to be thought of in the same breath as true, socially-minded leftists who never steal, or only from corporate congloms which deserve it.

since reading nickel and dimed i've become vehemently anti-walmart. fyi.

i find it funny that they even allow me onto the computer without checking my record here. if there's a black list, i'm on it. if there's a ten most wanted list, i might be on that too. oh dear. i wouldn't be here, listening to the inexplicable minnesota accent of the librarian helping a woman in a housedress behind me, if a storm hadn't racked our area, depriving many of power and my house of internet.

at home mostly i've been filling out applications. out of convenience/laziness, i've narrowed down my choices to: stanford, nyu, columbia (film), ucla (film), bu, emerson, and iowa. in the course of this, i've become as dissatisfied with my poetry as i've ever been. it's too late now to burn the lot and start over. maybe when/if i get into some grad skool program. i'll view that as a new chance.

if not, i'll do as ben discreetly suggested. see myself as a recreational poet who writes things for people when they need them.
(at the time, less than pleased with that prospect, i said, "they could just buy a hallmark card!" to which he replied, "there are no hallmark cards for ... pain ...") talk about a niche market.

"itchy, scratchy seek poochie"

my new salon personals profile has reaped me an invitation to be the playmate of a 30-something new jersey couple. i don't know between which lines about dorothy parker or lars van trier these people read "swinger" but i got a kick out of it anyway. at least they can quote the simpsons.

i'm back from the beach. it was beachy-keen, you could say, if you were lobotomized, for example, or a cheery redfaced fella. i came the nearest i've ever come to buying a two-piece. that is to say, i tried one on. it was bright red, the idea being that people would be so dazzled, or blinded, that they wouldn't notice my not-quite-washboard stomach.

the primary drama of the trip occurred last night as we wound our way home from delaware via new jersey and pennsylvania. my mother called my grandmother and discovered that something was wrong with my grandfather. immediately my father shifted from Speed to Fly. immediately my not-quite-sturdy stomach reacted. when we finally made it to our house, merely a stop for my parents on their way to the hospital, they discovered that no one brought the new keys to the new locks on our new door.
ultimately we had to ask a family friend, an ex-priest and present sociology prof at umd, to break into our house for us. you wouldn't necessarily think that an ex-priest or a sociologist could possibly be useful in the real world. but believe me, this one is a lifesaver. this morning he and his wife served us brunch.

counter culture

it's a common correction of a common misconception that housefraux in the fifties had sex drives. but even better, sez this article, apparently they had sex records and went to hear sexy stand-up routines. not bad for a generation of women in bobs and girdles.

i'm off to the beach for a week. hopefully our power will manage to stay on throughout. & i will manage not to think about grad skool or the GREs even once.

shaken, not stirred

the fucking gres, man. why didn't anyone tell me they were hard? or was that what people were telling me implicitly with their raised eyebrows when i told them i didn't feel like studying?

well, at least they're over. i did fine on the verbal, which is what counts. but it's hard not to be affected -- and by "be affected" i mean "have your eyeballs leap from the sockets and plummet to their gooey deaths on the keyboard" -- after seeing your beyond-pitiful score on the math section. they need to make up a new word for how pitiful my math score was. & by "they" i mean the assholes responsible for putting clearly imaginary words in the verbal section to trip me up.

sigh. let's just hope it gives the admissions people at iowa and nyu a good chuckle before they admit me.

personal

i updated my profile at salon. i'd completely forgotten i had one; i posted it in 2001. it was completely out of date. still, i can just hear the naysayers now: internet is on its way out, who would answer a personals ad, don't you already have a boyfriend? what's next, friendster?

i say, you can never be too careful.

past

a random oldie, revised:

you are a cat

No matter how many times
I kill you off:

drop you out of poetic windows;
drown you; chloroform you; then
wipe my hands
on a page,

you come back, dripping, merry,
your eyes greener than ever,
and your fur still soft

You curl up against me, purring,
and though I hear it�s bad for cats,
I feed you warm milk words.

the pillow book

last night i dreamt that henry ward beecher walked in on me hugging a boy, pulled a gun and shot the boy six times through. i screamed and screamed but didn't wake up. for the rest of the dream, in which i was supposed to be under beecher's control, i had to pretend that boy hadn't been murdered and that i didn't keep seeing replays in my mind.

it couldn't have been what i was reading before i fell asleep, because i was reading sei shonagon, a copy of which i only just located at second story books years after i stopped looking. the snicket books are lodged close enough to the forefront of my mind to potentially cause nightmares, and so are ehrenreich's nickel and dimed and c mcc's member of the wedding, both of which i began recently. but holding literature responsible -- isn't that what nazis and censors do?

it couldn't have been what i was eating, because i had fruit salad for dinner, and nothing bad ever happens on account of fruit salad.

i suppose it could have been what i was watching. the sopranos are notoriously violent and they showed the episode last night where dr. melfi gets raped in the parking garage. but i watched sex and the city immediately thereafter and the wedding was so cute that surely it gooed and cooed over the morbid residues in my subconscious, rendering them harmless.

or it could have been a result of the general recent topsy-turviness. my grandfather's still in the hospital, recovering from kidney failure. my house still seems to expect my dog to return. the house itself is in the midst of a face-lift. and i'm applying to mfa programs.

i managed to write a draft of my Who Am I, What Do I Want admissions essay today. perhaps that will inspire dreams of satisfaction and optimism tonite.

all about the gay

as occasionally happens, when one is lucky, my train ride -- which extended an extra hour, as often happens when one is NOT lucky, or every tuesday and thursday -- was brightened by the presence of a stranger. i did not handpick my gentleman companion. friday afternoon amtrak rushes wrest the power from your hands and put it in fate's. but fate's hands deposited me gently beside an elderly distinguished african-american man, a man who revealed himself to be, once we began to talk, once of the gayest adults i have ever met in my life.

he dressed as though awaited the second coming of the 70s. he wore three chunky silver rings on one hand and two on the other. one after another he mentioned his "friends." he said, "the other night, when i was watching sex and the city..." he quoted dorothy parker. or, misquoted, actually -- i got to correct him. mostly i listened, starry-eyed. he invoked lana turner. in fact when i confessed i hadn't seen imitation of life he nearly leapt from the moving car and with me in his well-maintained hands marched to the nearest blockbuster in aberdeen, maryland. he told me about living in miami. he told me about working in television. and last but not least, he picked up on a subtle reference i'd dropped into the conversation and said, "that's right: i pulled a scarlett o'hara."

my family greeted me at the train station and we all went out to dinner. we parked, as usual, in a church lot next door to a family friend of ours. he pays for the parking lot lights; we get to use one space.
after dinner upon returning to the car we heard a distinctive voice. "mr xxxxxx?" i said, turning around, and my brothers turned too. there, standing next to us, was our old science teacher & our unanimous favorite. born a catholic in the wild, he converted to judaism later in life and got a position at our school for spoiled jewish kids. he used to urge us to embrace our faith with, well, a convert's zeal. if my friends and i, the good kids, talked when we were supposed to be praying, he would approach us and beg, "if gold rusts, what will iron do?"

and here he was, in dupont circle, on shabbes, in a church parking lot, standing very close to a man who looked like he belonged to the church. (he didn't seem amused when we explained our deal with the lights.) mr xxxxxx exclaimed, we exclaimed, we said hi and made introductions. but the awkwardness was palpable. we knew he was gay, of course, but i never would have imagined that even in his other life he would not wear a kippah.

i'd never had granola for breakfast before. that shit is strong! first i couldn't even finish the 1/2 cup. then it knocked me out: having contact-ed and everything, i fell back into bed and slept until 1. there should be a warning on the bag, or something.

what prolly assisted the granola was that i spent yet another night meaning to go to sleep straightaway and instead staying up all-hours talking to el(she who once was lazyqueer)iz. with no apparent desire to accomodate our need to Would You Rather... each other til the early a.m., her alarm went off both this morning and last. ugh.

of course i should be doing stuff to prepare for my departure on friday. so far i haven't been able to motivate myself. but instead of focusing on the negative, i should be proud of what i have done:

• watched the first part of kissing jessica stein and the last of american pie 2
  
• went up to the counter of the cafe where i ate lunch yesterday to ask for a doggybag and had the guy at the register ask, "what, do you want my number?"
  
• crossed the brooklyn bridge on foot
  
• nailed down 2 recommendations for the grad skool process
  
• learned from my parents i racked up a whopping $450 cell phone bill because (heh heh!) no one told me the plan wasn't an unlimited one (heh heh!)
  
• spent only change on lunch today
  
• made plans to visit hipster brooklyn so i can cross that off my to-do list too
  
• bought a train ticket home. bye bye ny ...

that's relatively extensive, don't you think?

i think i'm having a blog identity crisis. i'd call a specialist for help but my phone mysteriously stopped working. i'd turn to my constant companion for advice but tragedy whirlwinded him away to his family late last night.

my life is neither boring nor depressing. somehow i just can't seem to write about it. maybe cause the issues occupying thoughtspace are at once weighty and banal (death, for example. and the future. ha! what's to say?

except, i miss my dog. i'm bracing myself for going home and for the first time in 12 years not having her smiling goofily and wagging her tail, shedding, looking vacant, or plopping melodramatically down on the carpet. my family's had to cope with her sudden cancer and sudden death up close. i've had the luxury of condoling via telephone and letting my last days in new york city distract me.
right there, that's guilt, see? a domestic species: familial, it says. don't tap on the glass, you'll wake it up. just look.)

i'm still doing stuff, running around research, reading screenplays at work. but it's all winding down.

birthday cake for breakfast

most recently, in my series of action/adventure-packed days, i returned from the plymouth congregational church where henry ward beecher preached during the 2nd half of the 19th century. in his day preachers were like movie stars. people came from all over the country to hear him, as well as from manhattan in droves, to the point where some ingenious fella christened "beecher's ferries" specifically for the purpose of bringing congregants across the river.

my tour guide in the church, a woman who looked remarkably like what i may look like at her age, plus 80's glasses and a muumuu, made it abundantly clear at the outset that she would not discuss the scandal. "that was a bump in the road of a long glorious career," she said sternly. "it would be like judging clinton's presidency by that thing with the intern."

i refrained from pointing out that clinton's thing with the intern did happen, and consequently that parallel was not necessarily one she wanted to draw. i got an hour and a half's worth of hwb's life apart from the scandal, which involved some amazing abolitionist work and some very touching stories. but mlk jr. had an affair too, didn't he? a man can still be a rightfully revered man and have committed adultery, or even still be a hypocrite in some senses.

on a non-morally-relativist note, i had a dream come true moment last night. my broadway faithful aunt marjy took me to see bernadette peters play mme rose in gypsy. since i was 12 years old, i wanted two things: to be bernadette peters, and to see her onstage. she was entirely as breathtaking as the above review makes her seem. my aunt, a veteran of shows and star showcasings, called her rose one of the best musical theater performances she'd ever seen.

and this came, in my case, on the heels of a weekend-long folk music extravaganza. everyone and their mother was there: swatties, high skool friends, their magically reappearing ex-boyfriends. white but diverse, as masses of 15,000 white people go. friendly and cheerful as always, and well staffed with happy leftist performers from dar williams to tracy grammer to arlo guthrie.

en avant garde!

the brita filter in our apartment has gone missing, or else i'm too lazy to retrieve it from where it probably is, so i keep ignoring the vast, abyss-like feeling of my mouth when i wake up. better still, i feed it diet coke.

today my lovely friend jamie trips up to the city, and tomorrow together the two of us + lana trip up to falconridge, a folk festival to which i've gone twice. THIS YEAR, i will actually know several people who are going too, and not just have to hit up 40 year old divorcee strangers and punk teenage boys for company.

in short, falconridge will be full of swatties, much like the play becca took me to on tuesday. she's now working for the pig iron theater company and she introduced me around to the numerous eager swattie-grads who formed and run the troupe. no words! for 70 minutes! just a lot of theory-based clowning around that succeeded in being amusing and engaging to watch.

it felt very much like the swat theater i'm used to. also it's nice to encounter mobs of swatties -- they seem to move in mobs, don't they? or at least in couples -- in the outside world. there should be a better descriptive noun for that: swarths of swatties? stings of swatties? watts of swatties? hum.

for all the prep stef and i did for our mutual special day, we neglected to plan or purchase a birthday cake. i didn't notice until ben, ross, reb and i were up visiting ross's grandparents in north salem. ben and i had brought a beautiful cake as a dessert that made me think of it as we were cutting it up. immediately ross's grandmother said that would not stand. she summoned the crowd, lit a tall white candle in a cande-holder, and the circle sang for me.

the cake was good, and i was satisfied.

i've also been reading the strangest combination of books: ulysees, with ross: the two of us formed an exclusive book club. our notion is that no one reads ulysees outside of a class, and since neither of us is going to take a class on it, we have to push each other to read it and help each other understand it; a series of unfortunate events: the bad beginning, which i adored; uncle tom's cabin for insight into harriet beecher stowe as well as her century; and easy riders, raging bulls about 70s filmmakers and how they grew.

easy riders, raging bulls is dispiriting in some senses. it's about the guys you're supposed to root for -- your heroes, the ones who subverted the system and found enough of a heartbeat in the comatose movie industry to power chinatown, network, and bonnie and clyde, harold and maude, taxi driver and the godfathers.
and it turns out, they're assholes. every one. coked up, self-aggrandizing, macho, violent, backstabbing, morally-bankrupt sex-addicts. they just happened to make great movies.

on the other hand, it's a fascinating process to read about. and it's fueled my ambition like nothing else. i want to work in casting. no, i want to work in directing. no, i want to be a writer. no, an editor. anything: i just want to work in film. somehow.
something about this city, too. it pushes, or deludes, you into thinking, maybe-just-maybe, you can do it.

practice practice practice

what better way to spend the daylight hours of your 21st birthday than enjoying an obscure russian opera at lincoln center? even those circumstances are immeasurably improved by the realization that you're in the company of the boy-you-love and making your father happy on your father's dime.

opera isn't usually my cup of tea. still, the nytimes raved about this one, and truly it was an experience. i'd never been to lincoln center before, or sat through four hours of russian, except for that seder in moscow.

life in general leading up to this momentous occasion has been lovely. intense research spanning two (2) boroughs has led me to discover the fascinating role victoria woodhull -- my woman, the subject of the screenplay i'm writing as my thesis next semester -- and harriet beecher stowe -- the woman who wrote uncle tom's cabin -- played in each others' lives.

about harriet beecher stowe, dorothy parker wrote the following:

the pure and worthy mrs. stowe/ is one we all are proud to know/ as mother, wife, and authoress./ Thank god i am content with less.

about victoria woodhull, people haven't written much; at least not recently. but in 1872, harriet beecher stowe wrote a satirical play about vw, in which hbs called vw "audacia dangereyes." poof: my screenplay-thesis now has a title.

tonite is all about dining and drinking. celebration. yay! i will never be a twenty-nothing again.

a (don't hate me) political entry

ben has been tirelessly touting bob graham as the neglected candidate in the dem showdown. indeed people haven't been taking him seriously as a contender, despite his actual experience, the fact that he hails from the south -- whence, as everyone keeps telling us, the only winning dems hail -- , and actually quite liberal views.
he didn't make nearly as much money as kerry, gephardt, or dean this past quarter, for one thing. he's also not jostling for room on the the-government's-been-lyin-to-us! soapbox, unlike several candidates i could name, nearly all of whom voted for bush's damn war.

although i think anything anyone says to undermine america's misguided faith in our president is a step in the right direction, as well as anything that keeps criticism of the white house on the front page, it's hard not to see it as craven vote-mongering. especially since the only people shouting are those trying to draw attention to their campaigns.

which brings me back to the point: it's refreshing that graham isn't among them. maybe that's because he voted against the war in the first place.

i'm finding it difficult to get energized about a particular candidate at the moment, myself. the rhetoric is so bland and interchangeable. fight for the future, wrong direction, blah. graham, though sympathetic, strikes me as more of a well-meaning guy than a firebrand (be a bobcat? come on). i understand why dean is so compelling. the man at least has passion. aside from all the name dropping of dead white males + mlk jr, he's actually saying something, strongly. and he understands the way to surf the wave of the future: blogger, man, all the way.

what's the issue with dean again? is it just backlash? i mean, alex likes him as does janeane garofolo. frankly the man looks presidential (how tall is he exactly?) and sometimes that's totally what it comes down to.

three random encounters yesterday:

first, waiting for the elevator at my office building. a well-dressed 30-something african-american woman looking disgusted informed me, "new yorkers are fucking crazy."
why?, i asked.
"they're just crazy, fucking crazy. why would some guy pull an emergency brake on a train? and then sit there? we'd all have to sit there for thirty minutes until the police came? they're even starting an investigation."
i agreed that it was crazy, and she said nothing more to me until we parted ways.

second, walking down 8th avenue toward the post office. a well-dressed 30-something african-american man walked up to me with his hand extended, "hi miss-in-a-leather-skirt. i'm doing a promotion for women in leather skirts today ..." by that point i had moved out of earshot.

third, walking out of my office and into the lobby, where sat a well-dressed 20-something white female. she glanced at me, i glanced at her. i thought, It's that chick from dawson's creek! what the hell is her name?
she must have thought, who is that attractive young female in the leather skirt, and why isn't she asking for my autograph?

the next time i see a katie holmes-level famous person, i'm going to go up to them, whether i can place them or not, and say, Wow, i can't believe it's you! i loved you in wonder boys. just to be safe.

spellbound helped raise my spirits. (have you not yet seen it? go!) certainly it's one of the best movies i've seen so far this year. it's fond of all of the characters it portrays while keeping just enough distance to allow you to laugh at them too.
as a documentary, not just a movie, it excels because it has that light touch. the previous night i saw startup.com. also good, but spellbound is smoother, swifter, and more composed.

friday night my roommates and i went in for an improv marathon at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater in chelsea. as it turns out my work is like three blocks from there. as soon as i was dismissed, i placed myself in line for tickets, and the hour i stood there before other roommates arrived allowed me to make the acquaintance of hard-boiled, wry new york artist harriet. she commented on my reading fran lebowitz. i remember reading that, she said, like twenty years ago. i'm glad it's still funny.

(it is.) in due time, the others arrived and comedy started. we stayed for 4.5 of the 54 hours, returning the next day for an hour more. the key takeaway, in my opinion, is that funny looking white guys are funny. guys who are so used to being funnylooking that they don't notice or care anymore and can be totally unselfconscious on stage, and guys who must have realized early on that if they want to get laid or noticed they'd have to come up with something, cuz their looks just weren't going to cut it.

we spent dinner that evening meditating on why women seemed to follow a different pattern. my theory is that women are primarily supposed to be attractive. if a woman is not conventionally attractive, she's supposed to suck it up, try hard and/or pretend. a man throwing in the towel of attractiveness can be brave ("wow, what a courageous realist") or at least can be good-humored ("chris farley, drew carrey, etc., and notice how these guys still manage to get chicks in their movies and tv shows"). a woman throwing in the towel of attractiveness, on the other hand, is pathetic. before you can laugh at/with her, you have to swallow your pity.

speaking of swallowing your pity, i have work now 2 days a week in a wonderful, sunny office filled with huge framed colorful posters, happy women and gay men. everyone is young and hip. everywhere are piles of screenplays and pictures of actors inviting your judgement. even if all i do is copy and carry, and at the end of the day receive a $10 bill from an unsmiling man named vinnie, i'm thrilled.

i felt for a while like i could cry. i was crying earlier, finishing bee season. i'd expected that to be light reading -- why? it's beautiful and i must have sniffled through the last 30 pages of it. afterwards stef and i argued whether there was some sort of redemption or happiness to be found in the ending. it came down to a simple pessimist / optomist dichotomy.

if anyone called me a pessimist, i'd be hurt. last night, however, i did have a moderately fatalistic attitude towards the water in which i was supposed to eventually put buckwheat pasta but which felt very acutely to me as though it would never boil, never, not if i stood there for the entire night.
you'll never be a good cook if you think fatalistically, said rebecca.
don't tell her she'll never be a good cook!, said ben.
i laughed. they were both right.

my job at planet elaineum fell through. it turned out that my prospective boss was crazy, and also that she was my cousin eric's second grade teacher (my aunt, reminded of the woman cried, "she's crazy!"). i was willing to work with her anyway, even for only $5 an hour, because i'm a sucker for crazy old jewish women, or at least i feel like i can deal with them.
but then ben, at whose house i would have to live to commute to planet elaineum, got this great job in brooklyn for those two days a week. so he'll live in brooklyn, i'll live in brooklyn, he'll make $25 an hour, and i'll continue wandering around my posh, beautiful neighborhood, wondering what i'm going to do with the rest of my life.

or even the present of my life. i expected new york city to incite in me feelings of: inferiority, self-doubt, mediocrity, low self-esteem, and/or perhaps bitterness. (see Fatalism, above) i didn't expect to thoroughly enjoy the city but find myself intermittently awash in an existential crisis. how will i make my million? is the general question. the more focused beginning is, how will i make any money at all, or does it matter, and should i just concentrate on the research? then, after that's done, after i write the screenplay i'm supposed to write, and graduate with the degree i'm supposed to graduate with, and become the person i'm supposed to become, then, THEN, i'll figure out: how will i make my million?

o beauty and beneficence. i have a job. after the various travel expenses, i'll make $FoodMoney.fortheWeek out of it. plus it seems like an interesting opportunity: i'll be acting in a research, writing, and editing capacity as an assistant to a lefty who's working on her 3rd book about progressive education. plus she has a screenplay too.

the battery on this laptop continues to diminish, smoothly, without fanfare, even though i've plugged it in. this feels like a metaphor for something.
meanwhile, still no replies to the emails i've sent out. the funniest was to a guy who wanted a girl to run his love life for him. i wonder if people are (understandably) turned off by the fact that i'm a college student. if all of these people are graduates with their own lives, wouldn't they want someone their own size?

oh i see. you flip the light switch, and everything changes. this is also a metaphor ... for something.

also a kind poetry rejection in my emailbox this morning. the editor wrote me personally, in blue. luckily i didn't even remember sending stuff to that particular internet publication. many of these are still outstanding; i imagine they'll trickle in til i accumulate my necessary 32. is this the beginning of a string of a disappointments or is this the disappointments themselves? it's funny, cuz i'm happy. by recent-emigres-to-nyc standards i'm living like royalty. our apartment is white-walled and high-ceilinged and an interesting shape. one of the smaller walls is entirely brick. sure, there's no kitchen to speak of, but no cockroaches either, and we're in one of the most calm, gorgeous neighborhoods around.

we're all getting along relatively well, too, even within our small space. we talk hpV in restaurants with only twinges of self-consciousness. we play nintendo and scrabble over white russians and smirnoff ice. it's a good arrangement. i am embarassingly bad at mario, by the way. why did i waste my childhood reading and casting spells on my brothers instead of learning all those tricks about where the little blocks you bump with your head are? i didn't even know how to run fast; they have to coach me.

one of the pt jobs i applied for yesterday through craig's list required knowledge of editorial columnists. personal knowledge? it was unclear. i wish i could say i'd like to date, or even get to know better, anyone whose opinions have appeared in essay-form in either of my newspapers. sadly, to me, most op-eds run the gamut from smug to idiotic.

that aside, this one suggests that america privatize marriage. or abolish it, or what you will.
i feel like people have been talking marriage with greater frequency and volume recently. canada started that. graduations, parental separations, and living arrangements have contributed. and now the s.court has fed the flames.
once my grand idea was that marriage should last 7 years. if, after 7 years, you want to continue being married to the individual to whom you're married, you & your partner renew your licenses. if not, you divide financies, work out custody deals, and go on your merry way.

isn't the idea of "for the next 7 years" simultaneously less frightening than "til death do you part" AND more concrete and therefore something you could potentially picture and evaluate?

50% of all divorces occur at the 7 year mark anyway. i know, because i'm a college student and i took a soc. class once.

brooklyn

is where i am. ben drove me (thanks ben) from cape cod, where we went to stay w/ his parent(?s) just like we did last august. the best part of the visit came the last evening when, after we conventional beached for a while, we wound our way from twisty road to off-road dirt path and deadended at a gorgeous underpopulated cove where signs warn you sea turtles and seals come out to laze. finding neither, we settled for watching the sun fall, casting a long straight bright orange shadow along the water.

that adventure didn't derail us from the initial plan: seeing charlie's angels: even more ridiculous at the wellfleet drive in. drive-ins! i'd always wanted to go to one and never had. ben's dad and lisa stayed in the car. ben and i took a blanket and sat in front on the ground. most people occupied folding chairs. the best part was that instead of previews they showed a road runner cartoon, and instead of requesting that you be quiet during the film they requested that everyone stand, place hand over heart and sing the national anthem.

comotion ended on an up note, too. the last day, we prepped, cooked, and hosted a bbq for the campers' families; cleaned up said bbq; cleaned up from the camp; went back to the dorm exhausted and proceeded to stay up til 3:30 discussing interpersonal dynamics, limits, and leadership styles. we ended with a round of affirmations that reminded me of high skool, when my superclose group of friends had open'n'honest conversations about what we liked about each other.
as always, comotion was a great experience. the camp ran better this year because we knew what to expect. i felt more confident handling children, and we had no major issues.

now i have to start work. nerveracking. stef might walk me around the neighborhood for a bit first so i can acclimate or at least not feel entirely so foreign.

ding dong, the witch is dead

what a terrific coincidence. bowers v. hardwick and strom thurman kick the bucket on the same day. i wonder if anyone's howling vast left-wing conspiracy.
and the headlines on the nytimes webpage, delightfully, read, "strom thurman dies, at age 100," followed by, "gays celebrate ..."

since finishing hpV, i've been too emotional to do much except comb the net for all the reviews i didn't let myself read before. though i appreciated the nytimes' glowing review (and it forced me to realize SATC didn't make up the name of their foremost critic), the one i identified most with is salon's. but i'm desperate to know what other people think. none of my fellow counselors have read the book. i need to talk about it with somebody.

in short, i gobbled it up so quickly and so ravenously it's hard to even gauge how much i liked it. my instinct is that i liked it a lot. obviously it's not as enjoyable as the 3rd one, my favorite. it's not easy reading. but i am very intense about this book at this moment. in fact, since i started reading it, i feel as if the book's moodiness and passion, both, have been seeping into me. i got irritated when interrupted, defensive when people were derisive, and generally i was on edge. i still am.
... it's something, all right.

three days into co|motion i feel much more confident than i did three days into it last year. the fact that i've done it before helps. last year i had no experience working with a group of kids at all. while i never panicked, i panicked that i might panic, and so on. i also remember, early on last year, finishing a day in tears, sure that none of the campers liked me and that i alone had no maternal instincts.

when the other counselors ooh and aah at length about one of our campers, who, at 11, still looks and acts 6, that same concern springs to mind: ohmygod, i'm missing the Everything She Does is Cute! Gene. but so far it hasn't been keeping me up at night.

very little, i feel, at this point could keep me up at night. by the time we go to sleep we've been up since 7:30. some of the girls show up as early as 8. camp starts at 9 and goes through 5. once we nudge them out, we spend an hour debriefing and occasionally obsessing over the campers, after which we spend the rest of the evening planning. we're lucky to have 2 hours of free time before we crash.
last night i used those 2 hours to devour the first 220 pages of hpV. i didn't have my own copy yet, it hadn't arrived, so i stole sorelle's. thanks-be-to-god (and amazon.com) it slid in today and i read in snatches until i was halfway through. i think it's gripping though, yes, as all accounts have mentioned, unrelentingly dark. it kind of reminds me of she's come undone in that way.

hpV is a sore spot among my fellow counselors, none of whom have succumbed to their impulses to start reading yet. a few of our campers/CITs have dragged their tomes with them and pore over them at every opportunity. having gotten enmeshed in mine myself, i kind of understand; i find it hard to put down. in fact maybe i'll return to reading now.

Lenin's bones

In Russia, everyone talks about Lenin
(who says
you can't lie in poetry?)
Lenin lies in his tomb and visitors mass like pigeons
in Venice, a calmer place, to his square
squat & clay-colored
monument (I won't lie:
I never went in to see the bones
I felt it sufficed to see Russia.)

(Of course, that isn't
fair. the old woman I saw
by the summer-colored Summer Palace
sprawl, pulling handfuls of sticks from
fistfuls of snow, may have as easily been the pinkie toe
of C. the Great)

Pinkie toe
pinko
why didn't Russia
just say no?

My father has traveled to:
Britain
France
Mexico
Israel
Costa Rica
Guatemala
The Queen Charlotte Islands
Never Russia,
though he was a Trotskyite at
Chicago

nowadays, he and my brother
who studied history and government
with a convert�s zeal in college argue
about Stalin
he brought industry he stood up to Hitler
he was brilliant he was crazy
twenty-million dead.

Lenin has a tomb
He can be understood
or at least stood over, and
examined

Russian vendors hawk Stalin
to tourists
on streetsides, on clifftops, by the
hundreds, along with Matrushka dolls
and liquor flasks flagged with hammer'n'sickle.
Not one of our tour guides
would speak his name

the hunched bundled woman pried branches
from the snow outside the Summer Palace where
C. the Great once flooded a ballroom
and left the windows open. C. came back
to ice skate. now tourists shod in plastic booties
slip delicately from room to room. Their feet
never touch the ground.

Trotsky had an affair / (is an ice pick
with Frida Kahlo. How bad / an absolution? Stalin
could he be? / just died)

our tour guides would mention
the Great Revolution, perhaps V.I. L
then skip to 91 and say, Russia opened! they would talk
about hotels. one pointed out
the first McDonalds, for which, at lunchtime,
people mass like pigeons to Venice, a calmer
place, even today.

Venice, I found
uninteresting, and smelly. From Moscow,
I contracted a parasite. Like a tattoo, it fades
but never goes away.

My mother saw Moscow in the sixtees
When she left her hotel room, people would come
dig through her bags, tap her phones
She expected this

My trip went smoothly, but I never saw Lenin
Only from the outside, only his trackmarks, never
the bones, which I hear they have to bury now
after all. What I regret is not buying
a Matrushka doll
My boyfriend�s Russian father
received one from a neighbor, filled with vodka,
and laughed and laughed and laughed.

more advice on my personal life

striding through campus in my black boots and green-and-floral polyester danish dress, i ran into my wacky-beloved history professor. she asked what i was doing around and i told her about co|motion. after a while:

she: so that's great. enjoy it.
me: yeah, thanks. i mean, it's interesting for me cuz i'm not naturally good at working with children. last year taught me a lot.
she: kids aren't your bag, huh? ... yeah, i can't handle them until they're 4.
me: right. until they can have a conversation and offer some valuable insight. then they're worthwhile.
she: okay, but be careful. don't take that too far. i told you before, smart people don't procreate.

toast

this time i'm spending in swarthmore prepping for co|motion isn't salaried, but como does pick up the tab for more or less everything, which i appreciate.

more includes the bagels we went out for early this morning after a 7 a.m. firedrill rushed us out of our firetrap of a building to wait in flip flops, squinting through the rain, as ever increasing numbers of golf carts, public safety vans, police cars, and finally firetrucks blocked our view and authority figures sought what filled the basement -- and, somehow, third floor by extention -- with smoke. the answer: toast. somebody in the basement not only BURNED TOAST, but then (panicked and?) HID THE TOASTER.

as my parents are fond of saying, And these are the smart ones?

the authority figures lectured us on smoke inhalation and personal responsibility. the person who hid the toaster was probably already in tijuana by then. i was irked cuz last night i was supposed to catch up on sleep. my b.lovd had been visiting. he's so used to being around como that our discussions no longer phase him. he came to nifty fifties with us when we went to gorge ourselves with milkshakes and talk body image, and he read franzen, not perking up once despite the repeated use of the word "boob."

as of yesterday he&i have been we for 2 and 1/3 years. that's rather a long time. quite likely that's what caused addie to take me by surprise by asking, Are you getting married? no, i said; or at least not til i'm 30. good, she said. otherwise i'd come to your wedding and cry.
veronica, when related this conversation, said, i don't think of you has the kind of person to get married. you're cynical.
later they amended that to mean Free-spirited. i'd never realized those two words are interchangeable.

and ...

as some of you have figured out, i've gotten myself an lj, shorterstory. i'm still playing around with it so bear with me. the best part is easily filling out the Interests and User Info stuff, just like in friendster. ahh, internet cultworlds.

terms of endearment v. bridget jones

the train to philly only broke down once today, in a densely wooded middle-of-nowhere type area. behind me, a travelling salesman in his 70s said, "uh oh! it's probably terrorists." he had already incurred my wrath by chattering loudly and inanely the whole trip, at one point saying, "everything's virtual now. it's a virtual world and no one has any real sense. the only people with any sense anymore are the senior citizens". i pitied the beleagured woman sitting next to him whose murmured responses i never made out, until i realized she was his wife.

immediately everyone drew cellphones from scabbards and made the same call: "hi xxxxxx. no, i'm still on the train. it's stopped, can you believe it? i guess i'm going to be late ..." too bad you can't send out generic cell-phone calls like mass emails. some people added spice, moaning and wiping their brows: "the electricity is out! it's BROILING in here!"
the travelling salesman remained cheerfully morbid. "maybe they'll make us walk to the nearest town. maybe jesse james is robbing our conductor. anyway, this is nothing. one time, in world war two ..."

a metroliner pulled up next to us, as if offering moral support, and in seconds the lights and air conditioning returned. our conductor, who didn't seem to have suffered an interaction with bandits or who otherwise was speaking coherently from underneath the gag they'd put on him, had told us to prepare to change over to the other train. i'd been reading david sedaris and i'd been jealous of all the exciting adventurous things he was writing about. part of me leapt at the chance. instead i found my seat again, next to the puffy-haired old woman with an eastern european accent who, coincidentally, was also named ester.
unlike me, however, she was enthralled by the travelling salesman and, equally enthralled to have a new audience, he hung over her seat regaling her. finally i couldn't take it. i begged god silently for another electricity outage, for the ability to change trains in the middle of the tracks, and went god didn't come through, i moved to the back of the train and stood reading naked in peace.

more trotsky!

would trotsky have supported the iraq war? usually hypotheticals are worth their weight in hot air. but this one draws comparisons between trotskyites and neo-cons and it makes me nostalgic for the history of 20th century russia seminar i never took.

back and forth all night

why didn't anyone tell me there was more to edna st. vincent millay than that stupid ferry poem? my father handed me a slim volume, the kind with friendly, uneven pages that are tinted old, when i went to college, but he didn't mention that what was inside would be even more attractive. conversations at midnight is a long narrative poem/play. a group of varied men sit in a room in 1937 and dialogue about politics, women, life, and each other. the most heated exchange comes between carl, a communist poet, and merton, a conservative stock-broker; but although you, as reader, might lose the subtle rhyme in concentrating on the ideas, she, as author, never does.

i'm accumulating lit for the summer. already on hand i have david "hot damn i'm funny ... and hot!" sedaris's naked, fran "now that you know my name, you're seeing it everywhere" lebowitz's metropolitan life and "that book that everyone but me has already read and loved" bee season. my hope is that the 1st two will help prepare me for / steer me through new york. and the third will just be comfort food.

it's sobering to come across something like conversations at midnight, though; something that reminds how much of value there is that you've already dismissed, or not heard about, or forgotten. being a capitalist myself, at least for the time being, i want more.

think about seizing the day

exciting morning. woken by mother at 8:30: "will you please get dressed and drive your father and your uncle down to union station?" and but i'm scared of driving and it's early, please don't make me do something more taxing than watching Shrek for the fifteenth time ... didn't seem like an adequate response.

so up i got, fed the dog, and drank cold water, my substitute for coffee (nearly 21 coffee-free years and i'm doing fine. my plan is to avoid coffee and cigarettes my whole life & look like i'm going to outlive everyone. then, suddenly, i'll be felled by a blow no one could see coming: the combined influence of + diet coke and - exercise). i found my way back from the center of the city through dc morning traffic, which, despite my nearly 21 years, is something i've actually never done by myself before.

i feel very grown up and responsible now. not either of two brothers but i got to save the family today. i! the princess. and the princess celebrated by reheating pizza and watching newsies. she even teared up a bit at the end, you know, when the crowd of kids join the strike and then teddy roosevelt comes out and you think cowboy's moving on to sante fe but at the very end he comes back. that's a movie.

another movie, a more real one, i caught on tv yesterday: the laramie project. i'd missed it til now, and it's really good. it's moving without being sentimental and it sure gets its message across, whatever that message is. on a related upbeat note, toronto legalized gay marriage today. canada's become more like scandinavia every minute.
and last night liz and i watched the immortal frida. i'm surprised julie taymor didn't get an oscar nomination for that. i'm surprising the critics uniformly weren't impressed, at least with the way it looks. i do agree, it should have been in spanish with english subtitles. and it should have been more about frida as an artist and less about frida as a part of a tempestuous relationship with diego rivera. the movie's politics did spark an interesting conversation about communism though, and this morning led me to ask my father, "in brief, please, why did stalin want trotsky dead?"

today i watched my little brother cross the stage at the DAR Washington Convention Center in a billowy kelly green gown with matching hat and tassel. he was noticeable even from a distance by the slight slump that makes his 6' 2"s less intimidating and the sneakers. up close he's more noticeable for his ski-length eyelashes and red mouth. he's the last: last graduation i had scheduled for this spring, last of my siblings & first cousins to leave high skool.

somebody at swat said, a graduation's not a graduation unless someone quotes robert frost. this ceremony didn't disappoint. it stood out in other ways, though, from the others of my experience. families were so exuberant that the principal had to threaten them with expulsion from the room. kids kept inflating beach balls and volleying them around. ted kennedy spoke, and really well, before lumbering back to the senade. the wilson senior high skool choir kept ascending the stage to sing, gospel-style. one selection: "celebrate good times." my mother whispered, do they do barmitzvahs?

afterwards my family celebrated by assembling on a table our combined bodyweight in food. ate it, too. since, at my little brother's behest, we were at a steakhouse, i had less than most people, i managed to walk out of the restaurant on my own two feet. others had to be dragged on stretchers that smith & wollensky's keeps stacked in the front for just that purpose. the plates were the size of computer monitors, the steaks the size of screens. all the drinks came automatically doubled. the slice of monster chocolate cake the graduate ordered was about three stories tall. he managed three bites and fainted (and this is a boy who can hold his chocolate).
ugh, i'm still full. in a way it's a good thing. i'm still wearing the french red (p)leather skirt i debuted today, which, under normal circumstances, sits slightly too big on my hips. now it's nice and snug.

from the latest fad in personality tests, an analysis of my brain (cheaper than a cat scan, and more fun!):

"ester, you show a slight right-hemisphere dominance with a moderate preference for auditory processing, an unusual and somewhat paradoxical combination of characteristics."

heh heh.

"Your tendency to be creative and free-flowing is accompanied by sufficient ability to organize and be logical, allowing you a reasonable degree of success in a number of different endeavors."

reasonable degree? well, who could ask for anything more?

"You find the symbolism in a great deal of what you encounter and are something of a "mystic." With regards to your lifestyle, you have the mentality which would be good as a philosopher, writer, journalist, or instructor, or possibly as a systems designer or social worker. Perhaps most important is your ability to "listen to your inner voice" as a mode of skipping over unnecessary steps to achieve your goals."

excellent. i love being affirmed by random testing. take it yourself.

also a first today, on the heels of my debut tryst with hamlet, i invited rejection #1 from the new yorker. gotta start sometime.

somebody give me a cigar. i just saw my first hamlet. immediately after, i had to come home and answer my father's questions about the production. was hamlet hyper-intellectual? effeminate? was he played as angsty, or indecisive, brooding or frustrated? my father saw some earthshaking production of hamlet in england once and many others besides. i've, well, seen movies. and i've read the play. i don't have much to compare it to but i thought the shakespeare company did, as they always do, a terrific job.

what's better is it's free. carton barren hosts one of these a year, an outdoor production of some excellently done shakespeare play. you have to reserve tickets in advance. in this case, my friend johnny obtained a ticket for me, lana, and several others. she heads off to arizona tomorrow. sad for me: she's been one of my principal playmates this week. i helped her paint her room. we took woods walks, watched movies, ate, and generally spent not enough time together considering we'll be the summer apart.

this is the first summer where all my regular friends scattered themselves. one in israel, in the south; another in israel, in jerusalem, where he's just been made an uncle. two to seattle. three staying in their collegetowns: one noho, one boston, one providence. one to costa rica. it's a good thing i'm back to swarthmore on friday and to new york at the end of the month, or i'd feel very left out.

well! thank god. blogger's back. that means i lost the last post, for reasons too complicated to explain -- it was just about grad skool anyway and we all know what grad skool can go and do. it is lovely to be able to post again even if i have nothing particular to say.

except -- oh yeah -- happy 2nd birthday babblebook!!

[wild celebration; parades; speeches; toasts; champagne corks popping; mardi gras topping; acid trips; skinny dips; foie gras]

that will be all, thanks. you may now return to your regularly scheduled pornography.

wrenched awake at 4 a.m. by the 2nd in a series of nights-of-nightmares, i write a poem:

body image in two parts

I. what the letter from the interviewer should have said

"... So I'm in africa now, a finger
of the peace corps (ha ha) and got
a copy of our paper. It's sad to be an alum,
but terrific to see that an interviewee I picked not just
got into school but flourished there!

"I remember when you walked in in
your Arden B suit crisp as plastic packaging,
a zipper clamping the 2 halves of your chest
together like a pacemaker scar, the skirt short
and to the point. Your mother bought that suit
for you in celebration when you traded in a permit
for a license, and with it a body.

"I don't believe you
the lady behind the window said, whose job it was
to record the numbers. Nobody loses 15 pounds
in a year. You tried to smile as though you'd gone
for a walk everyday with half a pound or so hidden
in the denin by your ankle, and shaken it out in the woods,
like people tunnelling from prison dispose of dirt.

"At 16, or maybe earlier, your mother
wouldn't let you leave your room in shorts
argument: but J and N wear shorts this short!
retort: when you work out, and have legs as nice
as J and N, you can too.

"Flash-further-back: a child stands before a mirror
as colorful and round as she, delighted. Look mom!
she says, lifting her shirt to her armpits. I have a tummy!
Mom says, that�s cause you don�t exercise.

"You spared the skeptic at the window these stories,
and others: of rationing your cereal, flake
by flake; of sugarless gum by the mouthful; of your
oldertaller brother�s shirts that became
your mobile home; of black, the shade of self-pity,
your pirate flag. You didn't mention to the woman
the actual number was 20, not 15.
Embarrassed, on the permit form, you'd lied.

"But I gotta say, the suit
suited. It did its work. I was impressed. Those legs!
Not long by any means, the shoes helped; a nice shape
though, trimmed from finally learning not to run
just one mile but two. The contacts, the gel � we like
these here at Swarthmore College, even if we say we don�t
(don�t worry about makeup though, that�s
where we draw the line)

"reading your review, I�m glad
you fit in so well. Obscure Chinese films
don�t make their way down here too often, but
it this one does, I'll be sure to go and think
of you! and hold onto that suit, I gotta tell ya
I can't tell where you�d be without it."


II. Heather's suggestion

a cruise ship! Spend the day in oslo; To and From,
with all your friends, at night,
only $130 including dinner!

I arrived early, curious; satisfied myself there was
nothing to do (the other passengers:
sullen families with small children and a convention
of the disabled) but drink, and stocked up
with my friends at the Duty Free

everyone mobbed the banquet room
at dinner time, figuring at least a buffet could amuse
for a while. as soon
as we sat down, we felt the waves


will they stop? we finally asked a steward once
we�d equalled the pallor of our beans. Oh, around dawn,
he said with the determined-cheerful air of one
who is paid not to apologize. There are pills
if you need them

steaming plates of shellfish, abandoned

waves of cheap alcohol crashed
inside, treble to the rocking bass of the ship

I landed on the bottom floor, told the movement
was less moving there, body pressed against it
like a forehead to a cold wet cloth


On the way Back from oslo, we were grimly
prepared. to begin with, we skipped dinner, 3 of my
girl friends and I, slipping instead through a back entrace
into the sauna. we stripped in the locker room, I
determined to be as unself-conscious as my lovely
friend heather, whose idea this was, though
I'd only been publically naked once before
in my post-puberty life, and that was at night

ready? we asked each other, and
went in, peeling off our towels and affixing ourselves,
stamps on envelopes, to the white benches.
on cue, the boat began to sway / we
began to sweat. we rocked
together, breathing deeply. no one spoke.
I noticed the others' tidy breasts but didn�t dwell.

We lingered
longer than was wise, perhaps, nursed
by nakedness, inured by nakedness, somehow,
against nausea. we showered quickly
and decided to dash to our rooms to avoid
the sickening sight of the everywhere sick. As we
left the sauna, immediately, we passed a boy who paused
a thoughtful moment, then sprayed the carpet

hurry, hurry �
we made it to our rooms
and locked the doors. my usually feeble,
unshowcased stomach and I, that night,
made each other proud.

CONSUMERISM 101: A Lecture in Dialogue Form

Part One: Using the Internet
me: so, [little brother whose name is omitted to avoid the threat of prosecution], there's this program that i kind of want a copy of --
him: what's it called?
me: well, i don't remember, but i can --
him: no problem.

[pause]

me: no, see, i think this one's difficult cuz it requires you to use the cd --
him and my older brother, also present: [fall down laughing.]
[laughter continues for five minutes.]
him: oh no! not a CD!!
my older brother: man! that means i can't use any of the 5,000 games i play that REQUIRE YOU TO USE THE CD!!
[laughter for another five minutes. finally both boys wipe their eyes.]
him: yeah, i think i can do that for you.

[later ...]
him: i got the most recent version. is that all right?

sheesh. nowadays pirates may be more useful, but they're far less sexy.

Part Two: Used Books
i went to 2nd Story to rid myself of novels that clutter my bookshelf and remind me of the loathing they first inspired in me.
the clerk took three in exchange for a $5 store credit.

me: why not the others? just out of curiousity.
him: we're not buying much fiction right now. except mysteries: in the summer, people read mysteries. and this [holding up waiting] we have too many copies of already.
me: that's cuz it sucked.
he: [looking at me with new respect] right. and this, [holding up i know this much is true] we can't buy cuz it has this oprah's book club sticker on it. sometimes we can buy books that were on the list, but none that actually have the sticker. no one wants them.
me: how ironic.
him: tell me about it.

swarthmore's graduation could not have been more different than cornell's except for the fact that all weekend it remained rainy and cold. last night i dreamt that the rain turned to snow and someone informed me gravely we were just skipping summer this year. in the dream, i cried.

in real life, i've been doing far less of that than i expected. at points i've hit Sad, like when i realized, after humming through the song in my head several times, that the song in my head was eerily appropriate and far too depressing:

... fun, isn't it? but nothing stays
in a year or so
it's gonna change, you know
but it's heaven nowadays

but i made it through dinner with ben and the russian hoardes without too much trouble, not breaking down even when member after member of his family rose to toast him. i made it through baccalaureate. easy enough since it seemed to have been declared a charisma-free zone. i made it through the last day, and the last night, and through seeing him in the cap and gown; through commencement, through picture-taking, through waiting for him while he went to check out green bottle.
the night of green bottle, he'd been packing and i'd dozed off. around 1, he whispered that he was just going to see what was going on the party. that whisper hit me like an injection of mountain dew. suddenly i couldn't go back to sleep. until 3, i paced, fretted, and watched the clock. he finally returned, chagrined to see that i'd been reduced to the state of a 50s hausfrau.

it was a wonderful few days. most seniors i didn't get to say goodbye to, not in so many words. many i'll quite likely never see again. but i wish everyone the best: patience when luck runs out, and luck when patience runs out.

right now i'm just glad to be home and not to have to move for a while. i want a soft room with muted, if any, stimuli. i want soothing ocean sounds. i want not to have to think about the future, which i hate. the thinking and the future itself. i want not to have to move stuff or shlep bags. i want sleep. luckily i think over the next ten days this can all be arranged -- at least til my little brother's high skool graduation, after which i have to leave for comotion and my summer starts for real.

the nice folks at the people's poet have accepted two of my poems for publication: "our visit" will appear in the autumn journal, and "runway model" in another journal whose name escapes me. both in the UK. no payment for either except for a copy of the publication, but that makes for 3 acceptances recently. encouraging.

my brother and i finally made it home yesterday. that meant i could go to lunch today with the curlygirls (at the sandwich counter, the man nodded to nomi behind me and said, "does your twin sister want something?") we ended up in bethesda afterwards and i picked up a george sand novel at 2nd story. in translation, of course. i'm excited to make her mine. as i found delillo's white noise disappointing, i'm turning squarely to 19th century women for solace. a copy of sense and sensibility i found in the bed n breakfast made me supremely happy.

so much for smug white misogynist males, 1950 - 1990. give me a proto-feminist any day.

around me, my brother and his roommate are dismantling their apartment. the walls look like once someone covered them with glue, took them to a heap of trash and rolled them through until every inch was covered. it's impressive. up closer some of the random pieces of paper, ticket stubs, pictures, postcards, doodles, bibs and parking tickets are funny. my decorative impulses and my brother's are similar, both inspired by packrat nostalgia and easy access to scotch tape.

the rest of my family has caravanned on. logically i know that different units have moved in different directions, but it seems to me, after watching everyone move in a body of 16 for 4 days, that the body will just continue on as one to the next celebration. two exist on the horizon, a cousin's barmitzvah in new jersey and soon after that my little brother's graduation from high skool. i'm going to the second, tho not before i stop over at swat for that graduation. considering how many times eager tears sprung to my eyes on sunday, just from watching the processional of cornell's 15000 in black gowns enter the stadium and receive the benediction of the college prez, i'm a little nervous about this next.

a cousin required my space in the family car so i'm staying with adam for another day, going home with him and all his crap tomorrow. that means another night on the couch. it's okay, it's a comfy couch. before i took up residence there, i stayed with the adults in a bed'n'breakfast 40 minutes away. lil bro judah stayed at adam's apartment with us last nite too, which meant we did everything from beer pong to, uh, beer pong, as a sibling unit. everyone now, come on: "awwwwwwwwwww."

the annoying part of the weekend was everyone turning to me and saying, "you next!" people! a year is a helluva long time. i refuse to look that far ahead and everyone else should follow my good example.
the best part of the weekend was the excesses of free food. since i'm immorally and inconsistently eating fish again, i could partake of glorious, glorious sushi. free range fun loving alaska salmon and otherwise.

the recent spate of graduations is making me grimly certain of the fact that i have no interest in graduating myself, and still less in actually being an adult. i'm not sure what to do with this self-awareness except duck into grad skool and hide. assuming one takes me. the closer i get to actually scared, the lower my standards for the grad skool mfa program itself will drop.

i'm not graduating myself this year. but (penn-alum)becca just did. my older brother will this weekend. ben will next weekend. my little brother will the weekend after that. like lemmings, except, contrary to the education i received from duck tales, apparently lemmings don't actually rush en masse over cliffs. no matter; it makes for good metaphor.

me: ... so what am i going to do with the rest of my life?
him: work at hooters?

another ghost rises out of the internet, having gotten connected to this "perversely detailed" account of my life. my mother lets me know that my father glanced this way and was once again shocked at how candid i am. i thought the first shock would have been sufficient. that would explain, tho, when i told him my bartending story from last month he said he already knew.

i guess i get carried away sometimes. i lose sight of what should be censored. can someone wave their hands over their heads, make some universal gesture for TMI, when i go overboard, please? it's almost been 2 years already; i wish i knew.

so many movies. it's like an addiction. ones of note:
purple rose of cairo: i forget how much i love this until i run into again. stars mia farrow as a housewife during the depression who escapes drudgery, monotony and her boorish unappreciative husband in the movie theater, and jeff daniels (where has he gone? what is he doing? the man can act) as tom, the star of a typical hollywood flick who steps off the screen because he's so captivated by the sweet, sad woman who he has seen sitting through four shows.
tom has no idea how to handle real life; the characters in the film he walked out of don't know how to handle his absence or a life without a script; farrow's character doesn't know how to handle being admired and adored for the first time. jeff daniels in another role, the actor who created tom and who is held responsible for his character's defection, tries to talk sense into his creation and ostensibly falls in love with farrow as well.
it's a woody allen movie sans woody allen -- the best kind. also tongue in cheek, smart, and meta. ranks among my favorite Movies About Movies with adaptation and barton fink.

spiderman: finally caught this on hbo. my little brother wailed and whined, pointing out deviations from the comic, until i bound and gagged him and was free to enjoy the thing on its own terms. perhaps because of its base in the comic, the movie felt wedged squarely between the years 1958 and 1959. just like my big fat greek whatever. it irks me to have to accept movies of archiac sensibilities as taking place in the present day. at least the special effects are up to date. willem defoe seems to be having the time of his life, as do kirsten dunst's breasts. sometimes wet, sometimes clung to, always perky. you know it's a warning sign when an actress is upstaged by her own body parts (and she was so good in interview with the vampire ...).
little tobey escapes that particular problem, though his body is so drastically different as to be distracting. but he's good. he's really carving out a niche for himself as the adorable outsider, a little like ed norton. just so long as he goes the ed norton good movie route and doesn't get caught up in reese witherspoon vortex that begins with fame and ends with mindless blockbusters, crowd-pleasers, and a celebrity marriage.
still, spiderman celebrity status as the #1 earner seems a mystery. i'm not sure what makes it quite so special.

matrix: reloaded: my theory is that the architect talks so fast so that the average movie-goer will not be able to understand what he's saying and so will not be able to detect that beneath that thickly worded veneer, he really isn't making any sense. to a degree the whole film conforms to that idea: the plot is convoluted and contradictory with several frustrating guns-on-the-wall. i suppose some of those could be dealt with in the next installment; then again, they might not be. it doesn't matter. five minutes in, i was grinning. my jaw dropped during the fight scenes, although each one goes on for longer than it needs to and i got tired of seeing every car flip over in slow motion. two hours in, i was still eager to see what would happen next.
that's the point, isn't it? it's entertaining. everyone looks good. long-winded expository speeches aside, it moves at a pretty good clip and it's exciting. the people who are disappointed with it most have gone in expecting more but it was all i needed it to be.
it does seem like the star wars of our generation. that's all right by me. they feel roughly comparable, quality-wise and in terms of representing an era.

walking down the sunlit bethesda street this afternoon with my dearfriend jamie back from spain, a woman's voice lassoes me: "do you download music from the internet?" jamie and i turn around. the woman's name is also jamila. don't look at the camera, she tells us, and then she invites us to opine on the subject of post-Napster and AudioGalaxy piracy. no one has ever found a bloom at a loss for words, even on a subject s/he hasn't given excessive thought to. i voice support for downloading as a great way to gain exposure to various artists. i bought a lot more cds after i realized through downloading that i liked someone.
i don't manage to be funny, but i don't say "like" either.
great, thanks, says jamila. you guys can watch yourselves on fox news at 10 on wednesday.

and so can you. watch us, i mean. i just wish we'd gotten paid. i spent a decent chunk of money today, only at the last minute forgoing adding a movie ticket to the receipts from shopping and lunch. i may need better self-control; at least i no longer need killer sunglasses.

ahh, home. so vastly different from college.

FOOD. my little brother, who's been holding down the fort for a week and a half by himself while my parents treated themselves to a vacation in central america, lives entirely off of meat and coke. the fridge is full of plastic containers: half hold one rancid piece of lamb each, the other half are empty and smell. last night, lacking the energy to go shopping, i make do with popcorn, carrots, and leftover tam tams from the family visit to australia last summer.

COMPUTER. in order to make this computer open up internet explorer, i had to close kazaa. What!, exclaims my little brother who wanders in to check his downloads. Kazaa was only using 95% of the memory! he bends over the glass table, resting his head on his fists and sighing.

TELEVISION. it exists! i arrive yesterday after two hours wedged between my bean bag chair and the backseat window, move immediately to the couch and scroll channels until midnight. i pause only to scrounge dinner (see FOOD).

FRIENDS. far away. we talk over the phone, each trying to convince the other to make the 20-minute trek.

BED. huge, comfortable, and empty. the walls around me a photo-collage i made of freshman year. it's eerie to look at everyone -- people i don't talk to, people i wish i talked to more, people who i'm still friends with but who look so much older now -- looking at me. in the same way, am i what they expected?

WEATHER. mediocre. what the hell is up with all this rain? did god not get the memo that it's may?

the honors exam actually went as straightforwardly as i could imagine. i wouldn't go so far as to call it easy. it certainly, at least, was the test i studied for. there's something heartening in that. and now it's over.

i leave saturday. all around me people are leaving already. why? love, amusement, free food, green trees: man, we've got it made.

so. intensely. tired. i didn't sleep last night. not Only a little, or Yeah i had to wake up early, or even I was up late studying (i was, but not that late). it was What's the object of all this darkness around me? they haven't gone and buried me alive ...

i had two thoughts as i lay there for hours, not moving for fear that if i remained for a moment longer in the same position my body would finally drift off: 1) why did i do all that research about mfa grad skool programs as a break from studying for my honors exam? and 2) why did i eat all that sugar?

i'd been waiting for a while to hear from the english department about whether or not they were going to give me (or stef, who also applied) $2500 to write poetry this summer. alas, they did not elect to give me (or stef) $2500 to write poetry this summer. i suppose i should have known: english departments have never liked me that much. individual teachers, sure. english majors, absolutely. but departments give me the cold shoulder.

to cushion the expected blow, before i heard i sent poetry off to six different places. fly, little poems! fly! i average about .3 submissions to out-of-college publications a year and that's sorely below the necessary number. at .3 a year, it would take me forever to accumulate the 42 requisite rejections that liz says precede that long awaited moment of wonder.
i did, however, only a matter of hours after sending the email, hear from the first place i sent stuff to. fixion magazine accepted "our visit," the t.s. eliot poem. well! that'll be the first time i've had something in print in an out-of-college medium since merlyn's pen took "i used to be a gymnast." hopefully this bodes well for my future of not being a pathetic failure.

instead of taking internet quizzes, for a change, i went out today. to the fair and glorious city where i met fair and glorious becca, and we brunched in honor of thank-god-we're-not-mothers day. i carried an umbrella around as a charm against rain and sure enough the sun stayed out.

good art today too, for a change: i finished the delightful pride and prejudice and fran lebowitz's social studies, one of the most highly readable books i've come across in a while. speaking of which, becca and i wandered through a pretentious bookstore, the kind that sells used volumes at usual prices.
what's this, said becca, picking up a sliver of a book, more of a pamphlet really, called something like "the guide to kissing," published 1938 and targeted to men (or at least those who kiss girls). we giggled over its advice for a bit then looked for a price. the chubby man behind the counter volunteered his opinion on the subject: "for you, $3.75." when i didn't seem to find this a bargain, he seemed crushed.
instead i lingered over a far more useful document, the diaries of anais nin; but i was put off, on that score as well, by price. if anyone is thinking of a present for me, think in that direction.

but to pick up on the good art thread, becca and i then treated ourselves to the good thief, a sultry, well-made, heavily-accented, yet-another-heist movie. but throughout i kept admiring it for its skillful use of cinematic elements: car chases, witty dialogue, expensive clothes, the french riveria, explosions; a clever cop, a smarter, sympathetic criminal (who has hit rock bottom), and a very thin barely-legal girl; sex, drugs, and rock and roll. altogether enjoyable.

YOU ARE PEDRO ALMODOVAR!IIII

You are adorable Spanish director Pedro Almodovar. Trust me,
it was either this or Benigni, and you lucked out.

http://www.ostrichink.com/may2003/almo.html

i only got here after redirecting my steps 4 times. first i made it as a corpse on six feet under, flipped burgers in a studio kitchen, directed porn, and was one of those pretentious assholes who just sneer at modern cinema fare. it's hard getting to the top. take it yourself.

i have [in]formally received the go-ahead from every member of senior company to turn their process into a movie. senior company consists of 6 honors theater majors, 2 directors, 4 actors, who, among themselves, have to pick a play, cast it, and then put on a production by the end of the semester. one of the directors i know relatively little of; one of the actors i have lived with. everyone else falls somewhere along that spectrum of familiarity.

and structure! pre-made structure: the best kind. i'll sit and take notes at rehearsals, occasionally interviewing the individuals involved. if no story develops, i'll abandon the idea. if one does -- or hopefully several do -- i'll have it all captured and ready to turn into my next project.
for my own amusement, i've been trying to cast Senior Co.: The Movie in my head. good, 20-something actors are eerily hard to come by.

one of the more inventive quizzes i've seen lately: The Dante's Inferno Test has sent you to the First Level of Hell - Limbo!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Moderate
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	High
Level 2 (Lustful)	High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Very Low
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Very Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	Low
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	Low
Level 7 (Violent)	High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	Low

Take the Dante's Inferno Hell Test

limbo, btw, is described thus: "charon ushers you across the river Acheron, and you find yourself upon the brink of grief's abysmal valley. You are in Limbo, a place of sorrow without torment. You encounter a seven-walled castle, and within those walls you find rolling fresh meadows illuminated by the light of reason, whereabout many shades dwell. These are the virtuous pagans, the great philosophers and authors, unbaptised children, and others unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven. You share company with Caesar, Homer, Virgil, Socrates, and Aristotle. There is no punishment here, and the atmosphere is peaceful, yet sad."

i mean, that seems all right. as a jewess i could hardly hope for better. but who does enter the kingdom of heaven, out of curiousity?

my poetry thing went rather smashingly, if i do say so myself. i got lots of laughs. that goes along with my poetry reading philosophy, which is, if your poem isn't funny, it better be pretty damn good. otherwise (i've noticed) people lose interest fast.

i racked up several wonderful compliments from several wonderful folks, including one cute freshman i don't know. "i liked you the best," she said, "not that you probably care." i was like, "are you kidding?" who doesn't live for the praise of strangers?

small craft warnings, the official lit mag, emerged today in hot pink. i tried my best to match it. people treat you differently when you wear pink. i can only wonder how my life would be if i dyed my hair blonde.

now there's nothing to do but buckle down and start reading for my history final on the 14th. in honor of my semester of poetry, here's a link to an ultra-cheerful newsweek article. my consolations are that clearly he didn't like poetry that much to begin with, and i'd never want to be friends with him.

having little to do is a serious predicament, particularly right now. even when amusements present themselves, a good time isn't guaranteed. for instance, last night i went to to the a capella jamboree, a swarthmore tradition in which twelve-too-many a capella groups sing sets that are five minutes too long. that's not the point though. the event can still be enjoyable and occasionally it was.
in the last set, the sight of one individual forced a realization down like a piano on my head: the seniors are leaving. the seniors are leaving. that individual, and another that he reminded me of, a girl i'd always wanted to be friends with, would be leaving; i'd never see either again.

i managed to regain my composure when the group did something funny. but that backfired: i congratulated one of the members of that group in a way that my companions alerted me was stupid. i hate knowing i've said something stupid. if i could have, i would have chased that guy down, tackled him and forced him to give me it back. sadly i couldn't and now i'll know that he gets to carry my stupid remark around with him forever.
this wouldn't have mattered so much if i hadn't been sad. o was i sad. as soon as i escaped my companions i started bawling. i mean on the stairwell. in a way there's no better place -- stairways have cathedral quality acoustics. at least no one happened upon me and my resounding misery in the stairwell.

better today. still aimless. i finished postcards from the edge whose happy ending -- and plot, and structure, and focus -- differs entirely from the film version. i love carrie fisher's voice. it reminds me of dorothy parker, jean rhys, and rebecca eisenberg, of everyone in fact who writes well about neurotic witty upper-class women. i think i used to read so much about neurotic witty upper-class women that i wanted to be one. now i've read so much of the same that i decidedly do not. that's growth.

several exciting things befell this weekend, including, most notably, a visit from dearfriend ilana. she trekked down from harvard and thus was subjected to innumberable questions of "do you know ________ ?" she seemed to enjoy herself, maybe a little wistfully at times, and of course i loved having her here. like bingley in pride & prejudice -- which production i just watched again from start to finish -- she was eager to approve of everyone and everything she saw. sarah kelly in particular.

worthstock, the music festival that's come to be known as ben's baby, went off smashingly. a good crowd lingered all day and by golly it didn't rain a drop.

the next day co|motion met with our girls for the last time before the summer camp in june. they scavenger hunted (assignments included, "sing to two students and get their signatures" "what is the barn?" and "bring back a W"), then we all played elbow tag. just 15 minutes of the latter left me out of breath. if only i cared about being in shape.

my vcr has turned tempermental at the very moment that i have much free time and little to do with it. at least there's something going on every evening: ross's funny dance-thing this evening (king lear via liza clark, ballet style); tomorrow evening the collective creation pieces; wednesday MY POETRY CLASS READING at 4:00 PM IN THE SCHEUER ROOM and the small craft warnings / scarlet letters distro party at 7.