tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57308392011-11-28T19:51:50.786-05:00redemption songme, talkingAlexnoreply@blogger.comBlogger5141100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1117210545820047912005-05-27T12:14:00.000-04:002005-05-27T12:15:45.826-04:00Yes I've left this blog. I'm still psuedononymous but not so much. You can find me at ixmata.blogspot.comWelcome over. I intend to be more interesting, and to try to pretend that no one reads the internet.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com14tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1116869438951541242005-05-23T13:26:00.000-04:002005-05-23T13:30:45.336-04:00The people who told me it was impossible to forget how to ride a bicycle may have left out a few quick facts. My reflexes are still there, but they expect to be encountering the body of a seven-year-old on a pink bike with white streamers on the handlebars. I have more momentum than I'm used to, and more weight. It takes me more work to get up hills, and I coast for longer on the other side. Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1116813227694613802005-05-22T21:50:00.000-04:002005-05-22T21:53:47.700-04:00I get depressed at all the people / friends / acquaintances whose lives are carrying on without me over this break. Things are happening that I won't know about; changes are happening that I won't see.I suppose people get married because they're sick of parts of their lives happening without each other.I have a lot of crazy ideas right now. It's fun, but I'm worried I'll run out and be boring forAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1116436370870976082005-05-18T12:21:00.000-04:002005-05-18T13:12:50.933-04:00Is there anything better than finding That One Book from your earlier literate days? I must have read UK Le Guin's A Fisherman of the Inland Sea when I was in middle school; I almost definitely got it from the musty, overcrowded town library. I remember reading in the upstairs bathroom of my house, the room with the best light, in the broad ceramic step of the huge, unusable bathtub. I also Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1116272961155892202005-05-16T15:32:00.000-04:002005-05-16T16:14:27.403-04:00The new Harry Potter trailer sends chills up my spine. I know it's geeky of me; it's just that the Prisoner of Azkaban movie was so good. I wish I had more hope that this next movie will have the kind of epic scale the story deserves; now, I've never seen one of Mike Newell's movies, but there's kind of a difference between directing Julia Roberts vehicles and directing a movie with dragons in Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1116266747755388732005-05-16T13:29:00.000-04:002005-05-16T14:05:47.823-04:00Man, translation is hard. First, it's hard to come out of assymetrical, irregular, immediate English into a neatly ordered language that has whole tenses devoted to being vauge. Second, it's hard to confirm my literal semi-conceptual translations when the translations in the books have already been prettied-up. Third, UTexas keeps cease-and-desisting Neruda translation sites. Thbbt.SimultaneouslyAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1115914470730497372005-05-12T12:09:00.000-04:002005-05-12T12:48:12.280-04:00Does anyone out there know how to thread a rigid heddle loom?I thought not. My bed is covered in a seething mass of yarn from which there will be no escape. I could have read the manual, but the manual says to thread the loom before cutting the yarn up, so too late now.On one hand, being around my grandparents is kind of reassuring. They are both suffering from pretty serious age-related illness,Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1115821766077127112005-05-11T10:12:00.000-04:002005-05-11T10:37:36.853-04:001) I dreamed that my mother's best friend divorced her husband and moved to a Momune in New Mexico. (I can't find a link for Momune. Sigh.) I also dreamed that I was trying to find somewhere to stay in Central America, and ended up renting a room from a family of oil bootleggers (who filled individual jars with black crude for people to take home and process) who lived in this vast Alexnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1115604998178080012005-05-08T22:16:00.000-04:002005-05-08T22:16:38.183-04:00 that's all for nowalexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1115516544149992872005-05-07T21:42:00.000-04:002005-05-07T21:42:24.156-04:00No, no, I was right the first time.Oh well.alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1115384699189855162005-05-06T08:51:00.000-04:002005-05-06T09:04:59.430-04:00While I was away, my family put induction cooktops on our (free from family) new stove. I guess if the oven's free, you can afford to get a little wild and crazy with the attachments. Right now, I've got a paper towel sitting under the pot as it cooks; also, I have this bizarre anxiety that the cook top is magnetizing my bloodstream and will either pull all my hemoglobin to one side of my body orAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1115223182171091832005-05-04T12:02:00.000-04:002005-05-04T12:13:02.490-04:00man, no one wants to hear about my underwear.I'm half-packed, in that everything that was put away neatly in drawers is now put away neatly in boxes. The sea of junk (from here: vitamins, phone, dishes, resume paper, bubble blower, a chunk of mahogany fencepost from Honduras, an empty bottle of Turbodog, a sprouted potato, Howard Zinn's People's History) that covers every exposed surface has not Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1115143183560869812005-05-03T13:52:00.000-04:002005-05-03T14:22:51.360-04:00Two Underwear Anecdotes:When my parents came up last weekend to haul home my extra clothes and books and cooking supplies (pounds and pounds of dried beans that I had stockpiled in anticipation of university-wide famine) they also carried off the paper bag I was keeping clean laundry in. In that bag was all of my underwear. All that remain to me are the two sets of old boyfriend boxers that I Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114986147419029542005-05-01T18:19:00.000-04:002005-05-01T18:22:27.420-04:00I came to school here because of the quiet. That's the thing I love best about my mountains; even in the dead of summer, in the daylight on the windy hilltops there is no sound besides the wind in the trees and the occasional hesitant bird. The woods have gotten green in the last week, after the late snow. They sound so different, no longer the faint cold song of branch on branch but an almost Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114974348916964912005-05-01T15:01:00.000-04:002005-05-01T15:05:48.923-04:00These are my URL ABCs:(Defective Yeti spawned a meme, and then an automatic generator. Type each letter into your browser and pick the first thing it suggests.)A is for abortionclinicdays.blogs.com - Not actually first in my browser, but good B is for buggydoo.blogspot.com - My general blog portal C is for comedycentral.com/mp/browsevideos.jhtml?s=ds - I just discovered the daily show. D is for Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114901371929397322005-04-30T18:46:00.000-04:002005-04-30T18:49:31.930-04:00Y'all, I picked this news story up off Bitch Ph. D. This is one strong girl.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114797089847358102005-04-29T13:51:00.000-04:002005-04-29T13:51:50.723-04:00Dear world: fill me up with your light.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114477148366427592005-04-25T20:57:00.000-04:002005-04-25T20:59:08.366-04:00Consensus: Kentucky Fried Chicken tastes of death. I've been omnivoring on and off with the occasional chicken wing or peice of fish from the Free Range Health-o-Mart, and those taste fine, if bland and healthy. Kentucky Fried tastes like life in an eight by ten inch cage. I think I'm done with that stuff.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114438598283443472005-04-25T09:29:00.000-04:002005-04-25T10:16:38.286-04:00Yes, I do have a self-righteous streak, thanks for asking.Those of you who've been reading for a while probably know that I go to a little two-year residential college at a little state university. I'm graduating soon, and will finish out my education under the auspices of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, or possibly with the flaky people over in anthropology.I will post more about Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114281101138692962005-04-23T14:27:00.000-04:002005-04-23T14:31:41.140-04:00I just posted this in response to a question over at So Close. I then realized that I should probably post it on my own blog, instead of hijacking her thread. I have found Tertia's conversations of the past few days extraordinarily thought-provoking, and I'd like to thank her here, too, for getting my brain moving."I didn't show up in time to comment on the initial question. I have not even Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114278618523581712005-04-23T13:33:00.000-04:002005-04-23T13:50:18.523-04:00Incidentally, I did, at some point, between the constant hunger and the walking all over town, loose four pounds over a week and a half on South Beach phase 1. If it weren't for the three pounds that will come rocketing back once all the beer and phyllo dough hit my system, this would be a healthy rate of weight loss.Next up: eating by the new Gay pride food guide USDA diet pyramid. (I pause to Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114231113605467442005-04-23T00:31:00.000-04:002005-04-23T00:38:33.606-04:00My day:1) Went for a walk and spent an hour stuck in shelter in torrential thunderstorm. Quite cold, rather fun2) Local activist raffle night: won a mini-bottle of Jim Bean and a chocolate bar.3) Crashed our new chancellor's installation gala.a) stole hors d'vores for activist partyb) danced in public, with enthusiasm4) Speaking of activist bingo night: the Dirty Girl Scout, granola style: vodka,Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114100186571801102005-04-21T12:12:00.000-04:002005-04-21T12:16:26.573-04:00Why do so many people here have to be heartbreaks in motion? Trailing their blond dreadlocks and misty bleary eyes and long broad-shouldered bodies through my life, one end to another. Trailing their cigarette burns and save-the-world ideals and marked beautiful faces. I walked arm-in-arm with the more sensible of the twin brothers, two years older than me and tall and lovely, under the eerie Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114045148148511172005-04-20T20:58:00.000-04:002005-04-20T20:59:08.150-04:00This is kinda fun, except that it has a real problem working with anything but a straight-on id photo.The number of times I post here in a day is directly proportional to the number of papers desperately due the next day.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114040209645386612005-04-20T19:36:00.000-04:002005-04-20T19:36:49.646-04:00Today, I met a PORN STAR!And I totally introduced myself.I did a paper on feminism in the adult industries, I had an excuse.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1114023139390527522005-04-20T14:49:00.000-04:002005-04-20T14:52:19.390-04:00Last night, I dreamed that we went to some sort of big family shindig a great-uncle was throwing, and when I got there I discovered that all of my cousins once- and twice- removed were young men with dreadlocks. Apparently, my subconcious has a more interesting family than I do.And then our boat capsized, but in the dream that was quite fun.Not much else to say. I've been a blogging fiend lately Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113968106803728462005-04-19T23:27:00.000-04:002005-04-19T23:35:24.166-04:00various crises in alex-land:1) The Spark has apparently completed its transformation from slightly sketchy purveyor of quizzes & wierd experiments to respectable publishing house. this means: NO MORE SKETCHY TESTS. No slut test. No sex test. NO PURITY TEST. My friends, my American-Pie watching, Dan Savage reading, bizarre american adolescence centered around that test. I will never have an Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113942670782992312005-04-19T16:24:00.000-04:002005-04-19T16:31:10.783-04:00My parents are, emotionally at least, in the process of cutting me loose. It's an interesting feeling. I certainly don't need them as much as I used to - I probably don't need them very much at all, except insofar as I am totally fiscally dependant and have never had a checking account or paid income taxes. You know what I mean. I probably could get by without any more parenting. I'm just not Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113929085251195802005-04-19T12:35:00.000-04:002005-04-19T12:44:45.253-04:00Exactly one pound lighter.After being hungry all the time for a week.Yes, I said that diets are crap, but what I meant was, I will add a bowl of oatmeal for lunch every day and continue with the eating nothing but scrambled eggs and salad. I think I have established that diets are crap in a more conclusive way, right now. Where's my unhealthy plummet? The drastic results that nutritionists tell Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113660074257070632005-04-16T09:42:00.000-04:002005-04-16T10:01:14.256-04:00So I had my first "babysitting" job last night. Babysitting in quotes, y'all. I came upon one of my friends sitting down by the pond, soberly keeping an eye on three freshmen who were forcibly meddling with thier nuerotransmitters, and decided to hang with them for a bit. Frankly, I'd always expected the LSD experience to look, even from the outside, a bit more dramatic. I'm sure it looked like Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113542257597025732005-04-14T23:42:00.000-04:002005-04-15T01:25:21.656-04:00The two girls at the other end of the cafeteria table are sweet-faced, heavy-set, with long hair twisted up in buns. They are wearing their gym clothes - making plans to meet for aerobics later - and eating chicken strips from the fast food chain in the other side of the cafeteria. I eavesdrop. They're talking about liberals and feminists. Their bible studies teacher, it seemed, used to be a Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113417090529906012005-04-13T14:24:00.000-04:002005-04-13T14:31:45.823-04:00Planted seed balls in the unused planter by the foot of the stairs. This is supposed to be the hottest summer on record - temperatures in the 90s in my mountain town, and at home, in the flats, by a swamp, I'm guessing it'll hit three digits pretty often. Today, though, is cold, and misty, and pleasant.I've been having insane wild dreams since I started going to sleep hungry. When I was in the Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113342894872824362005-04-12T17:53:00.000-04:002005-04-12T17:54:54.873-04:00Fuck it. I'm at 5'8" and 146 pounds. Do you think I need to loose weight? Me neither. Or at least not as drastically and metabolism-slowingly as all that carblessness. You try being a carbohydrate-less vegetarian with no time to cook.I had two bowls of oat bran cereal with unsweetened soymilk. I feel much better.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113240262933370252005-04-11T13:19:00.000-04:002005-04-11T13:24:22.936-04:00My **** project group won't get their **** **** together and I have another paper to write.It's pretty outside and I just want to play computer games.This morning I tried to make moong dosa, which was disastrous. I therefore saluted my first day of South Beach with half a box of Morningstar Chick'n Nuggets (despite breading = the South Beach ultimate evil) and half a cup of unsweetened soymilk.I Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113166645914660282005-04-10T16:49:00.000-04:002005-04-10T16:57:25.913-04:00My sunshine friends, this blog is about to take a boring little turn.Tomorrow: South Beach diet, phase one, begins. No sweet potatoes, winter squash, or brown rice for two weeks. Moreover, no marshmallow peeps.I will be posting things along the lines of food & exercise notes every so often. I would feel worse about hijacking my blog for this, but I really don't think my body of devoted readers isAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1113101867205355842005-04-09T22:57:00.000-04:002005-04-09T22:57:47.206-04:00I spent the day inside the concrete box hiding from the sun, and went out in the nighttime to spend my last five dollars on flower seeds.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1112810350305683832005-04-06T13:58:00.000-04:002005-04-06T13:59:10.306-04:00So often I assume that someone has a problem with me, only to realize that it's just that I've never stopped to talk with them. It's a relief, to no longer hold yourself apart from someone on an assumed dislike.Doing work! I swear!love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1112795896561443642005-04-06T09:52:00.000-04:002005-04-06T09:58:16.560-04:00I will break my addiction to a certain indy-rock content provider. I will not pay said content provider actual _money_. Really. I swear to god.The shit has hit the fan here. Again. If you don't hear from me for a while, it's because I'm trying desperately to make it all work.The thing is, I want to say I'm glad sophomore year can never happen to me again. But there have still been friendships andAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1112568210469250652005-04-03T18:39:00.000-04:002005-04-03T18:43:30.470-04:00The last snowstorm of April melted today, with a great change of clear sky and sun and wind rattling down the mountain like a freight train. The shift in time means that I can run out up the mountain, after everything, charging through the mud and the streams and the spread hands of rhododendron. I sat by the pond for a while - maybe hours even - watching the bright wind erupt across the surface Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1112207047558009222005-03-30T13:23:00.000-05:002005-03-30T13:24:07.556-05:00So, it turns out that standing up and walking out of a class - after telling the professor exactly what you think of his pedagogy - is not the diplomatic route.And my mother, she told me always to take the diplomatic route.This professor says he's not mad at me at all. Right.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1111980270885946562005-03-27T21:51:00.000-05:002005-03-27T22:24:30.886-05:00Oh wow is this more personal than my blog usually gets. Though it's been headed there lately.See, this child I want some day - this child I would desperately want now, if economics and society permitted - this child who thankfully did not choose to be created this month, despite my stupid forgetfulness with bc-pills - I already love this child more than I love my own life. I've already got myselfAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1111706929494950922005-03-24T18:27:00.000-05:002005-03-24T18:28:49.496-05:00I have been walking around like I'm blind and deaf, not using my senses, making up the world. I don't know how that has changed, or for how long, but the sun is bright and the air delicious on the mountainsides, and I feel much better.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1111690954637851232005-03-24T13:47:00.000-05:002005-03-24T14:02:34.640-05:00And now, your ten-minute rage.also, more about sex!The pro-abstinence website Truth4Youth.com offers us the following dose of empowerment:"So there you have it, girls. Nobody wants to marry someone who has been the loving, meaningful relationship of 17 other guys. If sexual experience was necessary for love to grow between two people, everyone would want to marry a prostitute."I guess I'll go Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1111596841895357772005-03-23T11:36:00.000-05:002005-03-23T11:54:01.896-05:00And now, some words about sex.Don't get too excited. It's a media rant. Specifically, a media rant brought on by the ortho-tri-cyclin ad, with the perfectly manicured hand holding up the smooth pink compact/pill-case. Now, this has confused me for a couple years now: despite watching five seasons of sex & the city, I still don't understand how someone with perfect manicures has sex. I don't Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1111440383000657992005-03-21T16:22:00.000-05:002005-03-21T16:26:23.000-05:00I. Hate. This.This is what killed it the last time we broke up. The only person I really want to talk to in the wierd vertigo of post-breakup and life going onward is _him_, the one I just broke up with. He's the only person who can do anything for me when I'm just plain miserable. But this time, we're staying broken up, and so there's nothing I can do but be miserable by myself and alienate a Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1111353255926695282005-03-20T16:12:00.000-05:002005-03-20T16:14:59.766-05:00Copied from Rin, without permission, by Rilke:You who never arrivedin my arms, Beloved, who were lostfrom the start,I don't even know what songswould please you. I have given up tryingto recognize you in the surging wave of the nextmoment. All the immenseimages in me-- the far-off, deeply-felt landscape,cities, towers, and bridges, and unsuspectedturns in the path,and those powerful lands that Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1111268023160607272005-03-19T16:32:00.000-05:002005-03-19T16:33:43.160-05:00I just spent forty-five minutes filling out a survey for this thing & then deleted it all in a misclick. That's pretty descriptive of my mood anyway.love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1110413749021756532005-03-09T19:10:00.000-05:002005-03-09T19:15:49.023-05:00Spent a long day in town and bought yucca root & pan at the tienda in Carrboro, "irresistable vegetarian abalone" in a can at the asian food mart, a spanish bible at the used book store, and cloth to make myself some flannel handkerchiefs. It was a good day, clear and sunny, and I didn't buy anything, but spent a long time at, Rebellious Books Inc and the health food co-op. I do like my Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1110056954893137282005-03-05T16:04:00.000-05:002005-03-05T16:09:14.896-05:00I am afraid that love annihilates the world. Lover and loved, complete in themselves, looking for nothing except each other, caring for nothing except each other, watching the world die, comfortably, apathetically, from the closed circle of each other's arms. I am afraid love annihilates the self, throwing it again and again at the closed door that is another human body, face, mind. I am afraid Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1109804848131975562005-03-02T18:01:00.000-05:002005-03-02T18:07:28.133-05:00Here is what I thought about, lying awake in the half-light before dawn on a musty mattress on the floor of the stove room of a house in the county:Beauty has no utility. Life has no utility. Friendships, loves, enjoyment - the burning, ecstatic blueness of the winter sky - colors, flavors, birds wheeling bright shapes over the snowy meadow - these have no intrinsic usefulness. Relish of life hasAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1109783662390552182005-03-02T12:06:00.000-05:002005-03-02T12:14:22.390-05:00So yes, the hipster boys are obnoxious first thing in the morning. They go lurching across the floor of mattresses to check their email, stepping on my pillow, talking loud in their braying voices, overconfident in their long thin arms and carefully disheveled hair. Arrogant, jarring, with the sun cutting through the window and the ache of cheap red wine behind my eyes. But it is all worth it forAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1109529831775658752005-02-27T13:34:00.000-05:002005-02-27T13:43:51.776-05:00It's the inbreath of sanctity and sanctuary - coffee, dirt, must, a hint of parrafin, the breath of old house. All Unitarian fellowships have a house somewhere in their history, a little turn-of-the-century affair with single-pane windows and a stained, scratched wooden floor. It's the house where the youth group meets, to sprawl in promiscuous, parsimonious heaps and talk and sing the old songs.Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1109358624759248792005-02-25T14:02:00.000-05:002005-02-25T14:10:24.760-05:00Maybe it's time for me to start thinking about how much different my experience of my life would be - health-wise, life-wise, energy-wise, enjoyment-wise - if I faced up to things instead of spending most of my time running from them. Today, for instance, I have been killing time, stripped of any real enjoyment of the sun and the cool-not-cold air by the constant lurking panic of what I'm trying Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1109182933968860132005-02-23T13:10:00.000-05:002005-02-23T13:22:13.970-05:00I think I may have the coolest diagnosis ever. After some time with a tape measure, and a second opinion from the nurse, the podiatrist says, well, one of your legs is a full half-inch shorter than the other. That might be why you're having trouble.Incidentally, I'm telling _everybody_ this, and it's been suggested that this could be my new superpower.Also, on the way to the podiatrist, I had a Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1109103128593603542005-02-22T15:02:00.000-05:002005-02-22T15:12:08.593-05:00Gimpy feet day!A whole new set of inflamed tendons means I've been holed up in my room all morning eating cereal to excess & watching movies. What I would give for an in-room internet connection. Convivial though this lab is...It's a beautiful day out. I'm going to gimp on out there and sit and read some Chilean mining history. It will be great.Nothing much to report. I'm just trying to put off Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1109014467708913812005-02-21T14:24:00.000-05:002005-02-21T14:34:27.710-05:00A series of extraordinarily gray days. I think I'm starting to realize that part of my problem is my inability to be still. My need for distraction (the reason why I'm writing this now, as it happens) jerks me away from any center I might develop. Some good things have come of this, mind - the lack of distraction in my room is sending me to the gym more often, for example. but in general.I just Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1108684272964953372005-02-17T18:48:00.000-05:002005-02-17T18:51:12.966-05:00Random collegiate hygeine tip: Vigorously rubbing a palmful of talcum powder into dry, dirty hair, and then brushing, can save you _so much shower time_. I've been skipping the shampooing for five days, and my hair is still silky-soft and presentable. Just in case you wanted to know.I had something else to say but I forget what.Oh yeah.You never know what you want until it becomes Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1108596519617061532005-02-16T18:15:00.000-05:002005-02-16T18:28:39.620-05:00At what point, in navigating the intricacies of faculty politics, do I have to switch from puppyish enthusiasm to corporate blandspeak? At what point does "that sounds awesome, I'd love to help" switch to "I would be glad to lend assistance to this endeavor"? And why, oh why, working world, do I have to spend eighteen years coming out of my shell and the next ten years learning to go back in?Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1108266830658901142005-02-12T22:49:00.000-05:002005-02-12T22:53:50.660-05:00What I dislike the most about growing up and being around your family is that you can no longer be right, you can no longer win arguments, you can't even win in that way where you let someone else win and then sulk and whine and try to make them miserable. Instead, you have to deal with your own hurt feelings, and your need not to hurt their feelings. I suppose I could just say, hey, you hurt my Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1108068266676526372005-02-10T15:43:00.000-05:002005-02-10T15:44:26.676-05:00Dear University:
Guuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhh.
love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1107888773505183572005-02-08T13:49:00.000-05:002005-02-08T13:52:53.506-05:00Can anyone else, incidentally, detect the abrubt contrasts between Fun!Chipper! and Deep!Thoughtful! that characterize my blog these days? Sometimes I read back, as with previous post, and wonder who the hell wrote it.
Then I realize that I'm still holding on with four.5 hours of sleep and a bazillion tests looking me in the face. And I forgive myself for coming off as chipper and shallow. Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1107879187030665012005-02-08T11:09:00.000-05:002005-02-08T11:13:07.030-05:00I am in the computer lab, checking my blogs for updates. (There are blogs that I should put on the blogroll, but I do not, because I am like that.) It took me several minutes of wondering why they were not new, but then I realized that I had last checked at 5:30 this morning, while I was in the computer lab looking up the MLA rules for footnotes. Keep this in mind. 5:30. AM.
In other news, yerba Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1107483504121740922005-02-03T21:03:00.000-05:002005-02-03T21:18:24.120-05:00(redemption song) -
So I will write this cynically, because that's how it is, but I want to let you know what just happened to me -
This guy is talking at our campus for Programmed Diversity Month. He left Aryan Nations - after being a youth recruiter and member from 16 to 35 - because he had a son with a cleft palate, and one day the leader of Aryan Nations called him into his office and told Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1107278847815453002005-02-01T13:20:00.000-05:002005-02-01T12:27:27.816-05:00I am trying to come up with a birthday meditation. I should think about something being lucky, to have lived this long and this well. Race and class analysis is making my stomach hurt, so I am letting go for a little bit of why I am lucky to have clean drinking water and a full round of immunizations, even though I am not forgetting that I'm very lucky. I would, insteady, prefer to dwell on some Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1107205760031916992005-01-31T16:08:00.000-05:002005-01-31T16:13:02.626-05:00Right now, it's not just alright, it's right. right now in the sun and the melting shreds of the blizzard, I can let it go, just a little, just for once.
love,alex
p.s. listening to a lot of Sleater-Kinney, if you want to know the kind of mood I'm in. Tomorrow, I will be twenty!Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1106671395807753752005-01-25T11:39:00.000-05:002005-01-25T11:43:15.806-05:00Republicans make me want to WASH AND WASH AND WASH AND WASH until no trace of their outbreath remains on me. And seriously, what is it with Republican boys? It must be really hard to get laid as a conservative (unlike, say, anarchist poet songwriters, who in the words of one I know, get more ass than God). The second you show neocon adolescents any inkling of respect for their common humanity, Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1106418552428765232005-01-22T13:26:00.000-05:002005-01-22T13:29:12.426-05:00The Korean guy has been using this computer, so Blogger Dashboard is in Korean. Which, may I say, is a very pretty written language.
This morning, I got up at 9:30 and went walking with my roommate in the ice-covered woods. 2 to 3 inches of snow tonight. We'll see, friends. We'll see.
On my agenda today: finding a phillips screwdriver, so I can unscrew the stupid grate keeping us from using our Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1106341816755491432005-01-21T15:47:00.000-05:002005-01-21T16:10:16.756-05:00A friend just emailed our professor from DC. He says he got pepper sprayed for kneeling beside the parade route. His girlfriend, who previously hasn't done much besides the yearly SOA memorial, refused to bring soap in a bag or a bandanna or vinegar to DC. They wouldn't tear gas people in the nation's capital, she said. It would be all over the news.
The whole group got pepper sprayed yesterday. Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1106236941082518312005-01-20T11:00:00.000-05:002005-01-20T11:02:21.083-05:00I don't know what to tell you. Nothing seems right right now; it's all aching head and gray sky and that horrible taste of blood behind the throat that comes at the end of a cough. I'm behind in all my classes, and not about to catch up; I'm claustrophobic and lonely, and I don't know how to fix it. In retrospect, though, I will think I'm happy, and I guess that's what counts.
love anywayalexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1106081070687338252005-01-18T15:24:00.000-05:002005-01-18T15:44:30.686-05:00Just a note, people, I've met some of the people who, as children, crossed the bridge at Selma and met cops and horses and gas on the other side. I've met some of the SNCC workers who slept with a rifle on each side of their bed, because they honestly believed that if they were not armed against the Klan they wouldn't live out the summer. I saw the room where Martin Luther King Jr. lived as a Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1105898558042626822005-01-16T13:46:00.000-05:002005-01-16T13:02:38.043-05:00My mother and sister came and stayed for a bit, and bought me groceries and breakfast and the Feng Shui Daytimer pack. I should be feeling all sarcastic about this last thing, because it has pictures of koi and zen gardens and quotes from Buddhist texts and is all very Aging Yuppie. But it actually does make me calmer to look at zen gardens while recording my homework. So much for my sense of Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1105664156856926742005-01-13T19:52:00.000-05:002005-01-13T19:55:56.856-05:00I put a lot of stuff in the hallway with a sign that said "free", and then I took some of it back inside. I dumped the boyfriend, and undumped the boyfriend, and now am not only an asshole but totally confused. If I wasn't sick I would feel full of life & love; if I wasn't sick I would feel miserable, displaced. I keep trying to be deep, so I can be with my companeros who are suffering like I Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1105584857525830652005-01-12T21:47:00.000-05:002005-01-12T21:54:17.526-05:00So it turns out I am that kind of person. The kind of person who wakes up the next morning in a whole new country. The kind of person who doesn't just visit but the kind of person who lives, and stays. I am going to be the person that stays.
Nicaragua was my first love, it's true, my sweetest thing, la flor mas linda de mi querer. Honduras is not my love. But me and Honduras, we can have a Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1105392327956995552005-01-10T16:19:00.000-05:002005-01-10T16:25:27.956-05:00In Honduras, in a sunny little internet cafe and shoe store in the old town of Tegucigalpa. One of my comrades is sending a postcard home of the FDR bridge at night, strung with christmas lights. The back reads "I just spent six days in a town without electricity. Here´s a picture of a bridge." That´s kind of the way I feel. This is a wierd country.
I have been doing some thinking. I hope that Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1104251569673654392004-12-28T11:26:00.000-05:002004-12-28T11:32:49.673-05:00It is something to have wept as we have wept,and something to have done as we have done.it is something to have watched while all have sleptand seen the stars which never see the sunIt is something to have smelt the mystic rosealthough it break and leave the thorny rodit is something that we hunger now as thosemust hunger who have ate the bread of gods.
lo and blessed are our ears that they haveAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1103948650339303002004-12-24T23:16:00.000-05:002004-12-24T23:39:32.100-05:00o come o come Emmanueland with your captive children dwellgive hope to all exiles hereand in the shattered heart bring cheerrejoice, rejoice, emmanuelshall come within as hope to dwell.*
Why don't we believe in this?Why don't we? After two thousand - five thousand - years of endless war, of son turned against father, brother against sister, soul against soul, why don't we believe it? Something Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1103580885586048722004-12-20T17:13:00.000-05:002004-12-20T17:14:45.586-05:00Just a note:
The more time I spend actively employed in the raising of children, the more I feel that that is the real world, and everything else is some brand of farce.
love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1102983073887115192004-12-13T18:59:00.000-05:002004-12-13T19:11:13.886-05:001) Saturday, an apparent format conflict wiped my 3.5 floppy and destroyed my only copy of a 5-page research paper due today2) Showed up at my algebra final this morning only to discover that said final was last Friday3) Jumping jehosephat, is it ever cold.
On the other hand.
1.1) I summoned up some sort of incredible academic fanaticism (and backup copies of my notes, if not my paper) and got Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1102891997157451812004-12-12T17:49:00.000-05:002004-12-12T17:53:17.156-05:00The first snow, two nights ago, at one thirty in the morning. I heard the commotion in the halls, thought I know that sound, and threw on my sweater over my pajamas. It was really cold outside for the first time this season, and the snow was more like a flurry, but it kept snowing, and kept snowing, and this morning in lieu of church I went for a walk in the unchanging dawn light of snow on the Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1102534113712324352004-12-08T14:24:00.000-05:002004-12-08T14:28:33.713-05:00Argh. I saw him today, another boy who was my friend all last year. This was the kayaker, the crazy inarticulate one who I hadn't realized till today I missed badly. We had a brief, awkward moment on the quad and then he went to sit down with some other people, leaving me to my roommate and her friends. Every time I looked towards him he was looking at me.
Anyway, I miss the kid.
love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1102448056357441602004-12-07T14:29:00.000-05:002004-12-07T15:17:39.970-05:00Oh my god, you guys have got to read the Waxman Report. At 28 pages, it's shorter than this week's New Yorker, and it's chock full of hilarity. A representative sample:
"One book in the “Choosing the Best” series presents a story about a knight who saves a princess from a dragon. The next time the dragon arrives, the princess advises the knight to kill the dragon with a noose, and the following Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1102340743592503172004-12-06T08:44:00.000-05:002004-12-06T08:49:04.506-05:00Wrote a six-page paper in three hours, scored a 95% on a math test that everyone else failed. Now, by the time the professor got to me, he didn't care that I'd slipped a few extra zeros in every problem, but still. Maybe this college thing is an okay idea?
love,alex
p.s. Blogger: Why have you eaten my last entry? But in response to all the mango-relish-and-bean fans, here's what I do: I buy a jarAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1101292734971546732004-11-24T05:38:00.000-05:002004-11-24T05:38:54.970-05:00On the island. I will talk to you all in a week.
love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1101153624192477152004-11-22T14:55:00.000-05:002004-11-22T15:00:24.193-05:001) Solely because my mother had a migrane and the family left for vacation a day later, I DON'T HAVE TO STAY HERE FOR THANKSGIVING! Poor Mother! Lucky me!2) Too much to do too much to do too much to do.3) It cracks me up that horrible looming task #1) is: memorize rest of Yellow Submarine in sign language, and sub-task #1.1) is: find pirate hat.
Wish me luck, yo.
4) Too much to do because Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1100814528970859152004-11-18T16:43:00.000-05:002004-11-18T16:48:48.970-05:00It's been a year. It was on a Thursday, in a street under an office building with the buzzards and the helicopters circling overhead. I was brave, and I was not brave. I spent a morning in the street with the sting and smell of pepper spray on me, and the afternoon in a deli watching the riot cops go by outside. We live in interesting times.
love,alex.
P.S. I saw him - the one from the alligator Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1100655706480711082004-11-16T20:34:00.000-05:002004-11-16T20:41:46.480-05:00His name, it turns out, is The Chief. He says it's because he's native american; he looks like an irish coal miner to me. He's a wispy little hobgoblin of a man, his brown-gray hair matted into a thick solid sheet across his head and down his back, like an extra hat. He sells polished rocks in front of the sandwich shop, mostly polished semi-precious things and usually the same ones for several Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1100464044209246342004-11-14T15:20:00.000-05:002004-11-14T15:27:24.210-05:00Summer in the mountains is a dark, heavy season, full of peculiar shadows and green underwater light. I like it fine, of course - even in the summer the high rocky hills are fierce, and quiet, and full of wind. But winter, winter is bright and sharp, even in the vallies. My mother used to call the furred brown winter hillsides the bones of the mountain. Down in the valley (between one parking lotAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1099959185216272562004-11-08T19:02:00.000-05:002004-11-09T15:27:20.760-05:00It could be the frenetic energy that I get right before being sick, or it could be a wee little plea for some POSTMODERNISM ALREADY dammit. But I now 1) sleep under the bed 2) use the bed as a desk and 3) use the desk as a kitchenette. The sad thing is, this is working so much better for me than the previous model.
And the sick hit right after I did all the furniture wrasslin', by the way. So Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1099576691446692352004-11-04T08:56:00.000-05:002004-11-04T08:58:11.446-05:00Well, fuck.
alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1099402146524326292004-11-02T08:27:00.000-05:002004-11-02T08:29:06.523-05:00Dear world: How is one supposed to concentrate on schoolwork on a day like this? It could be the Best Day Ever. All this madness could be over. Gone. Vamoose. Say it with me: Former President George W. Bush.
I will be up fairly late tonight.
love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1099353749180604552004-11-01T18:54:00.000-05:002004-11-01T19:02:29.180-05:00I have to go write a paper; I've put it off long enough. But I wanted to say - sitting in the graffiti and crepe paper front room of the collective, with a three-month-old baby (the child of a dredlocked girl washing dishes) in my arms - he walked in (the old man, the last one) and shock registered on his face. It's been almost exactly a year since I went to Miami and fell in love; that baby Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1099259112716760052004-10-31T16:34:00.000-05:002004-10-31T16:45:12.716-05:00The community is a red-and-yellow bowl of leaves and trees and houses and stick-figure people on top of the ridgeline. No one, it seems, in Floyd County has both running water and electricity, but these people have a little of each, an outhouse and a sink, a wood stove and a single working light in every room of the main building. No phone line, but a website. There is a single child there, Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1099070540333984452004-10-29T13:21:00.000-04:002004-10-29T13:22:20.333-04:00Dear World:
WHY AM I SO WEAK?
love,alexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1098982193992288062004-10-28T13:13:00.000-04:002004-10-28T12:49:53.993-04:00dear bizarre beautiful glorious world:
(which this morning is full of fog and chill and orange leaves opaque)
What I want back is my fever-pitch intensity, my academic fanaticism, my technicolor activism. And I want back the quiet comfort of ten students in a room, or of the band of hippies arguing life in front of the fireplace. And I want back myself, just myself, in the rare utter quiet of a Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1098796866070572872004-10-26T09:16:00.000-04:002004-10-26T09:21:06.076-04:00Dear ex-boyfriend:STOP CALLING ME.
He just emailed and basically is threatening to dump a big truckload of angst, and I'm just not vicious enough to start screening my calls. He's going to apologize, and there's a sixty percent chance that he's going to say he wants me back, and I will have to decide and, if I decide right, break his wee heart in the process. the last few days, post-him, with my Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1098492699874603302004-10-22T20:31:00.000-04:002004-10-22T20:51:39.876-04:00Incidentally -
I kind of wavered back into the room after making myself stand there for five minutes, watching the fireworks down the hill. I tell a bunch of people who don't really care - as I flop over in my chair waiting for my heart to slow down - that I don't have ptsd anymore. Usually the sound of something that loud would have set off my wimpy first-world white girl shell shock. Two Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1098490377449999522004-10-22T19:02:00.000-04:002004-10-22T20:12:57.450-04:00So I mailed the computer game back to my parents, set the mopey ex-boyfriend on a strict visitation schedule (he is allowed to talk to me once a week), and now I'm ready to try this whole having a life thing again. except now I'm watching Dirty Dancing II and eating cheese pizza. I want to go to Cuba.
I'm getting out of the country. SOON.
lovealexAlexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1098312774526432432004-10-20T18:44:00.000-04:002004-10-20T18:52:54.526-04:00Getting one's ass kicked in Capoeira feels suspiciously like falling in love.
We had a new teacher today - over in the cleared-out cafeteria of my dormitory, walking on our hands (trying to) in people's cornbread crumbs. I played the jenga (game) for the first time, twice with a pretty, vicious mesomorph who kept knocking me on my butt. I'm going to start taking classes at the mestre's school as Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1097968715310700712004-10-16T18:53:00.000-04:002004-10-16T19:18:35.310-04:00My dad works as a medical librarian, and he says every librarian working with doctors, no matter how geeky, has a helicopter story. This is his: his first year working in a hospital library (I was three or four; this was a while ago, in Washington) he was walking down the hallway when a doctor who worked with the EMTs came running towards his office and yelled for help. Two crop workers thirty Alexnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5730839.post-1097674497833516842004-10-13T09:04:00.000-04:002004-10-13T09:38:41.020-04:00So this Spinning thing everyone's talking about? Is a class involving group exercise biking. Really, people, you go to a gym and take a class in which you just exercise bike. I mean, good for you. Yay. Glad it makes you happy. I was just imagining either Loose Weight the Dervish Way or some fiendish version of Pilates involving a Sit n' Spin.
Incidentally, if anyone out there needs to placate Alexnoreply@blogger.com0