i know the shape of your hands because i watch them when you talk

because i need to be studying right now, and i can't get past the amygdala (the diagram's or my own). because all of my mnemonic devices seem to include you. because for the past few months i've gone intentionally without, and i feel purer and focused-er for it, only you keep appearing while i'm asleep. because those are the dreams that color my mornings. because i'm a creep and the truth is they kind of color the afternoons and evenings too. because it's true that i want to be free right now, as free as anyone can be and whatever that means. because i'm afraid to make space for you. because mine. because i'm afraid you won't want to fill it.

this is so not even a thing and you might be probably are symbolic.
probably i am pinning a lot of still-vague feelings to you,
and probably i might be projecting onto a you that really is just a thing to be projected onto and not a you at all.

only there is a you, and you are that,
and even though this definitely isn't a thing
and everything,

i sometimes feel a very real and not unpleasant
gentle sort of pressure. (not from you,
you don't know any of this and how would you)

(how would you?)

and i start to suspect that i already know something
and am keeping secrets from myself
which is aggravating as i can be pretty smug.

and i sometimes, like today is one of the times, sort of feel that about-to-cry feeling in a nice way. but also in a kind of standing-too-close-to-the-edge-of-a-canyon way. exhiliarating, but probably i could die. is the thing about standing close to the edges of canyons.

but mostly in the good way, and i feel like you'd probably be weirded out if you knew how happy you make me by hardly doing anything. but don't worry about it too much because i'm not saying anything.

so even though part of me wants you to stop

(you're not even doing anything)

no matter what, please don't.

sometimes i just want to shop for thrift store cocktail dresses and wear them in hotel bars that night. 
i made a run in my hose on purpose the other day.
that same morning when i poured my coffee, i went to get the sugar and brought out the coffee filters instead.
so i re-crossed the kitchen and got out the coffee grounds and almost spooned them into my cup, but i realized what i was doing in time and thought, "i am terrible at everything" but it didn't make me sad.
i forget how to make instant oatmeal sometimes too, and once i put the milk away in the cupboard where the cereal goes and no one noticed for a long time.
that field we found, where the grass reached our waist, i thought that was a miracle.

six-word autobiography:

in the morning, 

she was gone.

they say if you love something you better let it go away

I have an awkwardly timed break between classes on two days this semester. Not enough time to leave campus, not enough time to get any real sort of work done, but definitely more time than it takes to eat a snack (or two or ten). It's awkward because it's at a time when no one else I know is really around, and I'm too much of a lazy asshole to make new friends just to fill in this gap in my schedule.

So. Here. We. Are.
Two things:

1. Awkward Crush, version 978. I am in like with my math professor. When I am eighty-nine and realize I forgot to ever get married, please remind me that it's because I used up my childbearing years being attracted to potential partners that were about as appropriate as tree stumps.

I would really like to describe my newest infatuation to you, but. In the VERY LIKELY event that he has fallen in love with me back, I don't want him to find this page in his googling of me and read this. Although I guess if he does that he can probably figure out who I'm talking about. Unless he assumes I'm taking more than one math class? And gets jealous of my other, fake, hotter instructor of numbers? No. Math professors are probably excellent deducers of things.

Please stop interrupting. So last class he started by saying, "So I'm allergic to cats." And my heart smashed into the floor immediately, because HOW WILL WE LIVE TOGETHER. How.

But then he told a cat story and showed us a bunch of pictures of his friend's cat, plus a cat video. And my heart jumped back up into my chest and I may or may not have whispered "I love you" accidentallyonpurpose. (I definitely did.)

He's sending me mixed messages. I think I will write to Cosmo, they will probably know what to do.

B. Speaking of Googling me, don't. I got tricked into writing a blog for a company I worked for that will remain nameless, and I always forget it's there and it always is and I get SO MAD even though a healthier person would probably be over this by now. If you disregard my advice and do try to google me, which I don't think most of you even can because you don't know my whole name so HA, you will find this. It was good when I wrote it, because and mostly only because it was written before I threw up some kool-aid and remembered I didn't hate myself. But then it was edited in true company-that-is-remaining-nameless fashion and then published without my okay. I sort of expected them to water down my hilariousness because of reasons, but what I did not expect was for them to EDIT IN ERRORS and then publish it in my name. And probably the worst part is that they kept in just enough of every thing that was meant to be funny to make me sound like the biggest [curse word] that ever [bleeped]. This is worse than the time I broke up with a boy in high school who shall also remain nameless (in this case because HE KNOWS WHO HE IS and will probably deny this) in a note (not my best moment, get off my back) and then he put the note in his AIM profile with errors that I DID NOT MAKE.

And now my break is over, and I feel productive, because at least now the internet knows that I mostly know where to put my apostrophes and where words go and how to spell them.

But I am not going to post this until tomorrow because I already posted something today and too many blogs in one day = no. Go ahead and add that to the list of things I care about that don't matter. Also I want you to think I am too immersed in my classwork to pay attention to you, Spouting Violets. I need to practice playing hard to get in case I need to do it with my professor. (Ah ha. "Do it" with my professor.)

at the water's edge that's where i make my bed

Roots thread the earth under my body, I picture cupped hands. I think they may be what's keeping the ground from crashing up into the moon. When I told you where I was Going and why There and Not You, Not Now, Not Anyone, I meant what I said even though some of it, I can be truthful now, was part fairy story and part sleep.

I want to wear lipstick for a while, was the reason I handed you [all].
You can wear lipstick here, now, a chorus.

Once in a while or every other day, I consider my choices.
Sometimes when one passes near or smells a certain way, well, you know.

Just in case you didn't believe me about ruining people's pictures.
Also I wish I wish my hair was long again. BALLS.
Also look, cats and cat sweaters!:

your sky all hung with jewels

At the Dressing Table, self portrait, Zinaida Serebriakova

The source is the internet, stupid.

I will ruin your shots, so hard, every time. So why, then, these images of myself? 
(Probably I am just a douche, but if so I'm not the only one. And I want to know why we are being douches. If that is what we are being.) 
Do you know why, though? If you do, could you tell me?

(Is taking pictures of yourself different from carving your name into something? How is or isn't it? What's the fascination? What's the motivation? What's the velocity of a swallow?)

That was, of course, a preamble to this:

What I wore to life this week! Except it is a lie because of blizzards, so it's kind of last week too, because fuck putting on clothes to be snowed in.In the house = pajamas, always.
Personally I like when blog ladies post clothes pictures. Not fashion blogs, I don't read those, because in my opinion they are boring and I like blogs that um, talk about stuff.
Number one, I just like pictures of pretty girls, and that is what you all are.
Number two is that I steal clothes from the friends I see all the time, so why should you all be exempt from my sticky fingers? I'll be at your house in an hour.
Number three is just that I'm a creepy voyeur, but you knew that. (This seems like a good time to tell you that in real life, I have a mustache.)
Also I've found that you can learn a lot about somebody from their outfit photos. For example, you all now know that I sometimes wear fur. And that I shop in the little boys' section of BJs more than sometimes. And that I wear the same shirts a bunch of times in one week, which you probably already knew, just like you already knew I don't brush my hair a lot. And don't you like me more now?

i'd give her my heart but she wanted my soul, don't think twice it's all right

My valentine. ♥

Last night I went to sleep composing letters in my head to some of the lov-ahs I've abandoned.

In this past year, especially.

Maybe cruelty is magnified in hindsight, but I know I could've behaved better.

Everything feels so good right now. I also have a pile of letters I asked people to write about me, and they are full of flattering things, so that helps. (Asking for references always feels funny to me. Hi, can you confirm to this third party that I am awesome? THANKS!)

Dear work, I don't feel like doing you right now. Sincerely, Me

I am still in a letter-writing mood.

and i don't even identify with many phish fans anymore

I don't want to make you work that hard. It shouldn't be like that.
Maybe someday I can be the love that knocks on your door.

"...There are always more questions. Science as a process is never complete... As long as we won't commit to knowing everything, the presumption is we know nothing.

And even while he warned her of these caveats, Dellarobia felt a settling down of her lifelong plague of impatience. He did not claim that God moves in mysterious ways. Instead he seemed to believe, as she did, though they never could have discussed it, that everything else is in motion while God does not move at all. God sits still, perfectly at rest, the silver dollar at the bottom of the well, the question."

BARBARA KINGSOLVER, Flight Behavior

A few weeks ago I took my shiny pile of Barnes and Noble gift cards to - I was just going to say, "to Barnes and Noble," but to what other location would I be taking Barnes and Noble gift cards? The beach? Yes, that's where we went. And it was a great day, we had lots of fun building sandcastles and things until it was their turn to get buried in the sand and I never saw them again. And then I died of a broken heart, and then, you know what, this is why I never get anything done, because [many, many lines met their untimely ends at this site, butdon'tbetoosadaboutitbecauseiftheirpointlessliveshadn'tendedyou'dhavebeensubjectedtothem] - damn it. Now I don't know where to say I was taking the B&N gcs to. (I'm abbreviating things now. It's my new thing, I just decided. My n t, I j d'ed.)

Anyway. I wanted to get a Bible because, as I have murkily alluded to in this space (and in a few midnight establishments, and a couple times during whispered conversations with my cats while hiding from burglars-who-turned-out-not-to-be-burglars-but-I-still-kind-of-think-they-totally-could-have-been-burglars-and-so-the-whole-hiding-thing-was-completely-justified-and-not-at-all-an-overreaction-or-indicative-of-mental-frailty) I've been thinking about God a lot. (Also have been eating cheese sandwiches, which I have always found disgusting, always. Weird.) Or the idea of God, I guess I should say. So I went and picked the pinkest one ('biblical blush') (just kidding, it's 'razzmatazz' or something but that's dumb) off the shelf of fifty million different kinds (chronological? catholics have their own? pop-up!) and read some of it. And I liked some of the Jesus bits, and I loved the old-timey compliments in Solomon's love song thing. Hair like a goat waterfall, indeed. Old-timey compliments are my new new thing, I just decided.

I don't know what I was looking for, except that I couldn't help but think there must be something in there if bajillions of people seem to get so much from it. And I wanted to know what it was.

And I checked the Qur'an out of the library and some books about the Talmud and obviously books about fundamentalist Mormons because obviously. And I have come to zero conclusions, except that I strongly suspect a whole lot of church/templegoers have not actually read any of this. And while I'm tired too of hearing the arguments against these texts, I've heard enough because for me it's like... duh. Whoever wrote these books were alive before science was a real thing. But I haven't worked out a non-offensive articulation of my thoughts on that yet so MOVING ON. I just wanted to know, if there are people whose faith is in the metaphor, what there was in that.

But I still don't know. When it comes down to it, for me, I feel closer to God reading Margaret Atwood than I do in church.

And at night in my kitchen, when I find myself crying for the butterflies, it's comforting to think that I, like them, and like the birds, have my own secret tiny map inside of me, and that there is a part of my consciousness that quietly consults this map while the louder parts of me are doing other things. And my secret tiny map might be leading me to things I don't even know I can do yet.

i'm going to meet my god said the child as he stood

I do and do not want to be an occasion someone rises to.

I mean I do. But also I don't, is what I mean.

and i say let's run away when i just mean stay the night

I found this blog about bad teeth a few days ago and the tab's been hanging out up there ever since. (Originally I was trying to find things about mirror fasts, an internet odyssey that somehow landed me on youtube watching Tyra Banks yell at bananas religious zealots. Also you should know that my eyes keep focusing on 'Tyra Banks yell at bananas' and I now have a mental image of Tyra Banks yelling at bananas. And hopefully, if I've done my job, you have that mental image too. Do you want to know the best part? It doesn't have to be bananas. Pick your favorite! Any fruit will do! Do you want to know what else? You can skip the 'Tyra' part and just picture banks yelling at produce. The possibilities really are endless, kids, I encourage you to be creative. Please have this handed in by next week.)

(Oh yeah, and tabs. Ever since they started being a thing I swear I have not bookmarked one website. I pretty much just keep anything I'm the slightest bit interested in reading or looking at open until either a. I finish reading or looking at it or b. my computer euthanizes itself in protest.)

The following is a quote from where I've linked above:

"Besides the general ethos skewing toward everyone-should-look-like-Kim-Kardashian-at-all-times, there's another reason for the rise of cosmetic dentistry: patients as consumers. Health care in the States has increasingly been painted as a series of consumer choices, not a utility or basic human need. Even Obamacare, which makes some much-needed changes in our system, relies upon the idea that patients will treat their health insurance as a consumer choice. Couple this view with the fact that cosmetic dentistry really is a consumer good, at least more so than your annual tooth cleaning, and suddenly cosmetic dentistry shifts from being seen as something only the rich do to being seen as something that's on the same scale as checkups, cleanings, or orthodontic care. (If you're like me—that is, lacking dental insurance don't even get me started—that illusion is only magnified because all payments are out-of-pocket.)"

My teeth are pretty wonky, and there have definitely been moments when I've been insecure about them. But truthfully, those moments are very, very rare. I rarely think about my teeth outside of "Are they healthy?" and besides there being too many of them, they are. (Fun fact: I brush my teeth around 20 times a day. I also keep toothbrushes at friends' places just in case.) Last year I went to a new dentist and the first thing he did was start talking about when I wanted to get braces on these puppies (mental image of puppies in braces) and I got kind of pissed off, because I was at the office of healthcare professional, who I was seeing for my health, and I had to fend off a fucking sales pitch? I AM ALREADY PAYING YOU MORE THAN I CAN REALLY AFFORD to make sure my teeth stay in my head and you're trying to sell me shit. I think what ticked me off wasn't that he wanted to have the conversation, because hey, hi, you're a dentist and that's what you do and I'm a new patient so you don't know me. I get that. But the fact that he assumed (meaning he made an ass out of you and me, so he even brought you guys into this! rude!) that I was unhappy with my appearance and that that would be my foremost concern upon entering his office really ground my gears. And it's not even his fault! How many times have I ever read/heard something like: "There's no excuse for bad teeth in this day and age." A lot of times, is the answer to that. (Interestingly: I interact with a lot of children, durrrr, and if they ask about my teeth it's usually something like "Why do your teeth look like that?" or "Why do they go like this [mime of my vamp-y fangs with their pointer fingers]?" And it's really cute. And 99.99999% of them are just curious. And to the .0000000001% who are being little brats, I tell them it's because I disrespected my elders when I was their age.)

I want to stress that I'm not trying to make some kind of social statement by keeping my natural smile. (I wear makeup! I shave! I am obsessed with my body! I just like my teeth.) I especially want to stress that I don't feel any kind of way about people who do choose to correct their teeth. I don't know your life! Do you, baby! Do you. I guess in commenting on this at all my hope is that you'll consider something you wouldn't change about yourself, spending trends of the wealthy/media pressure/peer pressure be damned. (Also on my list of Things I'd Never Change? My bumpy-lump Roman nose.) (Something I would change? WHERE WAS I WHEN THE ANKLES WERE BEING HANDED OUT, HM?)

 

(Also pictured is a wanky eyebrow. Y'all are really getting your money's worth today.)

nobody knows it but me when i slip, yeah i slip i'm still an animal

Because sometimes mirrors aren't entirely truthful.
(Sometimes I am pretty sure that watching Clueless so many times during my formative years did something permanent to my brain. Once when I was watching it the summer before freshman year I remember her relationship making me think, "No one has felt a love quite like mine for my boyfriend. I am so lucky." We'd been going out for eight whole days and about two days after my Cher-inspired reverie he dumped me via AIM, saying: "I'd rather be a good friend to you than a bad boyfriend." So yeah, since I've been dumped twice in my entire life I'd say that makes my average a pretty good one. Except it's going to really fucking suck when I'm actually in love with somebody and they break it off and my system goes into shock because I haven't built up a tolerance. OH, my god. This blog is a giant exercise in testing the limits of how many nonsense digressions parentheses can hold.)

So despite the lack of anything remotely interesting going on in this space (EVER) I have been making a point to write more, and regularly. And by "making a point to" I mean I wrote it down in my journal as a goal to meet, which is how you can tell I mean business (at the exact second I write down a goal, until something more interesting happens and I forget about self-improvement.) A thousand words of free-writing a day (or any writing really outside of academia) seemed pretty do-able and I have surprisingly been do-able-ing it.. Actually I usually end up with more like 5000 words, which is partly why this blog has been so quiet, because my intention was to share pieces of whatever I came up with on here. Which was a Good Idea, since it would combine my winding-down-before-bed-time with my blogging-time-that-I-never-actually-scheduled-before-but-will-now-because-it-is-in-combination-with-something-else. Except that it is also kind of a Problematic Idea because AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME TO READ THOUSANDS OF WORDS' WORTH OF YOUR AIMLESS THOUGHTS, LINDS.