i'm going to blame it on bureaucracy.
but, the world works out with the help of friends.


back home, with five voracious mouths to feed, our cupboards were always stockpiled with jumbo-sized foodstuffs.
when we bought spaghetti, it tended to be enough spaghetti to feed a small army - namely, our household. so i'm somewhat unfamilliar with the amount of spaghetti a relatively small box will produce.

now, granted, i suppose i could have read the directions to determine how many servings were supposed to be derived from this relatively small box.
i did not, however, do that.

it turns out that one relatively small box makes spaghetti enough to quite literally fill a meduim-sized pot, and thence to quite overwhelmingly pile atop two suddenly far-too-small plates.
it turns out also that two people, when faced with the challenge of such laden dishes, will, in fact, rise to the occasion and eat a frankly astounding amount of spaghetti.
and, when they fail two-thirds of the way through, a trusty roommate may occasionally come to the rescue and do her share, so that the entirety of that relatively small box is consumed.

that, and a pint of ben and jerry's.
:: 23:09 (speak)

...

based on careful scientific observation, i conclude that there exists a direct causal relationship between the infusion of a cup of coffee into the human bloodstream and a resulting thirty to eighty percent increase in quality of life.
:: 12:05 (speak)

...

evidently, i'd be worth exactly $1,910,516.00 on the open human market.
who knew?
:: 21:09 (speak)

...

blood-drawing needles leave crescent-shaped wounds.
crackleplastic covering the not-soft mattress which holds me aloft, sacrificial gazelle beneath buzzing flourescent lights. impartial falsecheerful nurse who disregards my assertions that i've bled this way before.

a little sting, honey, and that's all.

i watch the needle. i always watch the needle; i think it's a stickypainproving akin to the way i walk across subway grates despitebecauseof my residual fear that they will collapse beneath me. i watch the needle nestle beneath my skin, licking into my shy veins, slaking a monotonous vampiric thirst.
then a quiet stomachclench before the only part of the process which truly twinges a psychological dischord:
there is a small tube attached to the needle, which they tape down across your wrist, fleshy side up resting precariously on the edge of the pallet and leading to fist, prepared to squeeze intermittantly on the small plastic cylinder provided for that purpose. a heartbeat after the needle comes to rest inside your vein, the first crimson swishes through that tube. across your wrist, and thence to the bag which will hold, at end, a pint of lifeblood.
across your wrist, where you can feel the warmth of that life leaving you, rushing from the relative containment of skin and flesh where it belongs, where it belongs, and becoming an anonymous number to be entered at the tone.

you saved three lives today.

and hold that tight to my chest, pull it into my undeluged heart and use it in place of the pint of me left sloshing about in that strange plastic bag and four test tubes.
:: 00:24 (speak)

...

in the morning, i forget who i am.
the night bulges with dreams so vivid and absolute that waking brings a moment of inchoate awareness, a moment in which i am neither my dreaming nor my waking self. a moment that slips by, unnoticed or immediately disregarded and thrown to the winds of necessity. classes, sunlight, worry.

sleep is dynamic rather than static. somewhere between a few and a dozen times a night, i'm pulled out of sleep to move, shift, roll over. by morning, the comforter is shoved against the wall or flung halfway across the room, pillows are found under the bed or at my feet, and it takes that disoriented moment to find myself.

today slid open with the press of solidity against me. early morning light slanting through newly-cleaned windows and casting ivyshadows on our legs. my first awareness of the day is skin.
my first expression of the day is smile.

stretching calves and toes, i find the impossible softness of his feet, and, murmuring wordless apologies for waking so early, curl myself back against him.
in the haze of incoherent morningness, happiness filters through me, soft and pink and golden, until all my words and all my world dissolve into the depth of the mattress, the scent of skin, the sound of breath.

he sighs, sleepdrenched, and pulls me closer.
:: 23:35 (speak)

...

mixing paint like meditation.

the dignity of each color spinning into the others, learning which are partnerships and which are rivals. red and orange are old, careless friends. red and green are abusive lovers; put side by side the energy sings between them, but truly together they scream and flail and lose themselves, and eventually just stare at each other until each turns to a sad, quiet grey. white tries to mediate and but always fails, thinks too much, pulls the energy from everything it touches.

mix red and violet, find an angrybruised hue. add red, and the blood comes to the surface. add more violet, and the healing begins anew... but the color is different. the moment is passed, and that particular shade will never exist again.

i think the reason i'm a design student is that i don't feel like i'm making this up.
:: 18:42 (speak)

...

"and it looks like the buildings are burning but it's just the sun" -ani
:: 17:32 (speak)

...

lease faxed to parents.
phone call to grandmother.
birthday card for roommate, bought way in advance.
going to museum, as per assignment.
took my multivitamin.
giving blood tomorrow.

yes, i am a good person.
:: 12:28 (speak)

...

"and i asked this God a question and by way of firm reply He said - i'm not the kind you have to wind up on sundays" - Jethro Tull

it is just me, or is the frequency of my blogging a direct ratio to the amount of homework i should be doing?
:: 21:18 (speak)

...

i don't trust elevators.

especially the ones that grind their way slowly, creaking mournfully the whole way up, then pause dramatically - long enough that you start calculating the how much longer the oxygen will last - before jolting down half a foot and reluctantly stuttering open the doors.

today, one of those was pried halfway open by a sweating repairman who grunted against some mechanism while the elevator floor hovered a few feet up the shaft and the dark abyss of the lower floors gaped around his frame.

today, i think i'll take the stairs.
:: 18:14 (speak)

...

"you've never been to the moon/but don't you want to go?" -melissa etheridge

i lied.
i have been writing. i've just not been inundated with words... i've been writing, but i haven't had the burning, driving need to write. i think that's the difference, that's what seems so strange to me.

it's all cycles, it's all rhythm.
we wake and sleep, step and sing, even love in rhythms. there are days when i am constantly groping for something to write on, when every margin i can reach is filled with little scrawled phrases. words that hurl themselves against the smooth inside of my skull until i find some way to give them life. thusly made are the handful of stories which i begat but could not bring to bloom, which have a few lines, a few pages written quickly and perfectly and which have no ending. in the mires of my computer are files which consist of maybe six words, maybe a dozen, thrown onto the keyboard for fear of some violent reaction if left inside my mind for a moment more.

she clings to freedom like an angel to her wings
and she screams like a demon when she sings

and then there are days when no words come. when i feel abandoned and desolate and alone.
odd that such little things could have so much sway over my life, but it's a thing i've always known.

and there are those stretches of time when i write occasionally and quietly, neither burning nor broken.
i've always been so strange about moderation.
:: 17:42 (speak)

...

sunlight. sunlight and little fingers of grass that push against my skin.
roll over, musclemovement.
sweetwhite marble, stretch, shade.
the quickblink of the camera.
hair in eyes.
sunlight, sunlight against every surface of me.
spin until i'm dizzy, laughter, the camera blinks again, again.
dappled sunshade treebranch.
and little grass fingers, closedeyes, sunshine smile.

72 frames in forty minutes.
aahh...
:: 15:36 (speak)

...