things that give me the heebie-jeebies.

1. amphibians (especially frogs and toads)
2. empty factories at night.
3. squirrels (it's the eyes! demon eyes!)
4. absolutely all scary movies
5. really advanced technology


my grandparents flew in from russia last night, and today i have a snow day, so i've been getting to spend lots of time with them. i love them so much they're adorable and hilarious and my grandma's an amazing cook.


anyways....today my mom was telling them about how the two of us have gay-dars and can easily pick gay men when we see them on the street because they're so well-groomed and fashionable and always smell nice, etc., and my grandma says "well your husband's totally gay then." and my mom says "yeah, you're right. he spends more time getting ready than i do and he wears shirts with pink polka-dots to work! he's lucky he has me, otherwise men would be trying to get some of that all over the place!"


gotta love family.


here's a picture of my friend mira and me when we took a trip to london our freshman year for spring break. i love how her hair looks in this. i think this picture really captured the windyness of the moment. we're standing at the top of a church (i should know the name of it).

we don't have to take our clothes off to have a good time...

that song is stuck in my head at the moment, this post isn't about anything of the sort, really.

i wish my life was more dramatic, like the movies. i'd rather be really hurt than just bored. is that fucked up? i know there are people who have shitty lives and that i don't reaaally want to be in their place, but i just really want something to freaking happen. EF.

bremenskie muzikanti.

i don't write on here as much as i would like to. this is mostly because i spend the majority of my free time sleeping and watching scrubs.

so, i ended up pretty much acing all of my exams, though i hardly studied, and finished the semester with straight A's and a C+ in AP stat (which i couldn't care less about, considering i'm a second semester senior and a C is totally fine). i feel great. i didn't realize how depressed i had been before. i was depressed before getting into college because everything i did seriously mattered and was done for the sole purpose of getting into college. i assumed if i got into college everything would magically change, and the day that i got in i was ecstatic and everything was perfect. but the next day i realized nothing had really changed, and got depressed again because the one thing i faithfully believed would change everything hadn't changed anything.

one random fact about me that i don't think i've told anyone before: when i come across a word i don't know in a book i read it backwards just to check if it maybe means something reversed. isn't that weird?

alrighty, so, while my friends were watching the little mermaid and aladdin, i was watching bremenskie muzikanti (musicians of bremensk). this animated film was (and still is) my absolute favorite children's movie. the story is pretty much about this bohemian troupe of musicians (one guy, a donkey, a rooster, a cat, and a dog), the lead singer of which (the guy) falls in love with a princess. and even though the princess really likes him, too, the king is totally against it and so the musicians try to pull off all of these tricks to try and kidnap the princess aainst the king's will. this video is one of the songs the band sings, which is about how just hanging around and singing and roaming the world with your friends is the best thing there is, and how they don't need fancy castles, and all they want is to bring happiness and laughter to everyone. it's fantastic, seriously. this song makes me incredibly happy every time i hear it. though this version isn't translated, i feel like you can still see how great it is.





& here's another song fromt he film. it's one of the times the band comes up with a plan to get the princess...they basically dress up as criminals and tie the king to a tree, and leave him there, and then the main guy fromt he abnd changes back into his normal clothes and saves the king. this was meant to get the king to finally like the guy because he'd think he was a hero or whatnot. if you read this thing, WATCH THIS VIDEO.






toodles!

baking, books, and resistentialsm.

last night i finished the great pretender, and realized that despite the great writing style, the book was entirely pointless. granted, i loved it, but it definitely had nothing of true substance. the honesty was what got me. that's something i really love in literature. not just honesty, but honesty that is almost painful. i hope i write a really honest book some day.

so, now that exams are over, i've done two things i can't do when i'm stressed: buying books and baking. i made a blackberry lemon upside-down cake today, and am ordering the following books right now:

tropic of cancer & sexus by henry miller
a coney island of the mind by lawrence ferlinghetti
lady chatterley's lover by d.h. lawrence
naked lunch by william s. burroughs

i'm pretty excited to finally be able to have time to read and bake, now that i'm officially a second-semester senior.


today's weird/funny words:

1. halch- to hug or embrace ("i'm gonna halch you!" sounds like a threat)
2. drazel- slut (who knew?)
3. snollygoster- a dishonest politician (aren't they all?)
4. kilkenny cats- people who fight relentlessly to the bitter end
5. resistentialism- the theory that inanimate objects demonstrate hostile behavior towards people (what the hell? who came up with this? though i must admit, at times i've thought my alarm clock was out to get me.)
6. torschlusspanik- sense of panic brought on by the feeling that life is passing one by (the german equivalent of a mid-life crisis)

today i watched p.s. i love you and it somehow made me relax about finding the right person. i hate when i complain about things like not being able to find someone. i know i'm only seventeen and i have my whole life ahead of me...but it's hard to help wanting something that seems so wonderful. i also hate that i hate myself for thinking i'm too young to be thinking those things, because i don't think you can be too young to fall in love.
the weird thing right now is that i don't really have feelings for people anymore. i used to love my friends and i'd love random boys and i felt great about both, and then when those friendships or boys were gone, i'd be sad but i would get over it. i felt more alive then than i do now. i want to feel somethign but i feel like the more aware i become of my surroundings and the people i know, the less alive i feel. that's strange, isn't it?

why am i so...blank?

procrastinating, (not) jesus & art.

procrastination comes from the latin word "cras," which means tomorrow. "pro" means for. so basically, to procrastinate means to make (ate = to make) for tomorrow. needless to say, i think i got an A on my latin exam. french was easy, too. and though i love easy exams, i hate them all the same, because they allow me to get away with not studying. but AP stat should put me in my place tomorrow. fuck stat.

i want to find someone who can replace the jesus in what would jesus do? any ideas? speaking of which, ben lee has a song called "what would jay-z do?" check it out, it's pretty decent. but honesty, i can't think of a good filler for jesus. i don't want something cheesy, either, like, abe lincoln or something. i need a role model that i will actually be able to follow. i'm not super-heroic... nor am i a genius (so einstein's out), i just need someone realistic to look up to. preferably someone fun.


right now i'm listening to "love reign o'er me" by the who and it makes me feel a lot of things i can't put into words, which i really like like, because i'm always trying to put everything into words, and sometimes non-verbal stuff can be better than verbal.


okay, so totally random, but i just found one of my old journals, and there was a list of boys' names that i really liked in it:

ashton, andreas, edward, eli, finley, hunter, james, lawrence, seth, theo, tristan, zander (why, sophi, why?)

i'm not sure why i wanted to post that.

oh! i found the cutest thing today (while procrastinating):
kissing crust. it's where the two loaves of bread touch while they're baking in the oven. isn't that sweet?

i've actually been looking up random words...for no real reason other than the fact that i just really like words.

here are a few sentences with the words i like (you can look them up yourself):

1. ex. of a zeugma: i followed my heart and his car to los angeles.
2. he was a big fan of paronomasia because it was a way for him to be clever and a pervert all at once. (i accidentally created a zeugma in this sentence as well! haha, isn't that special?)
3. i am an entirely twitterpated teenage girl, and simply can't think of anyone but edward cullen. (not entirely true, since i've been too busy to be twitterpapted, but it works.)
4. if i want to major in oikology i'll probably have to go to a women's college. (don't kill me.)
5. she irped at my pathetic attempts at a good sentence.
6. digerati is just a euphemism for computer geeks.
7. if i were to become a gork i would prefer to be taken off of life support.
8. because the annoying blonde fizgig wouldn't get her hands off of my boyfriend, i stuck a fizgig in her hair and watched it burst into flames. (oh how i love words with two meanings!)

moving on...i decided instead of just posting photos, i'll post some drawings today. i don't know why. i guess i just want to do something different. actually it might be because hannah posted them on her blog and i wanted to do it too. bah, shoot me.

i like nutmeg and i'm going to fail exams.

there's just something about nutmeg, i can't quite explain it...

i have barely studied. and by barely i mean i've probably actually studied for 4 hours total these past 3 days. my plan was to study for about 8 hours a day. this is my last day to study and i'm freaking writing in this blog. i'm a procrastinator, yes, but every year i've been able to get my shit together and study for exams. i've been a good crammer. but now, since i've already been accepted to college, i have absolutely no motivation to do anything. i've spent the last three days watching heroes. that's a total of like, 45 episodes. why am i so lazy? i hate myself for it, too. tomorrow i have my french exam followed by my latin exam, so today have to do double studying. and the next day i have bioethics and AP stat. and on top of all of that i have to write a couple papers for english. thankfully i just figured out what i'm going to write them on (which is usually the hardest part), so now all i have to do is get shit done. have i ever said shit on here before? because counting that, i've already said it three times in this post. i'm turning into a vulgar asshole ;)
i hate cursing but i do it a lot and i don't know why. maybe because it makes me feel like a jerk even though i'm not really a jerk. i guess that would make sense. it would throw people off, right? maybe i think cursing is funny? i don't know. it's weird. i should stop.

i'm going to study! seriously, i am! i have to memorize latin cases and french negations and si clauses. woohoo, i'm ecstatic. i hate grammar, man. seriously, hate it. these exams should be easy, if i could only bring myself to study. i am impossibly lazy. this needs to end. once exams are over maybe i'll have a "fresh start." actually, that'll probably be impossible, considering second semester of senior year is definitely the time to slack off for everyone...and since i'm one of the worst procrastinators ever, i'll probably be slacking the most out of everyone else.

so what i'm going to write one of my english papers (the term paper) on is being a stranger in new york city, since the course is "strangers in strange lands." it'll be about my experience at the NYU photography program and i'm calling it "I Am Not a Photographer: A Journal," and it will be exactly what it's called. i'm gonna put little pictures from contact sheets i made on there. it'll be like a little scarpbook.

okay i seriously need to go study some declensions and shit (4!).

my head is empty.

i am so tired.
i'm also kinda in love with one of the school counselors, mr. samson. this une petite probleme.
i am really tired. and i mean really, really tired. my brain and my body feel dead. but i don't want to sleep.
i'm not going to write anything...i'm too exhausted to think of something clever to say.

so here's a poem i wrote last year. it was the first piece of writing that i was really happy to have written. like a new direction for me, i guess.

rust like raspberries

he’d ride his heavy truck
through the damp grass
to where i stood with tangled hair and tired eyes.
he’d reach a sunburnt arm to roll down the window,
and his eyes would sparkle with a vaguely wicked grin,
and he’d just sit there, all sideways,
and look at me for a while.
his lips would part and he’d let out a heavy sigh.

so raspy yet so smooth, he’d talk me into his soul,
and i would give in, as i always did, and climb into his rusty truck.
he knew i didn’t smoke, but he’d still hand me a lighter,
and i’d lay it on my palm and stare as if it stood for something.
i knew he didn’t like to say much,
but i’d always wait for him to spill.
he never did, but i’d sit tight and hope
that my silence would pry him open.
i’d become anxious in my attempt at composure,
and so i’d ask about his wildest dreams.
“baby, i don’t dream,” he’d say,
and i’d turn to the window and bite into my lip.

he’d slow the truck down and put his arm on my shoulder
and chills would run down my body
and i’d feel so hot and cold all at once,
and i’d be so scared to look into his face; scared of the deep brown eyes,
the corners of his mouth, the scar at the top of his left cheek,
so i’d keep my eyes on corn fields bruised with dusk and bent with the breeze.

he’d brake smoothly to a halt and walk around the car in slow strides.
whenever he opened my door, he’d always pause for a moment
and take me in with a deep stare without a word, and i’d grow tense
and bury my hands in my hair and stare down at my knees.
he’d chuckle and reach those sunburned arms out to let me down,
and we’d catch fireflies before finally falling to the ground.

i’d awake in my bed
with wet cheeks
and pollen in my hair
and i’d make chamomile tea
without ever lifting my eyes
and i’d wait
for never.

oh the glory of it all.

an excerpt from the book oh the glory of it all by sean wilsey (my favorite book):

"In my bedroom, while Mom wept, I opened up the centerfold - blond and proud and gracefully, benevolently smiling. With an X-acto knife I cut a hole where her pubic hair was. Then I turned down the lights - I had a dimmer - took off my clothes, and pressed myself to the 23-by-10-3/4-inch page...
"After cutting out the pubic hair I knew I had made a mistake . It looked wrong. Everything was not O.K. I wondered if the real woman was in terrible pain now. I wondered what to do with the small, triangular patch of hair I'd cut out. Throw it away? Where? Someone would find it. But I still wanted to make love. Maybe everything would be O.K. once we started making love. I put my penis in the hole, scraping my skin against the edges of the paper, knowing my skin cells were getting all over - in science class the teacher had had us scrape out skin with the edge of a glass slide and then look at it under the microscope to see the cells. But I was still excited! I thought she might become real somehow when she felt how much love I had
"I said, 'I love you. I want to have babies with you.' I pressed myself down and she crinkled. This was not glorious.
'Oh the glory of it all' was something I said when I was alone and things were glorious." (p. 27)

this book made me laugh and cringe and cry and every other possible reaction. it's fabulous. it's a memoir, too, which makes me love it even more because there are excruciatingly embarassing things in it that i couldn't imagine letting anybody read. but, since it is out there in the world, i suggest you all go buy it right this minute.

i'm going to eat a bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream and then i'm actually going to study for exams, so i don't fail and hopkins doesn't withdraw their acceptance...because that would be sucky.

random thought: i want to dance to "this magic moment" by the drifters at my wedding.

blogger isn't uploading my pictures right now for some reason, so here's a playlist, instead. really relaxing music.

1. challengers- the new pornographers
2. so much love- lionel neykov
3. turnaroundturnmeon- sean hayes
4. i'm on fire- bruce springsteen
5. outlaws- joe purdy
6. love and doubt- slow runner
7. the knife- grizzly bear
8. flowered dresses- slaid cleaves
9. dream- priscilla ahn
10. i can't make you love me- bonnie raitt
11. sad lisa- cat stevens
12. st. anthony- richard mcgraw
13. the wolves (act I & 2)- bon iver

"i love the way you dance, oh we can work it all out," and rambling.

...a lyric from chris garneau's "relief," one of my all-time favorite songs. this really touches me because it makes me feel like the little things can really make us love someone. i think it's the little things that make things work, and the big things that screw things up. that makes me simultaneously hopeful and depressed.

...this is a self portrait from a summer photography program i was in this past summer. i'm dressed in a shirt & tie because i thought it was a "cool" thing to do (aka i was too depressed to come up with anything more creative and i wanted and excuse to borrow my cute RA's clothes.) my hair looks nice in this photo and i just wanted to put it up because i don't feel very pretty right now and this makes me feel better.

i'm reading the secret right now, and it's inspiring and i think it can point me in the right direction.

i find myself more at ease when i'm immersed in literature. i've always thought i was a very social person and that i needed to be surrounded by people, but i've been getting slightly more reclusive as of late, and i fine alone-ness comforting. books are a surprisingly good substitute for friends. i'm not going to replace all my friends with clusters of paper, of course, but i'm pretty happy about the fact that i've become okay with being alone. woohoo maturity.

side note: everyone should listen to lionel neykov. he's so talented it kills me. and totally underrated. here's a link to one of his songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-iHtNtZjP8

okay so on a slightly more serious note. i used to think i didn't love my parents and couldn't wait to get away from home. but my dad told me i was pretty totally out of the blue today, and that made me realize how i can love him but i can't love my mother. it's weird, but i really am totally unable to love her. sure, we have fun sometimes, but something is keeping me from loving her. i'm not sure i want to love her. she's a psychologist, so i'm well aware that she has plenty of knowledge about how relationships work, but when she's being a parent, she acts like a child. she is impulsive and immature and strangely vengeful. i've never heard a compliment from her without some sort of follow-up criticism. she's a bitch. it sucks. but perhaps someday i'll learn live with it.

when i got into johns hopkins in december, i thought, everything is going to be better; my mother will leave me be, all the things dangling dangerously in the air will fall into place, and i will finally be happy, but none of that really happened. i was ecstatic for one day, i cried tears of joy, jumped up and down, danced around a little... yippee. but that passed very quickly, and now my life has come down to waiting. i'm waiting for the year to end because i think when i start freshman year at hopkins i will be happy as a creative writing & psychology double major, perhaps i'll even take italian, and i will find someone really great who will love me plenty and give me butterflies. but i wonder if that's just and excuse to give up on life for now and be completely passive until september. i think i was a bear in a past life. hibernation seems pretty sah-weet.

a parting photo:

(this is the boy i lost my virginity to. he slightly resembles adrian grenier. which is strange.)

i'm sick of school and i love james atlas.

i'm currently reading the great pretender, and i have a weird connection to this novel that i have not experienced with a piece of literature before. everything seems to click with me somehow. not in that it's parallel to my life story, or i've found some meaning in the book that uncovered an ocean of truths within myself. no, it's really more simple and less...epic than that. it's just that little words and phrases in the book just feel right to me and make me feel at peace and make me smile and make me want to keep going, even if they aren't inspirational tidbits. i find strange comfort in the novel.



i also love that atlas dedicated the novel to his parents, and it is a book with very sexually explicit parts. i don't think i would be able to do that. i admire james atlas for that. kudos, you're the man!



at the kenyon workshop for young writers two summers ago, we had a writers fight club which centered around each student choosing an author and facing another student and competeing in terms of which passage was better. if this resulted in a tie, the readers would have a "sentence off," where they would have to chose a single sentence to "fight with." so as i was reading the great pretender, i found a sentence that i thought was pretty great:



"It was hard to get stoned when you were worrying about whether your poetry was any good and why you hadn't gone to California and gotten laid and whether your parents would wake up and find you weren't home in bed." (p. 54)



i'm not sure why i find this so appealing, i just do.



so, in this spirit, i am posting a photo i took at coney island this past summer. i call it "rebel bliss" and i'm not sure if that's an obnoxious title or not.

lenka, a short story

lenka

the mother left her retarded child with lenka, the bitch next door. just for a few hours, she said, please. the bitch frowned but let the child in, and shut the door in the mother’s face.

the child ran away and was lost and the bitch didn’t care when the police returned the girl with a shaved head and bruises on her little arms. she was wearing a tattered shirt that was meant for a man. saliva pooled in her mouth and trailed down her chest and she hummed.

the bitch curved her lips in disgust at the child’s vacant eyes and fed her a few spoonfuls of mashed potatoes while she waited for the mother to knock on the thickly-painted white door.

the child kissed lenka’s elbow and a low, repulsed moan rose from the bitch’s throat as the spoon dropped to the floor. lenka did not pick up the spoon, and left the kitchen quickly, and went to call up her fat ugly lover. his name is yura.

yura stares at the child drooling on the table. lenka flashes an awkward glance at the child and takes yura’s thick hairy arm and pulls him onto the couch with her.

the child hears nothing.

the television is on and yura is sitting on the floor with his back against the couch. lenka traces his features and wonders why she invites him over, then looks in the direction of the kitchen. there is a light thudding sound of metal against wood. the child is playing with the spoon.

yura doesn’t want to leave for one reason or another and though lenka has never been very polite, she does not ask him to go. instead, she goes to the kitchen and sits next to the child and feels helpless.

lenka lifts her hand and strokes the back of the child’s head. it is soft. lenka doesn’t move her hand for a few minutes. the child concentrates on the spoon but appears pleased. lenka sighs and a smile forms on her wiry lips.

lenka hears yura light a cigarette. he starts to cough, and with each cough that exits yura’s hideous lumpy body, lenka’s body shakes. she screams at yura and he rolls his beady eyes at her but says nothing and leaves, shutting the white door loudly behind him.

it is midnight and the child slowly closes her eyes and rests her head on the table. her breathing is rough but it appears she is asleep. lenka places her head on the table next to the child’s and closes her eyes. she thinks herself to sleep.

the mother does not come.

peach shisha smells just like peachy o's & other randoms.

i thought that was strange. made me feel like i was nine years old all over again, and was just starting to discover the wonder that is american candy.

i have started to work on a "romantic" novel. women deserve classy porn! hopefully it will work out.

i love mint chocolate chip ice cream.
why must i start all my sentences with i ? this is why i don't like capitalization. it makes me feel too self-important. screw capitalism! kidding.*capitalization.

i'm looking for a new show to get addicted to. series 3 of skins has yet to air, as well as season 2 of true blood, and i'm all cought up on my other shows. speaking of skins...i think it's almost unfair that none of the characters are returning for the third series. what will i do without my beloved twat sid jenkins and my favorite psycho anorexic girl, cassie? god only knows. actually, if god does exist, i doubt he cares about my tv preferences. actually i think i'll watch eli stone. i like the name eli.


i should probably go before i type myself to death.

i really want to find someone smart who will take bubble baths and dance like a loser to upbeat oldies songs with me. that seems really nice.

ok, i'm going now, but i will post a short story soon. it was inspired by a family i met over the summer at my grandparents' house in the russian countryside. here are a few pictures from a luncheon we had:

in the meantime...if anyone reads this blog, i have a question.

what does love feel like?

i just want to see it put into words. i wonder if pure love feels the same for all of us. or maybe i've never been in love...i really want to fall in love. just to know. being loved in return would be nice, of course...but i would just really like to know how it feels to really truly love someone. is that weird?

empty is not free, a poem.

empty is not free

the sink is broken
because her insides are filled with acid.

it’s simple,
like backspacing.

she avoids his lips
so he doesn’t taste her.

he brushes his fingers along her abdomen
and she cringes.

shivers run across her body
like it is a battleground.

he smiles because he thinks she is afraid,
and feels instantly powerful.

she notices a rib peek through thin skin
and relaxes.


...


this is my favorite picture of my grandmother: