moon river (which might have been cute if I were Audrey Hepburn but I am not so it was just weird and alarming)

[source]

 

 

So many people, bloggers especially, insist on their own awkwardness.

And I'm not saying I don't believe you (...) but I am saying

that there's "Oh lolz that was awkward" and then there's punch-you-in-the-gut,

keep-you-awake-at-night, soul-cringing awkward. There's funny awkward

[Insert screenshot of any face made on The Office ever here], yeah. Which

makes it worth it to be truly awkward because you get to experience/

are able to appreciate things that so many people don't even notice which is stupid

of them because awkwardness is way better/way cheaper than most other activities.

 

And of course what 'awkward' even means depends on the lens it's being viewed through,

which is why some people can walk around naked and give other people hugs

even though the other people are fully clothed and are trying to do something.

It's also why some things that are so easy and notathing to most people are so hard for some people.

Also because culture.

 

The point of this is that this morning I went up to look at the roof

and drink coffee and enjoy the neighborhood like a bird would

if birds stood on roofs and drank coffee and shivered a little and at first I thought

I should put a brick to stop the door from closing and even picked up the brick

but then something short-circuited in my brain wires and I put down the brick

and shut the door. And then I stood out there for some minutes and then I went to

go back inside but of course I couldn't get the door open. So I remembered

that M had said, Oh, something something, fire escapes, I guess I didn't really

remember what she said that well after all but I looked down and thought I could

probably get to the ground via the fire escape. But it turns out I could not

and the reason I know I could not is because I tried it. And on my way back up

there was a young shirtless man looking confusedly out at me.

And it was not like Breakfast at Tiffany's in the least, mainly because I didn't

have a musical instrument but also because I was wearing pajamas

and some eyeliner that I didn't wash all the way off last night.

I think it was the guy who lives across the hall but I'm not very good at geography,

in any case I might just knock and see if it is him and explain that I wasn't peeking

but that I am just kind of stupid.

 

I have a kind-of interview later on and I am hoping this means

that my awkwardness quota has been filled for the day.



glad i didn't die before i met you

 

CURRENTLY, I am living in squalor. WHERE IS MY BED. Where is it. Where.

 
Trying to Make Time For: Seeing my friends around here. Studying for my last finals. Being a real person. You would think, with three whole days a week now completely free and devoid of responsibility, that I would be getting so many things done. And having adventures. And getting dressed. But you would be wrong, friend of mine. So very wrong. My bed is somewhere in that picture up there. IT IS. I swear. I also swear that there are not seventeen other cats in various states of alive-ness underneath the one cat you can see, even though if you are anything like me you looked at that picture and heard the sound bit from Hoarders. I have a queen sized bed and the space I am utilizing for sleep and not for crap storage is smaller than a cradle.

Should be Doing Instead of Blogging: Memorizing questions for my Spanish oral. That I'm supposed to do in an hour. Only I will bet you my entire checking account* that Senora will not be where she said she was going to be when I go to that place. And the four and a half minutes I'm going to spend furiously flipping flash cards right before I walk down there will be for naught. FOR NAUGHT. Also just remembered have like seventeen other assignments I'm supposed to give to her. What up, google translate. What. Is. Up.

*Don't get too excited. It's pretty bleak. SUZE ORMAN GET IN MY LIFE.

Washing Your Hair?: Bahahahahahhaha ha. hahaha.

Taking Dumb Pictures of Yourself for Dumb Reasons/No Reasons?: Have we met.

 Wishing: That New England would get its act together. Why is spring not a thing here? I guess maybe because we get to have such pretty autumns and the universe is afraid of spoiling us? Whatever, it's fine. And let's be serious, I am in no kind of hurry to put away my grandpa sweaters. No hurry at all. Yesterday morning I sat in the sunshine for twenty minutes, which turned out to be all of the sunshine for the whole day because then it rained ice water forever and I wore fourteen bathrobes and every pair of socks I own and cried. Today it's supposed to be 80 degrees and so I am wearing a dress and bravely did not bring a sweater with me* because of optimism.

*This is not the truth.


Reading: I can't make myself be interested in anything. Which means, obviously, cycling through Stephen Kings for the umpteen millionth time.

Listening to: So I still have Bright Eyes on my iPod. I know. Let's just not talk about it. Let's also not talk about the fact that I still have like a second generation iPod and my phone still flips and YOU KNOW WHAT IT'S VINTAGE, IT MEANS I'M COOL. Except to say, that, listening to these songs now and remembering how connected I felt to the lyrics in high school is a lot of hilarious.

Anticipating: One more week. One more week. One more week.

Wishing:  That I hadn't failed so hard and so immediately at my "Not Buying Any Clothes in May!" idea. Look at me, taking credit for other people's ideas. It was actually this cute lady's idea, sorry I tried to trick you before. Anyway it was a really, really good idea, whoseever whoevers who ever's (how do you say that? why don't I know anything? donde!? por que!) idea it was. (Mine.) (Nope.) Even though my version of "extravagance" is buying something that costs more than four dollars at Savers, when you buy a million things that are less than four dollars that still adds up to more dollars than I have, because of math. (Damn it. I have math to study too. STOP DISTRACTING ME.) And I thought, oh, this combined with not smoking anymore will make me stop having panic attacks about money!

But then I blacked out and bought a pair of sandals. Which, in my defense, I really needed because of not knowing how to walk and therefore all of my other sandals looking like garbage shoes from garbage town.

MORE CAT PICTURES! PLEASE!: Well, fine, you twisted my arm.

it's a trap!

You want to know how annoying it is that I have three days of classes left, but I'm not done until next Thursday? A LOT ANNOYING, IS HOW. But it's fine. I actually can't believe I've been in school for two consecutive semesters. A whole year, guys! And I only spent a teeny tiny bit of it researching ashrams to join in India.

Anyway then summer will be here and I'll be living in the city forever. Or September. Whichever comes first. (I think forever does.)

So I just have to get through this next weekish and the random days off I have in between finals and things that I can't really do too much with. Which shouldn't be too hard and I really should shut up about it because I'll be spending them in the sun on my deck. (Even though I was laying out there yesterday in my "no one is going to see me in this so it doesn't matter that this is basically invisible" bikini and I woke up from my sun-induced doze to a bunch of random men right underneath me ALLEGEDLY "doing work" in my yard. UM WHAT HI. I'M NAKED. So I sort of gathered up the blanket I was sitting on around me Ariel-when-she-first-gets-her-legs style and crept around the corner and back inside the house and waited until they left to go back out again. And then a few days earlier, same situation, all alone in my alone-time bikini, and who drives through waving at me from his lawnmower but my ONE neighbor. Who is basically blind, but still. I was uncomfortable for the both of us. And DON'T tell me to wear more clothes because I won't do it. I will not.)

This was a fake post in which I said a lot of things without saying any thing. And you fell for it. But I still like you.

who suggested a hot dog bake sale

 

The point of this picture was to see what my legs looked like in tall shoes, because while I'm totally good with flashing my stem skin now it hasn't always been that way and I still have feelings of mehr about my sturdy Irish farmer legs. (That came without ankles but in the interest of keeping away from body shaming or whatever I won't bemoan my lack of ankles here. Except that yes I will, because this is my blog and it's not shaming to wonder where the HELL I was when the ankles were being handed out.) So whatever anyway I took a picture to decide whether or not I could wear these shoes in the world. And I realized that sometimes I spend far too many minutes trying to see my physical self the way others see it. That is an unnatural angle for one's neck to be craning in for so much time, friends. And I am sharing this with you because I think, somehow, it would bother me more if I kept it to myself. All secret-like and dust-gathering and gross.

I'm pretty comfortable with my body but I do catch myself measuring it against the standards of some made-up something that I never have been and never will be more times than I am happy with. I remember telling my brother I wished I had his legs once when I was like ten and he was eight and we were laying in the hammock in our yard only by "laying" I obviously mean trying to push each other out of it or make it spin all the way around with both of us inside of it because that is clearly the intended purpose of hammocks. I WANTED THE LEGS OF AN EIGHT-YEAR-OLD BOY. A particularly scrawny one, at that. What in the whatting what. And I don't do that anymore, honestly ever, look at someone else and say "I wish I had their ____." Because that is a waste of wishes, is what that is. And also because the older I get the more I appreciate the reflection of my life that my body is, and also also, let's be honest, I have aged really well. I look good. I mean really good. In fact, why doesn't everyone come and see how good I look? 

Anyway all I'm trying to say is, if you don't see me around in grown lady shoes during these hot months (which I don't believe are ever going to get here for real and stay because I have PTSnowD) it's not because I'm insecure about how they display my lack of ankles. It's because I can't walk in them. And also because my summer project is to trick this man who is only slightly taller than I am down an aisle (any aisle, I'm not picky, but hopefully the cookie one) and if that isn't a good excuse to keep on wearing different-color Old Navy flip-flops and passably-cute Target sandals from like three years ago, then I honestly really don't know what is.

notse from last week's history class (or: i just typed "notes" wrong six times in a row) :

"We are at a crucial point, you and I. At least, the you and I as we exist inside my brain. Or maybe it's only me. Probably it's only me. It's okay that I'm by myself here though because I'm familiar with this place, I've been here before. I come to decide: Do I let this continue?

See, usually by the time I get here I'm already erring on the edge of one choice or another. Rarely has the choice been made for me but I'd be lying if I said it never happened. Today I'm here to ask myself, Where do I think this is going? Where would I like this to go? Only not the second question, oh no, never mind that pretend it never happened because I don't know. And I don't appreciate being badgered this way, Self. The thing is, my life as it is in front of me has a vanishing point that is basically an inch away from my nose. There are some vague, shifty-looking things in my peripherals but these things are too slippery to lay eyes on. Especially because eyeballs are kind of slippery themselves, really there just is not traction going on here whatsoever. Also I suspect that they are being deliberately avoidant, these things. Forward is something to fall into. Backward isn't something I'd consider even if it were an option and remaining stationary presents obvious problems.

I used to not think I was going to live very long because when I tried to picture what my life would be like later on I couldn't do it. When I could, once in a while, conjure up some abstract ideas in which I Did Things and Was a Person it was too much like imagining someone else's life. Which I suppose, you could argue, it was.

Sometimes I play this game with myself that is not really a game at least in the being fun sense in which I try to memorize a moment - no, that's wrong, it's more just acknowledging a moment and what is going on in it and sort of bookmarking it in my brain with the intention of returning to it at a scheduled time. Like, for example, when I am in the car or on the train or walking somewhere, I'll think to myself, Okay. Think about this later while you're doing _____. I've done this ever since I can remember remembering things, who even knows why. Not me. Maybe just trying to manage my awareness of time and its passing, because in general time feels like an enormous wave that's always just about to crash over me."

The person who sits behind me told me he'd spent most of the class watching me draw cats in Paint on my computer and thanked me for teaching him something. When I fill out the survey thing for this professor I'm going to request a portion of her earnings. And also that she never toss a potato at me again.

just remember it all, the beauty as well as the flaws (l-o-v-e l-i-f-e)

A fifteen-minute cab ride is long enough to forget the chill in the air; it’s funny what skin chooses to remember. Walk past a certain building and think, This is the picture of Brooklyn that films and stories paint inside your head. And then you’re where you’re supposed to be, and the number on the chalkboard is dialed, and you climb a staircase and walk through what you’re pretty sure is the apartment you’d be living in if life were fair at all and you’re climbing again - onto a step stool this time - and out a window and down a rickety ladder into candlelight and laughter and the smell of twenty kitchens on one table. No thing has happened before and every thing tastes like a memory.

I’m still me, I still sometimes feel as though mine might be a parallel existence, resembling and trucking along without touching, but more and more (and more) I can identify that feeling as an offshoot of internal dialogue (or something, you know, whatever) rather than as a fact. I still feel sad sometimes for no real reason and I still feel distressingly removed from whatever reality is sometimes and I still struggle just like you and you and you and that other guy. I still expect things from myself that are maybe more than a little bit unreasonable.

All of these things, and more, still. Yes. But. 

 [source]

A lot of lately has been looking around and thinking,
What did I do to deserve this life?

Because all of it, in its imperfect entirety, is really pretty beautiful.

AND I'M SORRY I KEEP TALKING ABOUT THIS but seriously you guys it really feels like my stomach is going to flip itself out of my eye sockets and is that what feelings for somebody feel like? Seriously? If I try to sit really still even for a few seconds my body gets all shuddery and nervous and like, twitches. Which might actually not have anything to do with my love life, maybe that's just a thing. Try it right now, just try to sit perfectly perfectly still and see what happens. I bet you electricity happens. Let me know.