The transition to confessional blog from "keep track of fun activities I'm doing!" was pretty short. But I'm okay with that.

I'm worried that I'm going to waste my life being mean.

exdads on facebook and rd laing

I guess I feel like, if they have time to have a facebook, why don't they have time to send me a card or an email or a message? Am I supposed to add them? Message them? Email my stepdad and ask, why did you stop talking to me. Email my dad and ask, why did you leave and never talk to me again. You obviously talk to other people. I can see a list of them, on that website we're both on. It seems so High Fidelity, but with family members. Do I just get over it?

The other person's behavior is an experience of mine. My behavior is an experience of the other. The task of social phenomenology is to relate my experience of the other's behavior to the other's experience of my behavior.

I cannot experience your experience. You cannot experience my experience. We are both invisible men. All men are invisible to one another. Experience is man's invisibility to man.

from “Song of Myself”

by Walt Whitman (1819-1892)

I think I could turn and live with animals,

they are so placid and self-contain’d,

I stand and look at them long and long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,

They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,

They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,

Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,

Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,

Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth.

failure to thrive

i could have lived without all that and bought myself an ipod nano.

why not spend $200+ in a day

job interview

walgreens:
two rolls of developed film
miniature composition notebook
schick quattro refill cartridges
mechanical pencils

whole foods:
non fat soy latte
electric aromatherapy
birthday card
almond milk
tortilla chips

library

vegethai:
sweet and sour soy chicken
thai iced tea

vogue nails:
manicure
pedicure
eyebrow wax
lip wax

swirl:
creme brulee frozen yogurt

peet's:
jasmine pearl tea

dalo's:
red stripe beer
vegan platter
ethiopian honey wine

what would i want

This weekend I have felt horrible and inferior.
Listening to this song on repeat, tonight:

youth

I'm struggling.

George Phillips Bond

George Phillips Bond (May 20, 1825 – February 17, 1865) was an American astronomer. His early interest was in nature and birds, but after his elder brother William Cranch Bond Jr. died, he felt obliged to follow his father into the field of astronomy. Bond took the first photograph of a star in 1850.

etc

Some cool stuff has happened! But I haven't been putting it in here.

Things:
went to the art museum!
ate at ladybug restaurant in st johns!
ate at proper eats in st johns!
saw up in the air!
saw youth in revolt!
went on a city walk from the book portland city walks (with my cute drunk boyfriend)!
have been reading 'eating animals'!
have been going out to bars and having fun

lamebook

Well, this past week I have found my dad (who I haven't spoken to since 1989) and my ex-stepdad (who I haven't seen since 1999) on facebook. It was a shock seeing pictures of my dad for the first time in twenty years.
Seeing my stepdad after so long made me feel kind of stupid about my weird stupid issues that I have been blaming him about for so long. Facebook just makes everyone (even your estranged family) seem like any old dude. He's just some dude that is a fan of "sleeping in tents" and "slapping dick cheney", and this is the person I've let ruin so much of my life, YEARS after even living with him or knowing him. He was this weird phantom/creator of my neuroses... facebook really shrunk him down to size for me.

Also, finding estranged family on that website has made me reevaluate putting my pictures and stuff like that on there. I think it would be better to be a lot more removed than I am. I guess if you're actually removed from stuff you don't talk about it anymore.

Weird week though. As far as facebook stalking men that fucked me up as a child and then bailed.

sometimes breaking taboos make life feel a little easier.

I want to go to Paris.

endgame

The protagonists of the play are Hamm, an aged master who is blind and not able to stand up, and his servant Clov, who cannot sit down. They exist in a tiny house by the sea, although the dialogue suggests that there is nothing left outside—no sea, no sun, no clouds. The two characters, mutually dependent, have been fighting for years and continue to do so as the play progresses. Clov always wants to leave but never seems to be able. Also present are Hamm's legless parents Nagg and Nell, who live in rubbish bins downstage and initially request food or argue inanely.

"Beckett's favorite line in the play is Hamm's deduction from Clov's observation that Nagg is crying: 'Then he's living.' But in Berlin he felt that the most important sentence is Nell's 'Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.' And he directed his play to show the fun of unhappiness."

http://www.samuel-beckett.net/hugill.html

The implication in the play is that the characters live in an unchanging, static state. Each day contains the actions and reactions of the day before, until each event takes on an almost ritualistic quality. It is made clear, through the text, that the characters have a past. However, there is no indication that they may have a future.

I broke my resolution. Everything I wrote about is a big joke. Sam said a long time ago if you're not having a good time you're doing something wrong. It's easy to write that off and say, maybe life isn't that simple. But, fuck-- it should be. I am doing something wrong.
Sade has a new song that I'm listening to for the first time as I write this and I like it.

Did you ever hear that Peter and the Wolf song Strange Machines? I can't find it anywhere but it's a good one. "Life could be so easy, why do you have to make it so hard... what strange machines we are" it says. Basically.

What do I want?
To travel and feel free. To spontaneously take a train somewhere and to sleep in a field. I've been reading about Kepler and I love him and I want to talk excitedly about him and try and listen to the planets as they orbit the sun. You know?

From the Mahabharata, Book Sixteen: Tell me what is good for me. I am a wanderer with a hollow heart.

Whatever happens is a sign of something that will happen.
-Seneca

august 2008

I want to break my resolution.

oregon city

Logan and I went to the first city in the United States west of the Rockies to be incorporated (thanks wikipedia)... Oregon City!

On the drive there we saw lots of adult arcades and then we walked around and saw lots of historic homes. We read a lot of about John McLoughlin, the "father of Oregon."

He looks pretty intense.


Apparently in the late 1840s his general store was famous for being the last stop on the Oregon Trail. Also, I read this story on wikipedia and thought it was funny: When three Japanese fishermen, among them Otokichi, were shipwrecked on the Olympic Peninsula in 1834, McLoughlin, envisioning an opportunity to use them to open trade with Japan, sent the trio to London on the Eagle to try to convince the Crown of his plan. They reached London in 1835, probably the first Japanese to do so since the 16th century Christopher and Cosmas. The British Government finally did not show interest, and the castaways were sent to Macau so that they could be returned to Japan.

And he gave aid to American settlers. Probably more for his sake then theirs, but who knows.

When we were driving away from Oregon City I felt funny looking around at Michaels and Safeway and Starbucks and stuff, considering less than 200 years ago it was supposed to be the final frontier or something. Either way it was a fun day!

current favorite bar in portland

Billy Ray's Neighborhood Dive.

Dear Grace,
Get Out Of Bed. Take a shower. Go to work.

sometimes too tired to keep trying. tired of trying. sometimes.

on to the next one

I feel good about this decade being over.
I ended 1999, the 90s, sitting in a single wide trailer that was on five acres of land in a canyon in southern Idaho. I watched Body Heat with my stepfather, my mother, my brother, and my brother's ex-girlfriend. My stepdad paused the movie to check y2k forums. But nothing happened in Australia. And then nothing happened here. And then we went to bed.
A day later and still nothing had happened. We took my brother and my brother's ex-girlfriend to the airport. My stepdad, Earl, drank cocktail after cocktail in the airport bar. He made a joke about putting cyanide in our drinks. He joked about group suicide. On the drive home, the car kept drifting into the other lane as semi-trucks passed us. When we stopped for gas I asked my mother to drive the rest of the way instead of Earl.
What followed? Earl stopped showering and started baking a lot of bread. There were some bad fights between my mother and Earl, but I don't remember if they were pre or post December 31st 1999. I went back to school. I smoked pot out of an aluminum can. I talked to my brother about moving in with him.
And then Earl left. He went back to Florida to work as a commercial photographer. He said he couldn't work in Idaho. He was supposed to come back and he never did.
My mom started crying when we were in public and stopped wanting to get out of bed. But she got us out of there. We drove to Colorado together, and I can still picture the red dirt and red rocks as we crossed into Colorado from Wyoming. It was raining, and I swear I remember a rainbow when we got there.
My mom got us a house and painted the walls. She had to declare bankruptcy and she filed for divorce. She made me noodles with pesto and salad a lot and I tried to do my homework.
I did okay for awhile, kept it together for a year and got okay grades. And then I started skipping school and failing classes. Experimenting with drugs. Sometimes my mom would tell me I was the only reason she was still alive, and sometimes I would stay up nights wishing the next day would never come.
I made friends and I lost friends and I kissed a boy for the first time. I graduated high school. I got accepted into college, and I went back to Idaho.
In college I joined a sorority and started binge drinking for the first time. I lived with a man (a boy, really) for the first time. We made a nice house together for awhile. Our relationship ended when I was just 19, and I stayed single for a long time. I learned things. My mother moved to Idaho, and later my brother moved to Idaho too. I spent time with them. I graduated college and moved to Portland. And I learned how to ride the bus, how to walk around in crowds by myself.
During this decade I gained 50 pounds and lost 50 pounds. I worked for a national park for a weekend before I quit without telling anyone. I flew to Florida. I drove from Colorado Springs to Boise a lot, and from Boise to Portland a lot. One weekend I spontaneously drove to the address I had for my biological father, which turned out to be a huge apartment complex. I slept in a city park with a friend. I hung out in Seattle. I moved 15 times. I visited Peru and Bolivia. I moved to Argentina by myself and took a boat to Uruguay. I saw New York for the first time. I ran from the cops. I watched a lot of sunrises with friends. I went swimming with my mom and my brother and we walked our dog together. I saw my grandparents. I tried to celebrate things. I struggled.
It took me a long time to realize any of the impact the 90s had on me. I'm ready for it to be in the past. I've spent ten years trying to process and recover. Ten years reacting.
On December 31st 2009 I watched tv on my computer and napped. I fought with my boyfriend, and then we talked to each other. We worked it out and treated each other with respect. We drank champagne. I went to work, which is a shelter for teenage girls. I watched the ball drop with them and we drank sparkling apple cider. I talked to them about their boyfriends and their families and I gave one medicine and one chocolate.
I let them go outside to look at fireworks and they cheered along with the neighbors. We watched the premiere of the Jay-Z video for "On to the Next One."
I planned on writing in detail about each year of the decade. Instead I google chatted with Logan and Dave and I watched TV.
Dave asked me what resolutions I made. I said that I wouldn't look at Logan's exgirlfriend on facebook anymore. It's more than that, though. It's vague. It has to do with how I spend my time. It has to do with knocking some of the bullshit off, and growing up. I work with teenagers for forty hours a week, I can't act like them. It's still about celebrating and struggling. And it's about being ready to let go of the past.
Ten years is a big deal when you're 24. I'm excited to get older. I'm excited to learn how to do more things.
Happy 2010.