clothilde and her birds

We've spoken before about my eyeballs and the space they occupy. The gauzy curtains that sometimes filter what light might come through. The dark shapes I perceive through the curtains, the terrifying puppet show where shadows that loom large and menacing are just someone's own small hands. The distress of what I can't see clearly. The tiredness, and the vacillation from it to a painful alertness. 

I walked home yesterday along the same street I always do, and while I was passing the same construction site that's been there for months I thought I felt myself drying up at the edges. I felt ready to be picked and blown away. Like scabs, like flowers. One thing has nothing to do with the other, except as an example of the strange parallels I construct and then straddle. 

I'm not sad, except when I am. Right now I'm not sad. Right now I've got dinner in the oven and I'm hoping it doesn't dry out by the time my boyfriend gets home to eat it with me. I spent today trimming my hair and painting my toenails and grocery shopping and doing some other tiny things that will almost certainly be neglected when school starts again next week, until May. When I feel like I'm stretched too thin, when there are too many people and not enough me I try to think "This is where we are right now." (It's "we" because I think that way now, in terms of "we.") We are in the place where sometimes Diego just gets what's left over of Lindsay after this and that and the other thing. We're in the place of the stories we will tell our children about when we were first starting out. I don't love my job, but I love things about it and I love the relative freedoms it allows me for now. I don't always love the long walk to the train but I don't always mind it and I love my boheme apartment and I love love love the neighborhood I live in. Most importantly, I love the person with whom I'm sharing this little life I'm patching together. That he's strong enough to act on his feelings, that he's strong enough not to. That he responds to my fingers around his. So no, I'm not sad. Or I don't feel like I should be sad, maybe, is more accurate. 

That's life, though. Ebb and flow. Fertile and fallow, happy and sad. I think it's interesting to look at what we mean when we say we're "sad," or what I mean. Lovely things spring out of sadness, songs and poems and paintings and books. It is so essential a part of life, this sadness thing, and yet when we are it - or at least, when I am it - I'm inclined to furrow. To hide it. What am I doing wrong that I'm sad? Something must be wrong in my life for me to feel anything besides happy. 

Think about something else. Stay busy. Be productive, do better. 

Think about something else. Close your eyes.

I want to only engage with the things in my life that make me happy and that are positive. I am fully aware that there are things I am actively avoiding, and that this avoidance has become such a part of my thought process and the way I interpret the world that I've forgotten how to be another way. It seems that I've reached a point where it's either unpack some of this stuff and work through it, or what I don't know. It's unpacking itself, at any rate - I can't do one thing without the buzzing of a thousand Other Things in the background. There is a news ticker at the bottom of the window in which I view the world, the window with the gauze curtain, and it never stops running and I can't see past it. Wanting to only see the good has made it impossible to enjoy what's in front of me, which is why I think this whole sadness thing is worth taking a closer look at. Perhaps I should sit with it a while, intentionally stick my hands right in and let it slide through my fingers. Really let myself learn what it feels like. Find out what's underneath it all. 

See how I can use it. 

tracing your body and shaking your bones

I don't know why Diego's upper lip is white in the last picture. Let's just pretend that Mexicans have a New Year's tradition of drinking glasses of milk to ward off calcium deficiency in the coming year. What we don't have to pretend is that they eat a ton of food, drink a ton of champagne, and stuff a dozen grapes into their faces in the minute before the ball drops. It is a testament to our union, and a sign of the universe's approval I think, that I am so comfortable around Diego's family, since the part of my brain labeled "Being a Human Around Other Humans Without Getting Sweaty or Wanting to Cry" doesn't always work all that well. So, yes, fa la la la la la la it's over. And now we just have to get past my birthday so that we (I) can gratefully settle in to the part of the year where the only holidays revolve around small mammals and beer. 

I have to write more. It has to be a priority.

Also: haircut, finish organizing apartment.

Vegetables.

in my way I set you free

Pictured above is Thanksgiving Dinner, Part 1. It didn't know it was the first in what was to be a series of turkey dinners, and neither did the girl who made it. Her boyfriend had brought fresh cranberry sauce home from work, and also she knew she was working on real Thanksgiving and as such was sad about having to wait until Christmas to eat her mom's green bean casserole. So she got some deli turkey and baked a sweet potato and mashed it up and made the casserole from memory. It turned out okay. 

Then we went home (HEY NARRATIVE CHANGE-UP, HOW YOU DOIN?) the next weekend, and had (another) (early) turkey dinner (again.) (There was a better picture of my mom and Diego stuffing fruit up a turkey's butt together, but someone who shall remain nameless deleted it because he didn't like it. DON'T WORRY, I threw a temper tantrum of disproportionate proportions in reaction to this crime when I went to look for that one specific picture and realized it wasn't there.) We hadn't planned on visiting, so it was a nice sort of "Surprise, Thanksgiving!" impromptu sort of occasion, and also instead of pie we had birthday cake because of my brother. 

And also, we waxed lips and eyebrows while waiting for the turkey to be hot enough. What does your family do? Let me know in the comments below, and you'll be entered to win an iPod shuffle from 2005 and the privilege of my esteem. 

This picture doesn't have anything to do with Thanksgiving, except that it happened at some point in between the three Thanksgivings I had. Look at how good my sparkly sleeves are. 

On real Thanksgiving, I worked for ten hours and had a lot of fun making up stories about the people who found their way into my work on Thanksgiving Day and then came home to eat the turkey mole the BF made. It was the same as our Thanksgiving last year, I think we even got the same wine, except that in a different apartment and this year we put our plates on a box instead of directly onto the floor. We have, in fact, managed to fit a table into our 2.4 square feet of living space, but, picnic. Also, it's fun to do these silly things every year and think about eventually having babies to do them with. It's weird to have found the person I want to procreate with, weird to actually have my person sitting in front of me, and know that someday there could be tiny people who look sort of like us and think that Thanksgiving is the holiday where we sit on the floor to eat dinner and aren't Mommy and Daddy wonderful. Mostly Mommy.

Thanksgiving weekend we went to an event that that same nameless person from earlier spent a panic-attack inducing amount of money on tickets to. It was fun. I wore colors on my eyelids and sparkles on my skirt and a cardigan, and won an award for least amount of skin showing. 

I also won an award for most amount of time in between eyebrow waxes. You know what, though? You manage my schedule and simultaneously maintain perfect brows and I'LL give YOU an award. (You guessed it, an iPod shuffle from 2005.) Edit: I realize that I just showed you a picture of waxing on Thanksgiving and now a week later my eyebrows are furry again. To be clear, my eyebrow bushes don't regenerate themselves at an unusually fast rate, I just didn't do them on that day because of laziness. (Also because I was more focused on how much fun it is to wax a boyfriend.) So also, to clarify, it's less my schedule and more my laziness that accounts for my being unkempt. 

I'm taking a mini vacation for Christmas, and I'm not sure if I'm more excited about sparkly lights or about not having to wake up at 3:30 for four days in a row. It's probably about equal. Today is my day off from work and school and boyfriend because he's at work, and I don't mean that in a mean way I mean it in an I-don't-have-to-talk-to-anybody-today-if-I-don't-want-to-and-it's-my-favorite-day way. I had grand plans of finishing all the homework and studying for all the finals but instead I went back to sleep this morning and didn't get up until noon. And then I washed the dishes, and then I wrote this blog. And now I'm going to take a shower and go buy vegetables because I'm so bloated I'm surprised I can walk in a straightish line without tipping over. 

Postponing papers to go to concerts, Lindsay? Taking cigarette/taking-crappy-pictures-of-the-moon breaks during math class? GIRL PLEASE you weren't even good at being a teenager when you were a teenager.

I have so much shit to do but all I am actually doing is perfecting my dream cast for HBO's gift to me. (Example, but mine's way better.)

how i lost fifty pounds in fifteen years

My heart is a radio, I'm holding it to my ear. 

To my left there is a dial I am turning it

s l o w 

trying to hear over my own breath

(listen.) 

A great deal of my brain space is used for wondering about the points of things. The origins of the points, the significance of those points to myself, but most often - where are the points? I try not to ask, "What is the point of you?" to a thing or to a person, because that is a rude thing to ask and it is vulgar to be rude. Also, because, I think, that, or should I say, I assume, or have been assuming, or have been trying to alter my assumptions so that I can be of a mind where - that is to say - I accept that points exist without needing them to empirically prove themselves. By virtue of the fact that we exist - whether that "existence" is the place of all our converging, subjective realities or is, as asserted by Charlie (or was it Frank?), part of a "turtle's dream" - we're all the same. Essentially. Right? Can we agree on that, can you agree on that for a moment? We all exist. Common denominators, people. Math is fun (and important for young ladies, and sleepy turtles.) So if I accept that, which I do, and which you have agreed to do for at least the duration of this for me writing for you reading (we've all accepted that we all exist, in case you're unsure), then assigning a zero value to anything is… problematic. And so, the points, there can't be zero of them. Existence is its own point, perhaps. And everything's doing it.

Pointily. 

I don't like people sometimes. I really don't. Which is another thing that is "…problematic" because of being a human and also because of being a human in a customer service vocation and also ALSO because of being a human in a customer service vocation located on the upper west side of Manhattan. And the truth of it is that the people I don't like, it is specific situations in which I do not like them. And here is where I ought to say, or where you are expecting me to say, perhaps, something like "Maybe I'd like them if I knew them in a different situation." BUT most of the time I probably still wouldn't, because they treat people like basura and that's neither my jelly nor my jam. Another time, probably not though, I'll maybe address my thoughts on entitlement and poor manners and the customer/employee dynamic but that time is not this time and so allow me to backpedal and then continue along the intended route. The route being, points --> not always having warm feelings toward people --> the part I am getting to now, and, praise be to Aslan in the highest, the last part. 

My not liking someone, in a situation or pattern of repeating situations, does not negate their value, or mine. 

We are each one of us a bundle of mechanisms, fine-tuned and developed custom for the paths we've each takenandaretaking through the existence that, remember we all agreed, we are all doing. Being. Living in. Sharing?Okay. And then the universe throws glitter confetti powdered sugar hand grenade handfuls of triggers down into our allarounds and shakes real hard. And we're all maneuvering, navigating, dodging, reacting, engaging, living, hiding, whatevering, through that terrible, beautiful storm. And sometimes, too many times, we treat each other as if we're not all maneuvering, navigating, dodging, reacting, engaging, living, hiding, whatevering. And we lose sight of the points that everything has. That everyone has. The valuable, valuable points. 

(Not always, though. Sometimes we're cool.) 

I don't know, you know. Maybe we are all just shaking around this place like tiny metal balls just randomly crashing into each other. But we're still touching. We can try to make that contact a little nicer. And when we feel like we're the only ones trying and why fucking BOTHER my GOODNESS these people are the WORST, well. We can try to remember the value, and consider how the pointiness might encourage growth or inspire change. Or something. 

So, my goal for this week is, of course, not eat any candy and become a full-time model. Also, to keep at the front of my mind in all my interactions with other metal balls THAT: everything is valuable, everything has a point, how can I use that valuable point? 

So, if I haven't said something similar to you lately or if you feel like you just need to hear it from somebody or, you know, anything: I recognize and acknowledge your value. You are valuable, and there is a point to you. 

I am not sure, however, if there was a point to this. Or wait, yes I am, that's what I just said. There is definitely a point. I've just, I seem to have lost track of it. Maybe take my eyes off the screen and take them into the shower, because they're stinky, these eyes of mine. Maybe post pictures of me eating first, though.

These are from the same day, but like, eight hours apart. The next chapter in my life may just be following food-based pop-up markets around. It'll be a lot like this chapter of my life, actually. 

flotsam! jetsam!

Yesterday it was burnt-marshmallow-winter-coat season. I felt pretty bad for all the girls running the marathon in sports bras and bathing suit bottoms, except then I remembered that they could run a marathon and I get tired walking up and down Central Park and I stopped feeling bad.

Today is I'm-not-even-finished-with-this-latte-and-I'm-already-ready-for-another-one season.

Most certainly I'm where I'm supposed to be

No matter now if the compass fails again
Cause in your love I've built a home

This song is stuck in my head. Like, jammed the fuck in there like that guy who got the pole stuck in his head but lived but was really mad all the time. Or something. The video is kind of dumb I think, but I am viewing it through the lens of a really very intense Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis love/foreverimpressiononmysoul from watching Thelma & Louise forty-hundred times during my formative years. Also the lens of not really getting/liking trance music but when your boyfriend's friend gives him free tickets to see whoever-and-such at MSG you go, I guess, and you try not to hate it. Even though those "free tickets" cost you a lipstick and a chapstick and three lighters because of drug smuggling even though you weren't smuggling lip-moistening drugs at all, although maybe you would've if it'd occurred to you, but it didn't, but anyway you still smell other people's drug smoke during the concert and you are bitter not because of their poor life choices but because of your three-dollar chapstick and the fact that you are not a better liar.

Sometimes instead of writing nasty emails that really need to be written because WHO DOES ANYBODY THINK THEY ARE? I look at youtube for a long time and fake-blog about concerts I went to weeks ago. Maybe just will stroke the keyboard for a while. j lskad jelkdafs.xzc'ad that's better.