Rant and Ramble

based on all the available evidence, i've determined that staunch feminism can't beat biology. she was right. or he was. regardless, i magically transform from a relatively self-assured and self-possessed woman to a pathetic pile of weeping hysteria almost precicely every twenty-eight days, when i swtich from blue to green pills.

how annoying is that?

sometimes i wake exhausted, all my energy drained by the ferocity of my dreams. they take rough switchback trails, premeditate, foreshadow, make strange self-referential symbolisms. steeped in fullsaturation, all the senses engaged. i taste, smell, breathe, feel weight and darkness, all the colors, all the emotions, everything. the alarm startles me, most mornings, a crashing of reality like borges' sorcerer in the fire.

i don't remember them, mostly.
no. that isn't true. if i write them down, even the merest sketch of a plotline, i will remember them for years. if i speak them outloud, flickered images will haunt me for days. sometimes, they leap fullfledged into my mind in the middle of the day, stark, brilliant detail that shatters the complacency of lunch or the sunset.

i try not to remember. i make deliberate efforts to forget them, to erase the terrible beauty of these other lives that threaten to reduce my waking moments to only a necessary evil, a time in between to rest.

for those of you who missed the state of the union address, here's a summary. go on, take a look. you'll be glad you did. jason and nika, i think you two will particularly enjoy.

whadya think?

windchill. zero degrees. fahrenheit. bike ride.

if only i could drink tea and take a shower at the same time. in my uggs. then i might be warm again.

i always resonate a moment of deep, hollow silence when you leave. i know you can't help it, and i don't want it either. i have a strange crawling at the base of my spine, an almostanger that isn't your fault, that finds its root in something i don't have words to understand. it makes me pull my shoulders tight and turn my head. i don't want to take my shoes off tonight, needing the warmth of stasis and the comfort that comes with holding very still. i don't know where to run anymore, and i don't know why my night just collapsed under the weight of absolutely nothing at all.

the snow looks like glitter, or the finest sand under the rarest sun. a miracle, on a day of joy.
i love you.

this space might quickly become the blog-of-oh-my-god as i struggle to figure out how to shift gears from asking "What do I do next?" to making strides toward answering "To what can I devote my life?".
[very excellent article via electronic tea]

i didn't want to be late for ballet again, but i did want to refill my water bottle before i left. as i flurried into the kitchen, the strap on my bookbag caught the edge of a tray that i've been meaning to move for weeks. with a suitably alarming crash, about two dozen knives flew off the shelf, each of them miraculously missing my thighs, calves and feet. i spent a moment thanking the gods, in whose existence my belief had suddenly been revived, before filling my bottle and replacing the knives, in their tray, on the shelf.

ballet went well.

so i walk like i'm on a mission
cuz that's the way i groove
i got more and more to do
i got less and less to prove
it took me too long to realize
that i don't take good pictures
cuz i have the kind of beauty
that moves

-ani

today, tam and i fixed the heating duct in our kitchen. perhaps not permanently, and perhaps not professionally... but we did it, ourselves, and have a perceptibly warmer kitchen as a result.

but with winter approaching, closely followed by night / i want to change my life in the last breaths of the dying light -ashley brewer

i walked home with my keys sandwiched between my blackgloved knuckles, lending a probably false severity to fists which have never really known how to fight. the streetlights seemed to crystallize the already frozen air, turning my shadow into a thin plane of fragile darkness. the lurid glow of the traffic light snapped suddenly to sharp green; headlights slapped the sidewalk, shivered up my back and ran a long crack through the night.

if course, a cloud really only has a silver lining when the sun is about to come out from behind it anyway.
otherwise, it's just a cloud.

i always forget when it's been a while - but i'm generally happier when i'm doing something physically exerting on a regular basis. sex doesn't count because it isn't about the movement of muscles and blood and weight and breath the way that swimming, and yoga, and now ballet can be. i forget that i like being in my body, that i enjoy time devoted to nothing but the exploration of how i fit into my skin.

however, i also forget how hungry i always get as a result.

he asks me what i'm doing in the moment between when he sings a note and when i attempt it. "trying to figure out what color it is," i tell him. but that's not quite it - i'm trying to find the space it fills inside me, trying to discern the shape of the vacuum when the silence begins.

but my emotions come in colors, sometimes, pink and black and sharp orange. i hear music in colors like that, different in some fundamental way from color as a reflection of light. like dream colors, they have resonance and depth and fullness. they have dimension aside from sight and simple sound.

"i look down towards his feet; but that's a fable"

indeed - you want to call him inhuman, but his humanity more than anything becomes iago's most chilling aspect. the very deliberateness with which he systematically destroys life after life - with no apparent gain for himself - begs to be named inhuman, impossible. the soul of the reader wants to deny iago, remove him from the realm of empathy, but though certainly he suffers from madness, and hubris, he remains human. we understand his pain, his jealousy, even his madness, just enough to know that such cruelty can exist. iago brings to flesh all the deep, throbbing, denied angers of humanity - the thoughts we barely whisper to ourselves when we feel slighted, or abused, or afraid. he is the absoulte villian because he represents everything we fear in ourselves.

things i have absolutely, positively, utterly no interest in ever experiencing, whatsoever; number one: chainmail bra. [courtesy opi8.com]

She stepped off the ledge, just after midnight, and dove smoothly into the pool, which swallowed her cleanly and whole. Below the surface, the water felt cold and clear and very heavy - for a moment, she forgot that she could breathe. But soon she remembered whatever magic or science made her aquatic, and began to swim. Slow, steady pulses of muscles, moving her forward, towards the vortex that led to the entrance of the pipes.

Here, great machines pumped the water into wide cement piping, leading all through the massive building she had to breach. Holding her breath out of instinct rather than need, she took a final stroke and allowed herself to be pulled into the pipes, spinning with the force of the sudden tide.

Water swept through with terrible speed, ripping around curves and frothing against the sides. The width of the pipe allowed her to turn easily, so that her feet now went first. She held herself straight and pliable, and slid through the many twisting corners. The water exerted massive pressure, and she tried to keep herself near the top, for fear of being crushed beneath it. Her eardrums screamed and her lungs felt as though they would burst.

Suddenly, the mad pace of the water lessened. The pipe branched off in several directions; she stayed with the main tunnel still, floating now along the top of a swift stream. Soon, it slowed further as more smaller pipes funnelled off the force of the water. Finally, with the water level now low and placid, she found that the pipe became a half-pipe, leaving the a wide semicircle open for a few feet before the line ended abruptly at a grate. Beyond this grate, covered in slimy mold and debris, the water became a tame waterfall in the middle of a well-tended hothouse garden.

In the darkness, she could hear scuffling and low voices. Filtered moonlight showed the silhouette of two men, one pulling the other roughly behind him. She peered through the grate, watching as they mounted the spiral staircase out of the garden. When the engine of a jeep roared to life, she vaulted quickly over the side of the pipe, falling through the branches of trees and ferns before landing more heavily than she would have liked. Through the glass of the greenhouse, she could see the lights of the jeep slow and stop. She held herself very still, acutely aware of the moonlight reflecting off her skin. She closed her eyes.

...

at which point i woke up. any ideas for an ending?

alright, so i haven't taken math in about two years. i haven't ever taken physics, though my AP chem class was quite exhaustive and covered alot of what a phsyics class would. the first fifteen minutes of my astrophsyics class (requiring a "basic" knoweldge of both calculus and physics) completely, totally, and absolutely overwhelmed me.

if you'll excuse me, i'm going to go whimper over my calculus book for a while.

"the cold seeps through / every crack i put my hand up to" - dar

i dreamt of fire last night, deep fire curdling beneath me, filling me with smoke and flame. i dreamt passion and fear, and woke to cold sunlight and a wide, cold bed.

so, imagine this. a little after four PM on an LA freeway, new year's eve. a little silver car contains four reasonably attractive girls. one is knitting, one crochets, and all sing loudly to alanis morissette. stuck in the windows of the car, an array of monster puppets dance, carefully crayoned paper glued to popcicle sticks. a relatively similar scene plays itself out in the cab of a grey truck in front of them, two more girls with puppets and curly hair.

later, at the parties, they will file in as a veritable stream of lipstick, feather boas, and strappy tanktops, laughing at the reactions they cause. but for now, they make their scarves and talk about childhood and sing.