medieval sourcebook

2011-03-18T12:39:00.001-07:00

remember how i said i drool when i cry?

still true.

2011-01-09T10:28:00.001-08:00

who needs booze when the boys kiss like that?

healing

2010-11-13T20:38:00.000-08:00

The healing properties of candle-lit Billy Joel dance parties in the privacy of one's bedroom are not to be discounted.
Nor are the restorative effects of an afternoon ice skating.

2010-10-30T11:12:00.001-07:00

Here. I am here in Illinois.
Dave is not my boyfriend anymore.
My heart hurts. I'm listening to a lot of Sarah McLachlan. And I'm scared.

i'm just going to shut up now and read some emily dickinson

2010-09-14T08:27:00.000-07:00

I died for Beauty - but was scarce
Adjusted in the Tomb
When One who died for Truth, was lain
In an adjoining Room -

He questioned softly, "Why I failed"?
"For Beauty," I replied -
"And I - for Truth - Themself are One -
We Brethren, are," He said -

And so, as Kinsmen, met a Night -
We talked between the Rooms -
Until the Moss had reached our lips -
And covered up - our names -

1862

2010-09-02T16:58:00.000-07:00

the estimable Estlin and i

in brief

2010-08-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

I'm in Illinois. This summer has flown by. At the beginning of July, my aunt Patricia died. All through July and the beginning of August I wandered around the foothills with my alcoholic friends, this kid from Missouri and a girl from my high school in particular, smoking Reds and trading music. I fought with my boyfriend over the phone all the time.

Then on August 10th, my parents and I packed the car and started driving. Las Vegas, Bryce Canyon, Moab, Denver, west Texas, Dallas, south-east Missouri, then here. All kinds of things in my head quieted down. Driving through the desert, through the mesas and the mountains. Staying in my great-aunt Georgia's house, where she and my mother's mother grew up. I went on a few long walks with my dad, talking over everything that's been going on.

Now I'm in the middle of the cornfields, right at the edge of town, getting ready for classes starting tomorrow - children's literature, youth services librarianship, communities and libraries, information organization, poetry, all spread through the week. My parents just left this morning; they spent the last few days helping me put together my apartment. My dad surprised me with a beautiful poster - it's that photograph of Audrey Hepburn with the Roman Holiday haircut. He said when he saw it in the store, he couldn't walk out without getting it for me. I'm adopting a cat - Estlin - who I can pick up from the shelter on Tuesday. She's a gray tabby with tufty ears and she likes ping-pong balls. When we went to the pet store to pick up food and a litter box, my mom nearly filled the basket with toys.
"From grandma," she said.

There are thunderstorms here that knock out the power. I'm hoping I find people I like in my classes, hoping that I fit into the meetings here the way I fit in at home.

what is left

2010-06-22T22:09:00.000-07:00

You know that scene in the hospital dramas where the stoic but sad-faced doctor tells the patient and their family--There's nothing more we can do? And usually in the show, the patient is stone-faced and strong, and the family fall about weeping and begging? You know that scene?

Over dinner tonight my mother told me that my father's sister has been told--There's nothing more we can do. My parents got the news over a telephone call; my aunt and the rest of our family live in Dallas. Since the beginning of June, the cancer in her has grown, pushed its spider hands farther and farther and there is nothing more they can do.

I have been eating my anxiety: pints of ice cream, trays of brownies, fistfuls of grapes, bags of sugared almonds, illicit, late-night drive-through french fries, crackers smeared with peanut butter, whole bars of thick milk chocolate. I've also been buying books. I buy heavy paperbacks whose heft seems like a promise. I pray that my cousins can feel my love.

When she dies, we will find out in a phone call. A phone call. I wish somehow that I could reach into my cousins, my grandparents, my father, that I could reach into them and pull out the pain (I imagine it is a surprisingly soft thing, warm) and hold it for a while.

storytellers

2010-05-27T11:17:00.001-07:00

Now, on a worn couch, I am reading aloud to a friend:
my favorite poems, a passage from Anna Karenina,
a collection of short stories from Southern writers.

She pours hot water onto tea leaves in our mugs.
The steam rises over her face. This was
how I spent my childhood.

Listening. Reading. Words like
drops of amber, like growing pearls, like wet clay.
On the table of my elementary school library:

glazed pastries and green tea,
word games, lessons in character voices.
My mother reads to her tired father

and he laughs, then catches his breath.
A poet smiles at her husband in the audience,
reading a love poem to a crowd.

If you were deaf, I would read to you with
my hands in your hands.
Words outloud, words we feel.

My friend finds a bookmarked page,
says to me that this is her favorite part of the book,
the part where Tereza dreams.

When I was a child, my father read me
the best of 20th century sci-fi; I closed my eyes.
I went flying into space.

A mother reads to her son
to chase away the nightmares; she keeps reading
even after he has fallen asleep, just in case.

These words are not mine

but I’d like to share them anyway.

sleeping patterns

2010-05-10T10:46:00.000-07:00

sometimes i decide the day
should be over, so i go to sleep
at 8 or 9
and wake up the next day at 5
and bike to starbucks
and drink too much coffee
and get many things done

sometimes i get the urge

2010-04-30T19:53:00.000-07:00

to cut off all my hair
to stop reading email, forever
to run away to the mountains
to stop using electricity
to eat everything in my fridge,
including at least a pound
of cheddar cheese
to stay up late
to pray for rain
to buy five-hundred dollar Frye boots
and one of those indoor composters
to scrub off my make up
all the lotions and hair gunk
and walk around naked
to make BIG art
to take up room

the future has a shape, size eight, straight legged jeans

2010-04-28T21:36:00.002-07:00

I am going to Illinois in August, to study children's library services in a little town called Champaign-Urbana, where I will also take stealthy poetry classes.

Here, it is starting to get hot. I keep busy busy busy and it's less lonely, I guess. Looking forward to new horizons.

these things are good; these things are worthwhile

2010-04-24T18:02:00.000-07:00

Learning new things; ice cream on a hot day; hot tea in winter; patience; passion; keeping promises; respect; the fight for equality; hand-made gifts; home-cooked meals; yoga at sunrise; calling the people you love, just to tell them that you love them; saying ‘thank you’; new school supplies in the fall; someone to help you stand up after you make a snow angel; running on the beach; smiling at strangers; replacing tolerance with acceptance; hand-written letters; tapioca pudding; long hikes; giving things away; floating on a lake or a pool or a calm ocean; the last berries of summer; hostess gifts; beeswax instead of petroleum wax; compost piles; speaking another language; loving someone who loves you back; reusing things; loving someone even if they don’t love you back (but not in a creepy way); long books you wish would never end; reaching out to others; unexpected kindness; sustainability; clean dirt; oatmeal; poetry read out loud; rejection of a life dependent on the suffering of others; live music; caring; curiosity; listening--really listening--to what other people have to say, asking questions.

2010-04-18T08:22:00.001-07:00

i am writing some poems
and a very long prose piece
and my fellow has gone back
to england where is it cold
here it is too hot
and i think i am running
out of words

2010-03-31T11:37:00.002-07:00

march is ending
the year is beat beat beating toward graduation
and i am choosing
between illinois
and chapel hill
where i will study how to be
a children's librarian

found

2010-02-28T17:04:00.001-08:00

Dear Blobfish: You look so osoom. And I like your fase. And I like your name. And I like how you star. And I like your coler. And I like your mouf. And I like that your a sea crechr. Love Thomas

2010-02-09T16:56:00.000-08:00

a little something for a coffee break

giving myself an ulcer

2010-01-31T17:19:00.000-08:00

so it's not months until i find out about graduate school.
it's weeks.
less than two until i start hearing back.
it's really hard to concentrate
on anything
especially school work
and i know i'm way too stressed
and should just calm down
but that's proving
easier said than done.

oh, ani

2010-01-28T11:53:00.002-08:00

they say that alcoholics
are always alcoholics
even when they're dry as my lips
for years
even when they're stranded
on a small desert island
with no place in 2000 miles to buy beer

2010-01-24T19:56:00.000-08:00

i just spent far too long
looking at picture of cats
up for adoption
in madison, wisconsin
and checking out apartments
and freaking out about money

even though it's months
before i find out where
i'm going to school next year

i am taking a poetry class again, finally

2010-01-17T16:38:00.000-08:00

"From my mother's journal"

I threw away the plastic bag you had clutched, that soft-sided world.
The fish breathed heavily, sides heaving, after you'd poured him into his gallon tank.

I had just read you a book about First Nation traditions--
children growing into names
and then out, like snakes and skin.

I spied as every morning
you pressed your ear against his tank
and whispered--What's your name today?

When, the first day after we'd brought him home, I was packing your lunch,
you demanded I leave out the goldfish crackers.
They look too much like him, you told me.

After a week, he grew tiny white spots
like blisters over his scales.
Ich, you told me, It's a fish disease.
So we bought medicine.

Your breath, when you watched him, fell into the same rhythms.
You both sighed.
You both gasped.

The woman at the pet shop told you,
when he'd died after only two weeks and we brought him back,
that there wasn't
anything you could have done.

You told me we couldn't bury him, because--
What name would we put on his grave?

2010-01-02T09:42:00.002-08:00

Portia,

Please stop freaking out.
Just imagine you're at the farmers' market.
Beets, broccoli rabe, apples, sourdough bread, almonds, quark, salty mozzarella, carrots, nasturtium salad, garlic, white onions, fingerling potatoes...

Just imagine you're at the farmers' market.

Love,
p

bitter water

2009-11-20T20:29:00.001-08:00

Moses has a difficult relationship with the Israelites. He led them out of slavery; he brought them G-d’s law. And they didn’t just complain that they should have stayed in Egypt—when Moses went to the Mount they lost faith and turned from G-d. When he returned, Moses arranged for them to be slaughtered, all except his brother Aaron and their families.

Before the slaughter, before the golden calf, when the Israelites had been in the desert for three days, they came upon a well, at Marah. When they tasted the water, they cried out that it was bitter, and berated Moses. G-d told Moses that there was a wood which, when he threw it into the well, would make the water sweet.

But the Rebbe of Kotzk, in commentary on this passage, suggests an interesting reading.
“It was not the water,” he writes, “but the people that were bitter.”

I sympathize with the Israelites too often: I hear not what someone is saying directly but a version tainted by my own feeling.
The Israelites were dehydrated and angry and when Moses offered salvation, both physical and spiritual, they would not accept it, they did not have faith in Moses or in G-d. The Israelites were so focused on their own suffering that they had an I-It relationship with Moses and with G-d.
Martin Burber, the Jewish theologian, explored how we relate to the world around us, and how those relations can be a parallel to our relationship to G-d. He wrote of two types of relationships, an I-It relationship and an I-You relationship. I-It relationships are dictated by goal-directed verbs—I want, I need, I sense, I feel, I think. In an I-It relationship, the It is simply an object (whether it is a living or a dead thing or being). I-You relationships are a set of relations, a way of perceiving, a relation based on reciprocity. The You in I-You relationships is a whole being, defined by itself, rather than in relation to the world around. The I-You relationship is the one we strive to have with G-d.

Almost six months ago I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and clinical depression. In some ways it was a relief—it was suddenly not my fault, that there was something fundamentally wrong with me. It wasn’t my fault.

And for a while, that helped, relinquishing that responsibility. Looking back, though, I can see that I was wallowing. Not in the way you wallow after a break-up, with chocolate ice cream and An Affair to Remember. I wallowed in the way you wallow when getting out of bed is a monumental task, when the prospect of talking to another human being seems impossible, where each minute crawls by at the speed of molasses, and you simply accept that this is how life is.

I quit my job, candidly telling the family who ran the café where I worked that I was incapable of being a person and I needed some time. They nodded, eyes full of concern.

Some days I slept or watched bad daytime TV, incapable of anything more than eating cereal in my pajamas. Some days I was bursting with nervous energy. I spent hours feverishly working on graduate school applications and studying for the GREs. At the end of every day, I dreaded going to sleep, desperately afraid of the moments where I would have to be alone with myself.

The point is this—my depression and anxiety, I carried them with me all the time. Even when the medication helped me get out of bed, helped me call my friends, the sadness, the paralyzing anxiety, they hung over me like a veil I could not lift and no one else could see through.
Depression is a selfish disorder.
I am sad.
I am broken.
I, I, I.
It is as if the veil of depression transforms everyone around me into an object; they are there only to produce sympathy or comfort or love to give to me. Through the veil, I am capable only of I-It relationships, so like the Israelites complaining in the desert. Through the veil, I am incapable of loving my friends, of listening to their hurts and joys, of extending a hand to those in need. The view through the veil of depression is a bitter one.

My depression is not my fault.
I did not choose this veil.
But now that I see it, now that I know it is there, tainting every interaction, I can choose to push it back. I can choose to have faith. I can choose to have I-You relationships. I can choose to have faith that Moses will show me to the well, and G-d will provide the water.

I can choose sweetness.

invictus

2009-11-04T17:58:00.000-08:00

the poem

welcome to november

2009-11-03T13:07:00.002-08:00

JR posted a most magnificent playlist for this month.
I am writing a novel: Wild Alaskan redhead takes the talking ashes of her dead best friend on a meandering roadtrip.
The sun goes down at a decent hour (finally) and my sleeping patterns are getting a little more normal (finally).
My grad school apps are pulling themselves together, slowly but surely.
I'm doing my best not to go crazy.

2009-10-31T14:32:00.001-07:00

remember when i wrote poems?
i miss writing poems.
i am making a writing-portfolio website for my
very silly computer science: introductions to computers class
instead of writing
a paper on polyculturalism.

nanowrimo starts tomorrow
and i'm getting a little anxious.

o, well.

st as

2009-10-29T18:54:00.003-07:00

I miss my snoopy hat
and I miss wearing my red coat with the hood up
and I miss having the ocean within smelling distance.
I miss the cafe where I studied
and lentil soup and frozen pizza and beer
and Indian food.
I miss Fran's apartment and
Fran.
I miss my double bed and I miss
smoking in my bathroom.
I miss the bus ride and Edinburgh
and Cadbury's chocolate.

guilty gratification

2009-10-07T21:03:00.001-07:00

when you see pictures of your ex and he's gotten a little fat and you can finally acknowledge how ridiculous his skinny jeans look.

2009-10-04T09:21:00.001-07:00

Dear Portia,

Come on. Get your shit together.
Can you try to be a functioning human being around other people?

Being alone all the time is not an option.

Love,
p

2009-09-17T10:31:00.001-07:00

Stuck in Arkansas.
Home soon.

cups unbroken

2009-08-03T20:20:00.005-07:00

There is a midrash that tells the story of a king with a set of fragile, glass cups. He knew that if he poured in hot water, the cups would expand and break, and if he poured in cold water, they would contract and shatter. So the king poured the hot and cold waters together and then poured them into the cups, which did not break. The lesson is that compassion and judgment are the hot and cold waters--either one alone would break us, and both need the other.

Thinking about compassion makes me think of my friend Stephanie. She's this beautiful Polish-Colombian girl with thick black hair and a fast-draw smile and excellent taste in coffee. We met in Oxford and as soon as I met her, I wanted to hear all her stories. She is whip-smart and always ready for an adventure. If I had to name something wrong with Stephanie, I would say she is too compassionate. When I hear that sharp voice in my head, criticizing the pretty girl or the man driving too slowly in front of me, I like to think what Stephanie would say.

Something today reminded me of Steph and the picnics we took on our trips. We had the most beautiful weather for almost all of our trip to Scotland. In Edinburgh, we picnicked in Princes Gardens, near a group of pot-smoking yahs and we read our newly purchased Vacation Novels. Another day we climbed up Calton Hill and watched some poor model in a tiny dress fight the wind as a photographer snapped pictures. It was so windy that when we'd finished eating we lay down in the grass, as close as possible to the ground, and talked about how our hearts were broken while the clouds shuffled across the sky. Steph is the only person I can remember ever just looking at the clouds with.

Steph and I during the first Oxford snow
In St Andrews we hiked back into Lade Braes, this creek-side walk. We found a place with mottled sunshine and sloping grass and ate stone fruits, fresh mozzarella, crusty white bread and individually-wrapped chocolates. There's this drink in Scotland, Irn Bru--it's the Scottish national soda, and I managed to live there for four months and not have it. So Steph and I bought cans of Irn Bru for that day in Lade Braes, and when she took a sip, she exclaimed--"This is Colombiana!" Colombiana is the same, sticky sweet bubble-gum flavored soda. "It tastes like home," she told me. On the way back to the flat it started pouring, pounding hail and whipping wind, and we sat watching the weather in Fran's flat.

Steph told me so many stories about her family and Colombia on our trip--how everyone dances, and when one of her siblings was married, she and her father were the only ones dancing with the new couple, because everyone else was afraid to join in. When Steph and I were traveling together, we were both claiming Scotland--her for the first time, me for the second or fifth or tenth time. No matter how much we talked about the men who'd hurt us, she refused to condemn what had been done to her.
"Steph, he was being a total asshole!" I'd tell her.
"Well, I guess," she'd reply.

I've been working to balance all of these things in my head. I like to think that during the trip to Scotland, Steph and I rubbed off on one another a little--that she cooled down my hot water, and I warmed up her cold water.

as of today

2009-07-25T22:28:00.001-07:00

I am 1 month sober.

Yay me.

oatmeal

2009-07-19T20:43:00.003-07:00

I sell a lot of oatmeal at the Cafe. Do you want blueberries, strawberries, bananas, walnuts, currants or cranberries? Hot or cold, non-fat or whole milk? Brown sugar? Butter? Honey?

My dad has a very specialized way of eating oatmeal. It's more of an Operation. He adds milk first--to cool it down, but also so it's the right consistency. Loose, but not soupy. He folds the milk in with his spoon. His favorite kind of oatmeal comes from this place down the street from our house, Joanie's, where they cook the oatmeal in milk, rather than water.

At Joanie's, they serve oatmeal with three little metal cups of toppings--brown sugar, granola, and raisins. Always, the toppings arrive first and we all begin to nibble at the granola and raisins. Always, our waiter brings us a second set.

After he has added the milk, my dad picks out a section of the oatmeal, near the edge of the bowl, perhaps four square inches. And he adds the brown sugar. He carefully folds the brown sugar into this one patch of oatmeal until it has turned an inviting maple color. Then he adds a few raisins and a few clusters of granola. These are lightly folded in, and then he proceeds to eat those four square inches of oatmeal. Then the next four square inches are duly folded with brown sugar and then raisins and granola and then eaten.

He has this magic talent of budgeting his toppings--I can't remember him ever running out of one topping before the others, or before the oatmeal was all gone. He only ever complained that there wasn't enough brown sugar. He, like me, prefers his oatmeal a molasses-laced bowl of softness, almost a dessert.

On one of my last backpacking trips, we made oatmeal--not the decadent, refined stuff from Joanies, but a thick, bubbling cauldron of cinnamon-y cooked oats studded with dried fruits and nuts--cranberries, prunes, apricots, pecans, walnuts, raisins. The fruit swelled up and started to disintegrate. A totally different kind of sweet from brown sugar, but sweet nonetheless. We couldn't get enough--we were ravenous; the oatmeal was fuel.

I guess the oatmeal at the Cafe is alright--not as creamy as Joanie's, nor as flavor-packed as the camping oatmeal.

Most everyone is baffled, overwhelmed, when I ask them so many questions about their cereal. Some people know exactly how they like their oatmeal, and are annoyed when I ask the questions--it's as if they are saying--Can't you tell I'm a regular? Jeez. The thing that got me thinking, though, was that oatmeal is one of the foods at the Cafe where people really have to think about what they want. Egg scrambles are already created--ham and cheddar, spinach-feta-red onion, swiss chard and bacon. But oatmeal means they have to think, the oatmeal's a blank until they make it their breakfast.

2009-07-08T20:32:00.000-07:00

postcards

2009-06-18T08:14:00.002-07:00

fancy one?
email me with your address. (pcarryer@gmail.com)
postcards from munich and sienna.

my heart is in a strange-but-happy place.
i'm excited to go home.
i'm excited for italy with my parents.

i'm not excited to fall asleep alone. the last three months have spoiled me. my stranger spoils me.

there will be, i promise, more updating this summer, not to mention more stories.

bad things are coming, we are safe

2009-06-02T09:22:00.002-07:00

Last night I couldn't sleep and so my stranger told me a fairy tale about a foot soldier who found a magic jacket that made him handsome. The princess fell in love with him, and even when he took off the jacket, she loved him with all her heart.

2009-05-28T13:47:00.002-07:00

I want to talk about my eating disorder.

I want to talk about it because I'm not ok, and I'm not healthy and it feels like some time, somewhere between sixteen and now, a switch flipped for everyone except me.

When you're sixteen, an eating disorder has a subversive kind of glamor--it's an act of rebellion. It's that teenage-girl way of being independent. These decisions are mine.

But when you're almost twenty-one, it's this shameful thing you carry around all the time, silently. When does this go away? Does it ever? Who is there left to rebel against?

When my stranger asks what's wrong, I don't know how to tell him that I feel like my body has nothing to do with my self anymore. That when I'm high is the only time I feel like a whole person, not trapped. That I don't know how to fix myself.

both hands

2009-05-24T14:02:00.004-07:00

This last week has gone by too quickly. I wrote and revised, read pages and pages and Friday night, when I was just having a god-awful night for no good reason, my stranger took me back to his house and gave me a massage and cuddled me until I feel asleep.

Just after Brian died, I started having these nightmares--I was afraid to go to sleep for a week, just because I didn't want to have the dreams. So Darren invited me down to Edinburgh and he watched me sleep, to keep away the nightmares. I don't usually ask for help--not first. I always like to try on my own.

With my stranger, there was a degree of complete surrender I've never felt before. Maybe we say this every time we're in love, but this does feel so radically different from anything that's come before. It's simpler. Even when I'm in such a bad mood I'm picking fights left and right, he can curl himself around me, and all of that anger deflates. The first thing I want to do when I wake up is make him coffee and sit outside smoking hand-rolled cigarettes with his arm around me.

"Saved"
"Ghostfish"
"The Ossuary in Paris"

various, etc

2009-05-19T16:54:00.003-07:00

Listening to: Ani
Reading: Gaiman's Stardust; Staffords' Queens, Concubines and Dowagers
Writing: Another story about sad southern men
Cooking: Red-wine pot roast with grilled polenta, brown-sugar shortbread cookies
Recently acquired: A French press, a book on Hebrew, three books of short stories that generally make me feel talentless, a feeling of impending finality, a boyfriend of limitless empathy, a drought of words, an obsession with showering and lotion, and a book of Anglo-Saxon poetry that is surprisingly poignant.
Recently desired: A vintage leather jacket (only 60 quid!), a few more hours, deep dish pizza, new highlighters, a cat, a fish, another cactus (mine is flowering), someone to read me to sleep

fighting through writers' block

2009-05-15T12:12:00.001-07:00

portia freaks out, pt 1

2009-05-06T15:03:00.000-07:00

I am obsessed with Ryan Adams and strangely flavored cupcakes (lemon-rosemary, banana-ginger). I am totally and completely incapable of coherent thought.
I am also falling more in love with my stranger every day.

stars go blue

2009-05-02T16:10:00.004-07:00

When I got on the bus Thursday morning, from Oxford to Heathrow, I thought this was going to be a bad idea, that I was going to get all mired down in memories and writing this paper and wish I was back in Oxford. It's easy to be in Oxford--it's safe. But I'm so glad to have come back.

I'm staying with my academic mother Fran, whose flat is like a home away from home. The door is never locked; people are always coming in and out. May Dip was amazing (what I remember). Fran has this group of friends--it's hard to describe, but it's like this Portia-sized space simply opens up every time I come visit.

My love for Scotland is unabated. It's like the mountains, like this part of me that never relaxes simply eases here. Scotland is wild and raw, cold and wet and dramatic. I spent today in the cafe where I used to study, finishing a paper on Anglo-Saxon kings. I wish I could stay. I wish I had an apartment in St Andrews, spent the weekends seeing plays in Edinburgh and reading in Princes Gardens. More and more, I think I want to live here for a few years, put off teaching, and figure out a way to stay.

I've started making my stranger a mix. I'm not sure though, how to go about it. The last mix, the one I made for Darren right before I left, that was a good-bye mix. My stranger and I have a little over a month left, and I don't know if I should wait, to make a mix for what was, or make one now, for what might be.

I really really like this guy. It's kind of freaking me out. Somehow being sad seems easier, simpler. There's nowhere to fall.

the end of scotland

2009-04-30T10:44:00.007-07:00

I'm on a bus up to St Andrews. I wandered around Edinburgh for the last few hours, not really doing anything, just looking at the city. It's still striking; it still takes my breath away and makes me feel like anything is possible. And I still look for Darren on every corner. I'm excited to get up to St As, to see Fran and Morven, to run into the sea at dawn tomorrow. (Google "May Dip".)

I have a paper to finish, even though I've been working all week. Anglo-Saxon kingship. I met my fiction tutor for the first time yesterday: he's amazing. I am going to write a story a week for the next 8 weeks.
Here's the first one: The Ossuary in Paris

I'm having all these feelings, and I'm not quite sure what to do with all of them. I'm in love, and happy--how ridiculous is that?

nos. 5-7

2009-04-25T14:35:00.004-07:00

5-7. The last few weeks have been this strange blur of starting school but not starting classes yet, new kids moving into the house, group trips, and spending nearly every night with my stranger. My classes are going to be amazing: 'Anglo-Saxon Archaeology in Early Christian Britain' and 'Short Story Writing,' both one-on-one with Oxford professors. I already have so much to do, but I'm loving every moment of it.
The new kids are SO different from last term's group. I feel very disconnected from them.
I wrote to my friend Isaac:
so i'm on this trip to cornwall with all the stanford kids
and i thought last quarter--damn, i actually like these folks (they're not like normal stanford kids)
but these kids this quarter are like normal stanford kids
and you know that feeling you get, when someone is just SO happy that you have to be melancholy, just so things balance out?
everyone on this trip makes me feel like that.
know you'll understand. feel like coffee and cigarettes and lots of rain.

And he wrote back:
you n me pea
we're p's in a pod.
er...
but know what i learned this quarter? it's fully my problem and not theirs that their existence bothers me.
or....looking at it more optimistically, they are simply not worth it.
:) feel better.
-ip

And my stranger--he said, "I love you," a few weeks ago. He says it in the mornings, when I'm all wrapped up in his arms and not quite awake yet. We have this amazing, bedrock-shaking, intimate sex that leaves me feeling whole, not empty. He gets my dark and twisty, likes my hair back brown, and watches me sleep.
Today, I went to meet his family and, standing in his childhood room, I told him, "I love you," because I suddenly realized that I do.

nos. 1-4 red wine and the blues in bed

2009-04-25T14:18:00.006-07:00

1. I went to Scotland with the wonderful Stephanie M. We were both nursing broken hearts, and we bled out all sorts of memories during picnics and drunken adventures. Darren didn't take Edinburgh from me. St Andrews was brilliant, and I'm actually going back next weekend. Darren found out I'd been in the city, and texted me just as I was getting on a plane back to Oxford. 'Heard you were in the Burgh. Sad you didn't tell me, but I understand. X' REALLY?

2. My parents came to visit, and we walked around Oxford having pints and burgers for a week.

3. Spain. Spain was complicated in a way I can't write about here, but in the end was really good. I spent a week reading, eating picnics on clifftops and walking around the hills. I sent Darren a letter, basically telling him that, while it sucks that we can't be friends, that he couldn't love me still hurts more than it sucks. (if that makes any sense.)

4. Remember that boy I kissed all night, who made my knees weak? Well, we kept seeing each other after that first night. He is my new stranger. And all of that pain and unhappiness I was going through with Darren, I was up-front with him about it.
"My heart's not ready," I said.
"We're involved," I said when we had sex for the first time, "We're not together."
He just said, "Ok," and looked at me like I was the prettiest girl in the world.
So I went to Spain and figured out my heart and came running right into my stranger's arms.

fyi

2009-04-02T05:54:00.000-07:00

Much to be updated.
But for now:
Spain is wonderful. Irish ex-pat pubs, stunning cliff views, sleeping late, reading in the sun.

news from room s10

2009-03-17T06:28:00.004-07:00

I'm sorry to be away so long. I've been really ill for the last week and a half, and am only now coming out of it. People say they have the flu all the time, but when you get the real flu, influenza, it burns your insides up for days and days and leaves your lungs sore and chaffed.

I have one more paper to finish, and then I'm done. It should have been done this morning, but I'm still having a hard time concentrating. The other paper, well, I'm taking an incomplete, and I'll worry about it in April, after Spain.

The boy I was kissing? He came to visit a few times; he brought tea and movies and stroked my hair. I don't know quite what to do: I don't remember the last time a boy was this nice to me, this kind. I sort of like it.

Thursday, my friend Stephanie and I go to Edinburgh for a few days. I'm nervous, but excited, to go back. Then my parents are coming here to Oxford for a week. I can't wait to see them. And then, when they've left, I take off for Spain: one week in a tiny sea-side town set in the foothills, riddled with caves and covered in sunshine. There's a strong ex-pat community there, which means Irish, Aussie and Brit bars with live music to go to, after days reading at the beach.

The weather here has turned warm and beautiful. The sun shines in my bedroom and all I want to do is nap on the grass outside, by Magdalen tower. It was really hard, being so sick, and so alone, for so many days. I spent a lot of time missing Darren. There's this part, though, of Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, where she talks about her characters being transformed by a fever, purified by it. I'm not nearly as in love with him as I was a week ago, and that's progress.

almost famous

2009-03-07T12:10:00.001-08:00

I stayed up all night last night kissing a boy who makes my knees weak and my stomach flutter.

it is 4:20 am

2009-03-04T20:20:00.001-08:00

why am i not
a) asleep
or
b) smoking?
good questions.

remember when i wrote poetry?

2009-02-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

Swimming

Far far beneath in the abysmal sea,
The Kraken sleepeth.
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He sails me carefully:
I swim with a many-armed,
many-mouthed,
many-tongued kraken.

I feel his voice and he tells me—
Each tongue tastes things differently.
He tells me—These Pacific waves are no land of Aquinas.
The lines of this coast
are as varied as the edges of my faith.

(I want to ask him, someday,
how he found his way here from those Nordic depths,
how he came from that dark cold into
this unfrozen salt water)

You see, he teaches me to eat of one thing,
and taste of many: to find the things I look for
in the things I see.
And because I am one, I find myself in all:
it is this talent that lurks behind his tentacles and tongues.

The skin of freedom is filled with this ocean,
His ocean.
I breathe in, to give up,
to slide into this liberation.

The lights come early;
I did not expect to see so much,
I tell the kraken.
Fearsome, yet he is my only company.
What other voice have I to hear?

I remember these things
because I leave no wake and everyone else is dreaming.
I am both sailor and swimmer:
I am partnered with the tide.

2009-02-25T03:27:00.002-08:00

I have given myself permission to do whatever I want, whenever I want, and it's been helping. And while I love living in a house with my friends, right now it's becoming a little too much. I like my routines, my traditions. I like going to bed early, and I hate feeling guilty, not going to social events because I would rather go to sleep early and wake up early.

I've been working out a lot, and reading Dorothy Sayers novels. I'm trying to write a poem. I'm finally feeling able to dive into school work.

I think I might go to Spain for spring break, and hole up in a little sea-side town to read for two weeks.

o'neills

2009-02-21T05:57:00.004-08:00

I went out by myself last night, and stumbled upon an Irish bar with a live band playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. A man bought me a drink and told me to have a good night, and there was this feeling, like I was glowing, like I was floating through the whole night. I met two guys, both of whom had absent girlfriends, and we danced in front of the band for hours.

And when the band was done playing, we went to a club and danced more. My feet hurt but somehow it, everything, feels a little bit better. Like I danced something out, let something go. Not everything, not by a long shot. But I'm getting work done, I feel like I'm moving up.

That being said, it still really hurts.

playlist

2009-02-19T12:03:00.002-08:00

I had forgotten how much this hurts.

two other things

2009-02-16T16:45:00.001-08:00

1. i still drool when i cry
2. i wish i could have a hug from my dad

2009-02-16T15:46:00.002-08:00

i'm stuttering
darren darren darren
he just he just ended things
and now i am drunk
so drunk my fingers won't move right
my heart
i had forgotten what this feels
i dont know what love means
i can't my heart can't move
everything feels so far away
from where i am right now

i'd like to go away
somewhere wild where i can
forget who i am
or remember
i don't know what the right thing is
scotland was that--once upon a time
scotland healed me
and now
now now now

i don't know where to go

buoy

2009-02-14T10:40:00.003-08:00

I've had a really hard week.
I feel a lot like I'm drowning, and
I'd like to just lie quietly
until all of this passes.
(It's not just Valentines-
It could be any day, any week)
But there are things to do,
papers and stories to write,
emails to return and people to see.
I've got the mean reds;
I've started smoking again,
and I can't stop reading.
Robert Hass, Larry Brown, Salman Rushdie

2009-02-09T03:10:00.002-08:00

I went to Edinburgh for the weekend, to see Mr D.

It started with a hiccup: a used condom wrapper on his headboard that was not from me, a hostel reservation, deposit paid: place to go, seven cigarettes smoked rapidly on a street-corner, a conversation more silence than words, numbness, but also an understanding. We watched a movie, and he spent all two hours stroking my hair, scratching my back, lacing his fingers through mine. Apology both physical and verbal. The image of another girl in his bed touched away.

Friday night, there were drinks with his friends at the Jekyll and Hyde, where the bartender greeted me with, "Double Jack and Coke and a shot of tequila?" So much laughter, so much joy. Everything fit together; everything went right. He, unlike any other guy I've been with, makes me feel like I'm the only girl in the universe, like he's the lucky one.

Saturday morning: you know those scenes in romantic movies were the couple is in bed the morning after, and they're kissing, both under the sheet, and the sunlight makes their faces glow? All day Saturday was like that. He read to me from his favorite book, my head on his chest, feeling the way his voice growls.

He cooked dinner Saturday night for me and a few of his friends. There was wine and conversation. I've changed--a few months ago, I would never have suggested the dinner party for my last night, but now, it's more about having a good time, rather than having the right time, if that makes any sense.

He walked me to the bus stop (this is a pattern, isn't it? Since when was I the one that leaves?), stayed in line with me until I actually stepped on the bus. I don't even know where to begin thinking about how I feel. This was the goodbye weekend, even if he didn't know it. I'll probably see him again (he wants to come visit; I'm going back to see folks at St Andrews), but this is the weekend I want to remember.

a really perfect weekend

2009-02-08T12:12:00.000-08:00

untitled 7

2009-02-06T08:16:00.003-08:00

I didn't want to dance with your ghosts, but they were there, and the music was playing. And now I'm tired:
With every Dear John letter, I think 'I never thought I'd get here.' There is time, though, before you read that letter--
So throw me against your walls. I want you to pull me apart and like all the places where I fit together. I want to make you gasp, release sighs like specters, floating above your bed--a cloud of ghosts, pleasure past and intangible.
I'd like a silent violence this time. I'd like to leave with all my parts, clean and reassembled. I'd like to leave you with your ghosts.

swoon

2009-01-24T12:33:00.001-08:00

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/wdc/1001706735.html

2009-01-17T19:41:00.001-08:00

i am drunk and melancholy.
i miss mr d very terribly and feel
quite alone.
but
someone did touch
my butt tonight!

contrary to popular belief:

2009-01-13T15:13:00.003-08:00

I haven't forgotten about you. I just don't know where to start.

1. There was a fight. A screaming match with Mr D the night before I left. There was lots of crying. And then I slept through my flight home, and everything was a mess.

2. I had a white Christmas in the mountains.

3. I spent most of my break sleeping over at T's house, because I didn't want to sleep by myself.

4. For a big part of break, I didn't feel at home in California, but then I figured out that it's Stanford I don't feel at home in. I ate at Bistro, and Fraiche, and went out with Gabe for New Year's. I didn't see enough of Danya.

5. I have a single room here in Oxford.

6. The people in my program are amazing. Really, wonderful. I had forgotten how much fun it can be to live in a big house full of people who visit one another and go out together (so many clubs in Oxford have stripper poles!).

7. After 5 straight days of being black-out drunk, I got really sick. I'm still recovering.

8. I think I'm still in love with Mr D.

Hopefully, I'll get better at writing with regularity.

misery and splendor by robert haas

2008-12-19T09:50:00.003-08:00

Summoned by conscious recollection, she
would be smiling, they might be in a kitchen talking,
before or after dinner. But they are in this other room,
the window has many small panes, and they are on a couch
embracing. He holds her as tightly
as he can, she buries herself in his body.
Morning, maybe it is evening, light
is flowing through the room. Outside,
the day is slowly succeeded by night,
succeeded by day. The process wobbles wildly
and accelerates: weeks, months, years. The light in the room
does not change, so it is plain what is happening.
The are trying to become one creature,
and something will not have it. They are tender
with each other, afraid
their brief, sharp cries will reconcile them to the moment
when they fall away again. So they rub against each other,
their mouths dry, then wet, then dry.
They feel themselves at the center of a powerful
and baffled will. They feel
they are an almost animal,
washed up on the shore of a world--
or huddled against the gate of a garden--
to which they can't admit they can never be admitted.

mildly drunken post

2008-12-18T15:11:00.002-08:00

I feel like I take up too much space, sometimes, like I have too many things, write in letters too large, everything expanding expanding expanding until all I want to do is shrink. To live without comparison, without parallels, alone in a bed where no one can tell me I am too large or that I am taking up too much space. That's how I sleep when I'm not alone--curled on my side, arms clutched in. I'm afraid to take up space.
I've been drunk for a week straight, staying up too late, mixing Jack and wine and gin. I don't know how to say anything, anymore. How to say No, or I'm going, or even better, Why. I'm angry, but I don't know who at. Or what.
Now, to bed.

2008-12-16T11:18:00.003-08:00

Everything is moving terribly fast and slow at the same time. I'm starting to pack, have finished exams, getting ready to say goodbye. I've been drinking copious amounts of alcohol and spending as much time as possible with people. Over the last week,

I've bought a ton of new music, all different kinds, and it's a good soundtrack for the leaving. "Painting by Chagall" by The Weepies is one of the best songs I've heard in a long time:

I am humbled in this city
There seems to be an endless sea of people like us
Wakeful dreamers, I pass them on the sunlit streets
In our rooms filled with laughter
We make hope from every small disaster

Everybody says "you can't, you can't, you can't, don't try."
Still everybody says that if they had the chance they'd fly like we do.

to be young (is to be sad, is to be high)

2008-12-12T02:30:00.003-08:00

There's something magic about saying 'I love you' for the first time to someone. My family says it often--not that that detracts from the meaning, just that I'm comfortable saying it. We say it at the end of almost every phone call and spontaneously, simply when the heart can't hold in the feeling anymore. And I love that my family is so comfortable. Saying 'I love you' to other people, though, that still scares me a little, even when I mean 'I love you' and not 'I'm in love with you.'

Last night I said 'I love you' for the first time to a friend of mine, Gabe, who understands all of my silences. And he said it back.

A friend from high school, someone I did theatre with but wasn't very close with, committed suicide earlier this week.

untitled 6

2008-12-10T18:10:00.004-08:00

This is how grief brings us down, slowly, a rough cancer taking the place of all our other organs and joys. There is a sudden seize, how could we not have seen? Our lungs catapulting together, heart crushing, spine twisting. We can't share this grief, this weight rotting out our bones. All we can say is I love you and I'm sorry and none of those things will make us whole.

untitled 5

2008-12-10T18:08:00.004-08:00

If we all took our blackest days and strung them across the sky, well, then I couldn't show you the moon, love. Please, pull back those things drying so long on the line: I'd like to feel you, a shell around my back, banisher of night-terrors, and I, would like to show you the moon, because there's nothing left to say.

"there's a moment--there's always a moment, 'i can do this, i can give in to this, or i can resist it.' i don't know when your moment was...

2008-12-09T14:01:00.004-08:00

...but i bet you there was one." -closer

Everything has gotten colder--every morning I wake up to frost, if not snow, and the pond outside my apartment is frozen over.

My parents came over for Thanksgiving, and I cooked for them, my flatmates, and Mr D. I think it may have been my favorite Thanksgiving yet--there was wine and nothing felt stressful or upsetting.

I've been working hard and then playing hard. Saturday night I went down to Edinburgh and went dancing with a group from St Andrews. We went to a Céilidh, which is like Scottish folk dancing--a live band calling out the dance moves, switching partners and clapping.

The working hard is good, too, when I can actually make myself sit down and do it. My [history] writing is getting better (even I can tell the different between what I wrote two months ago and what I'm writing now).

I'm trying very hard not to think about going away. It's not that I don't want to go home, but that I've found another home. That moment, when I fell in love with Scotland, I think I know when it was. The first time I was in Edinburgh, I met a group of Aussie guys who took me under their wings for a few days. One of the those days, we climbed to the top of Arthur's Seat, which is just on the edge of town, a small mountain. I'd been sick for so long, I never thought I would make it to the top. It started raining just as we sat down to look at the view. Joel, the one who listened to all the same indie-folk that I did and made me laugh, lit me a victory cigarette and we all sat there in the drizzle, looking out into a bunch of clouds.

hurrah

2008-11-30T13:57:00.001-08:00

Have just drunkenly dashed off what may someday soon pass as a poem!

we put on ray charles

2008-11-29T13:36:00.000-08:00

There was this guy I was seeing for a while during the spring of last year, Will. He treated me like dirt most of the time, but no matter how often he kicked me out of bed at 6 am, I kept coming back, to smoke cigarettes and drink beer and listen to him play Ryan Adams songs for me on the guitar. He made me want one of those rock-n-roll, all in, all out, roller coaster relationships. Obviously, he failed. (He won my own, personal, Asshole of the Year award for his behavior.)
The point of this story, though, is that this whole time in Scotland, feels like that tumultuous, up and down, makes your heart sing and your stomach sick relationship. And I'm loving it. Even when I feel completely alone, I'm grounded. I'm healthy (1 year, 5 months, 3 days), I'm making friends and getting better at writing history. I wish there was a way for me to stay.

the ticklish spot

2008-11-23T01:16:00.000-08:00

I went down to Edinburgh on Friday night, drank a lot of Jack, and had the most fantastic row with Mr D. I don't even remember what it was about, but he just sort of let me yell at him for a while, and then I slept on the couch. In the morning, I crawled back into bed with him and neither of us could remember what I'd been upset about, so we just laughed. He's coming up for Thanksgiving with my parents. I'm a little nervous, I will admit.

It's Raisin Weekend (and I'm still finishing a paper)! In about five hours, I will be drunk.

Also, I woke up to this:

It's my first non-Calfornia snow!

could have used a happy ending

2008-11-19T17:50:00.000-08:00

Just cried my way through the last 20 pages of Gone with the Wind.
How did I not remember that it ended like that?

soon, i promise

2008-11-19T14:38:00.001-08:00

Have I told you about the cafe? I found my spot, where I sit for hours and do my work. They know me now, what I order, that I stay for five six seven hours at a time. And I get work done. The instant I walk into this cafe, the rest of my life ceases to exist, and it's wonderful. I'm doing history there, writing and creating. Things are good, I think. Things are looking up.
I'm thinking about my writing more, which is better than avoiding thinking about it because I feel guilty. The next step, as RNG says, is to apply butt to chair.
Soon, I promise.

from asofterworld.com

2008-11-13T12:17:00.000-08:00

2008-11-12T13:59:00.001-08:00

So, I get all of these grand ideas about what I want to write about--school, papers I've written, stories I've started, how my heart continues to misbehave, the best foods to eat while walking around Munich, books I've read lately, but the truth is, the sun goes down at 4:30 here, and by ten, all I want to do is get high and listen to music. The truth is I'd rather be falling asleep in Edinburgh, crushed up on a couch, watching the West Wing, being fed Dairy Milk.

And after all of that complaining, I'm so happy to be back in Scotland, and very little can beat curry and Newcastle Brown in bed while reading.

burning bridges

2008-10-26T14:06:00.000-07:00

All in all, things are pretty lousy. I'm struggling to keep my head and heart above water, but, today, for the first time, I blew smoke rings.

untitled 3

2008-10-22T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am driving faster than I should, pressing harder on the gas than I should, I should I should I should be silent and soft, I should keep these lips pressed quietly together these fingers wrapped tight around the steering wheel. I am veering off course, please, don’t stay silent, please, say something.

I am running over skeletons, spilling wine and I am plotting a course that looks nothing like the map and nothing like where we’re meant to be. Tell me, why do you get to be the serious one? All melancholy and abruptly ended conversations, I am tired, so weary, tired of trying to break your silence with my songs when you never sing along. Do you hear this silence speak? The road comes rushing up around me, swallows all of the things I’ve never loved and shows me the underbelly of the best, the glowing bones of the worst.

In California, I could run forever. The engine would gulp the mountains, the miles, and it would take days to reach the other ocean. North, south, I could hit the corners of the world. This island is small, so small, and I feel like I echo too loudly, fill too many lines, say too many words, ask too much. And all of our silences are awkward, all of our words the wrong ones.

I give my hopes too easily—that was the question you didn’t ask: my faults. When you are sad I want to fix it. When I am sad, I know I simply must ride it out. I am driving faster than I should, and it won’t be you that I call, when the engine fails and I am stuck at a truck stop, eating cherry pie and waiting for a ride.

when i am drunk i

2008-10-20T16:43:00.000-07:00

smoke cigarettes in my bathroom
listen to 'jolene' on repeat

under the water

2008-10-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

I got impossibly high last night at a friend's going away party. I felt like I was drowning, just sinking into this deep, deep, water and there was no one to pull me out, so I just let myself sink, until I sunk into the bottom of the ocean and settled.

Mr D was there, and there was drama with some of his friends. I sat in the the corner of a leather couch between two boys who were talking about football and tried to stay warm. I'm always cold here--except for in bed last night. Mr D wrapped himself around me and passed out and I sweated out all of the drugs and the Jack.

I like Edinburgh better than St Andrews. I wish I could put into words what it is, but it's nothing I can put my finger on. They both have good people, fun bars, nice cafes, stunning views. But I don't want to go back to St Andrews this afternoon.

2008-10-12T11:49:00.000-07:00

dear heart,

please stop doing the following:
messy somersaults
longing to go to india
coming up with terrible metaphors
pining (also known as melancholy longing, desiring, or aching)

buck up! read some poetry, go for a run--do something! i'm counting on you to keep it together.

love,
p

untitled 1

2008-10-11T15:48:00.001-07:00

The tiles of the sky slide slowly behind my window—a field, deserted, the moon, for a brief moment. This is the view I see while we talk, my face pressed against a pillow, I speak slowly. My evening overlaps your morning: here, you say sweet dreams, I say have a nice day.
Each gap in words: I wonder if after, the things you say will pace wearily across my thoughts, if they will step into my prayers and jiggle loose all of the things we leave in the backs of our closets: school uniforms, love letters, forgotten hats and half-eaten candy bars in coat pockets.
Back to our conversation: you ask about my lover, hesitantly. I describe the moon, the field, the empty room where I sleep. I imagine you brokenhearted, Emily lying unmoving over your thoughts. I wish these conversations could lift the gray of this unpain, this notsuffering that fogs the fields and covers the moon. You invoke God when the conversation stalls—I know he’ll reward me for this sacrifice. As the sky slides upward away from my window I uncurl my fingers from our exchange: neither of us has what the other needs, but we’re good enough at keeping each other company to call it friendship.

all dream the same

2008-10-06T05:03:00.000-07:00

I have tentatively started smoking again, although primarily cigars on Sundays and cigarettes when I'm drunk, which I was last night. I feel like it should be sad, to get drunk by oneself on red wine on a Sunday evening, but it didn't feel sad. Around 3 am I finally got myself out of bed and downstairs to have my cigar, and met two boys from my building! They're the first people I've actually met in my housing who don't live in my flat. We had a nice 3 am chat, them not wearing shoes, me in PJs under a big red coat.

To balance the excess of red wine and cigars and staying up late, I went for a run today, and will hopefully make my way out of bed and to a cafe to do some reading. I'm trying to read a lot to distract myself from the fact that the only time I ever write is when I drink, and even that is just drivel. Yes, I have writers block. Badly. Suggestions?

milan kundera

2008-10-03T03:15:00.001-07:00

I'm sorry to disappear like that--I haven't been keeping up my paper journal, either.

Scotland is beautiful. I've started running more (and when I say running, I really mean I jog for 15 minutes, then walk back) through the fields behind my apartment and out towards the ocean (more properly "sea"). St Andrews is situated on a bay, with golf courses looking out into the water. The town itself is based around three (mostly) parallel streets, and at the end of them are a set of ruins (castle and cathedral) that just drop right into the water. There's a tiny little cafe that serves panini and soup to go and a couple times now, for lunch, I've gone and gotten soup in a coffee cup and gone to sit near the cliffs.

I've had both of my classes now--'Legend and History in Sub-Roman Britain' and 'Queens and Queenship in Early Medieval Europe.' My class for 'Legend and History' is about half and half boys and girls, and no one seems very friendly. But my 'Queens' class is almost all girls, and they seem super chill.

I've been having a hard time meeting people here. I've been to a couple of LGBT events, which are a lot of fun, and the people seem nice, but other than that--the guys all seem stuck up and the girls run around in packs, which makes it hard to meet people.

My new job started last night, though. I'm waitressing at a grill, which seems pretty laid back. Plus, one of my co-workers is a third year, and has offered to be my Raisin Weekend Mom (St Andrews has this bizarre tradition for freshers or transfer students where one weekend in November, you are adopted by an academic 'family' who basically just get you very very drunk--I'm stoked).

I've been reading a lot, too. I'm almost done with 'The Unbearable Lightness of Being' (which, while a great title, sort of reminds me of 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius' in that I'm a little embarrassed to admit I'm reading it) which I'm loving. I think I've got a thing for Eastern European writers (Kafka, Nabakov, Dostoevsky, Bulgakov, etc).

gin and jack

2008-09-22T06:17:00.000-07:00

I went up to St Andrews on Saturday to drop off all of my things--it's beautiful! I have a single with en suite bathroom, double bed, and spectacular view of these very Scottish fields (I'll post photos when I have proper internet). I'm staying in Edinburgh, though, until tomorrow morning.
Edinburgh is as wonderful as it was last summer. It's a hill city, full of cobblestones and unexpectedly old buildings. People here aren't as friendly as they are back home, but once you get to know them, they're great. The women have amazing clothes and extraordinary boots here--it makes me want to make gutsy fashion choices and strut.
I went out Friday and Saturday night with Mr D and his friends, which was loads of fun. We went to a gay bar on Saturday night and I had so much fun dancing. I think I'm glad, though, to be going to a college town--hopefully there will be fewer plastic girls (Edinburgh has its fair share). I was back at the bar where I stayed last summer, too. It's funny how faces change, but the people stay the same--the same kind of people, I mean. I'm still just as awkward in bars like that, with the music too loud to actually talk and everyone just sipping and laughing at one another. I sat in the bathroom for a while, guzzling gin and pretending my life was an independent movie (somehow this makes awkwardness seem less awful, because in indie movies the awkward duckling usually finds another, equally awkward duckling and they waddle off into a used bookstore, which sounds divine). Enough gin and tonics later, and I was out, socializing with the best of them.
Starting my trip with Mr D has been just right--I don't miss California yet; I've been too busy, and by the time I get up to St Andrews, I'll have lots of things to do.

oh, ray

2008-09-19T05:30:00.000-07:00

I'm here! Skies are gray and it even rained yesterday! Staying with Mr. D is lovely--he's got a perfect apartment with a cozy kitchen. I'm looking forward to moving up to St Andrews tomorrow, though, and meeting my roommates, etc (and when I say 'looking forward' I mean 'scared shitless'). I've just realized that I have no pillows, no comforter, towels, or sheets, making IKEA a necessary stop on Sunday.
The city is mostly the same, although its different, knowing that I'm moving here, that it's not just a summer lark.

T-23 hours

2008-09-15T16:22:00.000-07:00

So, one day left. The bags are mostly packed, all the errands run. Things I'll miss about California: Borrone's custard, highway 280, driving in the foothills, our leather couch.
Things I'm looking forward to: Fog, living close to the beach and a big city, HISTORY all the time, trains.

should have been a cowgirl

2008-09-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

I'm up in the mountains now, for the last time until December. I had a great drive up--California still takes my breath away, especially the parts of Highway Four where the road curves around and there's a break in the trees and whoosh--there's a vista, a really fucking gorgeous sweeping view of the mountains across a stunning drop. Dangerous, breath-taking mountains.

I'm driving home in the morning to pack and pick up my parents from the airport. I've been mostly calm about leaving, but I keep having minor freak-outs--about my haircut, about where to eat dinner, about picking a face lotion, stupid stuff. I think mostly I'm freaked about leaving California, the geographic place. People move all the time; we'll always be in transition. But the place of California, I can't call California, I can't expect California to write letters. On the bright side, I know it'll be here when I get back!