i am feeling hella gross today. i have zits all over my jawline, chin, and hairline, and i stinky. the latter can be remedied, of course, but not so much the former.

anyway i am working tomorrow and that basically sucks. at least i will be visiting tara in brooklyn and going to see the new deal at the bowery ballroom.

fucking post below got fucked up. fuck.

i scored 9/10 on this quiz. i can't believe i got one wrong! :(

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 22)

Are you grieving the loss of the original woman you once were, who you may have sacrificed to goals you did not really want, or were forced to give up in order to survive in the world? The fact that you can feel at all is evidence that she is still alive within you, for she is the part of you who feels. Yet for her to find full expression in your life, you must not be afraid to become her entirely, and surrender to her necessities and desires. This holds true particularly among your friends, who are the people who often limit who we are the most. Her primal wound is really about judgment and the fear of judgment, and yet she is, in all truth, blameless. For the men: can you stand a real woman in your life? Can you give her the room and the freedom to BE?

correction: this is my new favorite horoscope, especially since it's blatantly written for a woman, specifically me.

i found out tonight that the gym near my house isn't that expensive. $35 for one month, $250 for six months. $400 if you pay for a year all at once, or $450 if you pay over the course of the year. i don't know why i thought it would be like thousands of dollars. i'm pretty sure that they have lame hours, they close

nyc bloggers should definitely get on that.

richie's entry about 9/11 made me cry. worse than the movie on HBO. *hugs to richie* i don't know what else to say, even. except keep wearing your sunglasses, and also *hugs* to k parker.

it's almost 11 o' clock. i went to sleep immediately upon getting home from work, at 6 or so. it's one of those nights where i'm feeling restless, though, on top of everything. none of my friends are around and i want to go out. i have a good reason, too -- i saw my crush in the village today and i have good reason to believe i might see him. in other words, what good is a day that i do not do a little bit of conscious stalking?

something i must bring to aimee's attention: i am in contact with renzo! in fact he is reading this message right now, cursing the day he met me (in the second grade, i think). he did a search for his name and this page was what came up. ha, ha. anyway renzo is one of the few people in the universe who, upon finding my page, did not question my health/sanity. he has known for a very long time that there is no hope for either and likes me just the same! more proof that catholic school makes a stronger and more real (albeit warped) individual out of you through guerillaesque methods of mental, physical, and emotional torture.

tara, i finally made an appointment avec adrienne. june 11th @ 6 pm! go me!

my hair smells like grapes and it is pretty but it is giving me a headache. damn those aussies and their smellylicious shampoo.

SCORPIO (Oct 23-Nov 21)

Week of May 30, 2002

Before I become a geezer, I hope to eradicate all my "isms." I've made stunning progress at purging the sexism, racism, classism, and looksism I absorbed while growing up. I've still got a way to go with my ageism, egotism, and capitalism. And then there's signism, as in showing favoritism towards certain signs of the zodiac. I've worked hard to be absolutely impartial, but lately I've received e-mails from readers complaining that I'm way too soft on Scorpios. One Capricorn said my messages to you resembled "mushy love letters." All I can say in my defense is that I get turned on by anyone who devotes ingenious courage to dismantling their dogmas. Your sexy efforts in this regard have more than earned my mushy love letters. Please continue.

this is like my favorite horoscope ever, thanks.

First he gave me
his heart. It was
red fruit containing
many seeds, the skin
leathery, unlikely.
I preferred
to starve, bearing
out my training.
Then he said Behold
how the world looks, minding
your mother. I
peered under his arm:
What had she done
with color & odor?
Whereupon he said Now there
is a woman who loves
with a vengeance, adding
Consider she is in her element:
the trees turning to her, whole
villages going under
although in hell
the bushes are still
burning with pomegranates.
At which
he cut one open & began
to suck. When he looked up at last
it was to say My dear
you are your own
woman, finally, but examine
the grief your mother
parades over our heads
remembering
that she is one to whom
these depths were not offered.

LOUISE GLUCK. POMEGRANATE.

this has to be quick, i am due back at the office in like .5 seconds --

i just saw my crush (mvm) in the village. he was outside of the deli where he works, across the street from the apartment in which he dwells. he was not at the bar last night, much to my chagrin. so i knew i would see him, he is always there, but it was exciting nonetheless. we had a little conversation. this is pretty much how it went.

he: "what's up, marie?"

she: "what's up, mvm?"

he: "nothing, really. just, you know, working."

she: *nods* "did you go out last night? i didn't see you."

he: "no, last night i stayed in. i did go to name of random bar omitted because they had free beer for this election thing next week. boring election-related discussion omitted but then i just went home."

she: "yeah, i saw your roommate there the other day whilst fetching beer."

he: *nods, clearly aware of said interaction*

she: "so did you watch the game last night?"

he: "yeah."

she: "the nets are playing tonight!"

he: *nods excitedly* "yeah, yeah."

she: *makes thinking face* "they're 2-2 now, right? and sacramento won last night, right?"

he: "that's right! you know your basketball." (note to self: crush seems impressed by the sports knowledge.)

she: "yeah, i guess. i was pretty much obsessed with basketball in high school, but now i only care about the playoffs, pretty much. i used to have this thing about scottie pippen."

he: *wrinkles nose* "oh no!"

she: "yeah. posters all over my room and everything."

he: "he plays for portland now."

she: "i thought he played for colorado?"

he: "no. portland." thanks.

she: "hm. well i have to go fetch midmorning vespers. take care."

(i don't actually say things like "vespers" in public)

he: "bye, marie. see you around."

okay, now my question is this -- is "see you around" not the most ominous phrase ever? is it not the blatant kiss of death? don't try to be nice, either, people. truly, we do see each other around constantly, so maybe it was innocent. but what if it was stated purposefully, as in him stating his desire to maintain the most casual of relations avec moi?

i am grateful for this silly bit of nothing to think about.

i want to write more poetry but none will come.

i am at work. i am not supposed to be on the computer. i am supposed to be packing the rest of the files in the "credenza," thanks, for our move next week.

but no one else is here, and i'm feeling intensely frustrated and lousy right now, so i'm not going to be a busy little bee. in fact, it is taking all of my energy right now not to leave the office.

this place is a sty. and if you know me, you know i don't use that term lightly, for i myself am an unrepentant slob. but i draw the line somewhere. my boss, however, does not. there's barely room to walk here, there are cups filled with old cigarette butts and you can't see his desk. which he refuses to let me clean, thanks.

i know this job is a good thing for me. it's the first 9 to 5 job (five-thirty, actually) i've ever been able to hold for longer than a little while. it helps my life move faster, i have money, i can pay my bills, etc. etc.

but still. i had to work monday, and now my boss wants me to work saturday morning to pack shit up. shit i've been trying to pack for a month but since this place is so fucking disgusting i can't tell what belongs in the garbage, what belongs in a box, what we need, what we don't. wasn't this supposed to be a four day workweek for like everyone in the universe? not only did i not have a four-day workweek, now i'm going to have a six-day work week. that is, if i come in. i don't care if it doesn't make me a "team player." everyone else who's a fucking "team player" makes a lot more money than i do.

and sometimes my boss treats me like i'm stupid, like i'm lazy, like i'm ineffectual. and none of these things are true. like most people, i don't respond well to abuse. it doesn't make me work better. on the contrary, it makes me sullen and embittered and shitty all around. i know he doesn't mean it, it's just the Way He Is, and there are times when i do do things wrong, and times when he's the best boss ever, but those times are few and far between.

anyway. the reason i'm boring you with this shit is because i have other things on my mind, other things i'm afraid to get into, for my own sake most of all. sometimes i am a Bad Person.

tomorrow i have to go back to here and buy:

a silver crate for organizing
silver candle plate
15 drawer small stuff organizer
aussie moist shampoo
aussie daily conditioner
frizz ease #5
ouchless hair ties
slant tweezer
berry face scrub
loreal vive facial moisturizer with spf
neutrogena body moisturizer
neutrogena body oil
lacy sleeved tank top thingy (black)
houseplant
sonia kashiuk lipstick in geisha
sonia kashiuk neutral pinks lip palette
sonia kashiuk nail polish in some red color
sally hansen chrome pink
reveal 40 light bulbs, 4-pack
venus shaver replacements

i think that's all the stuff i wanted to buy.
i should have been able to and couldn't.
i never spend this much on vanity shit but it was only like a hundred and fifty bucks or something but dammit.
tara says she's gonna tell the story.

i need to stop writing. now. i am due for a shower and then a memorial day gathering at chez cullen. despite constantly going to the happy place in my head where tara and her family reside whilst tolerating the company of other, more inferior beings: this inscrutable urge to purge myself before joining the company of actual friends, actual reality, actual existence.

a few hours with no more walking shadows. a few hours free of projected interference. of false bells dragging otherwise happy ships to crash against their harbors. in other words, no more fake people. no more people who make me feel bad about myself. who make me question the nature of my femininity, talent, drama queen status, "overcompliments,", my very fucking existence.

and these times between are something like solitude, but not exactly -- for my mind is overcrowded with stories to tell, stories involving every thing and every one: the bum who didn't look like a bum and wouldn't stop following me around the village asking me for change, my boss' sadly self-sufficient, cheerful, overly-latchkey, already-a-scam-artist-with-words nine year old daughter, the guy at the bar who i smiled at and he didn't smile back, then loudly called out my name a few minutes later as if he had been angsting, waiting for me to sidle up to him all along. those i cannot trust but want to. those i will never trust and want to banish from the face of the earth.

and myself. my poor, overwrought, overtired, oversleeping, overindulgent self.

but there isn't time. get it? there isn't time right now.

and, quickly, a story about my unbelievable psychosomatic purge issues:

when i went to the new year 1999 phish thing in the seminole reservation with d., katie, ben, my high school boyfriend c, katie's brother, tr, benny, and about a million other people --

well, katie and i had agreed to meet at the first aid tent and when i saw her, even though i had no desire to do so mere seconds before, i immediately puked.

when i puked, i mean puked. probably all the fluid in my body at the time, since there was no food, and some remnants of drugs my body just couldn't deal with at the time. i puked five times, for about a minute solid, on the edge of the first aid tent, thanks. before i could even say hello.

when i puked, i puked out the twenty-four hour drive down there with my current boyfriend and my most recent ex, the road food and the signs for SOUTH OF THE BORDER screaming their way down I-95. i puked the twelve-hour wait in the car among other fish people and a few confused native floridians, i vomited the presence of my high school ex-boyfriend, his pissiness at the airport for us being late, the breakfast we had with d's recovering-addict brother, at denny's, in which upon first meeting me he stated i'm sure i'll see you again, if you guys are still hanging out.

not to mention the drugs we had done as soon as the deposed exes were asleep and we set out to find anything, scoring sugary red opium crystals (soap-ium) which made my head sizzle and myself giggle unattractively and insanely, like amadeus. the E, probably, there was always E. the sex we had in the tent that night. the ridiculously life-affirming sex. the hot hot day. all the smell of food. all the flesh. the cypress grove lit with red from the roots. the hardly-ever occurrence of shade. in a swamp. in the heat. the acid. timothy learys, allegedly. the ones that didn't make me trip but probably made me puke.

five times. at the edge of the fucking first aid tent. when i finally, to my relief, found katie.

and guess what? this story gets better still.

midnight was approaching. we gathered our crowd of twenty or so strong and hid our champagne bottles and drugs in our blankets, as others were hiding fireworks and more drugs still. we entered the concert area, set everything up, and lo and behold, ten minutes before showtime, ten minutes before the millenium, in a completely crowded and sectioned-off area where the port-o-potties were ever-so far away and the crowd was infinitely deep in every direction and i had just eaten my first pill --

i had the worst abdominal cramps ever and thought i was going to die and that i was either giving birth to the Christ child which had entered me only moments before, or, despite my planning and best intentions and multiple succesful port-o-potty ventures mere hours and minutes before entering said venue, i had to take a serious, horrible, belly-stretching shit.

panic. i literally felt something akin to contractions, which would come to me in waves, sending me to my knees in my multilayered peasant dress and apron skirt, clutching the ground before me and my stomach, moaning, not wanting to puke, then it would go away, leaving me feeling cold, shivering, damp-skinned and weak.

then it would happen again.

panic. where to go? d. went on a sentry mission. to see if the port-o-potties were anywhere near accessible.

panic. they were not. but he had fetched a handful of napkins from the popcorn vendors.

what was left? who knew how many minutes till showtime? till the culmination of everything? would i be on the shitter during the turning of time, like those children in the basement during the only appearance of the sun in their lifetimes i saw on WonderWorks so many years ago?

what was left? well, i was not wearing panties. so what was left was The Wall.

The Wall at the edges of the venue where all the boys pissed. i'm telling you, kids, i squatted myself down, and took a shit by The Wall. boys were peeing. girls were peeing. we were giving each other thumbs-up. i did my business. i never felt better. d stood in front of me protectively, handing me napkins and giggling, after all our stress --

"i can't believe you're actually taking a shit on The Wall."

and of course everybody knew. i think at one point, after doing my best to cover the poo in napkins and whatever obvious debris and flotilla i could recover from the surrounding area, i actually screamed "WATCH OUT! I JUST POOED HERE!" gaining hollers and hoots of approval from my fellow concertgoers, fellow females most of all.

anyway, i'm serious. and that's why i'm late all the time. writing is no different than puking and the shits in that way.

just thought i would let you know.

Fishermen at Ballyshannon
Netted an infant last night
Along with the salmon.
An illegitimate spawning,

A small one thrown back
To the waters. But I'm sure
As she stood in the shallows
Ducking him tenderly

Till the frozen knobs of her wrists
Were dead as the gravel,
He was a minnow with hooks
Tearing her open.

She waded in under
The sign of the cross.
He was hauled in with the fish.
Now limbo will be

A cold glitter of souls
Through some far briny zone.
Even Christ's palms, unhealed,
Smart and cannot fish there.

SEAMUS HEANEY. LIMBO.

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name;
So in a voice, so in a shapelesse flame,
Angells affect us oft, and worship'd bee;
Still when, to where thou wert, I came,
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.
But since my soule, whose child love is,
Takes limmes of flesh, and else could nothing doe,
More subtile then the parent is,
Love must not be, but take a body too,
And therefore what thou wert, and who,
I bid Love aske, and now
That it assume thy body, I allow,
And fixe it selfe in thy lip, eye, and brow.

Whilst thus to ballast love, I thought,
And so more steddily to have gone,
With wares which would sinke admiration,
I saw, I had loves pinnace overfraught,
Ev'ry thy haire for love to worke upon
Is much too much, some fitter must be sought;
For, nor in nothing, nor in things
Extreme, and scatt'ring bright, can love inhere;
Then as an Angell, face, and wings
Of aire, not pure as it, yet pure doth weare,
So thy love may be my loves spheare;
Just such disparitie
As is twixt Aire and Angells puritie,
'Twixt womens love, and mens will ever bee.

JOHN DONNE. AIRE AND ANGELLS.

I am reaching for the place where there is no fear. This place is beyond fear. To get there, one must stretch their arm quite through the middle of fear, but emerge whole on the other side.

This is the journey.

I cannot get him off of my mind. Aeneas, my constant wanderer, Apollo, whose gaze is too noble to sit on mine for long, Hektor, oh, Hektor, who died for the good of the kingdom, oh, Hektor who had to fall with Troy.

You see, he is all of these things rolled into one. The love on whom I inflict my standards. The canvas on which I paint my masterpiece:

my One True Love.

Donne said it best in Aire and Angels – he knew we all carried around our ideals, waiting to slip them into a warm, receptive body. A beautiful hull in which we think we see everything, the one who is saying fill me! Be me! Let the medium melt away, I am yours, I am, I. There is no We in love. In the purest moments there is only one glorious fluid I.

I lived through this week with the patience of a saint. All with the promise of you, at some fixed point, my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. To see your face. To regain my faith. For in your face, love, I do see the face of God. And I am no blaspheme: I feel I must explicate upon that for purity’s sake. For it is pure. They say we are created in His image and I do see Him in other faces. A pleasant dull glow. In you my most rapturous dedication is ignited, the tongues of flame of the Holy Spirit himself dance from your fingertips. With you I have only the best intentions. Your mouth is my baptismal font.

When I finally had you, you were lost again, off to circulate amongst your friends for an occasion of obligatory social import.

I know that I can claim no part of you as mine. Nonetheless this is not so, at the root, this is not so on an elemental level. Did not the Lord God tame the raging seas with fire? My love, I am the sea and I need you to guard my shores. Without you the whole world will drown.

And all night and day and yes, the night before, my mind was ravaged for want of you, for lack of you. And my heart called for you all day, and you proved this aching was not mine alone, for you came to me, and called upon me, and your voice was laden with pleasure and joy at the sound of mine.

And, tired and bitter from my wait, I lashed out at you, I hurt you, and those wounds I feared I could not gentle, again. I curse myself when I am too soft, I curse myself for being too hard. Oh, love, why do we hurt each other? Why do I hurt you?

I have been a faithless lover. Mark my words, once I had faith, love. The deepest. I believed everything. I trusted your navigation, and you bilged me ashore. Left me sputtering and sightless, eyes full of sand and choking on brine.

I had God in my arms and He pushed me away.

I was in His arms and He pushed me away.

I knew it was coming. Perhaps the moment I opened the holy book to read the secret knowledge, my fate became written? As spiteful and random as a flip of a coin, a whole new future invented on cruel superstition.

For I did. In your black and white ledger book, you had written things against me I could not forgive. How I had failed you. My flaws. There, in black and white. And there was nothing good, nothing of those moments where you told me I had changed your life forever, none of that.

And I see now where my logic was flawed. For you do not write as I do. You only write to solve problems, to cement solutions. Was I not part of a solution? Was I only part of a problem? Never did you testify in writing that I was something fixed. Only something to be fixed.

Isn’t that silly, me reducing the irreducible to Evidence, to History, to everything but faith? Some mock my passion for the metaphysical: it is simply what is. What goes between history, evidence. There are a million moments between us which we cannot prove exist. I vote in favor of those moments. Yea, shuddering in your arms on a dewy hill from dusk till dawn! Yea, you gazing at my body like a newly discovered country, like a raw and beautiful settlement after a year at sea!

I thought you were the end of my exhaustion. I thought you were the place where I could rest, gather my senses.

How it should have been is not how it always was. There is too much tension between us, too much pain, too much divergence. But still I covet you, and you me: for you did once claim I am your first thought upon rising and your last before falling to sleep. You carry around a small portrait of me and keep the things I have made you in places where you can see them. you have not forgotten.

I read you as fixed. There was a solution. I gave up, crashed too hard too soon. I became paranoid and afraid.

And now my punishment, my lord, is to again become worthy of you, suitable for your attention, trustworthy and self-sufficient, a conduit of joy and faith as I was the night we fell in love. For I have broken my vows to you. I have sinned against you, against our bond, I now deserve everything coming to me. It was the only way I could explain it to myself, the only way I could justify being foresaken. For I was forsaken in a purer form, one more susceptible to cruelty of whim. I could not sustain existence with such rooted disbelief. I lost you, you sluiced between my fingers, I could not save myself, or perhaps, I sluiced between yours and could not be saved.

I became a walking shadow. Life was empty, gravity no longer applied.

Oh, I was crushed. Oh, ye of little faith! Oh me!

They say You forgive all who are truly sorry. I am, and I repent by your kisses, your whims. I balance myself on your word, past and present. I know a greater harmony.

Out of Troy

Forgive me my solitude.
I have not forgotten you, dear city,
Bearing arms.

I have only stepped outside
For a moment
So I can scan the entire scene.
From forsythia bush to smoking rubble –
I want to see everything.

(You are all mine, even those of you
I do not want. I carry you in my pockets
Where you jingle like pennies and marbles,
To be emptied later into a mason jar.)

Wholeness is implied.
I grew up believing that armless legless
Headless busts were intended to be that way,
Never missed the garish facepaint the Greeks
so thoughtfully applied.
The truth is I prefer ruins:
the truth is I prefer what has already been destroyed.

I would rather imagine the face I could never imagine:
So beautiful it would burn my eyes.
I would rather see you, dear city,
Burning through twilight in this age
When your conquerors are no longer romanticized
When no one has truly good intentions.

Dear city, let’s go to Hollywood.
Take these burning spires and latch them
Against the gates of MGM. Hand over your ruins
To the puppetmasters, to the refurbishers of sorrow.
They will refinish your ugliness into glimmering
Shabby chic. They will make it seem like a story.

(The narrative has always been lost. This is our secret,
Yours and mine. There was never a point
To this wandering, the point was only the wandering itself.)

In my mind there is a photograph of Aeneas
Carrying his father out of Troy.
Towards a weary future
Full of remembered dead.

Dear city, we live for these moments.
What is an Empire that does not fall?
What we want is utter ruin,
What we want is what is left.
What we want is to believe
There is a reason we were spared.

My poems frighten my lover.
He says they make him feel implicated.
I assure him he is not
The only one –

My lover says the only way he can read
My poems is to practice detachment –
To remove all context, to absorb
Only words, to hang on to a raft of meaning
Building itself as it simultaneously
Floats and sinks.

If the words started to mean too much
If the veil were pulled aside
Then this was no longer poetry
But the rantings of a mad whore
Of a drama queen poised for great tragedy
Of unsympathetic gods casting down the template
For that which would entertain them most,
Regardless of the suffering it may or may not cause –

And I could not even begin to explain Cassandra to him.
How what I knew was already known.
How the poems were already written, how I am never
Free of desire. I am the conduit that traces
My fingertip against the muddied windowpane.
This is how the story begins. With what is
Already there. The poem is only a moment.

And this is when my lover enjoys my poems the best.
When there is nothing in them he can find
That would lead to his own door, that would mark him
as an unquestionable member of this hysterical society.
Questions I would never ask him,
That which in our real lives I would pretend not to see.

My poems are written in the blood
Of an oft-bitten tongue, the ink is my liquified sorrow,
My tears, my regret, the babies that did not come
this month or last, his cum on my thigh, stray hairs,
My own juices come to roost on the page.

Of this he wants to know nothing.
Of this he cannot abide.
It is better for all of us
For me to speak only of myth –

I crown my lover Hektor, Orpheus,
Phoebus Apollo, Dionysus –
He of the shining helm, lyre-strummer,
Bearing curses and jugs of wine.

no! time! anymore!

i have no time!

for instance, i have less than ten minutes to write this entry and so very much to say.

i saw my crush the other night and made an ass of myself. quick quote: "i just want you to know that i like you, i really do, that is, i really like being your friend, and hanging out with you, and so i just want to bypass all the stupid boy-girl tension bullshit so we can actually hang out without any weirdness. but i'm not a girl, not really, so i don't girl like you, i'm actually a gay man living in a woman's body and so even if i did have any interest in you it would be all about anal sex and bjs anyway." and you know what he said? "i couldn't have said it better myself." ha! i do not know if this is good or bad! i think he is afraid of me, and he obviously has good reason to be as i am patently insane!*

i have a story about work to tell that involves whores, firing, internet sex, and "motivational speeches." i do not even have the energy to dispense a quote about this issue until i can further discuss it.

and there are Good Things to discuss, too, and annoying things to bitch about, but i promise i will later. that's all for now, folks.

*and ev'ry night i see him i end up ralphing. what can this possibly mean?!

don't ask me about love. i don't know the rules anymore. if ever the rules existed to begin with.

i saw the crush, mvm, again the other night. a. and i went out to the leaky cauldron for a couple of drinks. it was such a fun, relaxed, dart playing kinda night. seriously, a. is the bomb-dig and is one of my favorite people ever. he always knows how to make me smile.

mvm and i ended up staying slightly after the bar closed and smoking endo with the nice bartender. the girl the bartender was kinda with* asked mvm and i if we were dating. "no but we have the same initials!" i said. "yeah," he said. i should have let him field that! what was i thinking? anyway i learned a bit more about him. he's such the generic good boy, he does bill cosby impressions that aren't even funny and reminds me of tom green a little bit. he's obsessed with the n-w-r-k bears and is always wearing a sports jersey of some kind and my god, he even has a hairy chest! and his hair is always messy!

the thing is i definitely like being friends with him and all, but there is definitely this weird tension betwixt us. like we can't just be friends. and i guess i'm a bit familiar with him, but i'm like that with everybody. i definitely don't want to come on too strong although that is what i do best! i worry that i am, based on the fact that after he asked me to hang out some months ago and i actually expressed an interest in following through on said invitation, he quickly said "well see there's this girl i'm seeing and i don't want to jinx it --"

as if hanging out with me alone could jinx it!

then i met this girl and she was cute, nice, younger than me, but a scorpio too. he is a cancer. they are not together anymore. that was a while ago.

so sometimes i'm around him and i'm thinking he's probably just like, why is this fat girl hitting on me? and then i think something like all the songs he played on the jukebox were about fantastical faraway mystery girls who are always around but never really there. and i talk like an idiot around him. and while i'm having this thought he's apologizing to me for being an idiot. and while i'm driving home and he's walking across the street, he makes me open the window so he can pretend to be looking for the texas weiner place, which he is standing in front of. he is just silly.

i'm not as excited about this as i sound. if something happened, great, cool. but i don't think it would be fair for me to have a relationship with this kid or anybody else, not right now. not for me and not for them. yes, partially because of feelings that have not passed about d., that resurface just when i think they are gone, i could not even try to give myself to anyone as effortlessly as i have to him. i don't even want to.

but at the same time i do want to. i want first kisses and first snuggles that turn into first kisses, i want to be wooed, i want something new, even if it is just for the time being. even if it isn't forever. just for a little while is good enough, sometimes.

*"kinda with" as in was suspected to have been hooking up avec him in the bathroom

my boss has two personalities. actually it's a bit like having two bosses.

one is a fun, off the cuff kind of boss who is hardly there. this is the boss who is gone most of the day, calls me now and again but doesn't nitpick, actually says thank you and sends me out on fun errands just to get my stir-crazy ass out of the office. this boss is psyched to hear good songs on 104.3 and talks about silly things once in a while.

the other is a micromanaging pain in my ass who won't leave me alone. this boss picks apart the most minor things, including locations of file folders, every minute flaw in quickbooks, and me being two minutes late to work or leaving the office to do something patently office related thanks. this boss will only listen to cd101.9, and will actually bitch about anything else that is on.

lately i have had a lot more of the evil boss. and i don't like it. but i'm not afraid to complain. believe me, i do. i have to work memorial day. i get paid well enough. this makes it better. also, things will be better still once we move to our new supercool location. it's huge and airy and white and has all these great architectural details, like tension-wire stairs and regular windows placed at crazy angles, overlooking the edison water tower.

also my coworkers rock. well, most of them. the graphic designer is great, a guy from brooklyn who goes to ozzfest, reads j*anette winterson and elizabeth wurtzel of his own accord, and brings me these when he gets doubles. heh.

i never have time to do anything anymore. seriously. i am so busy, all the time.

today i think i am going to take a solo shopping trip. i need books and clothes and have not spent money on either of these things for a while so i pretty much deserve it. perhaps when these peripheral things are out of the way, i will be able to focus on the more pressing issues and duties in my life, and will be able to discuss them here, as i should.

this page has samuel butler's entire translation of the odyssey online! now if only i could summon up the time to undertake such an online reading exploit.

also, please explore these treasures at your whim. metaphysical poetry is my bag, baby. i love how everything is a "Treatise" or "Protest" or "Deposition" or "Dialogue."

and yes, i saw the ubiquitous star wars. and i LOVED it. i refuse to nitpick. senator amidala was as gorgeously outfitted as ever, anakin was developed nicely, the politics were a bit much but intriguing nonetheless.

not to mention the beautiful locations, fight scenes, and a special yoda-related surprise. go see it! it is our generation's epic myth, people!

26. Mediocrity in love rejected

Give me more Love, or more Disdain;
The Torrid, or the Frozen Zone
Bring equall ease unto my paine;
The Temperate affords me none:
Either extreme, of Love, or Hate,
Is sweeter than a calme estate.

Give me a storme; if it be Love,
Like Danae in that golden showre
I swim in pleasure; if it prove
Disdain, that Torrent will devour
My Vulture-hopes; and he's possest
Of Heaven, that's but from Hell releast:
Then crown my joyes, or cure my pain;
Give me more Love, or more Disdain.

thomas carew, metaphysical poet

i am so sad to hear of the death of the beautiful and talented makeup artist, kevyn aucoin. he was only forty, and apparently died of a metabolic disorder.

kevyn is one of my few fame-idols. first of all -- his work is amazing. he has made martha stewart look like a serious sex goddess more than once. he pushes makeup to the absolute limit and always knows what makeup is about -- playing. realizing you are beautiful to begin with and want to be spirited about how you look. you want to look like you're obviously wearing makeup, that you're playing a part. it's like dress-up.

and i always got the sense that he genuinely adored humanity. i'm surprised the media isn't giving this more attention. i would expect his funeral to be a hugely celebrity-dense affair, based on the friendships he had with various celebrities. i remember reading in his allure column how he and winona ryder are like bff, and would get drunk in their hotel room in paris, playing with makeup and watching old greta garbo movies. i choose to believe this is true and not a manufactured hollywood fiction.

expect the skyline of hollywood to dull a bit without kevyn. seriously, he was so good at what he did and he was a nice, happy, loving person to boot.

now our luminaries have only botox and bland old bobbi brown to save them.

blessed be. the sixth sign of the apocalypse.

scorpio
We think you're finally ready for true love. If you're already in it, great! Our job is done. But if you're not, then it's probably time to move on from that soulless relationship devoid of any real emotion but full of great, mind-blowing sex. Wait a minute, who just said that?!

so there's this boy i have a crush on. let's call him mvm because those are his initials.*

it's one of those vague crushes, bar crushes, town crushes, see-ya-later-maybe-never kinda crushes. but i see this kid all the time. i see him in town on a regular basis. granted, he lives in town and works in town and so do i, but still. so do a lot of other people that i never see, thanks.

so last night i was at the bar with a and his friend from work. a's friend left, then mvm showed up, fresh from the nets game (GO DIRTY JERZ!). he was so cute, wearing a tie-dye he got at the game from b-- w--** over the jersey and tshirt he came in***. so he goes to put songs on the jukebox and i make a blatant request for "cock rock."

look, if you don't know what cock rock is, i'm sure as hell not going to tell you. let's just agree that iron man by sabbath, which i played earlier in the night and he played without knowing that, is pretty much the prime example and leave it at that.

i think that amused him. me saying "cock rock," that is. which was not the original purpose, but still. i am instantly attracted to boys who appreciate my foul mouth without being creepy and lecherous about the fact.

then randomly, d showed up. him showing up at the bar these days is kind of obvious, like me showing up at his studio. i am a barfly whilst he is an artfly, although if you're wondering who is more fucked up most of the time the answer is probably him. i guess he is aware that a and i have a standing tuesday night engagement. so he knew we would be there. which is all good.

except mvm was there and girlfriend was trying to get her swerve on!

which she could have pretty much done had a and then d not dominated the conversation avec mvm. who then invited us over to puff. armed with a sex-pack we went.

mvm loves ween. perhaps even a little too much. but he did play piss up a rope like i asked him to.

but here is the part that is really interesting. he asked about my job and i told him where i worked and he looked at me curiously.

"whatever happened to the new jersey eye institute?" he asked.

"huh?" i said. you see, the njei is right up the street from where i work. sometimes i park in their lot. but i certainly don't work there. fuck, i don't even wear glasses.

"didn't you work at the new jersey eye institute?" he asked again.

"i don't work there. but i do park in their lot sometimes."

he laughed awkwardly. "maybe they don't like you parking in their lot!" he yelled in a false-disciplinarian tone.

then i realized. he must have seen my car parked in their lot on several occasions and deduced that i worked there.

but here's the thing. i never said i worked there. and i didn't even know that he knew what my car looked like. blatantly stickered as my car is, he has never, to my knowledge, seen my car.

conclusions: this kid knows enough about me to know what my car looks like, although he has never seen me in it, entering it, or leaving it, to the best of my knowledge. furthermore, he apparently trolls the parking lot of the new jersey eye institute often enough to deduce that i work there.

in other words, ladies and gentlemen i am being stalked.

and i love it! i live for stuff like this. knowing someone i'm even vaguely interested in is drawing wild conclusions about me and/or notes my whereabouts via stalkeresque information gives me faith. i thought i was the only one! i thought i went wildly above and beyond!

yay for stalkers!

*mine too. but chances are you knew that already. and if you cut out the last parts of our names, the "mar v mar" parts are the same. creepy.

**name deleted to bar possibility of random internet search

***normally i do not approve of this style of dress -- the whole tshirt under jersey thing -- or the wearing of jerseys of any kind, for that matter -- but he's cute and sporty like that. change him i would not.

i am the busiest bee these days.

last week i opened a new checking account. this is my attempt to Start Fresh and Organize My Life. so far, it's worked pretty well. without cash in hand i spend a lot less on crap and a lot more on bills.

i know this probably seems obvious to everyone else in the world, but it is a huge thing for me. managing my finances, keeping my world in order -- i didn't realize how satisfying this would feel.

and there have been other changes. the codependent freakouts i have been known to have seem over for now. i have been spending a lot less time with friends for various reasons (a fight almost a month ago, being tired from actually having a regular job) and for once this doesn't feel like a bad thing. it doesn't trigger all the paranoia it used to.

i feel like maybe i'm cashing in on what has been here all along -- dormant, unlit, waiting for me to capture it. i feel unstoppable, full of promise and options again, and i know what it takes to make things happen, i know it is often as simple as a fax or mailing a letter or five minutes on the goddamn phone.

this weekend i was supposed to go to a reggae show in new paltz with katie. basically it didn't work out because we ended up bitching each other out. it's okay, though, she sent me an email that said "sorry." and it's okay. it's okay to be pissed off sometimes.

anyway i ended up spending the night with d, in the printmaking studio. we went to montclair state and swiped a jar of bio-t-max so i could teach him how to do photo transfers, like i did with my porn series (richie, let me know your color scheme and i will custom make porn prints for you, thanks, as i know you would appreciate them). he's doing a series on garbage trucks. i also sliced up old abandoned prints and made about six or seven pieces of woven paper, which was a lot of fun. i pasted them in his journal book, which i also painted and wrote in a little bit. i also painted over transfers he did that didn't come out right with watercolor and gouache, making them into new masterpieces.

it felt good, because i wasn't trying to do much of anything. i was just playing. and even though d kept trying to get me to do various other things, placing tools in front of me and what not, i think he was just trying to share and participate, and he ended up being the one who thought the stuff i had done was so cool, and was terribly impressed and inspired and all that. which was not necessary but still v. nice.

this has been a torrential spring for me. but i have weathered the storms, and i have come through stronger.

watch out, world.

this picture was taken during my very first acid trip. it is of course, not a picture of me, but i swear i was there, laying on the couch two feet away. about seven of us ate sugarcubes that were dosed with liquid. then, complaining to vinny, our large, drunken, punk rock dealer, that we couldn't yet feel it and it just didn't seem to be working we all ate yet another laced cube o' sugar.

and i spent most of the night tending the zen garden. you know. those little boxes filled with rocks and sand. i even determined the energy of the stones and was soon divining the future via the zen garden. one particularly telling formation was The Chaos Stone. one side of it was really smooth and the other was extremely haggard and volcanic-looking.

well, needless to say, i left the zen garden alone for two seconds and vinny had flipped The Chaos Stone. and nothing could be done about the fact.*

the bird was funny. i remember stacie q's song "two of heart" seeming to be overly-significantly about the bird. whenever that bird was on your nose, it was your fucking partner. it didn't matter who you were. that bird was the fucking equalizer. it was completely mesmerizing.

note how intently and satisfactorily, the subject communes avec /slash/ stares at the bird, thanks.

once, during a similar but different occasion, the bird had to be removed from the presence of one betsy cassel during the phish song "esther." it was determined that the relationship betwixt betsy and the bird and esther and the life-sucking doll given to her by the nefarious armenian many may be pondered upon too deeply and the bird would surely cause betsy to careen to her death from the second-story rooftop balcony of the house, pulled by the gravity and the psychological pull of the Notorious B.I.R.D.

i mean, seriously. we actually took it away from her based on that logic.

we were a constantly raving mad tea party.

*or, alternatively, "abeau' the feau'." which sounds cajun, now that i think of it.

you can forgive me for not posting for a few days at a time because i tell you unbelievable shit like this:

i know two people. boys. specifically, d and a. who think they invented "i can't believe it's not butter...spray."

let me explain.

so we're hanging out. the bar. i think.

a turns to d and says loudly: "i can't believe it's not butter..."

and d replies: "spraaaaaaaaay."

and then they laugh and laugh and no joke -- congratulate themselves for making up such a wacky product!

seriously! they think they made it up!

the funniest thing is, they do not get that this product actually exists nor that they are basically imitating fabio exactly.

i would understand helen keller making this kind of mistake. we all know helen is deaf, blind, and did not have good vowel control. but come on. in this day and age. with the internet! and direct tv!

i will never understand boys. or, for that matter, cultural osmosis.