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31August | today i regressed to age 8
when I tripped on the sidewalk and fell and skinned my right knee. My left is bruised and slightly swollen. I'm only slightly ashamed to admit that I sat on the sidewalk and pouted for about ten seconds before realizing that I'm actually a grown person and getting to my feet to find a place to clean off. I mean, how long has it been since YOU skinned your knee? That shit hurts.
26August | this is my life
This has been a great weekend. And for no big, particular reason. Just something about it has been very serene, and I've taken good care of myself and done a lot of writing and thinking. A current list of things that I need/would like to do: a. figure out how to make my job more fruitful for me In other news, I'm currently on a Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers kick. Favorite song - 4th of July. Check it out!
24August | brain purging
It's warm again, after a freak week of cold, rainy days. And, appropriately, along with the rain came another round of emotional loss. I've recently gone back to therapy to make some sense of the kind of erratic behavior that occurs every time I allow myself to venture back into the dating scene, and this past session I told my therapist my theory about rain and my moods. His response was - 'or, maybe it just rains a lot in August.' And I said, 'it's not just August.' And then he had nothing to say. Anyway. It has been raining and I have once again lost something. Each time it's different though, and each time I'm more acutely aware of my instinctual reaction and am able to somewhat curb it with what I hope is a strengthening sense of rationalization. In times like these I like to go back to my blog from the year prior and see what was going on. This is what I wrote a year ago today. I don't think I was writing a whole lot about myself in terms of emotional discovery, but I do know that I was dating someone I'd met on the L train, not particularly caring about what happened, and still in the throes of something messed up and psychologically manipulative with my ex-boyfriend. Hm. I would say with resounding confidence that I am in much better shape this year. Even today. Today is also the 9th anniversary of my first Hanson show. You know I'm all about anniversaries. I guess I'm doing all right.
20August | something about the moon
tonight was the perfect night for a bottle of beer to fall out of my fridge and shatter on the kitchen floor. and by perfect, i mean worst. have you ever wondered what disinfectant combined with heineken smells like? me neither, but now i know anyway.
20August | and she writes
Recently I've felt that itch to write again. Maybe it's because I've been emoting a lot more lately (apparently this is a skill that I have lost - at least physically. I think I do plenty of emoting on my blog) - I also went to a reading for The Flash that Jackie hosted about a month ago, saw Hilary's play yesterday, and generally have been realizing that I am literally surrounded by great stories. Case in point - last night I went to a housewarming party with Sonja and we spent basically the whole time talking to this guy whose family and life are just interminably fascinating. Really made me stop and think about how crazy and complex people are... and how much there is that I can and want to write about. So today I spent a lot of the day putting off the (apparently) excruciating task of opening up Microsoft Word, until about 10:30pm when I said to myself, enough of this time-wasting! Just sit down and knock something out! Well I didn't quite just knock something out - I opened a piece that I had started working on a few months ago and just tapered off on, and read it through, then just picked up where I'd left off. It was much easier than I'd thought it would be - and to this day I surprise myself with the quality of writing that I've been able to put down. (If I may say so myself...) I don't know - it is strange to revisit something and find passages that I completely don't remember writing until I read each word. And then I think - was I really ever that lucid a writer? Strange... Anyway in an attempt to stroke my vanity, as well as make up for the severe lack of writing I've done on this blog lately, here is an excerpt: I'd thought that I would be ready to see Amelia again. She'd been the only member of our family I'd ever particularly cared about or let myself depend on. I wasn't sure what I was back for, or if she'd even give me the time of day, but I found myself crouching by the back door of her shop before I had really thought things through and there seemed nowhere else to go but in. It was early evening when I arrived and as I'd expected the door was unlocked and slightly ajar. Amelia had always been fierce and smart, but never without a hint of carelessness - eggshells in our breakfast, too much or no sugar in our coffee. She never locked the back door to our house during the day, naively believing that as long as it was light out, we'd be safe enough. I was thankful for a moment that since I'd been gone, that much hadn't changed. Once I stepped in, though, I saw a woman who couldn't have been my sister at any point in our lives. She was on the other side of the kitchen door, which was propped open, allowing me a pretty wide view of the store. Her dirty blond hair was pulled back into a frizzed-out ponytail and covered with a dowdy handkerchief, and she was much shorter and thinner than I'd remembered. For most of my life I had been smaller than Amelia, and growing up I'd thought she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. Even now I could still feel how perfectly my head fit in the curve of her neck when she held me and how soft her long curls felt, slippery in my palms as I twisted my fingers through her hair. But this woman was hardened, compact, and weighed down by stress and age - I wouldn't have settled for the idea that it was her if I hadn't heard another woman behind the counter call her name. I stepped further in, then ducked quickly as someone entered the kitchen in a rush. It wasn't Amelia; I could tell right away from how slow the footsteps moved, almost like a shuffle. The footsteps came near me and I crawled stealthily away, hugging the base of the counter in the middle of the kitchen. As I slipped away from view, I peeked out and saw a girl peering into the refrigerator. She couldn't have been much older than me, maybe twenty-one or twenty-two. She was wearing cuffed, paint-stained jeans under a short white apron, and black Converses with no laces. I couldn't see her face - she rummaged through the refrigerator for a bit, then emerged with a carton of milk and shuffled back out into the store - but something about her comforted me, the clean cuffs of her jeans and intentional carelessness of her laceless shoes; she was soft and real and probably the kind of person who smiled for no reason. I hadn't met many people like that. There was a narrow door next to the refrigerator. I crept over and tried it; it fell open to reveal a tiny but impeccably neat office with a sizeable metal wardrobe in the back. It was relatively empty, save a couple pairs of dirty shoes and men's shirts. I stepped inside and shut the door behind me, a perfect fit. It smelled faintly of the shoes and old sweat, but it felt so safe shut up in this little box, no one knowing my whereabouts that in an instant I forgot about smelling anything. Leaning against the wall side, I closed my eyes for a moment, content to breathe quietly for the first time in too long. I woke up what seemed like minutes later, but I could no longer hear any of the shop noises and the air was settled and still. Gripping the inner handle I inched the door open slowly and stuck my head out into the darkened office. There was a tiny window that let in a touch of moonlight, just enough for me to look around at the room's sparse contents. The walls were blank and a tiny television sat atop the wardrobe I had just stepped out of, its antennae askew and slightly bent. I pulled out the wooden desk chair and sat gingerly on it. A large, clumsy cordless phone sat at the far corner of the desk. I picked it up, turned it over; handwritten on the display beneath the numbers was a list of speed-dials. Home. Store 1. Store 2. Natalie. The rest, blank. I set the phone back in its cradle and pushed the chair back, stomach rumbling. I realized that I hadn't eaten anything today. I wouldn't eat anything that night, either; the door leading out of the office was locked when I tried it. I spent the night curled under Amelia's desk, the shirts from the wardrobe wrapped tightly around me.
10August | i have to sleep but
i finally watched tsotsi tonight after it had been on my netflix queue for months and then in my possession for another month or so, and it was a long overdue viewing. raw, subtle, gorgeous, haunting, powerful. and the music is something else. that is what films should be.
04August | a hiccup
i lost my grip for a little while - isn't it funny how pliable yet resilient the human spirit is? i've been caught up in the whirlwind of too much going on, not enough sleep, and this temperamental, limitless weather. i've talked about the rain and its inexplicable connection to my moods - not that the rain affects me, but that i seem to bring on the rain, usually when i'm losing something close to my heart. (i realize this is an extremely self-centered theory, but english majors tend to be somewhat self-important and able to draw connections between almost anything - here i exhibit both traits) with the freakish and sudden thunderstorms that have been cascading over us lately, i can't help but wonder what it is that i'm losing this time. i think i found it - i'm losing my sense of self. that is to say that i was - because as soon as i made that connection i took the necessary steps to reclaim it. i refuse to lose the person i made for myself this year. i only want to live in the present and future. i ran today for the first time in a while - it was an impulse run and i went into it intending for it to be a long one. and - how i've missed that incomparable sense of independence. i love feeling it in my limbs and my chest now, that satisfied fatigue that will only settle into hardiness. my knees are happily fine, and i'm amazed at the human body's ability to recover from the foolish strain that we put it through. more importantly, my heart is slowly loosening - but not surrendering. it's beating with vigor, not anger. i feel like i'm emerging from too much darkness and the beauty of it is overwhelming. i wish i could help everyone feel this way.
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