Is summer over already? Wasn't it just this morning I was assaulting the racks of the Franklin Ave Goodwill, probably foaming at the mouth more than a little because something in the sunshine that day told me that this was MY day, the day I would prevail over National Grid and Target and my bank account, the day I would buy my entire summer wardrobe for twenty-eight dollars? (I discovered the precious gem that is Bed Stuy when I briefly dated this boy who lived by the Tiny Cup; cigarettes are eight dollars there. EIGHT DOLLARS. 'The Perks of Being a Hood Rat' hits shelves next month.)

I suppose I'm ready for fall, though. It is my favorite, and stuff. At any rate I'm ready to get past this awkward part of the year where I freeze my ladyparts off the entire time I shower and get ready at four in the morning because it's too early to fire up the ol' woodstove and I spend far too many minutes deciding whether or not I have too many clothes on, because what if it gets hot later? And school is never an appropriate temperature (this is true for every school building I have been inside of, ever) so my notes wind up either undecipherable due to violent shivering OR drenched in a pool of my sweat. YUM. Also everyone is always sick. PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: If you don't cover your mouth when you cough, I picture myself having to comb phlegm out of my hair later on. That is an unkind place for you to send my brain to.

the horizon will appear through bird-filled light. climb the highest tree until you spot the farthest ocean. go there. on the shore build a castle, and when the sea witch comes she'll show you the way to draw violet from a driftwood altar. with the tip of the first finger on your favored hand trace poems on her skin, but remember not to leave your name on her lips (she'll swallow it.) waves will bring you froth. take it into the universe between your palms and press your eyes. blink salt. (does your hair spill down your back like rain? or curl around your shoulders as roots curl into earth?) now dig a hole. get in. stay there for one hundred years, or until reluctant sunrise commits to dawn and the water moves above your head. then shift your bones; at this point you ought to have achieved flight. gather some cloud in your feathers, and come find

me.

sweet Wind dragged her fingers
across the tops of the trees, shaking
green slipped down her perfume around us

Let's you and I play Catch the Light

Just by existing, just exactly as you are, and by thinking of me the way you did, you changed the way I thought about myself. Thank you, for stirring up in me things I'd forgotten about.

Becoming us was like the coming-true of a wish I didn't quite remember making. 

And then the night before last, that dream - the feeling I woke up with clung to me through half the day, through numbers class and talking class and through flirting in the library and through the movie I saw.

That not-unpleasant tightening of the stomach.
Maybe I'll kiss you again next time I see you. Maybe I won't. Either way, either way.
I have a feeling.

It's been a whole YEAR since this? What the what!

 I am in the process of getting all of my important documents (ie, music that took me years to "accumulate" in the not entirely legal sense, random pictures from the few times I remembered I had a camera, and nonsensical half-written drafts of things) off of my old, sickly laptop. My nerdier more technologically-inclined  friends are all like, oh you can just do this this and this and it'll take like two seconds and you'll have all your stuff. But kind of, I don't know how/don't feel like it. And kind of, I like the process of going through years of shit and picking and choosing what I think is most important to keep. If I just move it all somewhere else all the less important stuff will still be all mixed in with the good things and then I'd become this like, file hoarder, knowing it's all there but never actually going through it. Every few days I give it about ten minutes and then either a) it shuts down on me and I give up, or b) I have something actually productive to do. So by the time my next piece of technology (boop boOp bing Boop) fails I will have salvaged everything from this one. SUCCESS. In any case I didn't mean to say this much about that, as INCREDIBLY FASCINATING as it is, but my first class got out half an hour early (I paid good money to space out while you talk for TWO hours, lady, quit ripping me off) and because I am still getting used to this whole "having downtime" thing I get confused about what to do and start rambling. Aren't you so glad. Anyway, wanna see some more pictures from a year ago? OKAY LOOK:

No one is sure how that couch was brought into the apartment (it is obviously physically impossible, so my theory is that it was built there; probably, it has structural significance to the house.) I'm not sure how many tenants' butts it has seen. What is sure is that it is the ugliest couch in the history of ever.

 

 

And guess who chopped all her hair off again! This girl. Don't worry, it's back now.

Oh, Akin. You legitimately made my jaw drop.

Rape is not funny. (I especially dislike when folks use it as slang. Just, no.) Here is a joke about it anyway:

How about, let's teach our sons to respect women. And other men. And it might be a good idea to teach our daughters the same thing. And how about we teach them all to respect themselves. And then maybe the Kelly Kapoors* of the world will stop crying wolf.

I am in no way saying that any woman "asks" to be raped, ever. I am saying that we need to teach our daughters (and sons) to make smart choices and take responsibility for their actions. Not in any way shape or form to defend or support any such thing as a magical rape-detecting uterus, but there are indeed females who claim to have been raped when truthfully they have not. Years ago, when a lady bagged some gentleman and then was like OH WHOOPS THAT WAS DUMB she probably wouldn't have said anything at all. She would've kept it a secret and hoped nobody found out. Today some of the ladies who find themselves in that situation choose to be all loud and OH HEY YOU RAPED ME instead of accepting and dealing with the fact that they made a decision they are unhappy with. Of course, rape existed years ago as well. And women were keeping that secret, too. So to me the obvious solution is to open up a dialogue. Just talk about it. A lot. And be honest. And maybe when we're all talking, the stigmas or whatever it is keeping people afraid and ashamed will start to fall away. And maybe "real" rape won't stop happening (because it isn't about sex, after all) but at least there will be less fuel for idiot politicians without a firm grasp on human biology.





*Kelly, you know I love you girl. But seriously don't keep doing that.

With so much going on it's easy to blame things on not having enough time. Things like the fact that I don't write enough, that I don't keep in touch with people in my life who aren't right in front of my face enough, that I don't put enough effort toward nourishing certain parts of myself. I don't feel like I do enough for other people, I don't make enough earth-sustaining lifestyle choices, and I never did get around to painting that giant spool we got out of an industrial dumpster when we first moved in. It's easy to use lack of time as an excuse for all of those things, but it's just that - an excuse. And to that end, I find myself questioning why I'm even making an excuse in the first place. And who am I making it for?

There are other things I make excuses for - my body, that I have yet to accomplish a bachelor's degree, my moods. But why? Who is keeping score, exactly?

It might be interesting to examine the things I am making excuses for a little closer, to probe a little into what it is precisely that I am avoiding. Oops, no time! Just kidding, but seriously. My life is full and I have so much to be happy about, both big-picture things and also smaller daily gifts from the universe that remind me to smile. I get to be around kids eleven hours a day, and I get to spend the rest of those days in a city that [overall] I absolutely adore. Even as I keep telling myself to engage in the present, to be here now, there are things I'm looking forward to. And there are also a lot of things that I need to figure out. Some I'm sure I'll make sense of on my own, while others I know will require, uh, outside help. And that's okay.

Blogging is a lot like talking to yourself, right? Maybe that's why I keep coming back to it. I'm trying not to be overwhelmed by the fact that it is COMPLETELY FUCKING DIFFERENT now. You know what else might be interesting, if I examined why I am so turned off by any kind of social networking. Which this kind of is but not really because I don't have to interact with whoever reads this if I don't want to. I go off a lot about Facebook and smartphones and sadness leprechauns robbing us of organic human experience and how the need ability to share where we are and what we're doing at all times is... I don't know what that is but I seriously doubt that you're able to process and appreciate whatever experience you're having if you're busy checking in or thinking of a cute caption. Could just be me, though; I already get the feeling sometimes that I'm doing some things because other people enjoy them, ergo, I should too. Like, my day will have been well spent if I can show or tell about something I have done that other people like to do. The older I get the less I give a fuck, though, so here's to gray hair. (Which family tree research shows I will not get until I get myself knocked up. Neat huh?)

So here's where I could stop rambling and share specific things I've done recently, like how I visited the Hetrick-Martin Institute and toured the Harvey Milk High School. Or I could tell you about when I met Wyclef Jean and his daughter during team fun at Dave and Buster's. And that one time I shook Chelsea Clinton's hand at what I was told would be a "Women's Breakfast" but what was actually a fundraiser, sneak-attack style. (Shameless, these nonprofits.) I could, but it's been so long that that would make this even longer and more boring than it already is. Plus I forgot a lot. Plus I'm really tired and I have to go to bed because I might go to the beach tomorrow but it might thunderstorm and/or be too hot for me to want to celebrate soldiers by sitting on sand and so in that case I'm going to go to my friend's apartment in Queens to make customized pencil cases as goodbye presents for my kindergarteners because there are only eight of them in my after-school class and the third-grade class I support during the day has like twenty-eight kids and who has money for twenty-eight pencil cases plus sparkly things to put inside of them so I think I'll just bake something for those rugrats and I just remembered I promised my fourth-grade lunch club boys we could eat McDonald's for lunch on Tuesday and I really hope it isn't hot which it will be because anything above thirty degrees is hot when you are wearing high-waisted khaki pants and Timberlands. Pluuuuus, what you really want to see is a picture of my new red hair and then a bunch of random pictures from my computer! which isn't really my computer it's my mom's old netbook that she so generously bequeathed unto me so that I could continue borrowing wireless from my neighbors to pay ConEdison and watch Arrested Development while I clean my bathroom when I had to retire my haggard laptop to a closet in her house because I don't think the old gal has much juice left (the computer, not my mom) and there are documents and pictures on her hard drive that I definitely kind of need and so I'll eventually have to persuade her to boot up one more time in order to get them. So okay, you talked me into it:

My locks are much, much more Ariel-like than this picture would lead you to believe. 

Also, observe my giant bedroom. Lap of luxury, people.

 

 

 

 

(Getting a little fast and loose with the whole posting-pictures-of-kids thing here but the important thing to take from this is that usually there are at least six more tiny people piled on top of me and or flying toward me from all directions. Also how flattering that uniform is on women of all sizes and shapes. YOU ARE JEALOUS.)

fin.