i bought a pair of tortoiseshell ray ban wayfarers. if only it was sunny.
this is what i’ve been having for breakfast lately, like at 4:30 this afternoon:
raspberries are very cheap right now. 97 cents a package. that never happened last summer, not in d.c. anyway. jesse and i saw something that looked like a raspberry bush on our walk yesterday. it had fruit but it wasn’t ripe.
i am thinking a lot about graduate school again, and it’s starting to seem like a good option for something to do next. (i am also thinking a lot about “next” lately, maybe because tomorrow is the one-year anniversary of my last day in d.c., at my job, all of that — how did it go by so fast?)
when i first arrived in denver, the only further education that seemed to make sense was law school. and that’s all, it just made sense. it wasn’t something i really wanted to do, just something i thought was a good match for my qualifications and abilities. and plus, saying i was going to do that next was a good justification to fuck around as a waitress for a year or so.
i couldn’t think of any old master’s program that seemed worth it. philosophy? one should really get a Ph.D, and it doesn’t interest me enough to invest a decade of my life. journalism? it wouldn’t be much different than the undergraduate degree i already hold. i could get my MFA in creative writing but that seems silly. i had too many friends doing that in 2002 and none of them are really any better off. for a while there, charles wasn’t even putting it on his resume. and he has published a novel!
recently it came to me, what i would actually enjoy doing. i want to get a master’s in education. and i am sort of thinking a little bit about applying to peabody at vanderbilt, because besides the fact it is located in my hometown, the program was also recently ranked first in the nation among schools of education. and vanderbilt has a ton of money, so maybe it would not cost me so much.
i sort of think i want to be a high school english teacher — there is a program especially for that. a lowly position, perhaps, not as cool as “a writer” or whatever the hell i thought i wanted to be when i was 18. it has the qualifications i am looking for: interaction with people, ability to influence them for the better, not tied to an office/computer screen, somewhat creative, involves kids, etc. summers off would also be a plus. and the time it would take to complete graduate school is, i think, a nice digestible amount to spend in nashville. i cannot see myself staying there very long, but maybe i would change my mind.
i need to talk to my father about this; i am sure he will be pleased. i need to talk to mr. croker, too. he was my creative writing and ap english teacher, and more or less one of the best grown ups i have ever met. adam ross is another person i should give a call — he was my first editor back when i wrote for the scene. then he started teaching at my high school after i graduated, and now he has a book deal and is some kind of “writer in residence” because basically harpeth hall is a university these days.
anyway, grad school seems like a less extreme measure than spending a couple years in morocco with the peace corps. but i would probably like that too. maybe this is all just really making sense today because it is like 55 degrees and cloudy and feels like it is time for back to school.
still i can sort of see myself amidst coffee cups and textbooks at fido more than the alternative. a major trip in the not-too-far-off future is needed, though.
i had lots of visitors at work last night: lacey and tracy shortly after i arrived, cody and her friends during the bar rush, john very early this morning before he opened up st. marks. i hope tonight is fun because i will be sleepy. patrick and i are going to the onion gathering at the atomic cowboy before i go in. no beers for me.
the weather this evening is incredible: like fall. it rained, and after that the sky got dark and i could have sworn it was late september. tonight i came home from the gym, cooked dinner, and walked across the street to whole foods for a gluten-free ice cream sandwich — which i suppose was a very summery thing to do.
i saw jesse today for the first time since i left three weeks ago for my vacation. it was nice. we walked for over an hour, talking about nothing i guess. toward the end he asked about me and david and it was a little weird. it wasn’t that bad, though. then we got back to my house, his old house, and i made him an avocado and cheddar sandwich on spelt crackers (because my ezekiel bread contains sprouted lentils and soybeans, and jesse is allergic to legumes).
i want david so badly, lately. i don’t know what to do about that. i am hoping once i get through the next couple weeks it will pass, even though it probably won’t.
tomorrow i am going into the onion office to do some work.
a one-legged man timidly approaches the garden, uses his crutches in a manner that suggests they are new appendages.
for instance, there are some things even i can’t write about on the internet. not right now, anyway.
yesterday a friend sent me a text message that read:
you are willing to take risks which shows your confidence in your own ability to face what the world may throw at you.
i am not so sure that is true anymore.
Your results are in!
The BattleaxeDeliberate Brutal Love Master (DBLM)
Sharp. Hardened. Dominating. The Battleaxe sweeps all before her, smiting and what not.
You’ve had a number of serious relationships, so you obviously have many attractive qualities. You’re well experienced in dealing with other people’s weirdnesses, and it’s likely you’re good in bed by now, too. Also, like the drunken housewife chucking Heinekens at her no-good husband, you’ve got a lot of energy.
People can tell you’re sophisticated, and so you find yourself the object of infatuations quite often. But it’s how you handle yourself in your relationships that gets you the ‘brutal’ tag. Controlling? Imperious? Overbearing? Yes, please.
Remarkably, you don’t mind the same from your men. You’ve experienced enough to take whatever you dish out. Overall, you’re a very good person and a capable lover, and when the time comes you’ll make a fine divorcee.
i wouldn’t be horribly surprised if sometime in the next year, i picked up my shit again, fled to portland, and got back together with zach. that might be fun, especially if my brother returns from russia. i could finally fulfill my plan to make him my roommate. between the three of us, there would be a lot of cats.
or not.
i am feeling kind of gross right now. yesterday rachel colored my hair too dark and cut it too short… rather, she cut off about half an inch instead of approximately, well, not at all. meanwhile i am turning into a fertility goddess, with huge tits and a swollen lower abdomen, thanks to my monthly visitor. and it is hot outside and i do not feel like putting on makeup or real clothes.
i figured out what i want, incidentally, and the fact that it is missing could be contributing to the fact that i feel gross, despite the fact that i get hit on by assorted men on a near-hourly basis sometimes. a fucking sex life. i really miss having sex with david all the time.
going to stop complaining now.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: do i have to tell the story of a thousand rainy days since we first met?
i was supposed to get married in two and a half weeks. it seems as if that life was a thousand lifetimes ago. and yet as i think about this now-meaningless date, i still get a knot in my throat, a feeling like i am choking back tears. i’m not sure what i will do that day. leslie and my little brother will be visiting, so it shouldn’t be too bad. i don’t know… actually it will probably fucking suck and copious amounts of booze will be required to distract me. (i should note that, in general, i think abusing alcohol is a bad way to deal with one’s problems, but the day of one’s cancelled wedding is an exception. fuck, maybe the whole surrounding weekend is an exception.)
incidentally, yesterday i went to the argonaut and picked up a bottle of kim crawford sauvignon blanc, which was supposed to be served at our wedding reception. i don’t know why i did it. i mean, i know i like the wine, and it occurred to me that it would be the perfect thing for sitting on my front steps some night soon. it’s now in my refrigerator, waiting to be quaffed. hopefully before august 9, which will probably require something more along the lines of scotch.
i have no idea what i want right now. i am just going to go to the gym and run and then go to work and make money and not think about it until it happens.
a fat little boy is walking across the whole foods parking lot with his mother, carrying a large pepperoni pizza. he makes me smile.
i can’t remember the last time i actually paid for a drink at st. marks — that’s probably yet another sign that i need to find a new spot. i am here again, though this time i am sipping oolong tea instead of bitter beer, killing half an hour till my shift starts. last night i went on, um, a date, and we ended the night at a potential replacement coffee shop pretty close to my apartment. i hear they’re not really into internet poachers, though, so maybe i just need to suck it up and call comcast again (meanwhile, the fuckers who sent me the modem have started an “investigation” into its improper delivery… and it should take 30 to 60 days).
i don’t really have anything to say. i’ve been digging my new gym and i’m meeting with a trainer for a couple months because i really want to put on some muscle this time around. it feels so good, though, like it did when i started running again at 22. the last year i was in d.c., even though i had started feeding myself, my body was just so fucking rundown and tired. by the time i got to colorado and joined qi, i was over it. the fact that they had like five weight machines, no mirror in front of the free weights, and treadmills that depressingly overlook colfax didn’t really motivate me either. yoga kind of saved me, reset things. but i am ready to go back to what i am really good at doing.
denver marathon in the fall? maybe.
after i wrote that little treatise about my time in d.c. the other day, a boy came up to me and told me he wrote a poem about my smile after i waited on him three weeks ago. sometimes it is strange, you know, when things happen that make you realize you aren’t floating through life unnoticed.
so, that is all. i have really been enjoying coming home to a warm animal sleeping on my bed. and yo la tengo is playing at the ogden in the fall. these are good things.
cannot stop listening to light of love by music go music. best treadmill jam ever.
wow. i need to find some new spots with free wi-fi. i’m at st. marks, obviously, because that is where i compute at night, when i am probably in the mood to enjoy an adult beverage. a dude just walked up to me and asked, “weren’t you on your laptop at whole foods this morning?” and yes, i was, because whole foods is where i steal the internet in the a.m. hours when i need coffee or kombucha or juice made out of leaves and grass. i did actually sign up for the internet at home, and it was supposed to be installed on wednesday, but fedex lost or improperly delivered my free modem while i was out of town.
speaking of — i think i am removed enough from my trip that i can write about it now. at the same time i think i’ve forgotten most of what i wanted to say.
so here is sort of how it went: i got off work at six in the fucking morning, went home and showered, went to whole foods and drank a green juice, then drove to david’s house so i could leave my car under his carport and so he could drive me to the airport. this was perhaps a mistake. jesse had offered to drive me, and i had decided i wasn’t going to talk to david, but, well, perhaps i am a glutton for punishment after all.
anyway, i shot into the sky with david on my mind, and actually it was sort of nice that i hadn’t slept yet, because i zonked out immediately on both of my flights and didn’t have to think about him anymore. by the time i arrived, i felt a little rough, but it was nothing that a shower and some of justin’s adderall couldn’t fix. ha ha.
walking out of the airport to the metro station immediately conjured up a feeling of regret about uprooting my former life. there is something about the east coast summer heat and humidity that swallows me, embraces me in a way that is comforting and familiar. i feel similarly when descending the escalators into the underground metro stations, as if i’m entering a beehive or the warm belly of a whale. (which probably sounds weird, but when you are the sort of person like me — one who sometimes intentionally isolates herself and generally feels apart — it feels good. d.c., i have always said, is a good place to spend time alone.)
i did that. i walked all of my old routes, to cleveland park and dupont circle and georgetown, then across the border to arlington. and i spent time with friends, mostly justin and (oddly?) john. i was surprised to see that not much has changed, including them. i immediately realized that i fit in much better in d.c. — that i feel most comfortable in that weird swarm of the patrician and the ghetto fabulous. colorado is in general a uniform sort of place; people seem to gravitate toward average. i have enjoyed having a very different sort of job that gets me away from the beige mentality, but it has made meeting people socially sort of difficult. in a meaningful sense, at least. justin and john, the intellectual and the aesthete, both reminded me of this. colorado doesn’t make their kind.
at the same time, while i lived in the most diverse neighborhood of northwest d.c., i saw how little it actually affected me when i was walking down columbia road one afternoon last week. the columbia heights/mt. pleasant/adams morgan area is populated with burgeoning yuppies and hipsters — as well as latinos, ethiopians, african americans, and foreigners of various mediterranean-ish descents. they served me fresh coconuts and injera and falafel, sat next to me on the metro, or maybe worked as doormen in my apartment buildings. but while they were part of the background of my lifestyle, they were… just the background, the scenery that i took for granted. that sounds racist perhaps, but i don’t mean it to be. d.c. is just a weirdly integrated but segregated place, full of gentrification controversies and economic stratification.
working as a waitress this year, i’ve interacted with latinos, ethiopians, african americans, and foreigners of various mediterranean-ish descents on a pretty much daily basis. when i was at greektown, ethiopian cab drivers were on the other end of most genuine conversations i had. many a time i have had a i-can’t-believe-this-is-my-life-but-i’m-glad-it-is moment at work when a mexican dishwasher is making my night tolerable by showing some completely random act of kindness to me. and i think we all know by now that i have basically become greek.
but when it comes to my demographic, overprivileged white kids in their mid-twenties to early thirties, give me d.c. any time. i haven’t even gotten to the part where no one i know in d.c. is married or having babies and giving me a ridiculous complex about dying a spinster. which reminds me : i got a phone call from julie on thursday night, actually a series of phone calls that i didn’t answer because i was sleeping a million hours trying to readjust to my life as a vampire, and it turns out she’s pregnant. this is not very surprising considering we’ve been joking about it since basically the day it must have happened. she and yuli are moving in together in a few months, and they’re going to try to make it work… which i really think will be good for both of them. but the messed up thing is that what i first felt in my gut, or perhaps my uterus, was a pang of jealousy.
ughhh.
there are other things to say, i guess, like that i visited the new awi office and it was super fancy and there were all these new people and they were dressed like typical office workers, in the pencil skirts and oxford shirts i owned but never wore. it was nice seeing chris and serda, but i think going there is what made me decide that moving to colorado was actually a good idea after all. that, and the humidity started to feel crushing instead of swaddling.
i went to galaxy hut and smoked a shitload of cigarettes at the bar, which was awesome and weird and also made me decide i am definitely not a smoker. i went to the portrait gallery/american art museum and sat in the snails installment for a long time and felt okay. i ate pollo ala brasa and also my favorite chicken analog made out of wheat gluten. and the whole foods salad bar and a salty oat cookie. i came home feeling a bit like a foie gras duck.
one morning while john and i were eating lox and bagels from so’s your mom, i saw david clifford ride down 18th street on his bicycle. that was about as much interaction as we needed to have.
i had lunch with drew and his very neat girlfriend. was kind of bummed we didn’t get to spend more time together.
a funny thing: the real world is currently being filmed in d.c., and because it is sort of a small place, the camera crews were everywhere. the first time i came back to colorado, two years after i graduated from college, the real world was being filmed in denver. i did not notice any cameras then, however. my guess is that they were confined to lodo.
so anyway. i came home and david picked me up from the airport and did not really talk to me on the drive back to his house, and i hated it. i miss so intensely the way we used to be able to talk for a hundred hours. oddly being in d.c. brought back those feelings more than ever, i guess because i spent last summer falling in love with him from a distance of 1,500 miles. i thought about him every time i went out flaneuring back then, so i guess it makes sense that i did it again when i revisited those old streets.
incidentally, i did not make it to new york. i felt like i needed to stay in d.c. till i got sick of it, and i am pretty certain that was the right decision. autumn in new york, if i am lucky.
this is perhaps my most prolix blog entry ever. i think i will stop now.
there is so much to say and i don’t know how to say it yet.
in the meantime my corepower yoga membership expired on the 14th, so yesterday i decided to sign up for a proper gym – the same one i eschewed last august in favor of qi, that stupid east-meets-west gym i joined perhaps as an intermediate step to becoming a yogini. i don’t know… i actually miss weights and treadmills all of a sudden. and then there was a two-weeks-free coupon in my junk mail and i took it as a sign.
i don’t yearn to be back in d.c. like i thought i would. well, the way i though i would until maybe the fourth day i was there. i kind of feel like leaving by plane was a more concrete end to an era. and that i finally left on my own terms. i returned to see denver both with new eyes and with the same sense of wonder that i experienced when i first moved here late last summer.
but, oh, d.c. — columbia heights is starting to resemble my old neighborhood in arlington, with its big box stores, starbucks, gastropubs and a fucking chipotle. at least mt. pleasant street is still the same, all bodegas and day laborers and pollo a la brasa.
it seems relevant to mention here that i just renewed the lease on my apartment for another six months. and that my rent did not go up. oh, denver.
i’m going to name them milo [edit: make that milan] and minou [i will call them milo and mina].
in the meantime:
(at least i have a cat)
i’m in d.c. right now. it’s something.
Filed under: dear diary | Tags: this might be the last time i mention david on the internet.
sometimes you just have to realize that a person is inherently bad for you, even if he or she once seemed to be your everything. i kind of hate how often i’m coming to that conclusion these days, in various degrees.
after an emotionally destructive experience with david on saturday afternoon, i finally decided to cultivate some avoidance techniques. i did what i said i was going to do months ago: i deleted his number, i decided not to contact him again. i haven’t talked to him much recently anyway, but i needed that formal process to further let him go.
yesterday i had also planned to tell jesse that i needed to run away and not keep spending time with him, because i felt like he has been getting entangled in unnecessary drama due to the fact that a. i like him, and b. he knows david. but instead i saw him and instantly felt better. we did a really stupid but awesome yoga tape and erich made dinner. later we talked about how i wanted to run away and why i changed my mind. he’s very patient with me and this messed up situation, and it’s nice to feel a connection with someone but not feel the need to make him my boyfriend asap.
today david contacted me on gchat and asked if i wanted a ride to the airport, which seemed like a weird offer considering how we parted ways on saturday. we talked in the way that we always talk lately, and i quickly became frustrated. i told him i didn’t want to talk to him under the terms that he has set, and that associating with him is harmful to me. he didn’t seem to care very much about those statements, but when i added that i had decided to start seeing jesse, he responded with something along the lines of “fuck you, bye.”
my attraction to jesse is not new information to him — i mentioned it a week ago, and he saw us together at the thin man on friday. and i’m fairly certain he’s dating, or attempting dating, himself. which leads me to another recent realization — if i just met david today, i wouldn’t even be attracted to him, physically, mentally or otherwise. so why torture myself? i figured out a while ago when i was starving myself that there is no point in making my life harder than it has to be. i just have to apply that logic to other appropriate situations.
the perceived stability of being with david was in many ways a replacement for the perceived stability of my former career. oddly i am in a better place to “date” than i was a year ago, when i moved here and had no idea about anything. i was totally dependent on david and our relationship was probably messed up from the start because of it — i felt insecure and out of place here. ironically i suppose it wasn’t until i first started feeling at home in denver that our two months of hellish fighting began.
i am still mourning my relationship with david, though, and anything that does happen with jesse will be slow moving as a result. the other night pete, being my surrogate father/grandfather and all, pulled me aside at work and asked how i was doing with everything. i told him i was upset about david and he said, “why can’t you just not have a man for a while?” (though i wonder if he would have said the same thing if he didn’t consider me an 18-year-old for all practical purposes). i told him i got a cat and he was pleased. i didn’t tell him about jesse.
but you like who you like, i guess. i don’t know. i am going to try not be fucked up about it this time.
man, it’s a good week to get out of town.
I wrote a poem on a dog biscuit
And your dog refused to look at it
So I got drunk and looked at the Empire State Building
It was no bigger than a nickel
And if it don’t improve
Then I have to move
I never thought that I would end up here
Maybe I should just change my style
But I feel alright when you smile
I stayed at home on the Fourth of July
And I pulled the shades so I didn’t have to see the sky
And I decided to have a Bed In
But I forgot to invite anybody
And when I fell asleep
The neighbors had a peep
I never thought that I would end up here
Maybe I should just change my style
But I feel alright when you smile
i really want to go to waterworld and the botanic gardens when i get back from the east coast.
just a reminder to myself.
incidentally i am sad that i did not get to see jonathan richman at lions lair on wednesday. i was a couple blocks down the street at work. oh well.
thunder road by bruce springsteen
kodachrome by paul simon
this must be the place by the talking heads
(i don’t want to go to) chelsea by elvis costello
hot child in the city by pat benatar
i think it’s pretty safe to say that i am no longer cool.
***
the 30 hours or so since i got off work very early yesterday a.m. have been strange, minus the 12 or so that i spent not being awake.
i guess at this point nothing is that weird because everything is weird, but let’s just say running into david and getting along, then bonding with his friend tynan (my former arch nemesis, when it mattered) was not exactly how i expected to spend my evening. unfortunately, because we are a couple of scumbag 20somethings, bonding involved a shot of tequila that knocked me on my ass, pretty much literally — soon thereafter, i climbed on the giant see-saw behind the thin man with not so sexy results.
thankfully at this point jesse showed up (jason also came by and was surprisingly the only source of bad vibes all night) and escorted me home in a cab as it started to rain. we waited — rather, i made myself horizontal — on the steps of castle marne, and i blabbered on about how david and i stayed there once. we got to my house and i puked up some tequila and the salad i ate earlier. he put me in bed and gonzo curled up next to me and somehow i didn’t die. actually, i woke up quite early this morning and felt pretty good despite the circumstances.
i got dressed and walked across the street to whole foods for some spinach-parsley-cucumber-apple-lemon-ginger juice. it was amazing. so now i am here, and in a few hours i am supposed to eat lunch with david and his little brother and his little brother’s girlfriend. what?
last night i also ran into this chick lacey who works at salvagetti, the bike shop right by where i used to live with david. i keep waiting on her in pete’s establishments. anyhow, i’m going to drop by the shop later for a swap they’re having and hopefully i will score a bike.
in other news, as i was walking to the thin man last night and questioning the safety of being a female pedestrian on colfax at 10 p.m., i saw two drunk girls and figured if they were okay, i probably was too. then they started shouting my name and i realized it was jess and katy from greektown. oh denver, you are finally becoming a small town to me.
home is where i want to be / but i guess i’m already there.
indeed.
i came to visit denver one year ago today. david and i went to tynan’s house and that is when i decided he was my arch nemesis. i went to steuben’s and the thin man with jason and justin and saw fireworks from justin’s stairwell. later on david and i made out. and that is how i got here, i guess.
things are better now, actually.
i have been reading the works of pablo neruda lately and today i stumbled a poem i liked a lot when i was in high school. reading translations of poetry written in a language you don’t understand is kind of weird, but neruda translates well.
Naked
Naked, you are simple as a hand,
smooth, earthy, small. . . transparent, round.
You have moon lines and apple paths;
Naked, you are slender as the wheat.
Naked, Cuban blue midnight is your color,
Naked, I trace the stars and vines in your hair;
Naked, you are spacious and yellow
As a summer’s wholeness in a golden church.
Naked, you are tiny as your fingernail;
Subtle and curved in the rose-colored dawn
And you withdraw to the underground world
As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores:
your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again.
***
later, when i was in college, jonathan told me he aspired to be a japanese poet… or something like that. he read a lot of translated japanese poetry and i made fun of him. next week i will be in new york and i am looking forward to doing that thing we do whenever i come to visit. wandering around lower manhattan, in some kind of parallel universe.
sometimes it seems like all of my elementary schoolmates are either engaged, getting married, having a kid, or writing for vanity fair. meanwhile it is now 8 a.m. and i am still wearing my waitressing apron despite being in a public place, you know, as a customer.
and i mean, seriously, what the fuck?
john opened the coffee shop this a.m. and i came by to say hello and steal the internet.
which reminds me that i wanted to say:
dear anonymous internet public,
i am curious who keeps googling me and reaching this blog.
please comment, or maybe just bookmark me so i can’t tell that you are stalking me all of the time.
your friend?
cat
