it's definitely too late for me to be awake.

happy birthday, jesse! and michelle pfieffer!

i made more soap tonight. went over to katie's to watch the simpsons and six feet under. we also watched this scareumentary on super HBO that made me incredibly grossed out about ecstasy. there was this tweaker 40 year old dad with hair like eminem. he was rolling with his thirteen year old, fifteen year old and eighteen year old. they were all about the e-cessories, like pacifiers and glowsticks and candy jewelry and the like. there is nothing scarier than a 40 year old man sporting an upside down visor, let me tell you.

six feet under is the best show ever. i identify so much with claire and brenda. d says i remind him of claire. because i'm smart and have an answer for everything. i'm glad he sees the claire side of me more than the brenda side. claire may be into psychopaths, but brenda is a self-destructive person who undermines her own happiness. i'd rather be claire than brenda, as much as i love both of them. it's just hard for me to imagine brenda ending up happy, as much as i want her to. like, when i hear her say things like "yeah, today, i jerked off a client, but it's okay because i got like twenty pages out of it" i cringe. because i've totally justified things like that, too.

i'm living day-by-day now. this is a good thing. i'm practicing not fearing the worst and living in fear in general. things could always sneak up on me, at any moment. good or bad. i just have to remind myself of the possibility of good along with the bad.

*** Message (#31) from Silvertone at 18:58 ***
>it's a hard road, girl, but you're asking the right questions, which puts you
>ahead of the game. most folks never even /get/ to the point that you're at in
>their entire lives. they wander blithely on, hapless.

Now this particular girl
During a ceremonious April walk
With her latest suitor
Found herself, of a sudden, intolerably struck
By the birds' irregular babel
And the leaves' litter.
By this tumult afflicted, she
Observed her lover's gestures unbalance the air,
His gait stray uneven
Through a rank wilderness of fern and flower.
She judged petals in disarray,
The whole season, sloven.

How she longed for winter then!--
Scrupulously austere in its order
Of white and black
Ice and rock, each sentiment within border,
And heart's frosty discipline
Exact as a snowflake.

But here--a burgeoning
Unruly enough to pitch her five queenly wits
Into vulgar motley--
A treason not to be borne. Let idiots
Reel giddy in bedlam spring:
She withdrew neatly.

And round her house she set
Such a barricade of barb and check
Against mutinous weather
As no mere insurgent man could hope to break
With curse, fist, threat
Or love, either.

SYLVIA PLATH. THE SPINSTER.

i am so screwed.

"Fried, oven-baked and deep-fried potato and cereal products may contain high levels of acrylamide," the administration said.
The Environmental Protection Agency classifies acrylamide, a colorless, crystalline solid, as a medium hazard probable human carcinogen.

According to the International Agency for Research on Cancer, acrylamide induces gene mutations and has been found in animal tests to cause benign and malignant stomach tumors. It is also known to cause damage to the central and peripheral nervous system.

Findings unveiled at a news conference called by the food administration showed that an ordinary bag of potato chips may contain up to 500 times more of the substance than the top level allowed in drinking water by the World Health Organization.

this partially explains the higher risk of cancer in the poor. poor people = poor food. ever wonder why fast food is so cheap?

okay, i been freaking out about my health lately but this makes me freak out, think i have cancer already. the truth is, i NEED to be healthier. i could be one of those people who die at twenty-seven from some random cancer, based on my gluttonous diet. i think like an intelligent person but i don't eat like one. that doesn't make any sense. the truth is, i just don't plan ahead when it comes to my body. i need to take better care of it. even if it is just a hull.

seriously, i could be hot. i could be dangerous.

and i'm going to go shoe shopping ASAP. but in the meantime i'm going to wear my broken-down vans and take a nice leisurely stroll through my neighborhood after dinner, i think. i don't walk enough. i am basically sedentary. i need to remind myself of the concept of lifestyle change by actually living differently.

in other news, i made my first-ever batch of homemade soap on sunday. they turned out pretty well. i wasn't doing anything complicated, just glycerin + loose herbs + oils + color + plastic doll arms (in one of the soaps, anyway). but it was still fun. and they came out really nicely.

go me.

lately i have been doing a lot of writing and thinking, thinking and writing. just not here. i think i'm in a chrysalis phase, what jazz musicians call "woodshedding." hermitting myself off. closed for repairs.

enter at your own risk.

seriously. change is not easy for me. oh, of course, superficial changes are. it's easy for me to bite my scathing tongue and glue on the permagrin, to wear the airs in which i no longer believe. but the real changes, the ones that require true suffering as a subset of true growth -- those are the ones with which i'm not so good.*

and what i resent most right now, what leaves me most vulnerable -- for my skin is raw, it is healing, (has it not always been raw, aren't you done healing already?), is those who don't see how hard this is for me. i don't need your approval. i don't need you to say you notice a thing. i just need you to work with me, here. not to play those same old mindgames where i am the villain and you are the beleaguered saint. i am sick of it, from either side. i don't want to be the villain anymore. i'm even over wanting to be the saint. i don't want to feel like sarah michelle gellar in cruel intentions anymore and i sure as hell don't want to be reese witherspoon.**

a little less noble, a little less cruel.

Come, come, whoever you are. Wonderer, worshipper, lover of leaving.
It doesn't matter.
Ours is not a caravan of despair.
Come, even if you have broken your vow
a thousand times
Come, yet again, come, come.
your daily rumi

*sometimes i irritate myself by say, deciding that leaving a little participle dangling at the edge of my sentence is unacceptable, and i will construct the sentence in a much more tedious and ugly way to avoid doing so. then i will do it again, five seconds later, dangle a participle that is, and not give a shite.

**what the fuck kind of name is witherspoon, thanks? nothing against reese -- note i'm not even bringing up the reese issue here -- she's great and all, but were her ancestors spoonmakers who were fond of peanut butter cups and made generally corrupt and altogether faulty spoons?

Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You say,
I make you feel dizzy.
Of a little headache then,
why do you worry?

You say, I am your antelope.
Of seeing a lion here and there
why do you worry?

Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You say, I am your moon-faced beauty.
Of the cycles of the moon and
passing of the years,
why do you worry?

You say, I am your source of passion,
I excite you.
Of playing into the Devils hand,
why do you worry?

Oh soul,
you worry too much.
Look at yourself,
what you have become.
You are now a field of sugar canes,
why show that sour face to me?

You have tamed the
winged horse of Love.
Of a death of a donkey,
why do you worry?

You say that I keep you warm inside.
Then why this cold sigh?

You have gone to the roof of heavens.
Of this world of dust, why do you worry?

Oh soul,
you worry too much.
Since you met me,
you have become a master singer,
and are now a skilled wrangler,
you can untangle any knot.
Of life's little leash
why do you worry?

Your arms are heavy
with treasures of all kinds.
About poverty,
why do you worry?

You are Joseph,
beautiful, strong,
steadfast in your belief,
all of Egypt has become drunk
because of you.
Of those who are blind to your beauty,
and deaf to your songs,
why do you worry?

Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You say that your housemate is the
Heart of Love,
she is your best friend.
You say that you are the heat of
the oven of every Lover.

You say that you are the servant of
Ali's magical sword, Zolfaghar.
Of any little dagger
why do you still worry?

Oh soul,
you worry too much.
You have seen your own strength.
You have seen your own beauty.
You have seen your golden wings.
Of anything less,
why do you worry?

You are in truth
the soul, of the soul, of the soul.
You are the security,
the shelter of the spirit of Lovers.
Oh the sultan of sultans,
of any other king,
why do you worry?

Be silent, like a fish,
and go into that pleasant sea.
You are in deep waters now,
of life's blazing fire.
Why do you worry?
(rumi)

Be with those who help your being.
Don’t sit with indifferent people, whose breath
comes cold out of their mouths.
Not these visible forms, your work is deeper.

A chunk of dirt thrown in the air breaks to pieces.
If you don’t try to fly,
and so break yourself apart,
you will be broken open by death,
when it’s too late for all you could become.

Leaves get yellow. The tree puts out fresh roots
and makes them green.
Why are you so content with a love that turns you yellow?

Ode 2865 Trans. Coleman Barks

these days i can't get enough of rumi.

random thing i have to mention before i forget:

this kid i know, josh, is featured in a benetton ad this month. in the online version, he's fifth from the left, the asian kid with waist-long dreadies wearing yellow pants. in the print version, which i randomly discovered much to my surprise last night whilst thumbing through an impulse marie claire magazine, he's fourth from the left, they cut out some chick on the end.

it's funny because i've literally referred to this kid as "gaultier beautiful" a million times to his face. in fact, i still think he should go gaultier (where the hell is jean-paul these days, anyway? i feel like he disappeared after masterminding the fabulous raggedy futuredoll costumes for the fifth element) but the truth is, he's way more of a benetton (read: astringent pretty party boy) personality. but i always look for the best in people, so i believe there's a beautiful freak just dying to be unleashed by the fashion stylings of gaultier.

lunchtime again.

today my boss asked me to babysit his kids. tonight (i'm already hanging out with miss kasey cullen, sister of tara, our harper lee) and saturday. and i actually said "i'm sorry, my saturdays are too important." but then i submitted an ad to my old high school and called around other leads to solicit perky, drug-free 16 to 18 year olds.

i like my boss' kids, too. i like kids in general. and it probably wouldn't be such a bad thing, hanging out with them on the occasional saturday night. but i do have a twelve-year-old cousin who is a little supersass ivana bitch who worships me and i shamefully neglect. i cannot take on the role of caretaker in this situation. it's one thing to invite my cousin to the movies on my whim, it's another thing to be responsible for another's children at some predestined, earlier date. i'm too much of a free spirit to have the temperament for that at this current stage of my life.

i cannot underscore how cool elizabeth, the aforementioned cousin is. she looks like lucie arnaz, child of desi and lucille ball. my aunt eileen is a 5'2" firecracker of a redheaded irish business-yuppie ex-hippie type, a total woman of the world with a quick tongue and wise wit, and my uncle ed is a first-generation american businessman of south american descent. they are totally in that strata of society which the clinton administration was all about, they were even at his inaugural ball.

elizabeth is a product of a life of privilege and few worries. she is entirely self-motivated and, i daresay, self-possessed. but this is not a bad thing. it is the only thing. she's an actress, and i swear to god, she sang "my funny valentine" at my cousin richie's wedding last september in front of three hundred swanksters at the manor without flinching, only the most coy, conjured humility. she knows she's a star, and she so is. this is what she sees in me, as different as we are. elizabeth is more refined, but she loves my grungy, bohemian, ancient tastes. she reminds me of who i am, and encourages me to keep it because i see her and i never want her to lose that fierce belief which is really a kind of knowing, i never want her to be unsure that she is anything but amazing, i want her to know she is loved and a part of something.

did i mention she's taller than me? neither of her parents is over 5'8", and this child is pretty much already that height. and she has hair that is like, a cross between raquel welch in the late sixties and julia roberts, except dark brown.

i think i want to take elizabeth to the city for the day this weekend. to the museum or something. a day in central park. or to newark for the cherry blossom festival. hmm.

lunchgirl out.

sometimes i feel like i know too many people. people who can slip in the side doors of my consciousness, fuck things up in the corners. whisper nasty things among themselves and give me dirty looks. people who hang at the perimeter of my life and make me feel like i'm trespassing within the perimeter of theirs.

i always felt excluded as a kid, who didn't? yet i am inclined to say my sense of detachment, or rather, the world's detachment from me, was especially lonely. who wouldn't? there is something in me that is a remnant of this childhood, attuned to the exact frequency of resentment, derision, disgust. it's a cold-blooded power that children possess, the way they can turn on you when you displease them. it's like being stalked as prey. children are cannibals. they eat one another's tears. draw them out like honey.

it's important to me to have real friends in this world. people i can cry on, be truly weak in front of, human beings who love me and encourage me that i'm still something, in spite of my various trespasses and misgivings, in spite of the fact that my words are better than my spirit and that actually sometimes my words are more bitter than my spirit, already fictionalized, as i have a tendency to inflict on my fellow human beings -- to characterize them, to pixellate them, to separate them from what is to serve my leisurely literary whims.

also, i hate snide thirty year olds who have the nerve to include me in the britney generation. hello, you john hughes castoffs, you schwag post-seventies white-pant wearing fuckers, i am the NKOTB/Nirvana generation, which is better than your faux-cool, coked-up, reagan year fogey hairspray wearing asses.

that is all for now.

oh, and confidential to mystique in manhattan:

i scored 16/16 on the shemale quiz! ha ha!

i had a great time this weekend visiting my brooklyn kids. we totally tried to do the hip open mic thing, but were completely disappointed right away, even if the guy was wearing plastic netting around his arm. it's just that me and bess used to throw these things ourselves and it just wasn't as high-quality, thanks. i mean, where is our old friend Penguin Classic (drunkenly) reading (slurring) aloud from bukowski? where is natalie reading her bad poetry? where is ian playing the banjo?

and for the record, you KNOW i would have been ALL OVER the underground sex club, thanks!!!!!

i want to write more but have ten minutes o' my lunch break left. i love my job, how fast it goes, how quickly it makes my day and life fly by, but i hate that i fuck up sometimes. i mean, i do a lot of shit in the office and i know i'm bound to screw up something or other but it still irks me. i mean, i'm terrified on a daily basis of getting fired, even though my boss and everyone else seem to really like me, i don't know if they're aware of quite a true genius i am when i screw up the billing and fax the wrong contract to the wrong client. and i really like working there. i couldn't have a more perfect in-between* job.

i'm going to focus on getting ALL my shit together by the time we move into the third floor (cathedral ceilings!) of a victorian house (yay, maybe i'll even start wearing corsets to work!) and

working out
getting my eyebrows plucked
buying more "need-to-know-basis" outfits

confidential to martha in manhattan -- i reached (surpassed!) my breaking point. it's time to hit the gym.

*in between Doing Nothing and Doing Something Meaningful Avec Ma Vie, that is.

am i a Citizen now, since i have a job and a salary and everything? i'm strictly full-time now. this is a Good Thing. my job helps the days go faster, makes me feel busy and responsible and relevant. i can't believe i've been here for a month already, it feels like so much less.

let me tell you why my friends are amazing.

yesterday was my friend hannah's 27th birthday. hannah is english and has had a little trouble with her status. meaning, she can't go home. our friend stacy had a brilliant idea back in january -- to fly hannah's best friend from england, sarah, over for her birthday.

sarah and hannah came to america at the same time, both as nannies. sarah left after two years, and hannah hasn't seen her in three years.

ten or so of us pitched in. i don't know how we managed to lie for so long, since we're all terrible at keeping secrets, especially from one another. especially from hannah, who is omnipotent.

so diego called me at 10:30 saturday morning. we went grocery shopping and spent all day cooking for the party that night. we did so much. a lovely domestic adventure.

diego made five pizzas from scratch. i went to a pizza place where some of our friends work to pick up boxes. that was v. convenient.

i made mashed potatoes with irish cheddar and peppercorn, brown gravy, green beans with almonds, corn, chocolate chip cookies with caramel, and little brown n serve sausages.* stacy made two delicious mini meatloafs. she made cookies and brownies and two pudding pies. mark made a huge plate o' baked ziti. katie made pasta salad. everyone else brought loads and loads of high quality booze.

it was great. i couldn't believe how delicious everything was, how great of a party it turned out to be. we were very sneaky. mark and stacy went to pick up sarah at the airport while katie dragged hannah around town and kept her out of the house. finally when she came home we all surprised her, and then surprised her more still by hiding sarah in alex's room.

she screamed, cried, etc. it was awesome.

and i had an excellent time at the party. it felt so good. i remember looking around and thinking "wow, i am so lucky to be a part of this group of people."

and then i passed out on the couch.

i woke up feeling v. uncomfortable. i went into hannah's room, where the foam bed was on the floor, unused. so i decided to sleep in it. sarah and hannah were in her bed, and diego was on the floor next to me.

i started to pass out and then...

i hear hannah whispering to sarah that she can't believe i came in her room. because i snore and that pisses her off. okay, i do snore. but i wasn't snoring right then or anything.

then hannah said that i must have come into her room because diego was in there and i "didn't take the breakup well." then she started saying how jealous i can get about diego, how one time he wanted to paint her topless and i got so jealous.

um, what?

i know she was drunk, but it still upset me. and i just lay there, pretending to be asleep, wondering what else she had never told me.

*hannah likes to cut these up and put these in her mashed potatoes, thanks.

i had a great weekend and i should probably be talking about that. but instead i'm going to tell you that right now a lot of my [local] friends are starting to feel like enemies. i mean, i fell asleep the other night to one of them talking shit about me.

and people keep asking diego and i if we are related. this freaks me out.

i often wonder if i am a generous enough person, or if i am one of those bean-counting, toilet-paper rationing penny-pinchers. it's easy for me to feel taken advantage of, even if it is all my fault. so i have to wonder. i don't want to keep track of these things -- who has given me what, goods and services that have been exchanged -- but i'm starting to, because otherwise i will be taken advantage of, and i'll be passive-aggressively bitter about the fact.

example:

a friend of mine, k., recently quit smoking cigarettes, but not anything else, if you catch my drift. when we hang out, it is the custom of my pals to smoke spliffs. spliffs = tobacco + green delights. we have an english friend that got us into the habit, and so that's that. there is no other puffing device available, so that's all there is, unless we smoked only green delights, which would not be efficient.

so anyway, last night i rolled two of these things, which were shared among myself and two others. k. interrupted me whilst i was rolling the first to ask me if she could have a little for her one-hitter. see, now that she's not smoking cigarettes, she carries around a one-hitter that looks like a cigarette.

so i said yes, and after i was done i filled her up. it really wasn't much, but enough for a bong hit. i wondered why she didn't bring one of her many other sharing and non-tobacco requiring devices. but, whatever, i thought, and that was that.

a bit later it was time to share again, and i noticed that after this, there was barely enough for one more spliff. hmm. i had wanted to make this last until saturday morning. she won't ask again, i thought to myself, or figured she might ask one of my other friends, or something. but again, she asks me and i find myself feeling irritated -- because of a choice she made, i'm going to have to set aside a special supply for her, account for that every time i share?

i hate feeling used. and i hate feeling like i'm being greedy, especially over something like pot. but, truly, my friends and i are incredibly generous with one another. this friend has been generous with me, too, in the past, and vice versa.

HOWEVER. this time i was like "look, i barely have any left and i'm sorry, but i can't do that." she pouted and made a face like she couldn't believe it, and no one else offered to hook her up. i mean, it's just annoying. why assume that people are going to accomodate you, every time? why get insulted when they don't?

and i am keeping track. because i've gotten my share of no's from her, i've asked her for the same things she's asked from me and it's "oh, i need to save my $ / i don't have much..."

one time she asked me if she could roll something with my weed, and i told her i would do it. mainly because every time she rolls one, she smokes half of it before passing it on. then she got red in the face and said "well, this time you HAVE to pass it to me FIRST because last time i got the END of it and it SUCKED." the rest of us just sat there in shock and laughed at her.

look, what i'm saying is this: i've been a beggar a million times and so i know that you can't be a beggar AND a chooser. i also know to be grateful for what i get and to accept yes and no graciously. but what pisses me off the most is that SHE has set her priorities so that SHE can't afford to spend any of her precious money on the stuff she loves so much, she just expects the rest of us to.

THAT'S what makes me so mad. the fact that she's allowed to make choices that ensure she has everything in order -- that her bills are paid, that she saves enough money to do the things she wants to do. and frankly, that's what i'm trying to do. and if she or anybody else doesn't like it, they can fuck off.

see how little and dumb this whole thing is? still, though, it comes up in a million ways, and i am learning how to say no without feeling like a stingy bitch. how to take care of myself without feeling guilty about it, to do what everyone else does without blinking an eye.

how bored do most people get at work? i mean, how normally bored does one get in the average day? or are you mostly too busy to be bored?

i can honestly say i am generally busy here. but my boss is in florida and i am alone in the office, listening to k-rock* and feeling guilty because i don't generally (read=am not really supposed to) use the internet here.

or i'm supposed to use it for "research" purposes.

by the way, my new style of dressing consists of only black, white, and grey clothes. that's my workwear, anyway. it's called the "need-to-know basis" style of dressing. it works. yesterday i was wearing basically pajama/yoga pants that were grey in color with a black v-neck buttondown. v. simple. and then a smidge of neutral, brick-red lipstick. so there you go.

the funniest thing was when my boss told me i looked "dressed up." HA! that's the best thing about "need-to-know-basis" workwear. it doesn't say too much. and it's easy to make pajama/yoga pants look fancy if you're simply dressed and wearing the right basic colors and only a smidge of makeup. um, yeah!

i can't wait to get my eyebrows plucked.

*i used to listen to the last hour of howard stern every morning in my office in new york. this morning it was a rerun of an ancient interview with lisa kudrow, but howard is always a good start to my day.

This morning I had to meet our new landlords in Queens at 9 AM to give our rent check for April. They are so awesome and completely natural (the exact opposite of me).

= why i love lockwood.