| Telescope Eyes |
[Dec. 4th, 2008|09:01 pm] |
So, I put my itunes on shuffle to answer the following questions:
What do your friends think of you?
Peg- Steely Dan
If someone says, “Is this okay?” You say?
Spain- Return to Forever
How would you describe yourself?
Watermelon Man- Herbie Hancock
What do you like in a guy/girl?
Pretty Things- Rufus Wainwright
How do you feel today?
Baby, We're Really In Love- Hank Williams (aww)
What is your life’s purpose?
The Origin of Love- Hedwig and the Angry Inch
What is your motto?
Hooves- Bowerbirds
What do you think about very often?
Brazilian Girls- Berlin --Brazilian Girls
What is 2 + 2?
Why don't we do it in the road?- The Beatles
What do you think of your best friend?
Hangin' Round- Lou Reed
What do you think of the person you like?
Penny Lane- The Beatles
What is your life story?
You Used to Call Me Sadness- Stereolab (so angsty)
What do you want to be when you grow up?
I Want You- Bob Dylan
What do you think of when you see the person you like?
Cliquot- Beirut
What will you dance to at your wedding?
Back in the USSR- The Beatles (ha)
What will they play at your funeral?
I'm Too Young- Mellowdrone (OH NO!)
What is your hobby/interest?
Weeping Wall- David Bowie
What is your biggest fear?
Touched Something's Hollow- Of Montreal
What is your biggest secret?
I'll Believe in Anything- Wolf Parade
What do you think of your friends?
Hold it Now- Hit it- Beastie Boys
What will you post this as?
Telescope Eyes- Eisley |
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| Yo Miss! |
[Sep. 6th, 2008|10:07 am] |
So, listen, listen, I teach in Brooklyn now. And it's hard. Harder than anything I've ever done before in my life. I really like the school and I know things will get more calm in the classroom...but these first few weeks are intense. I have to step so far outside of my personality to basically yell at 26 teenagers for an hour. I've never yelled at anyone in my life before this, except maybe my sister. It's emotionally exhausting.
I don't know...the number of times that I've thought: "maybe this job isn't for me" these past couple weeks, is really only outweighed by the number of times I've looked at my students, looked at their low level skills, their potential, their struggles, and thought: "how can I not be here? how I can see this and know about it and not try to help?"
It's not like I fancy myself some kind of Michelle Pfeifer in Dangerous Minds, but I do know that these kids need me. I know that they will have so many enemies in their lives, that they have so many enemies now, that only a handful of people in the world care if these kids succeed at all. And I'm there solely to help them, because I want to be. And they are treating ME like shit? I get it. They're pissed. They have a lot to be angry about because the world has fucked them over. I don't know how much I can do to get them on my side, or at least have them realize that I'm on their side....but I'm just going to keep showing up every day. Eventually I think they'll get it.
Sincerely,
Ms. N |
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| Some old bag |
[Jun. 24th, 2008|12:57 am] |
I've been packing, getting ready my move to Brooklyn on Saturday. Tonight, while rummaging through the contents of my closet (which hasn't had a serious rummage-through in a while, I'll add) I found this old purse that I used to carry over a year ago. I guess, in switching bags, I neglected to fully empty this one, so it was still quite lived in, in terms of trash, small artifacts, receipts, lip gloss.
Now, if you aren't female, you may not understand the relationship of a woman to her purse. Even though the purse may be wildly disorganized, a woman generally knows its contents and their whereabouts, and can locate these predominantly by touch. This old purse, however, belonged to an older self, so the half a pack of gum, ticket stubs, and loose change felt foreign, as though this were the purse of a stranger. My fingertips sweeping the cluttered bottom of that bag also brought back images, a dark movie theatre with a plastic cup of wine, notes scribbled as reminders for details I probably forgot anyway.
The purse, however, is decidedly mine. I found a couple of strange objects (gems, really) that confirm this:
- a ceramic pipe from mexico, quite graphically shaped as a penis. (This was a present to me, I believe)
- a very, very poor fake ID that says "this unautorise by any government, school, or corporation" on the back.
- a receipt for a vibrator purchase (hey, even cowgirls get the blues!)
- a small tin of "scent block," a salve used by hunters to disguise their location from animals. (I REALLY do not know why I have this.)
Oh, packing is quite a project. |
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| Dating at the End of the World |
[May. 22nd, 2008|12:35 am] |
I know, without asking, that you have been in love. I know that sometimes, just before you sink deep into my warmth, you think of her. And then, even though it was forever ago, you miss her terribly, you climb fiercely on the tree of my body, clutching limbs like branches and pulling yourself to the top where maybe you can see with some clarity. We’ll never speak of it because it doesn’t matter. In the restaurant where we sit in companionable silence, the door could blow open any moment, flood waters could rush through the windows, and the swollen moon might swing down like a wrecking ball— a final disaster, an apocalyptic crash of dinnerware. So instead of talking, instead of remembering the perfect lips and hands we touched forever ago, I will wrap your hair around my fingers and we will shower, and make love, and shower again. |
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| 22 Things I've Learned in 22 Years |
[Mar. 10th, 2008|12:16 am] |
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I made a list like this a couple of years ago, but I thought I'd update it. Here goes:
1. Adequate sleep makes more of a difference on your life than you would ever imagine.
2. Being friendly and open is more important to success than academic or professional prowess.
3. Also important to success: confidence, confidence, confidence
4. (and a healthy dose of humility)
5. Eat as many colors as possible, and I don't mean Red 40.
6. Read everything.
7. Always wrap presents. Learn to wrap them perfectly, it's strangely satisfying.
8. Go out of your way to make someone happy. Do it often.
9. A genuine compliment can change someone's day.
10. You can't trust everyone.
11. Experimentation is beautiful.
12. Take emotional risks...within reason.
13. Dance as much as humanly possible.
14. Pay attention to your body and how it moves as you go about daily life. It will keep you from existing only in your head.
15. Orgasm. Do it often.
16. Give pleasure.
17. Cook.
18. Sometimes, play hard to get. With the whole world.
19. No one should be able to smell your perfume unless they lean in close.
20. Embrace your inner (or very obvious) nerd.
21. It's okay to be a music snob, especially if you like better music than everyone else.
22. Be quiet. |
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| March hair. |
[Feb. 25th, 2008|10:45 pm] |
I feel great, by the way. I wanted to howl it out to everyone. I anticipate March, I think it will be a great month. It also contains my birthday and I will be turning a palindrome age which is very exciting. I absolutely feel like I am 21 and 11 months and one week in every fiber of my being. I don't feel a second older or younger. I love it.
Teaching is fabulous, people in my life are fabulous, walking in the street knowing that life is fabulous is fabulous.
I wish I could wrap up this feeling and give it to you, dear reader. |
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| February Itches |
[Jan. 29th, 2008|11:27 pm] |
Well, in contrast to my most recent entry, I have told the poet that our two glorious months are over. Maybe I've broken another heart, and I feel terribly, but if I didn't end it now I would have continued to poison the relationship until it was dead. He sent me a letter in the mail, written on a typewriter and decorated with black inked stamps. It made me cry. When I filed it away in the box where I keep other things of that nature, I took out all my other love letters, and song lists from CD's that have been made for me. One letter was written on cream colored hotel paper, others on index cards, notebook paper. I have had, I still have, such beautiful friends and lovers. I felt good about this, reading over the letters and listening to that Dylan song, "I Want You."
Speaking of Dylan-- the times, they are a-changin. In a romantic sense-- I am alone, truly and deliciously alone for the first time in years. But also, more importantly, I start teaching tomorrow! Maybe with all of this newness, (plus some pills) February won't be so itchy this year. |
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| January |
[Jan. 8th, 2008|01:08 am] |
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The poet and I went to this supermarket in chinatown to look for weird ingredients. There were all kinds of rice buns and pickled things in cans and one bag that was just labeled "food." We bought some things to make dumplings with because we wanted to see if we could make dumplings. We laughed and laughed during this project because dumplings are funny. They tasted quite good if you closed your eyes, we decided.
We sat on the steps of the Met last night and talked about our old romances. No one was around and it was so warm we didn't need our gloves. The thing about past romances is that sometimes they are quietly, appropriately remembered, and sometimes they are preserved in pages of potent metaphors. Last night, we didn't care about any ghosts. We talked about them as though they were other people's lovers, bodies who no longer mattered at all. Talking about the past seems frivolous when you are so interested in the present. Right now, everything tastes so good--eyes open or closed. |
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| Read this Poem by Frank O'Hara |
[Dec. 26th, 2007|12:46 pm] |
Having a Coke with you is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluoresent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I'm with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o'clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it's in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven't gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn't pick the rider as carefully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
-Frank O'Hara
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| The Poet |
[Dec. 11th, 2007|09:35 pm] |
I met a poet and now I cannot un-meet him. Which is good, because I don't want to. Un-meet him, that is. He has bookshelves filled with slim glossy volumes and he sends me lines of Ashbery in text messages which seems like a weird place for Ashbery but I don't even care.
The night I met him he quoted Bishop in my ear at 4 am on the subway when we were both drunk and too tired to speak in words of our own. And I thought then, that we would arm ourselves with poems, always, that we might shout out stanzas to each other while standing on a park bench at night when it's freezing. I guess I forgot that not everything is a war. Sometimes a thing can feel gentle and soft and good. The readiness is all. |
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