Home

Advertisement

Customize

...dance more.

Recent Entries

11/14/09 02:07 pm - What happens when I think of Home (an existential crisis).

The midwest drowns my mind, covers these chilly, treeless days in the sticky humidity of summers where my heart learned to burst, alone. You don't recover from moments like that, no amount of idyllic yellow-red leaves will absorb those poisons, die for those sins. So many sins in so little space. Each one brancing, growing, budding from the last. The roots become entrenched, they become culture--an entire culture grown from dirt, sometimes I'm surprised any of us grow. Was it a windy day, or some holy breath, whispered only to us in the clods between our fingers. Only He can move us. Here, I ride up in circles, I think, "How high?" How high can we go here, mama? How high can I go because I've been stuck in one place my whole life and ain't nothin like the feeling of air like blood through my veins. How high. I used to plea to be pushed to the sky, push me up hard against the sun, safe against the crater of thick yellow plastic and now all I have to do is leap. So close. But here they are, mama, they preach the same way as they did back home, but where is the substance in such a flighty place full of such flighty souls, muzzled up like frightened red birds, we are making messes of dichotomies. My soulstomach burrowed like a worm to dirt to find nourishment and I huddle to find some semblance of the dirt I grew up on. The soil so fertile and pure here, and they wonder why I scream and scoff and mourn in the same breath of my full-bellied laughter. You don't recover. From veins ruptured. Your best friend drowning. Intestines curdling. What happened when she was 10. Scars traced with clean, sharp steel. She holds a baby. Yet I hold holiness. In each breath I remember what held my feet, with each breath I remember what freed them. Holy holy. Yet such profanity. I run his thick brown curls through my fingers, knowing the dirt, this familiarity, yet knowing three months ago this would've been a dream, two months ago the reality made me squeamish, one month ago the contrast made me neauseous. Thick curls the color of dirt. A history in Hebrew and spoken words never learned in Bible school, a mouth that tells taudry tales of boys' dicks. Such dirty profanities our history tells. I hold my tongue. I hold his hair. I can feel the confessions seep like sap, then the relief. Our wounds close up. I close my eyes tight. A million histories, a million sins, a million broken birds budded from forbidden fruit trees. Like my grandma's stomach when I asked about Bethlehem, our lungs rumble when the air sifts through cilia. An equalizing moment of disability. We rumble. Under bare-branched trees we move our limbs in the frozen soil and we rumble.

11/11/09 11:25 pm

-Used the wrong pronoun.
-Not hip enough to be vegan
-Cute cute UMass boy who can SWING a lady
-Heart to heart with a boy I can treat like a brother.

10/29/09 01:01 pm

Tomorrow is Halloween.  I guess we'll find out how street savvy I am then.

I want to go to Bloomington for Janterm.  I might be able to get credit for it if I spend some time in a public school.  Heyheyhey.  One step closer to a teacher's license, yeah.

10/25/09 01:28 pm

Much more sane after an honest confrontation and hours of prayer and alone time.  I get so carried away sometimes.  I forget what I'm here for.  I feel so rough and raw and healthy I could cry.

10/19/09 01:10 am

My life is interesting in that not interesting college way.  I'm having lots of tea.  I talk about sex a lot.  I don't get any.  Slowly learning that having limited straight males on an extremely small campus and all hormonal stressed-out students results in something similar to incest.  How do you balance being intellectual interested and completely repulsed by boys' sexual habits?
"Want some more tofu?  Here, have the rest of my spring roll."
I saw Where the Wild Things Are.  I cried.  But so much has been ruined for me by simply not being 14.  I'm so jealous that some other introspective, thinky 14 year old girl went and saw that movie and her week was changed.  I shed a few tears and then got in a very sensitve chisled-jawed boy's torn-up car and went back to college and that was that.  I miss being shook. 
Have I mentioned yet that it has already snowed here?!  WHAT THE FUCK.  No thank you, Western Massachusetts, no thank you.

10/14/09 12:43 pm

I went to New Hampshire and then Boston.  I saw the ocean in New Hampshire.  It was real great.  I had sleepovers in friends' houses.  It was real great.  Next time, I'd like to not be sick.

10/8/09 10:50 pm

I'm going on a trip to Boston and New Hampshire tomorrow.  Free of charge.  Because my friends live in these places.  I get to see the ocean for the first time in my life.  I am dying with excitement.
I'm in a much better mood now that I have friends.  I smiled and had a brief chat with the most beautiful boy in the world without a conscious ulterior motive.  It felt good.  I deposited a check.  It felt good.  I studied the bible and prayed with people.  It felt good.
As if I need more of a reason to be madly in love with this place.  I feel so fucking good today.

10/3/09 03:33 am

Collared greens and quiche that I couldn't have and a party that didn't want us and a Yiddish Book Museum that did.  I almost attacked a girl when she told me about her love for Louis Garrel when only hours before I had because she told me she was from Oklahoma.  I started my job today at a children's center in the rural part of Amherst, and all I could think of was "Bethlehem, Indiana.  Bethlehem, Indiana..."  Tiny things make me want to cry.  The way they are so parallel yet so different.  The way the roads are the same and the houses are the same distances apart but they are painted bright colors and people with masters degrees live in them.  And I get so nervous when I'm on the bus through Amherst and all I can think is, "WOW I love this place.  How did I ever get here?  I am receiving the biggest blessing that could be bestowed upon me for my eyes simply to see this," because I can see what happens to people in college.  I can see how people change without knowing it.  I can see it happening to me.

9/30/09 08:09 pm - Oh, college...

http://us.penguingroup.com/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9781592404537,00.html?Don't_Follow_Me,_I'm_Lost_Richard_Rushfield
Forget US News and World Reports.  We've got memoirs about the 80s.
Side note:  it is really hilarious as a Hampshire student to look at the pictures posted on the facebook group for this book and think, "Oh my god.  No.  This is not 1986.  I'm pretty sure these kids are right outside my window."

9/29/09 03:33 pm

I looked around my ecology class today and it hit me:  I don't know anything.

9/28/09 09:45 pm

My roomate is nostalgic for crackheads on subways.  I'm nostalgic for republicans.
WHY ARE WE ROOMATES PART 57.

I have people I like a lot here.  But not having a cell phone is ruining my social life.

9/20/09 11:54 pm

Having an old friend so close kind of feels like cheating.
But DAMN, is it nice.

9/17/09 06:16 pm

Forgive me Indiana, for I have sinned.
How many socialists have made my ladyparts tingle over these past two weeks?  An embarrassing question, but relevant nonetheless.  Innumerable men on bikes holding loony ideas about the future of government in their handlebar baskets.  One, two, 300.  I sigh and fantasize about them telling me their ideas, me telling them mine.  Aruguing.  Hot, angry...discussions.
Oh motherland, how many flags do I have to salute?  How many translations of the Bible do I need to open?  HOW MANY BAPTIST CHURCHES MUST I ATTEND TO OBTAIN REDEMPTION?

9/15/09 09:09 am

Every night around 11PM, we have R&B sex hour.  And by we, I mean me, even though my roomate is black and grew up in a media capital of America (NYC) because she doesn't even know R. Kelly.  I don't know what everyone on our hall thinks of this and I don't really care because when R. Kelly talks about putting his keys in the ignition I melt.
I need a loyal partner with a penis to follow around.  I can't say I need to get laid because regardless of the truth of that statement I'm not playing that game.  But I don't see nothin wrong with a little bump n grind...

9/13/09 03:16 pm

I'm going to be patient and not obsessive.  I'm not going to force myself to fall in love with people, and won't try to force them to fall in love with me.  I won't spend all my money on overpriced beverages because I've never had them before because if there's one thing these people from Massachusetts like it's fancy beverages (and fancy fresh food).  I'm going to try to be more independent, and less dependent on people just because they're there (because that is like using them, and it is not right to them if I don't like them, and not right to me because it doesn't make me happy).  I will work hard and form opinions.  I won't form opinions on what people are.
I'm on a quest to perfection in Amherst, Massachusetts, ya'll.  Pray to your god/object/nothingness of choice.

9/11/09 12:14 am

I miss hearing talk about God.
Religion is just a mute topic here.  It's something I'm a little distressed about.

9/6/09 11:33 pm

There are moments of extreme social anxiety, but there are also these great big moments of just utter love and my inability to think anything other than, "Wow, this is an absolutely perfect place."
I wish I had a way to portray to you the things that happen here, but there's no way.  It's absolutely fascinating, almost every person I've met here can easily be described as beautiful.  I wake up every morning and look at mountains and a bright sunny room and I open my room to clean, cool air and feel both in love and terrified.  I'm always unsure, but never unimpressed.  And that says a lot, today we were supposed to talk about the oversimplification of our personalities and stuff (Hello Orientation!) and I was like, "Um.  I was always known as the asshole snarky kid at home, but...I mean, I don't really think that's going to be an issue here."  I talked to a girl today around a fire in an open field with a bunch of kids playing guitar and dancing to corny indiekid songs from Portland and it was natural.  And I looked up and I saw so many stars and I looked out and I saw the mountains and I just felt so good. It's like all these good moments completely make up for so many bad ones.  It's strange and wonderful.  I shake hands with so many people in a day, I fall in love with people I would have been so assholish and judgemental to back home (boys who smoke, make friends that way, make crude jokes) because they have cool things to say, they shake my hand, high five me and hold my hand in theirs like they mean the hello they say, and their art is good.
My best friend started college today too, about 10 miles away from me.  It's a big time in life.  Impressed and terrified.  That describes it pretty well.
 

9/5/09 05:33 pm

These people are freaks of nature and don't believe in sitting.  Ever.

9/5/09 01:51 am

On second thought, tonight was fucking awesome.
These people are NUTS, absolutely out of their minds, but in the best way possible.
My mind, it is blown.

9/4/09 06:42 pm

I think the feeling's pretty average.  A mix of loneliness and excitement.  I don't know.  My hall is pretty fucking boring and my roomate's parents will not leave.  I'm really excited for classes to start, because I think it will be easier to talk to people then, but classes are a week away.  So I'm pretty nervous.  I'm happy and angsty and I am all mixed up and I've learned a lot already, like that it is possible to not be a complete dick about people, but I still need to work on it.  And one boy in my tutorial feels the need to constantly talk about how he wants to bring down 'the state,' but other than that it's going okay.  It's going okay.
Powered by LiveJournal.com

Advertisement

Customize