Of Roses | Camila's Bloggetta

housewarming

2007-05-01T02:19:00.001-04:00

new blog:

kisses are a better fate
than wisdom
lady i swear by all flowers

-e e cummings

epilogue

2007-01-21T15:27:00.000-05:00

This blog is pretty clearly defunct; now, it is also officially discontinued.

Thank you for your kind patronage, everybody who has ever read it; it was, truly, appreciated.

It remains here because I can't bear to get rid of it; unfortunately, comments have been lost, but now the archives are navigable.

New blog location to be announced when the baby has legs to stand on.

Thanks,
Camila

2006-10-19T19:13:00.000-04:00

"I don't want to remember any of this."

That's not me.

Me? I don't know why.

i don't know where my cell phone is.

2006-10-01T14:35:00.000-04:00

and it makes me angry.

relic

2006-09-24T21:02:00.000-04:00

found this today, on the front of an old notebook -- I can't accurately date the specimen. Certain linguistic indicators imply roots in 7th or 8th grade, while others suggest the post-Europe time period:

camila·cristina·flamiano·domonos
ke·this·is·my·notebook·not·to·b
e·confused·with·my·life·speaking
·of·which·this·is·my·reality·kindly·
stay·out·we·now·return·to·our·regu
larly·scheduled·programming·
which·is·to·say·random·sen
seless·nonsense·for·instance·wh
y·are·these·fuschia·apes·why·are·t
hey·here·no·matter·what·one·thing's·f
or·sure·you·best·beware·the·pink·g
orilla·

what the hell?

2006-09-21T17:45:00.000-04:00

happy post!

grinding down

2006-07-19T13:22:00.000-04:00

Here's why to stay up late:

because I went to bed at ten last night, and so 12 hours later simply could not justify staying in bed any longer. So I got up and I ate breakfast and I read the whole paper and I looked at motorcycles and I talked with my father and I hung out with Alex and I walked downtown and gave Alex shoes and read in the Grind and went to the library and came home and made lunch and talked to the mayor and read Animal Farm and made a few phone calls and read my webcomics and that's IT

I have exhausted my day. I'm done. I have no desire to make anything else happen with it. If somebody comes to me and says "this is what will happen" I will undoubtedly say "ehhhh sure." Otherwise I don't know what I'll do. I actually wish I watched TV... do you have any idea how ridiculous that is?

so, if I'd stayed up until 1 and slept in until 1 it'd be... well damn. It'd only be 8 pm right now.

GRRRRRRRR.

that was mature of me, wasn't it?

Bah.

I'll admit it. I'm lonely.

Which is kind of unusual, really. But my sister runs around with absolute bevies of friends and my mother works her mind out and my father has ten times more of a social life than i do -- hell, has almost more contact with my friends than I do, to the point where I'm actually jealous of him for it -- and I sit around growing tired of myself.

I'm getting melodramatic again. I think I'll go cook something. Or something.

hurry STOP

2006-07-17T16:11:00.000-04:00

This blog needs a makeover. My logic goes like this: "If it's prettier, I'll pay more attention to it."

Horrible, no? I take back what I said, blog darling -- it's not me at all, it's all you. It's not that I'm lazy or unmotivated or bored, it's that you're not pretty enough. that's why this relationship isn't working. Here, have the number of a plastic surgeon and call me in a few months...

can you see my blog bursting into tears and spending hours on the Ben and Jerry's website after I've dumped it? I must say, I worry that it would take quite the wrong turn -- start hanging out with the pornographic blogs, emailing marijuana dealers and stealing large amounts of bandwidth to roll up and smoke at home. Make sure it's pure, blog darling, and do try not to overdose! If you're lying half-dead by the side of the superhighway, I'm sure not coming over to pick you up.

Anyway. That aside, the point is that I'm not doing terribly much with my life right now. So I might as well be writing. Nevermind that I have nothing to say, and no great desire to say it, and even less of a desire for anybody to read it -- I ought to be writing, goshdarnit, and that's all there is to it.

Alex is home. yay!

I'm filled with a morbid unease these days, and I won't attribute it to Lord of the Flies. Which I thought was a damned good book, by the way. No, I think it's because I'm not doing nearly enough.

I'm not uneasy much, mind you. Mostly I'm bored, lazy, lying around and staring at screens and words and feeding myself until I'm full and lying around some more.

I feel like I ought to at least want a job. I feel like I ought to at least want to do something. I feel like I ought to be working on a mountain of things for the newspaper, preparing to go back to school, looking at colleges.

Instead I gaze uninterestedly at piles of Things to be Done, slouch onto the couch and pick up massive tomes on globalization. Minutes later, I roll over and pick up another book, and pages later I yawningly turn on the computer and flip through webcomics, passively practice Spanish, briefly consider the piano... occasionally I cook. I sleep in late and hate myself for it, a bit, and I stay up until past dark for no reason whatsoever. This is my life, right now.

And maybe that is the root of the unease. I love to do nothing at all, but I hate it when I'm not doing anything. To do nothing is an action -- it is to decide "there is much that I could do today, but I am going to lie here and look up at the ceiling and be. That is what I will do." To do nothing is to decide that there are books you've wanted to read and places you've wanted to sleep and patches of sunlight dancing outside and you will abandon everything that causes the remotest bit of stress and read and sleep and watch bright shiny spots of gold pass between the leaves of the trees.

to not do anything is to wake up and reject the day and its offerings. It is to say "There is much that I could do today. I don't give a damn." It is to put off deciding what to do until it's much too late and to fall into bed with a sickening sense of satisfaction, thinking, "there's another day gone." there's another day I've killed, another day I've ignored until it was gone. To not do anything is to sulk, to claim the world has nothing satisfying to offer. "There's nothing to do" means "I'm choosing to not do anything." A day spent without doing anything cafes, it itches, it makes my fingers tap impatiently. If doing nothing is glorying in the simple fact of existence, not doing anything is pretty damn close to a denial of that fact.

Since there's not much I want to do, I would love to spend my days doing nothing -- and yet that's not quite how it's been working.

or is it?

Maybe I'm lying. Maybe I'm making this up. Maybe I want an excuse to wallow, to claim "ah woe is me I am WASTING my LIFE do you people not see the TRAGEDY here?" Maybe this is all just a lazy attempt to deny the quiet joy in my life -- because it's more interesting that way.

After all, the words I've been reading have held a fascination for me -- I say I pick up books and throw them down, but I devoured Golding quickly. I say I spend my hours pointlessly, but I also plan and calculate for future trips, I figure things out. I say I hate when I sleep in late, but there's also a moment when I stretch and think only, "This is good."

Or maybe it is this: There is indeed something sour, something slightly off, in my lone and purposeless hours. And maybe it is this as well: I would dearly like to blame that sourness, that musty and unpleasant taint, on the simple emptiness of my days. And maybe this: I draw a false dichotomy between doing nothing and not doing anything, I create this semantic lie of the good and the bad lazy hours, because something I once loved is now less bright for me. And maybe this is why: because with nothing to do, the future and its vagaries become harder to ignore.

So maybe I do need a job, or an extreme hobby -- maybe I should start absorbing myself in the minute details of prepping a student newspaper for a new year, or comparing the sins and virtues of every school of higher education within 800 miles. Maybe all I need is something, anything, to bother me and worry me and stress me and absorb my time and leave me less than a moment for myself.

Because here's what's whispering in my ears when the space between is idle:
"yes, but what are you going to do?

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: "there's not enough time
For one man in one life
Just a flicker and then a breeze"
To be done: stuff
Color: the blue of the sky when it's firefly time

because I can

2006-06-17T18:12:00.000-04:00

because scientists need broadband internet and free public access won't come my way again and because it just wouldn't have been cool to say "hey, host brother, I know you need to do your homework but I want to look at some blogs so GET OFF"

so here I am.

Here is La Selva, a research station in the Costa Rican rainforest. Here is very large and very green and very wet and living and loud. On the base, loud from the scientist's parties -- out in the forest, loud from the insects and monkeys and birdcalls and near-constant, highly unsettling rustling.

weather's beautiful

i'm happy

gotta go finish some laundry and then -- well hey, we only have another 16 hours in the rainforest and I haven't yet nearly seen all there is to see (did I mention that here is very large?) so I'm hitting the trails again. Probably with Mr Yutzy because we aren't allowed to go out by ourselves and everybody else is all like "i'm tired" or "but we already saw the rainforest" and I'm like "jaoeiwnk,noiuoivka2o410\gjglazgo43295u23rvf I HAVE TO BE OUT THERE RIGHT NOW" and so yeah.

out.

to costa rica

2006-06-11T14:19:00.000-04:00

back in two weeks

facts of life

2006-05-27T12:58:00.000-04:00

1. housework grows more fun in inverse proportion to the length of your skirt

2. social awkwardness is best prevented by copious amounts of chocolate cake. Even when there is little chance of uncomfortable silences, it is best to be careful. Always use protection, you know. Keep a few cakes handy.

3. research discovering more benefits of chocolate proves the great importance of science to mankind. let's put more funding towards the cause!

4. long hair in warm weather is obnoxious. Long hair in a strong breeze is marvelously dramatic. Long hair in warm, breezy weather somehow multiplies out to awesome.

5. it's a pretty fun world sometimes

summation

2006-05-08T20:49:00.000-04:00

so there was a day

which was the kind of day the gods created when they decided "hey these humans aren't entirely all rotten after all

let's give them a bit of joy"

and there was blue sky and greengreen grass and the trees are blooming leaves and the flowers blooming petals and all over the world things were growing

and there was sunshine and a breeze

and I talked to the trees as I walked down the street, and told them this was the kind of day the gods created when they decided "hey these humans aren't entirely all rotten after all"

and the trees just ignored me and kept on sprouting thin young leaves still unfurling, translucent pale and bright, and it was just all right with me.

and it has been drearyrainygray outside since then, but other than that a good life to live

and hey!

i was granted immortality today. it was random, but --

i'm not complaining,

Camila

wings

2006-04-10T14:16:00.000-04:00

i have them today, great fluttery wings falling from my elbows

which seems like kind of a useless place to have them, actually.

And school lets out soon, on this monday of mondays with a break a week behind and a few days ahead -- and I'm travelling up to Montana dontcha know

and I wish to point out that my wings have flowers and butterflies

raindrops THIS big

2006-04-03T18:07:00.000-04:00

how is it, do you think, that a single spring rainstorm can bring back all the magic in the world?

we heard it up on stage (and the scene went quickquick) and throwing my stuff on the cafeteria table I ran outside --

and I don't dance in the rain, don't be silly -- but it's no sin to stand there, looking up and laughing

because it was like the world was filled with a furious madness, lightening striking the football field and my skin feeling each raindrop as the parking lot looked like it rolled, rain hitting it in undulating waves and raindrops skittering-bouncing

and I stood there looking up and laughing, and Katie ran out and she spun me around and I felt the rain come in through my shirts and soak my skin (and that may be the one kind of cold I savor) and just watching as the sky broke into shards and rolllled down

and carico yelled at us at we ran inside and I ran back out to the door and you know

you know there are things in the world which simply aren't symbolic or significant or weighted or otherwise adulterated at all but just plain beautiful

and one of those is seeing half the world consumed by a gray-dark ravenous mass of sky while

on the other half of the world

the clouds break blue and the sun shines down on a rain-drenched water-happy gloriously green spring

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: a towel
Inside my head: a brain
To be done: envsci homework
Color: green
Career choice: environmental engineer
Craving: raspberries
My happy place: yeah
Annoyance: nope

battle on!

2006-03-22T14:43:00.000-05:00

what's the difference between fighting something off and being sick?

semantics.

After all, unless you're unfortunate enough to actually die from whatever's attacking you -- and if you have AIDs, I suppose -- most of your symptoms are actually due to your own immune system, right? Back me up here, people, I want to know that I'm not just making this up --

so you run a fever to burn the pathogen out, and -- whatever. all the other symptoms of sickness.

the point is, when you're ill it's really because you're fighting something off. because you're better than it.

I think there's a point to this -- and I think it's that my body's sore and my lymph nodes swelling to the size of texas and my head is all wooly and my throat is angry at me, and all these are happy signs that I am fighting something off because I'm not going to get sick because that's silly.

and when I say that I'm fighting something off, it's different than when I say that being ill is the same as fighting something off -- because there's this overlap, somewhere in between the people who are dying of disease and the people who don't notice their immune system valiently at work, of people who are Sick and also Fighting Something Off, and that's not me. That's not me because I'm noticing my immune system putting up a valiently, indubitably eventually successful fight, but I'm not sick yet because I can still walk and I don't even have to think about it that much.

and. um. hi.

Weather? Politics? How're your brackets doing? Ready for school to be over?

Let's small-talk 'til the cows come home, because let me tell you those cows are exciting and without them here it's not a party --

screw it. g'night. afternoon. whatever. gah.

requiem

2006-03-07T21:06:00.000-05:00

My great-grandmother died today.

There's no way I can do her justice, certainly not tonight, so I'll just throw a few words out there, for her sake --

Grammy was one of the most beautiful women I know, with an extraordinary quiet strength in her every action. From her childhood in a dying town in Montana, through her marriage to a younger son in the Depression -- birthing children, caring for them in shacks and on army bases as my great-grandfather travelled, looking for work -- from her massive dinners for hordes to her constant support of my great-grandfather to her simple endurance as her body began to fall apart, there was an elegance in her fortitude that I never saw her without.

What can I say to sum up a life, particularly one I witnessed only the last fraction of? She was a child in one world war, and a young woman in another. Her unyielding graciousness was the perfect counterbalance to Papa's stubbornness, and she carried her intelligence gently, never bragging or boastful or pretentious. Even as the old woman that I knew, there was a spark in her eye and an occasional wryness in her voice, and sometimes, I confess, I wonder what she could have done with her life had she been born a half-century later.

Although I would never wish to live her life, I would like to live my life with the grace that she did hers. Does that make sense? She spent her life with and for my great-grandfather -- she'd studied to become a bookkeeper, but then she got married -- "I've been keeping books ever since," she said with a smile I didn't quite understand. She managed money, raised children, kept the family alive in poverty and bitter Montana winters, kept them honest when prosperity came, served. And yet, though not all of her life, perhaps, was for herself, the woman I knew was a woman all her own.

She possessed herself. She knew who she was, and when she acted or spoke it carried the weight of contemplation. Everything she did was centered, and even when she was feeding us and housing us and guiding conversations so that everybody at the table felt happy and engaged and busy -- still if you looked over to where she was, without fuss, keeping everything running smoothly -- you'd see Grammy, smiling, entirely herself and entirely her own.

I knew Grammy -- Gertrude, Gertie, Great-Grandmother -- through the almost-yearly visits to Montana, and through the long, chatty letters she would send. I can remember a vibrant old woman, but in recent years, she was tired -- tired so it showed all over. They'd moved in from the old farm to be closer to the hospitals, and she and Papa were on a cocktail of drugs so potent that half their hospitalizations were for their remedies, not their ailments -- but it kept them alive. Their world shrank a bit, to crosswords and nurses and a riding lawnmower, but my great-grandmother and great-grandfather carried on much as usual.

I can't do this. I can't properly pay respects to a woman's life when all I saw of her were her fading years -- I can't do it.

Here's what I will say -- she was an amazing woman, graceful of action, sharp of wit and kind. She lived a full life, and I would say, from what I know, it was a good life, and one she was happy with and rightly proud of.

I am not sorry that she died. I know how weary she was, nine decades weighing on her, and her body had been failing her for years now. I am glad that she lived, and glad that she lived long enough for me to know her, glad that I knew her well enough to love her -- selfishly, I am glad that, through her self-possession and grace, she gave me something to look forward to as I grow old. I am glad that we made the trek so often to the Billings house, and I am glad for that family history project that gave me an excuse to hear her spend an hour or two taking me back to a life sixty years gone.

I am glad that she lived, and I do not find it a sorrow that she died. She can rest now, after a lifetime's hard labor, and I hope her rest is sweet.

I worry a bit for Papa -- his life has been one with hers for more years than I would care even to consider. He has been so weak lately, and I don't know how he will take the news. I can't imagine, I can't even begin to imagine, what it would be like for two lives to be cut like that after so long entertwined. She was almost a part of him, and he of her -- a union that was now less romantic than simply a fact. With so many years of shared experiences, they couldn't not be together -- with so many years of devotion and dedication, their love was inherently assumed.

For Grammy's passing, I cannot grieve -- for Papa's pain, I do.

So. That is that.

five things i like

2006-02-28T17:55:00.000-05:00

instead of writing that essay that is so long overdue I don't even want to think about it, I shall in no particular order state the Intersection -- I do love that upside-down U, because it seems to me to be one of the simplest possible mathematical actions, neither adding nor subtracting nor altering, but rather finding What Is The Same Out There, and it is so charmingly wonderful because it takes massive imposing threatening Sets Of Doom and together pares them down to lookwe'renotallthatbad, and because so often the Solution is simply the Intersection of Functions -- which are nothing but Sets of Points often so expansively defined that each set is Infinite in a Scary Way, and the Union would be greater than the sum of the parts and so more like Terror Squared than big plus big -- but again the Solution is just the Intersection where you find the one or two or five or ten set of Things Which Are The Same Both Here And There, or Things Which Are Present Everywhere It Matters, or Things They Both Agree On and so really it's a nice, nonconfrontational, considerate means of solving great Conflicts between two sets that feel they define the world, and did I mention the incredible simplicity? Young children can grasp the concept, and all great and might concepts should be able to be so described --

I shall in no particular order list a small sample of the set consisting of the intersection of Things I Think Would Be Simply Marvelous and Things The Universe Has Decided Ought To Exist which really when you think about it is the best of both, since mulling on Things I Think Would Be Simply Marvelous that happen to Not Be is just a terribly dreary exercise that also tends to make me feel some sort of obligation to bring about change, and I always get cambiar and caminar mixed up when he starts talking quickly, and suddenly objects are strolling about instead of slightly altering and that just flips my world upside down anyway and we wouldn't like that -- and also since the Universe Has Decided that a great many Things Ought To Exist which are simply hideous to contemplate in their scope or chill or painfulness

but none of those things matter because

VALRHONA are simply some of the best people ever. 70% cacao solids is my Guanaja, and it is so that on the first bite there is sweetness tied in with the bite, so though in the corner of my mouth it twinges with the bitter in the front it tinges of flavors almost-recognizable that valrhona calls "floral" but I call "so familiar but yet entirely -- oooh" because at that point the sweetness melts entirely away and suddenly there is a Party In My Mouth that tastes as dark and rich as it feels and the corners of my mouth open and the edges are worn away and all is smooth and overpowering like a sweet dusky night, except instead of sweet it's a thunderstorm where the crashing noises are orchestral cellos not cymbals and all the world is beautiful --

and two hours later still my tongue is weighted with the lingering feel of my taste buds contracting and the taste -- oh the taste of that chocolate.

PANDORA is simply one of the best places ever. I say "red hot chili peppers" and not only does it bring me the clash, but also it says "catherine wheel" and I say "i like this" and allmusic says "shoegaze" and I say "my bloody valentine!" and we all say "whee."

or put another way, I say "crash test dummies" and it says "wilco" and I say "yes that's right" and it says "slumber party" and I say "hmmm not bad i like tell me more"

and then sometimes it goes "and what about this" and I say "ew" and it says "all right then" and flips ahead and says "these are the campfire girls" and i say "are they now? I feel the urge to give them money..." and maybe someday I will and the point is that it is a website that says Tell Us What You Like And We Will Tell You Other Things You Might Possibly Also Like just has so many possibilities!

WHITE PINES are the only five-needled pines you will find in virginia, and pines with needles in clusters of three will be loblolly unless the needles break roughly and they're pitch, and if they're found in pairs it'll be shortleaf if the needles snap cleanly and if they don't they might be virginia unless they're prickly (with vicious cones) in which case they're mountain

but the main point here is that envirothon requires me to Study. to Study things which I really Had Never Known and learn them entirely new and that really doesn't occur all that often-frequently and so that fills me with a happy because I don't study when I needn't but I like learning new things and so even though I've only gotten through the pines and also I need to perfect my biltmore-sticking, this is all quite fresh and new and requires active pursuit on my part and I like things that are like You Will Learn Me And It Will Be Work, Damn It quite a lot.

PEOPLE are marvelously fun -- not all of them, but then there are people in the world like my sister who is beautiful and brilliant and brutally honest and when she smiles she makes me glad that I was there to witness something so Marvelously Magically Mysteriously NEW be suddenly created on the planet and when she laughs it makes me want to live inside the sound, and there are people like my father who is absolutely infuriating because everywhere he walks he carries a cloud of surreality within which everything is turned a perplexing color that you can't quite see when he's not around but you wish you could because it takes the mundanity of the world and adds the insanity of his and what comes out is beautiful and wavery and makes an evening every-lasting fascinating, and there are people like my mother who is graceful even as she breaks things and who can take all my world into her hands and pull out the most important terrifying horrifying vital things and wrap them neatly with a nice note and say Is This What You Were Looking For So Nervously, Because I Found It And It's Not That Bad And I Think You Can Handle It, and for a person so human to manage acts of such absolute perfection is overwhelming, and there are people like my William who is the origin of a great many smiles that start somehow in the back of my head, and as they work towards the front take everything in the way and turn each neuron backwards and dye it a happy green until there's a Garden in my head and a grin on my face and I can't really explain how that right there works, but he just quirks an eyebrow and It Happens Again, and there are people like my Alex who is brightyellow passionate furiously emotional and likes gray days and seems to fillfill up the empty spaces and is able in two minutes to take my leaning careening world and tap it so it flips back rightside up and i'm balanced again and there are people like my Rachie who is so centered sometimes that her Most Muddled Of Confusions resemble my Most Dearly Held Certainties and when she's talking she pulls words from my head that made no sense in it but fit right outside of it and there are other people, too, who I don't think I can claim as Mine, which is a dubious claim in all events for who am I to own anything, let yet alone anything so wild inexplicable uncapturable immense as a Person, but if by mine you mean only People I Adore And Who Might Also Possibly Adore Me then that's them because the other people only Might Maybe Also Possibly Adore Me which is just too many qualifiers

but they all make me happy

but also let me say here quite honestly that it also makes me happy standing all me just me up there stealing all the eyes and from the back of my head to the tip of my tongue come words and they have to keep coming because if they don't it shall be like falling down stairs, and each and every moment is THERE just completely there because if I blink too much, if I wait too long, if I look down or think up or pay attention in the wrong direction, if I fail to process what is said and what is asked and what I'm writing and what she's writing and where they stumble and what weaknesses of ours they've noticed and what of theirs I'm missing and what the timekeeper's said and which quote was that? and if I can't juggle it all then it shall be like fainting down stairs

and there I think I almost maybe understand fighting, understand racing fast cars, understand day trading because there's something about being forced to turn on every miraculous bit of my brain I can reach, and there's something about seeing brilliant people and knowing that your challenge is to be Better Than Them, and there's something about juggling words and there's a power in business clothes but Mostly Almost All-ly there's the joy of something forcing you to be right There, right Then, All Of you -- some outside force, some pressing need, that takes all your body and all your being and turns it towards one discrete set concrete goal that takes every damn drop you have and the answer is

respondent

and the answer is yes

and that made me happy but mostly not that yes, mostly it was that moment when I stood at the podium and they asked me with other words Well Let's See Now, Can You Do This and I answered with other words Oh Gracious Your Honors I Do Believe I Can Just Watch Me and they smiled.

2006-02-15T16:35:00.000-05:00

i need to get my head back on.

why do they say on straighter? it's not crooked. it's on a vacation, and probably not somewhere pleasant. deepest siberia, out of self-spite and masochism.

screw straightening the damn thing. I need to find it.

god is a man

2006-02-13T09:50:00.000-05:00

and the inventor of ibuprofen a god.

this is not a post, this is a rant.

think about it this way.

what's the man's role in our godly goal of procreation? pleasure. that's it. and, if he's a good man, killing animals and dragging them home to feed the sproutling. or being a good father figure. whatever. the point is, that's optional.

the woman's? well, first there's the monthly punishment every time she doesn't get pregnant.

my body:

"but I want a baby! I really really want a baby! why won't you give me a baby? I'm a nice body, all my joints work, the ankle hasn't acted up in ages, I'm not fat or diabetic, I don't even get PMS-y... all I've ever wanted was a little baby all my own to carry on my precious DNA and YOU WON'T GIVE IT TO ME YOU BITCH *kicks me in the uterus*"

me: "sorry sorry ow stop that go away i never liked you anyway you're too skinny and my shoulder still hurts sometimes from that one time I fell on it sideways look just wait like a decade, okay? hang tight, be patient, we've got years to be making babies ow stop"

my body:

*kicks me harder"

NOT ONLY THAT but take hypothetical woman who says "okay, body, fine, I'll have a baby just for you"

or alternatively "SHIT I'M PREGNANT"

and what does she get? PAIN. morning sickness. Bloatage. Lower back pain, the general discomfort of carrying a person around inside of you, and the culminating event?

labor. whoooooooooopee.

if god were a woman, menstruation would feel amazing and giving birth would be orgasmic. PMS would be those few days before your period when you're overwhelmed with joy, and ejaculation would cause cramps.

I'm nice to my body. I've cut back on caffeine. I eat less salt for days in advance. I up my intake of potassium. I try to get more calcium. and my reward?

cramps for one day, not three. Gee thanks.

God is a man, and a bastard at that.

2006-02-08T22:59:00.000-05:00

AND there was much pwnage.

2006-02-04T13:14:00.000-05:00

so today it is much more of the blah. I believe I shall go out and do homework by the fire.

(or maybe I'm like a gluon in the proton of my family (the numbers get wrong, there are four of us, but let's exclude accuracy from this)

and then we throw ourselves, our hydrogen atom, onto the hydroxide functional group of a proline (it's the prettiest amino acid)

which in turn fits itself into a nondescript collagen molecule

which twists itself up and finds friendly fibers

aligns into layers and wraps itself with hydroxyapatite crystals, because it's a scary world out there

snuggles up close to the bone marrow,

and with all the other bone tissue, wraps up and around and knobs at both ends and it's a femur,

(leg bone connected to the... hip bone)

of some immense skeleton, wrapped around by muscles and skin and filled with organs, all made of proteins made of amino acids made of functional groups atoms made of electrons, and protons and neutrons made of quarks and gluons and all of them individuals with their own dreams and hopes,

but caught for a while in their protons in their atoms in their functional groups in their amino acids in their proteins,

which keep company with the lipids of long chains of family bonds connected on and on, and the dna, each base knowing a thousand lovers all exactly the same (except for that slutty adenine), the blood flowing with the thousand sorrowful red blood cells wanting only a nucleus -- if only, if only!

but eventually what there is is one immense giant, in his immense giant shoes and his immense giant city,

and when he coughs a thousand souls fly out.)

my feet are cold.

all science you can't see is just lies, anyway.

take me to the river

2006-02-02T20:53:00.000-05:00

so february has begun, with clear skies bright light and general beauty in the world.

Not only do I find it hard to complain, but I revel in this -- if this, my least favorite time of the year, can be so amazing, just think what life overall is like!

but then I do,

and life overall, it is just very big.

Like, there is a speck of dust. one of the smaller specks of dust, so visible with a low-powered microscope but otherwise just not. no, maybe a little bigger than that. you can see me when you look at me, but i'm certainly smallsmall

and that speck is stuck on a piece of tape, which is put on a whiteboard, and on the whiteboard is drawn a widewide circle big as my arms can reach -- and that is me in the school. except there's a little red arrow drawn pointed at me, because I am a little bit noticable there sometimes. 1:1,200

and then the classroom, it's one of those big lecture classrooms, with the tall ceilings and the microphones so the students can hear the teacher and the rows and rows and rows of hundreds of seats, and from the back you can see the big circle, like hey look that's a nice school there, but you can't see the little red arrow (it's really little) and not even binoculars can help you see the dust -- that's me in harrisonburg. 1:41,000

and then the whole floor, with its classrooms and halls and offices and walls and walls and places you need keys to get into, and big giant places and tiny little places, all fullfull of silence (there are no bumbling rushing students in this thought experiment, shhh) -- that's me in this valley. 1:380,000

and then the whole building, stretching up for floors and floors - piedmont, coast, Nova sitting happy at the top -- and the staircases and miles of wiring and plumbing and infrastrucutre, and different atmospheres in every room -- there's still that tiny speck on one of the whiteboards in one of the classrooms on one of the floors, and that's me in virginia. an hours-long drive to the classroom with the ocean in it. 1:7,078,000

and the whole campus, building after building, with quads and gardens and dorms and streets and construction and empty spaces and crowded places, room enough for thousands of students (who don't exist here, remember) -- long green grassy places, narrow pebbled walkways, young trees and old trees and tiny specks of dust all over unseen -- that's me here in the east coast. 1:125,000,000 depending

and then the whole hypothetical city, let's say five times and some the size of the campus, with parks and strip malls and big roads and residential areas and quaint downtowns and lurid lights on the outskirts and it stains the sky bright at night enough to be seen from space, and it would take a speck of dust a million years of floating to glimpse it all -- well, that's me in this united states. 1:295,735,000

and then we may think we're all bigshots and all because we own the world, dammit, but the US is nothing to the size of russia, and we're nothing to the age of the middle east or even europe, and we're nothing to the population of china and india and we're nothing to the pain of africa so really, you have to come all the way out to a big state full of other, bigger cities, and other, older cities, and other, sadder cities, and maybe even a few more beautiful, but you have to come out to an entire state, and this hypothetical state is a large state, and compare that infinitismally small speck of dust to THAT to understand me to los demas -- the rest of the world, everybody else. 1:6,000,000,000.

and it's not done yet, because you have to pull out to a whole country, a big hypothetical country, to compare me to all the things in the world, all the books and all the buildings and everything that's not people but still there -- and if it would take that speck of dust millions of years to grace a whole town, and billions of billions of years to transverse a state, not just passing through because that just takes one, two days in the right plane, then it would take trillions upon trillions upon trillions of years to see everything of importance in the country and there are so many books I'll never read.

but wait, it's not done yet, because those are just things sitting on the surface of the planet, and there are millions of years of effort and an unbelievable amount of work into the substance of this planet, the dirt below our feet and the rock below that and the restless hot compression below that, and compared to THAT super-heated incredibly powerful mindlessly big area, I'm like a speck of dust to all the air in the world. 45:5,974,200,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms

but then compare that speck of dust to that same planet -- how much does a speck of dust weigh? -- compare that speck of dust to the giant hot fierce ancient planet, and maybe that's a bit like what it's like to think of me in this solar system (see how quickly we've caught up, the dust and I? I was three steps before it back when it was virginia and I, but now we're only one away. Soon, we'll be equally insignificant) me in this solar system, I said. My proportions are getting way off here, because I can't handle numbers this big or this small, but let's just go with .045:112,300,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m^3

and then we've got to go bigger than that, because there's a galaxy, a whole big galaxy, and MAYBE if I'm lucky i'm to that galaxy what the speck of dust is to that whole big empty rapidly whirling solar system, because counting all the three-dimensional area the stars cover but don't fill because it's still mostly just GIANT EMPTY SPACE the galaxy is just too huge for imagination and I'm too small but by volume it might maybe be something like .045:14,800,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m^3

and then maybe the speck of dust in that immense galaxy is something vaguely similar to me in
the observable universe, but really I think we're in the same boat now, the dust and I: I have it taped to my hand now, and together we face known existence in this dimension and we have a volume of less than half a square meter, and the universe stretches on and expands and is utterly, utterly ineffable in a proportion of approximately .045: 3,400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 m^3

( sources disagree)

and then together if we face all of existence that we CAN'T see,

but let's not even start on that let's just skip to the end where I'm desperately clutching that little mini-symbolic me so that it won't blow away in the winds of time because together it and I would kind of like to take a glimpse of all of everything that has ever been, every quark that popped into existence for a moment and every star that supernovaed and every space that was empty or was full and every planet that grew and every wind that blew and every person that thought a thought, and maybe we'll take a glimpse down eternity lane and see all the possibilities for the things that might be in the future, the awful marvelous immense tiny terrible powerful dramatic possibilities in the swelling seas of time, everything that has been or could be everywhere at all

well that speck of dust and I, we're companions. we're friends. we're in this together, it and I, and hard as it is to hang on to we together know one thing for sure.

We're really fucking small.

2006-01-29T00:11:00.000-05:00

I know this blog is coming back -- I still don't know why, or what its function will be, or what it will look like.

So while I work that out, most of my posts will look like this --

just reminders that, hi, world! i'm still figuring stuff out.

tag, i'm it

2006-01-27T18:10:00.000-05:00

Four jobs you've had in your life:
I don't work. I'm one of those lazy teenagers you've heard about who are basically just leeches, draining all the life and vitality out of the world.
1. delivering papers
2. babysitting
3. assassin-for-hire
4. baby-assassin-for-hire. i'm the best in the business.

Four Movies you could watch over and over:
I find it hard to think of movies I've seen more than once. And over and over again in a row? doesn't matter what movie, i'd eat my own brains out. But I'd rather eat out my brains over:
1) Star Wars
2) The Princess Bride
3) Star Wars What was I thinking! BRIDE AND PREJUDICE ALL THE WAY.
4) The Lord of the Rings movies

Four places you've lived:
1) Berkeley, CA
2) Chapel Hill, NC
3) Farmville, VA
4) London, UK

Four places you've been on vacation: Only four, eh? I suppose I'll try to pick ones that truly felt like vacations, then -- not just places I've travelled to, but ones where I've felt like I've managed to escape the mundane. or something.
1) Catalina island -- first time I ever went snorkling. The sunlight there was amazing, pure and white-bright.
2) Naxos -- All the other places we visited were fun, but here I felt like a load had been lifted off my shoulders -- like everything I ought to be or everything I might do in the future didn't matter, because right now I was here and ocean sparkled cold and beautiful over the ridge, and the lizards changed color at night and the wine was as golden as the strange sweet fruits and the sun, the sunlight was amazing
3) Sedona, Arizona -- I don't know all that they say about "vortexes" and "subtle energy" that they talk about, but here's what I remember -- i remember that small peculiar chapel that was one of those churches which feel like they hold calm enough for the whole world, and I remember the red rocks that rose up from pine trees and took my breath away, and I remember a dry warmth that went down to my bones and I felt like I'd never be cold again, and I remember a bright sun that made me consider, for a moment, life in the desert
4) Outer Banks, North Carolina -- every year, pretty much. It's family, and we've gone out kayaking with dolphins at sunrise, and sat surrounded by kites holding our paddles perfectly still, and we've held bonfires late at night and told stories until only three of the fifteen people remained, and we just sat and watched the flames -- and we've gone swimming in thunderstorms, yes we have, and built sand-cities, and spent hours and hours just sprawled in the sun.

see a theme? I'm actually pretty easy to please, you know.

Four of your favorite foods:
1) Chocolate anything
2) Squash. I dunno, I just like it.
3) Indian food. With potatos and lentils. Don't ask me for the name, I don't do that.
4) Fruit. Like mango. I like mango a lot.

Four Places you'd rather be right now: I'm not that sure that I'd really prefer to be anywhere else. How can I know what the weather's like there, or who I'd be with? Maybe right here right now is really the very best that the world can offer me. But if I could choose a few other variables...

1) Costa Rica. I've never been, but I'd like to.
2) San Sebastian on a sunny day
3) the lawn in front of the Weaver Street Market, when they've just baked bread and some enthusiastic young folk singer is pouring his soul into his guitar, and I have a good book and better company. and a big blanket.
4) London in June. For Queen Mary's Rose Gardens, you see.

Four Shows you love to watch: Like, TV? I don't watch TV. I'll send these four on down below.

Four Sites you visit daily:
1) My personalized google homepage.
2) the blogs I read -- j., alex,katie (yes, I'm cheating. but they're linked to from my google homepage, so is it really cheating?)
3) Boingboing.net
4) Go Fug Yourself
5) Myspace. Most days, anyway
6) Pink is the New Blog -- shh, don't tell
7) My webcomics -- all fifteen of them
8) my gmail account

Four Bloggers you are tagging:
i won't. because, lord willing, nobody reads this anymore.

2005-12-18T22:40:00.000-05:00

blog (temporarily?) nonexistent

so.

2005-12-11T12:55:00.000-05:00

You know what's obnoxious?

dropping a thumbtack down your pants is obnoxious.

and that's all I have to say about it.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: DIZZZZZEEEEEEE!
Inside my head: i'm flipping 17
To be done: i'm cleaning my room. even as I type. sort of.
Color: black
Career choice: engineer
Craving: that super-yummy chocolate that nice people gave me
My happy place: warmwarm! yay people. My dad said "you have a nice group of friends" and I said "yeah I like them too."
Annoyance: brr cold and people have to leave
confession: I stand on swivel chairs.
Fear: monotony

os haey

2005-12-01T07:39:00.000-05:00

you know what would be exasperating? being dyslexic and trying to type in the letters so you can comment on a spam-protected blog.

it'd be all, owniekdnq

and you'd be all, onwiekdqn

damn

owneikdnq

damn

owniedkqn

damn

woniedknq

damn

owniekndq

damn

owinekdnq

damn

ownikidnq

screw this i'm gonna go bake cookies.

be back saturday.
camila.

top three reasons hamlet deserves a modern treatment

2005-11-26T16:53:00.000-05:00

#3 -- the ghost.

Without using any modern stage magic, illusion, or theatrics, the ghost is practically impossible to make believable. Some man in gray face-paint? Puh-leeze. On the whole, I am a fan of performing Shakespeare the way it was written to be performed -- and I want to see more greek plays that do the same, but whatever. I think that asking audiences to forgo special effects and the fourth wall is good for them.

However, when the ghost is unconvincing, the entire play gets off to a bad start. A few slight touches -- lighting, speakers -- would make the awe and horror of Hamlet, Horatio, and the guards infinitely more believable. For the general audience, this will make it much easier to get involved with the play, and, if the rest of the play is treated in the Elizabethan manner, it will make embracing the strange "new" style of theater much less of a shock.

#2 -- atmosphere.

Many of Shakespeare's plays -- most of Shakespeare's plays -- are at their best when brightly lit and surrounded by warm-toned wood and pseudo-marble. If they weren't, the Globe wouldn't have been nearly as successful as it has been, historical accuracy or no historical accuracy. It brings out the merriment of the comedies, emphasizes the brief happiness of some of the tragedies (Juliet's ball deserves a beautiful and joyous setting), and makes the histories seem more accessible.

However. Hamlet is set in a castle -- in a prison of a castle, damp dark and dull -- and, furthermore, one located in a cold, dreary north. There is no brief happiness to be emphasized, and as the humor is almost all dark, the bright surroundings add nothing.

Understanding the tragedy of Hamlet while surrounded by chandeliers of homey candles and pillars of welcoming wood -- well, it's like trying to appreciate Frankenstein while sitting outside on a warm summer's day. As soon as the shivers start down your spine, you can look up and admire the birds and recover.

Audiences shouldn't be allowed to recover from Hamlet. Just as you wouldn't have clowns performing in the interludes, so there shouldn't be lights on during the play. It should be dark, and darkly lit, and there should be fog at night -- not because the language needs it in order for the play to be appreciated, but because anything else is being too kind to the audience.

It's one thing to appreciate Shakespeare, it's another to feel Hamlet's pain. Add the atmospheric affects -- don't let us take a break from the emotional onslaught. There's no respite within the play, there oughtn't be one from without.

(cruel, aren't I?)

and #1 --

Isolation.

Like I said, I adore the way a well-done Elizabethan play breaks down the fourth wall. It's a modern invention, one made possible by electric lighting and a prudish culture, and plays are more fun if you're involved at least a little.

But.

Elsinor is an island -- what goes on inside its walls happens entirely separate from the rest of the world. There is no calming, outside influence, no respite to be gained from travel, and nobody who enters its walls leaves and lives to tell the tale. During the time that Hamlet's tragedy is told, Elsinor's a world unto its own.

The fourth wall, here, is absolutely essential -- the tale must take place in a bubble. If the audience feels too close to the actors, if the illusion of verisimilitude is shattered, the play suffers. In this case, the lie of the theater can't be broken while the meaning of the play remains intact.

If the audience is left unseparated from the cast, if the play is allowed to interact with the watchers, then Hamlet is not alone -- and if Hamlet is not alone, utterly and completely alone, then the power of the play is broken. The isolation must be absolute -- the fourth wall must be solid --

the lights must be off.

Thank you and good night.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: nada
Inside my head: yay! the boy's back!
To be done: homeworks
Color: pinkpink

2005-11-24T16:22:00.000-05:00

"I could just give birth to a turkey right now."

"I'm... not sure that's exactly how it works."

"I could do it. I'm chinese. I'm magical"

Happy Thanksgiving, all.

camila oral

2005-11-22T21:19:00.000-05:00

Avoid Camila if you have experienced abnormal vaginal bleeding.

Camila does not protect against HIV (AIDS), or other STDs.

Proper Camila (Oral) Storage:
Store Camila (Oral) at room temperature away from sunlight and moisture.

Possible side effects of Camila Oral include:

abdominal pain, vaginal discharge, acne, fluid retention, bloating, blood clots, chest pain, hair loss, headache, heart attack, high blood pressure, kidney problem, migraine, leg pain, nausea, sex drive changes, skin discoloration, stroke, vomiting,weight gain or loss, breast lumps, tenderness or swelling, yellowing of the eyes, tiredness, or contact lens discomfort.

Camila is a synthetic form of female sex hormones produced naturally in the body.

People, I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried.

Camila who is currently suffering an identity crisis.

status quo:
Outside my head: stomping
Inside my head: gah i'm a failure a failure a failure!
To be done: find things. do things.
Color: black
Career choice: birth control
Craving: ten years of sleep
My happy place: warm sleeping
Annoyance: my own incompetence
Confession: I'd have told you if you'd asked again.
Fear: forgetting to explain myself

ETA p.s. -- did I in fact forget to explain myself? well, click here. and be enlightened by the contraceptive glory that is camila.

2005-11-22T20:50:00.000-05:00

there's no way to exonerate myself without looking as though I'm exonerating myself, is there?

bah.

2005-11-21T18:13:00.000-05:00

"Sounds to me like you were both behaving inappropriately."

"Polyps!"

"Yes, you could say they were like polyps. Polyps are pretty unattractive."

chicago nownow

2005-11-12T17:49:00.000-05:00

So I’m wandering around this useless hotel, literally floor by floor and practically corner by corner, looking for a decent wireless connection, it struck me – KABOOM!
Lightening, shards of glass everywhere, the screams of kittens caught in the rubble, my valiant clinging to the bricks in the face of the awesome storm –
No, not really. Actually, I just lied. Right to your face.
The point is, that espresso was amazing.
Like, seriously amazing. The crema was thick and textured, the barista was middle eastern and polite and he made espresso like he’d been born for it, the coffee was dark and smooth and had just the slightest tinge of magenta in the darkdark brown, and that last sip tasted like death squeezed into a teaspoon but left the most amazing aftertaste in my mouth, smoky and rich… I can still taste it now.
Seriously. Wowow.
But excuse me while I scamper off to another corner.

So yeah. I woke up, did five hours of being educationized, decided that was enough and ran off to Lake Michigan. The sky was all unhappy-gray, but I rather liked the lake – the layers of roads were strange to me, and took me more than a moment to navigate, but I’m never scared to get lost when I’m alone. So I got lost and so found my way, and there were long flat pathways and a long flat blueblue lake and a woman with professional shoes lying down and watching the waves, and I walked beneath a freeway to get to trees,
And then I was at the museum of contemporary art, and I think I should have given them money (like, admission or something) but I didn’
Scuz me, another corner,

Anyway, I didn’t actually give them any money. I just walked into their brazilian exhibit and decided I really liked the ecce homo woodprint and that
OMG the Eden exhibition was AMAZINGly fun. I mean, it was pretty clever, and it was probably quite decent at art, but I don’t really do art criticism. Or much criticism at all. All I know is what I like, and I liked that a lot – like a giant sandbox, but without the walls – and a sense of privacy, until somebody else sticks their feet in the water and shrieks at the cold – and I clamored on the wooden walls and jumped on the squishy things and couldn’t bear to walk on the books.
Because, books!
And there were little maze-like things, and the observation platform but that was a bit dull, and a blurry tv that freaked me out a bit just because to get there it was like a corridor curved in on itself and no way out, but it’s okay. And I wrote I LOVE YOU in the sand because it was there and a beam of light hit it just right,

And so that was that. And then I found a smoothie, and a subway, and I mused and I watched and remembered why I hadn’t brought my music

One moment

Because if I had I’d be too distracted to notice how that man eating alone wasa clutching – desperately? Hopefully? Happily? –a travel brochure for California

Or that old wobbly man with the cane and the clean new White Sox hat, would I have seen his look of quiet contentment?

Or noticed that the woman with the brightbright pink hair behind me on the subway platform was the same one I’d seen upstairs at the museum
(she probably saw the Warhol exhibit. For a moment there I’d wished I wasn’t so cheap, because, Warhol!)
And so I was happy, despite my headache, and then I spent forever looking for a coffeeplace that wasn’t Starbucks, and I found one, and I was happy!
And then I came back, and the girls invited me out shopping again, and I said no – and here I am, wandering around stairwells and corners looking for a wireless connection, and I think I’ll just give up and put this back in my room and pull on shoes and find friends
And go down to the big squishy chairs by the fountain and just say “ahhhh” because I still have caffeine instead of blood in my veins and I really really

Don’t want to think about how much work I need to do or how far behind I am on things or how angry my gov’r school teachers have every right to be or anything at all, really. So I won’t.

And that’s thatthatthat I swear.

OMZ I HAVE INTERNET!!!!!

*happy dances*

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: portishead
Inside my head: mmmsbah mmbah
To be done: bah go away you
Color: pinkpink!
Career choice: not journalist, because they were all "ew no."
Craving: yeah. can't say. alex'd slap me.
My happy place: lala feet in the sand flipping through photography books and listenig to kids laugh

chicago 2

2005-11-11T23:47:00.000-05:00

Exactly eyelevel, behind the shiny railing, is a pink-glowing squashed sphere that I could probably fit inside, and it is surrounded by other such lights: blue, red, lavender, larger and smaller and at different heights. Down a bit, I can see the escalators full of kids headed towards the dance, and almost every one seems to think that it’s something new, witty, and clever to dance briefly to the techno music that’s blaring.
The fountain is, I will readily admit, quite gorgeous, and the way the screen on the club’s dance floor is showing shifting ribbons of the exact same color of the light on the water – well, that’s a nice touch.
The bar about twenty feet away is lit by orange, red and purple Chinese lanterns, cylindrical rather than oblong, and reflected again on the glass walls -- and the sight of the city behind the liquor bottles is rather sleek. The giant screen with Gwen Stefani rather takes away from the entire, otherwise almost elegant effect – plus Hollaback Girl totally clashes with the much-better techno – but I like the living trees, and the glass ceiling which lets me see the comfort of the sky scrapers.
In case you’re wondering, no – the journalism dance is not being held at a spiffing techno dance club with an animated dance floor and a decent sound system. It’s way down in one of the ballrooms.
And in case you’re wondering, no, of course I’m not headed down there – the only thing dorkier than a journalism dance is a TSA dance. Journalism dances are full of girls with hungry looks in their eyes (the girl-guy ratios at these things are ridiculous, especially considering how basically only the boys will pursue journalism as a career) and TSA dances are full of boys with desperate looks in their eyes. Otherwise, the biggest difference is that journalism girls are just a tad bit skanky (especially those yearbook chicks… everybody knows that) and TSA boys are totally geeky.
So no. I’ll be staying up here, me and my giant glowing oblong whatevers, and remember how much I like the sight of sun on skyscrapers. And also sales at Forever 21.
And remember the joys of wandering alone around a big city, of feeling like a small cog on a huge, chaotic, and infinitely beautiful machine. Remember how quickly the shell comes back – the thin layer of protection against all those all those all those people, the mask that says that you don’t want to talk to them and they don’t want to talk to you so really let’s just compare shoes and walk on. It’s a confining, terrible, constrictive and itchy construction – but just for a moment, the feeling of anonymity can be amazingly freeing.
So that’s where I am – at a convention with 5,000 journalism dorks (so I come in the door and I overhear “and so in that case, at least, we’re free from prior review,” and there’s a passion in this girl’s voice, and I smile and think “I really really like geeks” and also spare a fleeting mental glare for Hazelwood), in a pseudo-chic but strangely charming balcony above the hotel club and beside the hotel bar – and also I wish to point out that that girl’s glovelets are pretty damn hot – and I meant to do my dialectical journal, or maybe NaNo, or even write-up a few of the sessions that I went to –
But I did this instead.

Heaven knows when it’ll get posted. I’ve yet to find free wireless access.

chicago1

2005-11-10T17:44:00.000-05:00

typed in as we drove through and I meant to be novelling:

(1:57)
I’ve always thought of Chicago as an industrial city, for as long as I’ve had any idea what to think of Chicago – and I must say, my first second impressions are holding up that image quite well.
I’ve been to Chicago before, but it was a while ago, long enough ago that I’ve no memories to interview with what I see.
And what I see are sets of train tracks, and huge rusting bridges with pulleys, and giant steel constructions. The sky is a charming pale blue, and the skyline distantly isn’t unattractive – but so flat around here! So flat, with the trees dead and the steel constructions and the train tracks parallel to the highway – industrial, yes, industrial and brown and silver and blue, that’s what I’ve seen of Chicago so far.
(2:00)
And bricks with broken glass, too – but in a beautiful sort of way. It’s a tiny factory with a tiny smokestack and tiny square panes of blue-gray. It makes me want to fix it up lie a miniature Tate Modern and fill it with light and flowers and modern art.
(2:05)
And yet here are tree-lined broad streets with bike paths instead of sidewalks, and a long park and long brick apartments, and this is a place that seems livable. I confess, I didn’t think I would like Chicago – and I don’t like the signs that mention that parking is conditional on the amount of snow, because ew cold – but I tend to think that about most cities before I go, and I’ve found very few that actually insult me.
(2:13)
Hyde park, and still my main thought is that the world is just too flat over here. No hills, no cliffs, no bluffs, no mountains, no ocean – I am glad fr the skyscrapers, for else the horizon would drive me mad with its distance.
Museum of Science and Industry – what a combination! Culture, discovery, and profit, all rolled up into one great big ball. Or building, as it were.
(2:18)
Lakeside now. It’s quite lovely – not quite beautiful, but certainly attractive in a quiet sot of way. Attractive in a flat, passive sort of way, with well-trimmed grass and carefully-planted trees and a well-managed shoreline. It rather reminds me of something the british would do, except they would have more roses and pebbles.
And then the juxtaposition with the great, rusting pedestrian bridges over the highweight? How peculiar.
Okay. I like this place. We just passed a skatepark, and instead of skaterboys, there were indie-rock skaters. That’s right, skaters. On skates. The skates with the four wheels. You could tell they were indie because they were wearing girl pants. The point is, it was amazing.
(2:24)
I like this view, too – a park, slowping up, with stiars cut into little hills and wide plains of grass broken by tree-lined pathways. And right behind that, the skyline beginning, with old brick pyramid-topped buildings and ugly tall rectangles, rising up to serve as man-made cliffs. And then right behind me, the road comes close to the water, and a small amusement park juts out on a pier into the water. The tall productive buildings in the horizon, a comfortable-looking living area between, with huge leafless tress that would create an amazing canopy in summer, and then behind a long flat blue and a toy ferris wheel. Every balcony on these apartnments is crowded with chairs and the occasional plant – and I do like people who can appreciate a good balcony.
(2:28)
All I really ask of a city is that it be alive – because if it is living and vibrant (more balconys, more brick, more chairs – and some lovely gothic-inspired architecture right there, too) then there is a certain charm even in the worst of its faults. Not always enough charm, but at least a little. After all, a city’s strength, and all of its beauty that means anything, comes from the people within it – not from the money that flows through it, or the buildings that stand or the climate it is surrounded by. All of those are just perks. So plus for the buildings, because I just saw an unbelievably adorable one – and plus for the people, because anybody who builds bike paths through parks that head downtown is a friend of mine – and a big fat minus for the climate. Because ew cold.
(2:42)
Caribou coffee! Jamba juice! Whoooooooooooo!
(2:45)
Also, I’m at 14000 words – which is, okay, still behind – but not badly! Yay!
And off the laptop goes.

quite quite

2005-11-09T19:56:00.000-05:00

Fulk lost.

We were up at the top of Calhoun's, rain hitting the windows, everybody really just waiting around to see what kind of party it would be, and he stepped out into the middle of the group of people and started to talk

and started something like "we ran a good campaign. We fought hard in this race."

And i thought, "damn. please, no. damn."

and some deaf, half-senile man behind us started to clap, loudly and enthusiastically, as Mr. Fulk said "It looks like we lost by abou 1100 votes,"

and his son grabbed him forcibly by the arm and the old man's smile started to fade.

and a few people started to ask, "but they don't have all the votes in yet, right, right?" and Lowell just shook his head until they stopped asking.

And Davis slapped an unsteady mask on and said that he could eat now, the nerves were all gone,

and that was that.

Good thing life is more than politics, neh?

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: REM
Inside my head: meh. the achingness.
To be done: pack and go for a FREAKING SIXTEEN HOUR DRIVE
Color: blueblue
Career choice: eighth sleeper
Craving: see exploding dog, november first, second drawing
My happy place: bed bed. not a bus.
Annoyance: teeth
Fetish: Gwen. Because it was beautiful: Gwen is a sexy man, with her vest and her goatee and her swagger, and Weston in his dress was the most adorable thing ever, and when they went,

"Will you marry me?"
"Why buy the cow when the milk is free?"
"Because the cow just wants to be loved! Cows are people, too, you know, and they need affection. Plus, there are about 7 single cows in town, and about a hundred bulls. Besides, don't you want a little welsh cow of your very own?" *cue Weston's eyelash-fluttering*

it made me happy.

nano is not for the right now.

bweeble

2005-11-07T18:44:00.000-05:00

so this isn't really a post.

Just a LALALALA I'M HERE WORLD

WHOOO GO ME

Isn't existence grandgrand?

Yay to all existing people!

Let's have an existing people party!

It'll be great. We'll have pineapples and bongoes and shag carpets and Louis XIV furniture and nylon jackets and broken computer wires and huge hunks of slate and pieces of construction paper and squirrels

and other marvelous existing things

and we'll read fiction stories and cut them up and rearrange the letters into 100% true and 34% accurate memoirs of our lives

and it'll be great

won't it be grand?

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: yelena on the piano
Inside my head: coffee... at 7 in the evening. ugh addiction!
To be done: meh homework 1666 words and suchsuch
Color: lala plush red like velvet maroon like sunset made soft like pillows of blood and royalpurple dye like rich red clay made dark by rain and midnight all whipped up by the world into a blanket for you and i i
Career choice: you know, my mother's had about 26 different jobs. and though my father is my sister's hero, my mother is mine. and she's happy and successful now, albeit married to a crazy man, and not where she first envisioned ending up being. so that.
Craving: mmmmzbah umum warm humid salty air like a breeze off the ocean at sunset in august
My happy place: tomorrow evening with lowell fulk seeing him winwin
Annoyance: ah toes. yes. what's up with them?
Confession: I like to show off.
Wordcount: meh haven't checked
Today I wrote: it's all on the laptop. but I know there were rocks like little heads and they squeaked when you stepped on them.

2005-11-06T18:33:00.000-05:00

THERE ARE TWO KILOGRAMS OF TRUFFLES.

SITTING ON OUR DINING ROOM TABLE.

AND THEY WON'T LET ME OPEN THEM

hms

2005-11-06T16:32:00.000-05:00

i had a list of confessions ready-made, and then I forgot them. or wimped out. choose as you will.

finally managed to transfer documents from the laptop to my computer, yay!

and just changed my duct tape cuff to pink.

and also I think

that I need to go hit things. so excuse me while I do.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: all the rest of the world
Inside my head: all of the world.
To be done: homeworks and suches
Color: dark green like distant pine trees
Career choice: hack for hire
Craving: a neck massage
My happy place: a little cabin
Annoyance: pop-ups and strangers
Confession: book reviews turn me on
Fear: suffocating
Word count: 9,523
Today I wrote: "Aren't you proud of me, oh mother darling? In two hours I'm due for my piano lesson, so if some crazy old man rapes me and hacks me to pieces with a candlestick, you'll know right away. Wasn't that conscientious of me?"

Nanowrimo

2005-11-01T05:55:00.000-05:00

Right. I'll tell you where my novel's living if you'll tell me where I can find yours...

cocktail of the day: hemlock delight

2005-10-30T12:51:00.000-05:00

the unexamined life is not worth living, neh?

and yet the too-examined life becomes more examination than experience, and overanalyzation is surely a fault as well.

It's a pity Socrates didn't give us any guidelines there -- "Spend half an hour considering your own nature, your faults and your gifts, the reasoning behind your actions and the consequences of what you do in your life. Also, take a fifteen-minute nap every day."

But no, he just gives a warning -- "be sure to examine your life!"

but how often? how hard? how cruelly?

And what do you do once you've looked at your life, pulled on the seams, created a few more tears and found some faults?

It's a pity Socrates didn't give us any guidelines there -- "Spend five minutes a day meditating on how to utilize your gifts, every day attempt to remediate two of the errors of your past, and spend one hour of the day actively counterbalancing your faults. Also, be sure to get enough Vitamin C."

But no, he just gives an order -- "Find your faults!"

but then what, old man?

then what?

I should make my Lolo happy, join the catholic church. Become properly baptized, wear a pretty confirmation dress, "forgive me father, for I have sinned" and learn to speak the rosary as fast as my grandfather can, speaking in the foreign tongue that now is his only. Then I've a solution -- find my faults, unbury my guilt, dump it in the lap of God and say three Hail Marys.

Lolo's cancer is back. Suddenly, I want to do something to make him proud, just in case -- sure, he's one stubborn old man, and nothing's been able to kill him yet (not the japanese, not the koreans, not the vietnamese, not the americans, not the workload, not the children, not the pneumonia or the strokes)

and adopting a religion to make your grandfather smile (and cry, most likely, because doesn't everybody want to see their bloodline make it into heaven?)

it would be a terrible idea. and I won't join the army, not an option not at all,

(and besides, the army doesn't offer absolution.)

Bah. I'd like some ultimate authority in my life, something I could acknowledge as wiser than I and stronger than I, something I could kneel before and proffer my sins unto. I'd take the Church, except that I'd never accept the pat answers they offer in return -- and I'd like Socrates, too, because questions for faults seem a fair trade,

but you're dead, old man. You're dead, and leave only words for guidance,

and books make poor idols.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: "Whisper words of wisdom, let it be."
Inside my head: Flames.
To be done: Homework.
Color: Green, white, and maroon. It looks horrid, but I like it.
Career choice: Menial labor.
Craving: A balcony where I can watch the birds.
My happy place: somewhere warm, still, and silent.
Annoyance: my own fears
Fear: my own potential
Potential: for success
Success: an annoyance

warning warning

2005-10-28T16:36:00.000-04:00

November's coming!

damishbawa

2005-10-24T08:15:00.000-04:00

It's a "research day" at the governor's school. So here I am.

and I don't feel like writing up a post, so I'm going to give you some lists.

The Top Ten Reasons Camila Loves Clem Snide:

1. The frontman's name is Eef Barzelay.
2. He is hot and slightly dorky and likes to wear suits. I like that a lot.
3. DidI mention his name is Eef freaking Barzelay?
4. "and psychosomatically I'll sing to God and all his pretty girls LA LA LA LA"
5.
6. The music's good.
7. "I would prefer you don't remove your gloves," as cartoon-Eef rides a flying yurt pulled by a centaur. A centaur in a hat. I think it's a fedora.
8.
9. "No one will survive the end of love." I like the way he does his cynicism. Like, a lot.
10. "I grew up in suburban New Jersey in the 1980s watching a lot of TV and smoking pot and trying to get laid... I don’t have anything of any great importance to sing about." Yay honesty!

Five things that need to be changed in my world:
1. That problem with the door and the people. Umm, sorry bout that.
2. The problem with the cold. I need more warm things to wear.
3. The problem with the procrastination. That'll help
4. The problem with the lack of sleep, which will help
5. The problem with the caffeine addiction.

and other than that, i haven't much to say.

or haven't much that makes sense.

or haven't much I'd care to share, or

really, I don't know. like at all. so, i'm just gonna go away now... yeah.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: The Rinse, Just Like Me. And Red vs. Blue
Inside my head:ow ow damn dangit why it's owigishblah!
To be done: research which method of benchtop biodiesel production is most efficent in terms of cost, time, effort and space. also, get rid of this hangnail
Color: i'm wearing blue, but I'd rather be wearing layers and layers of brown and green. course, i'd rather be home in bed warm, but nobody asks me these things.
Career choice: shipwreck
Craving: mangos. just for jatue.
My happy place: dude i wish I could walk on ceilings.
Annoyance: my inability to be a decent person.
Fear: corpses. on my bed. because I saw one, and I freaked out like "omz" and I blamed it on lack of sleep. because I don't want to be crazy enough to need medication.

new word

2005-10-17T18:00:00.000-04:00

rorqual!

scrap of paper

2005-10-15T00:38:00.000-04:00

(because i've now got more than eleven thousand hits, and that's, like, a thousand in the past month and a half, and I feel like at the very least I ought to be posting something, you know, just occasionally.)

shoved this in my backpack somewhere:

Wed., just finished watching Our Town -- indicted as blind, ignorant, and thoughtless, there was a pause in the room -- a single breath that Wilder might have approved of, before somebody spoke up:
That was depressing.

And cut short by the bell, laughing, seizing up bags, kids in silly face-paint and kids dressed with care, we came out to our cars and buses.

and as we drove back, me sitting with my bio homework in front of me, wishing I had gotten more sleep, wishing I had gotten less sleep, wishing -- I pulled out my duct-taped, faulty mp3 player and put on carbon leaf. I was spread out on those ugly, textured brown seats, in the front where it's quiet and less bumpy -- because although the dirty jokes of the back are fun,

I had bio homework.

and I glanced up and out of the window, because I like to see the horizon -- like it when it's gentle and close, when my world is quietly confined to walls that look climbable,

and as I glanced out, we drove by a field beautiful and still green

and at the very top of the knoll, two horses were silhouetted black and slowly walked, almost touching, bending graceful necks to the earth to feed,

and I thought, "yes."

and I thought, "who gives a damn?"

and I'm alive, and my eyes may be closed, and yes, I looked down to scribble this, and yes I will still look down to do my homework,

but still it remains -- it's a gray day, with a gray sky too close, and accusing tears from a DVD player, but if moments of peace are all I can seize,

then I'm damn well going to seize them.

(emphatically underlined)

/page

Don't go on to me about missing the point about Our Town. Don't even start. Inspirational? Crap. What he wanted, he said, was to encourage people to appreciate the little things that make up a life, and yet--

'only the poets and the saints,' he said, as though we all want to be poets or saints, as if we all wanted to hurt that much. As though you have to be superhuman to appreciate what you have. He was getting close, when she wistfully rattled off all the things she wished she had savored -- but inspirational? to say that life and death are composed of time wasted, the realization of what could have been but never will, and then god knows how much waiting?

Maybe I missed the point. Maybe that's inspirational. Maybe telling people that they've never taken the time to enjoy their lives, and they CAN'T, and they NEVER WILL, is inspirational. But screw off and inspire somebody else, Thornton old buddy old pal. I'll sit over here uninspired and cynical, and I'll smile at silly silhouettes and give exasperated rants a lot and i'll watch things happen and I'll make things happen, and my life will be small and silly and slightly petty and there are going to be a lot of moments where I'm just not all here, and a few more moments where I'm so here that it hurts, and a lot where I'll go around feeling things and thinking and wondering and doing and just generally trying my best

and i'm bloody well going to believe that this is living, if you don't mind very much.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: silence of one am. cold outside. i've turned up the heat in here
Inside my head: "i think that hunger, war, and death are bringing everybody down"
To be done: sleep, edit, write, read, a few other miscellenia
Color: skin
Career choice: receptionist
Craving: hope for answers, someday
My happy place: warm bed
Annoyance: so many, but all quite petty.
Fetish: freaking pinstripes are going to bloody. well. kill me.
Fear: quiet desperation. or worse, if Wilder is right.

battling the weather

2005-10-09T12:32:00.000-04:00

and so i like indian food a lot on evenings that are drab, eaten spicy with loud friends in this house that smiles at us while we sleep.

yesterday I woke up and it was gray and i was cold.

so I turned up carbon leaf really loud, and made oatmeal and put in berries and molasses and ate my breakfast wearing big fuzzy slippers. and i knew my mother was coming home.

so today, i woke up and it was gray and i was cold, so i curled up under my sheet and cursed alex for having taken away my comforter.

and then i crawled out of bed and begged for hot breakfast, and turned up jack johnson really loud and read pablo neruda and painted my fingernails and toenails matching brightbright pink,

and alex painted hers to match,

and my hair's up spiky and I'm wearing a sweatshirt that reminds me of a time when gray days would send me out to glistening green parks or to sprawl under immense art installations,

and my feet are cold again but it's okay.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: what's it matter? it's glowing pretty
Inside my head: so it's all good.
To be done: i have homework. it glares at me. i don't like it much.
on the other hand, my chaos gate needs to be painted, and i like that a lot.
Color: brightbright pink and blue like the crystal sticker on my face.
Career choice: not a writer, because I'd be daunted by the need to be extraordinary. something where I can be merely competent.
Craving: one day, just one day, with no homework and nothing in the way and nothing between us
My happy place: under my covers, because in my head it was happier
Annoyance: my computer which won't burn cds
Fetish: fires
Fear: apathy

2005-10-05T14:27:00.000-04:00

OMZ FIRST NANOWRIMO EMAIL

*gushes*

*panic*

*runs away and hides*

the doom of the gods

2005-09-29T20:42:00.000-04:00

also translated as the end of the world.

i have a bit of a headache, and the obnoxious twinge of an irrational emotion.

and still, there's a beauty in the world, and in hot cider and new subscriptions and Ella Fitzgerald.

and when I came back after hours of staring at computer screens and problem-solving, after coaching freshman and getting pictures that were somebody else's responsibility, after twiddling with details and fixing minor problems and repairing major layout issues and despairing a bit because there simply isn't enough time in the world to fix all the minor problems or repair the major issues,

and then laughing because we were the both of us talking to our computers like they'd talk back,

well. i was home. obnoxiousness and all, and that green still needs to be fixed, but still. home.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: hums
Inside my head: an ache
To be done: i don't want to.
Color: the blue of this shirt
Career choice: train engineer
Craving: sleep
My happy place: bed
Annoyance: "you can't give me back that time, can you?"

sand dust

2005-09-27T22:28:00.000-04:00

my dreams were strange last night:

in muted colors with harsh corners, and oddly enough I remembered them when I woke,

full of strange sharp mountains in a blue sky too close for comfort, with shaggy under-fed unicorns in the distance: i remember travelling, though we didn't know where to,

and when we threw quarters at the man begging for pennies, he grew angry and insulted.

then he invited us back to his modest mansion in its dusty colors, with rooms that smelled of lovers and an apologetic smile.

dinner was delicious.

and the mountains were still furious and beautiful outside my window

and then there was

i think it was different, there was a vast library with only one entrance and no books.

it was a spreading park, beautiful with a tainting taste of strangeness. we picnicked in a far corner, walls around us, and we could see the trees and a path and the zoo

and strange, tall, long-eared predators reaching paws into the cages, sharp teeth smiling when i looked over, startled

I swallowed and looked at my parents. "genetics experiments," they whispered, and suddenly I really really wanted to go

and as night fell, shattering as it hit, we started the long hike back to the barred gates

and almost there and alison and mona turn and say,

"we forgot our hats!"

and I watched as they turned and ran back. My parents hesitantly asked if we should let them go alone, and when I almost instantly lost sight of them I searched instead for bright eyes and teeth.

and when they came back, whole and giggling and hatted, we walked out happily and piled in the car, and drove away across strange roads like minigolf courses,

under a sky too close for comfort, yet a comforting dark warm blue.

and the mountains rose on either side, short and flat like prop sets, spiky like cacti, fake like too many similes and ominously white

and nobody in the car spoke a word.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: a big wide world
Inside my head: a little narrower world
To be done: bah. biology. bah.
Color: blueblue
Career choice: sidekick
Craving: face-to-face
My happy place: in outer space. oh the rhymes!
Annoyance: distance
Fetish: raspberries
Fear: memories lie.

hehe

2005-09-25T13:38:00.000-04:00

dizzee rascal makes me laugh.

and i'll pretend that I don't like it, but i'm not much good at that.

incoherantly but whowhat where and that's not the important bit

2005-09-25T12:06:00.000-04:00

i'll give it a try, though, quick before soon:

because two days ago, I was in the library remembering my favorite places, wandering the stacks and throwing my bag on those longlong couches right in front of the windows, right in front of the microfilm, looking out on brick and grass and sleep-deprived, self-absorbed college students (there are only a few more beautiful views in the world)

and of course they're self-absorbed: they're young. we're young. all youth has that right: when the rest of the world respects mid-life crises and treats angst with derision, a little counterweight is needed:

and since you're only young once, but once you're old you just keep getting older:

and after all, we're still beautiful and vibrant, and our drained-out teachers and family just leech

(being around teenagers makes me feel young again! i love their enthusiasm! I feed off their energy! STOP STEALING OUR JOY, DAMMIT)

off us and think that it's okay,

the point is (if there was a point) that there's an amount of sense, when you're young, to leashing off your world and drawing everything inside of it.

or rather,

deciding what size you want your world to be, and making yourself big enough to fit inside it. does that make sense?

the point is, the whole world is big and it hurts a lot. and growing up, well, that just hurts a lot already. so if you can make a world that's small and hurts less, a life that fits like a skin instead of like shackles, it's good to do for a bit. as long as you can leave, eventually,

once you grow enough that it starts to itch.

I don't think I'm making any sense any more. The point is,

that there were windows, and I leaned on them and left handprints and watched boys on skateboards and girls in pajamas, walking swiftly with determination and slowly with hangovers, and I was in the Bound Periodicals section.

and then I lay on a car roof in the sun, and I like the sun a lot. there was talking, slightly less happy, but I don't really run and instead I rolled over and felt heat on the back of my neck.

and then there was

there was chuckie, who is dead or in vegas, and nobody knows,

(poor chuckie in his spiffing jacket, shooting his heart at the careless windmills)

and i like the people i'm around

and then there was there was a hike, and rocks and spreading ground reaching out across under over between the tall columns, and "but isn't that a glacier?"

and a sermon on the mountaintop i'm not allowed to talk about,

"no, it was a good story burkey. it had a great, uh, moral lesson to it."

but the point was, i was sprawled on a rock that looked down down and across trees still green, and on either side was the haze of a grey day, with our kindsoft mountains reaching, and of course we talked symbolism and we talked sex and we talked geraldo rivera, but we also talked rivers and there was the sky up there,

and we looked out, the lot of us, down down and across, and as birds turned slow flips we agreed

"yes

yes i want to jump"

and i like the corpse bride and waistcoats

and i need to learn some self-control

and i like the little collective people at the grill and at the store

and the point is

was there a point?

the point is that it's dull and grey outside, the weather that makes alex smile and makes me cringe inside,

but i like it when alex smiles so it's okay

but see, i have my music list on my brand-new happy playlist

"I guess we took us for a ride
I guess its just a gesture."

i have a strange sense of happy

but like I told the man at the little store collective, while we were buying flowers for that crazy lady who lives across the street,

when I had forgotten to pick up our coupon and he's said he'd discount us anyway,

"you mean you don't want us to give you more money?"
"i want you to be happy."
"I think we'll be happy anyway.

It's a nice world."

notalways but oftenenough
i am Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: Ying yang ying yang ying yang ying yananaphone (hey, it makes me happy.)
Inside my head: i like what it does, i like its hows
To be done: macromolecules and such
Color: the not-grey my sister asked for
Career choice: don't give a flying freak
Craving: mangoes. fresh mangos eaten on
My happy place: a balcony that smells like the sea, without
Annoyance: the screechy voices of drama, but with lots and lots of
Fetish: sunlight, pouring down rich and slicksmooth like warmed honey, and I'd even take some of that
Fear: prescience.

2005-09-25T00:07:00.000-04:00

i can't post

because everytime i have time to post my thoughts look like this:

*edited for content*

or like this:

[expletives]

or sometimes like this

GAH!

2005-09-23T14:48:00.000-04:00

today?

is a good day.

mondaynity

2005-09-19T22:39:00.000-04:00

tassled =/= tousled

but the point here is, this blog will live.

and that means posting.

and so, I have this one in my head but I don't want to write it yet, because it's shy still.

so instead, old things.

Old random bits that I found while I was redoing my room and scared alex with muchly

and old random bits from this blog last year, which is cheating I know but hey

and old like your mother is old, too, just for fun

AND OH.

CHECK THE POSSE.

because GUESS WHAT THERE ARE PICTURES

and comment or email or talk to me alex katie h. anybody for password/posting info yah?

but the point is

was there a point?

the point is I like the sun, and that the autumn makes me think of dying and worse

of growing old.

So there was this I said, once:

i don't care what consequences
i've been a fool for lesser things

and though it reads like poetry, I think it was a note to myself. A reminder of something, I suppose.

and now I have a chocolate fortune on my mirror saying "smile at yourself in the mirror" and one by my computer saying "don't think about it so much"

and I do like they tell me.

so there was this I said, once:

It started as truth -- but truth left on paper grows sharp, or falls to rotten pieces, but is never left untouched by time.

I fear blades, and hate to see my world dissolve. Truth is best unwritten, and better unsaid.

It started as truth, but it was too true, so I changed the ending and the place and stole back the kernel that was real. I have hidden it -- read what remains, and think it true, but know that my truth is mine and mine alone. Words shall not mar it, paper shall not bastardize it, and forever shall it sleep alone.

and quite an ending there, eh? I want to know how paper bastardizes, that's what I want to know.

and the thing is, I don't think I do that any more. By and large, the truth is strong enough to survive on its own --

but I lie there, because I said this not three weeks ago:

I'll try it this way – I can't tell you who I am. I can't tell you
who I am because words wield great power, and often change the things
they touch. When I put my thoughts into words, they become solid –
solid, so that I can work with them clinically, but solid so that they
can no longer develop organically. I take a thought and, in a way, I
make it real – but in the process, it loses the amorphous quality of
the undefined.

When I put my thoughts to into words, it's like my stem cells
differentiating, say. Suddenly, what had all this potential suddenly
becomes something that can grow, but only in one direction – something
that can develop, but can never inherently change. More practical
than pure potential, surely, but there's a sorrow in it too. What
happened to all those possibilities that never occurred?

and that's really the same thing.

and this was me, a bit more than a year ago

looking at the utterly opaque water in the backyard pond, darker than black in the nighttime. Faint glimmers of reflections -- twice reflected, from the lights to the leaves to the water -- somehow made it darker by painting yet another layer on top of the emptiness. It was an invitation to drown, and it looked like it would taste cold and sweet

and not me at all, anymore, and I really think that's kind of funny, in a strange way.

a strange, warm and sweet way.

and here's now: my room is making me happy, and there are things and people that worry me and make me sad, and things and people that just make me smile,

and get this

get this

are you listening?

I don't care that the summer is dying.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: "merry christmas, babe,"
Inside my head: a good kind of alcohol buzz
To be done: homework that's late
Color: purple like my nails
Career choice: professional winker
Craving: the boy's an addiction, I swear
My happy place: wet there, with dark rocks and green trees leaning over dangerously far
Annoyance: school
Fear: truths

post

2005-09-18T22:51:00.000-04:00

I've never been to New Orleans.

That wasn't my first thought, or my second, but it came soon enough for a quick twinge of guilt. What the hell kind of thought is that? There's a disaster, there's death and disease and class struggle and the inborn raciality of the South displayed like dirty laundry for the world to see, there's gross ineptitude and raw heroism and a ridiculous amount of sorrow and a sorrowful amount of ridiculousness

and I'm sitting here wishing I could have visited, just once?

oh, they'll put it back together. They'll repaint the filigree and sterilize the streets and tear down the rotten planks, and strangers will donate to questionable funds that will insure the sanctity of the gumbo, and tourism will no doubt increase because New Orleans will be the City That Survived,

but I'm not sure I'll want to go.

I mean --

let's start somewhere else.

I could only ever read half an article. I read half of a lot of articles.

I read half because I would read the first sentence and I couldn't not, and then I'd go on and feel sick inside because hey, you know, the world really sucks, we all acclimate to the fact thatin crappy third-world countries a lot of bad shit happens, and to the fact that there are a lot of places in the world ruled by chaos

but it's not supposed to happen here

and if it does, we're not supposed to see it.

and I never could figure out what was the worst,

(and here I was, a quarter of the way through the piece)

whether it was that something bad had happened -- but it couldn't be that, it happens so often to so many people

or that something bad had happened in America -- but it couldn't be that, that's so self-centered, that's so idealistically confused to think that we're better or more protected or safe, or that because we have more people suffering less, we'll always have less people suffering more

or that I had to watch it, had to know about it -- but it couldn't be that, please it couldn't be that

(and here I was, a third of the way through the piece)

and I'd distract myself with the writing, because god it was brilliant -- freed from the doldrums of summer reporting on sharks and kidnappings and how hot it is in Washington in August, and given an honest-to-god disaster reasonably accessible, with victims easy to find and pictures begging to be taken, and science and weather and fingers to point and obvious errors by the government, the journalists remembered what they do and how they do it

and god it was brilliant

(and there were reporters writing op-ed pieces on the journalism of the hurricane practically while the rain was still pouring down, and wasn't that self-serving? and wasn't it disgusting? and I didn't mind, not a bit, I read them anyway because it was fascinating, and I felt guilty because I could read those pieces all the way through)

and then I'd hit halfway through and I remember that, wait, that elegant turn of phrase a few paragraphs back

the one with the corpses and the fetid waters

that wasn't a brilliant bit of creativity.

because it wasn't creative.

because it wasn't made up, it was there -- i'm not reading someone else's imaginings, I'm seeing what they saw,

and my god how can I admire the talent of the reporter, how could I do this, if I could be understanding the suffering of the

I DON'T WANT TO

and exhausted I'd close the paper, or swallow and start the next article "In the middle of a shattered neighborhood, stepping around glittering shards of glass, breathing the unavoidable stench of death,"

and that's new orleans for me, now. I don't think of cheap beads and cheap women and cheap alcohol, or heavy humid nights with voodoo in the distance and cajun french and okra and shrimp in a bowl,

but of disease carried in the waters, and old women who want to stay with their dogs, and of the poor black feeling so betrayed that they openly accuse the government of planting bombs within the levees. I think of bush, and nobody anticipating this -- I think of bush, and this working out rather well for them.

I think of three people standing on a roof, and a single rescuer dangling from a helicopter, and of a fistfight.

And oh, the white "finders" and the black "looters" -- the fact that days went by before people started talking about how everybody on the television left poor and destitute was black, and destitute to begin with,

and why was that do you think?

and talking heads talk and people seethe and people judge and people pity and there's a lot of sorrowing, too, a bunch of that, but basically the point is it's Louisiana. It's the South, and it's America, and there were rich whites and there were poor blacks and some levees got the care and some people got out and the South is racial when it's not racist

(and honest about it, which is more than I can say about the North)

and there might as well have been bombs, really.

and they'll build it back, and who will return? The rich whites will come back, the ones whose mansions were protected by men with shotguns and booze,

and the restaraunt owners, and the bartenders, and the cheap jewelry sellers,

and the middle class,

and everybody who still has a home and a job. or a home, or a job. or a family still together and alive,

but there's so much to a city! there's the soil and the history and the air, a tainted soil, now, even if the chemical plants stayed mostly intact,

and a history that most now want to forget, or to start a few years further back, and what's the point of a history unlived?

(and eventually the air will the heavy and humid without the stench, but I don't think I'll be there to inhale)

and if all that's back is the city that's attractive, if all that's back is the city that is wanted, what's the good in that? what's the city in that?

there's a majesty in decay that's not found in rot, and there's something in old age that's not found in death, and plastic surgery by means of Katrina is like purification by fire. what you get is rather more dead.

and oh, they can do a brilliant job. They can get the city back together, they can attract back all the attracted residents -- but why would they want to, when they can keep the poor black out, and bulldoze down the slums that now stink of sewage and corpses? the simple laws of economics say the city is dead

(though simple laws are broken as often as any tangled web of bureaucracy, still they're worth listening to)

and I'm doing this instead of sleeping so maybe I'll just say this.

Venice is a city that's drowned many times, and a city where the living have been pushed out -- not so much by the rising tide as by the rising prices, in a place where tourists are the life and blood and life's blood, a place that whores out its history, a place with the raspy charm of a singing gondolier with emphysema

and I liked it. I liked it a lot.

"all the streets whisper invitations, quietly, unconsciously – look at me, come walk on me and see the way my shadows fall in the dark and where I lead now, because look! I’m blind! I might run somewhere at I never meant to go and take you where you never planned on being and won’t we have fun wandering back together? Just come and look, come and look at the different color the dark is"

is what I said in Venice

but I don't want to hear what the streets of New Orleans whisper to me.

I want the heavyhumid nights, and distant chanting and thick dark accents and rich dark skin, and I want the fine filigrees and the french and the food

but I want the fresh raw pain of a living city, not the stale taste of old, rancid corpses, because living hurts good but dying is just crap,

and where the drowning streets of Venice were peaceful and calm, in New Orleans I'd fear all I'd hear would be screams

and cracking

and sudden harsh silences in the bright, wet night.

what the hell kind of thought is that?

alex says

2005-09-08T18:40:00.000-04:00

"screw physically."

beat.

"well, I guess that would be the best way to do it."

posted by camila-who-really-honestly-is-truly-going-to-post-soon

2005-08-24T20:46:00.000-04:00

1 down, 179 left to go....

yay!

2005-08-23T21:02:00.000-04:00

doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom.

and bigass holes in our drywall ALL THE WAY DOWN HERE

2005-08-16T11:01:00.000-04:00

so there we are, my mother and I, casually walking home and discussing the verifiable insanity of consumer advocates.

"They're ALL crazy!" I wail.

"It's like they're feeding off each other!" my mother bemoans, gesturing wildly. As we continue on our way, contentedly in agreement, she suddenly halts, staring in horror at the ground.

"Oh no," she says softly. I watch her for a moment, perplexed, then follow her gaze to the grass beside the sidewalk.

It takes a moment before I comprehend.

"Oh, no."

We gaze at each other, my mother and I, in abject horror. The moment stretches on, and finally I lick my lips nervously and ask, "Do you think...?"

The look of fear on her face is as clear as any verbal answer. Yes. And yes.

I turn to look behind me, down the road. There's nobody in sight. I whip back around and look at my mother, just begging for a cue -- and when none comes, I ask, "what do you think we should do?"

"We could --" she pauses, and looks around as well. Nobody. "If he doesn't see it," she says. "If -- behind the bush?"

I nod and steel my resolve. Taking a deep breathe, my eyes still checking over my shoulder for any sign of an approach, I slowly bend over and pick it up.

The hat is disgusting. Dirt falls out of it, and ants crawl over the surface of the straw. It's still whole, though. Still washable. Heaven only knows what would -- well, it'll be okay. He won't look behind a bush.

I drop the hat, shaking off my hand, and scamper back off the stranger's lawn. The man next door is probably perplexed, sitting in his driveway, but I don't even spare him a glimpse. Instead, I squint down the street behind us -- still no sign of him. I look at my mother in relief, and with equal sighs, we turn around

and face my father. He stands there with his hands on his hips and a look of shock, and we freeze, guilty.

There is a moment of silence.

"What," my father asks, "were you doing with that hat?"

Another pause.

"Rearranging?" my mother suggests desperately.

"It wasn't in accordance with feng shui," I throw out, a giggle rising up from somewhere behind my throat.

He just looks at us, shaking his head slowly. "I can't believe it," he says, betrayed. "I just -- I just can't believe it."

As we stand there, he walks around us, tossing accusatory glances at us, and my mother leans over to whisper at me, "I should have known he would come down this street. He always comes down this street." I give her a forgiving look.

After all, we did our best.

As my father walks around the bush, bending over to pick up the hat and shake it off, we exchange one last glance, my mother and I. We exchange one last glance, and we keep on walking.

"Ah well," she says. "We tried."

I laugh again, loud enough for the entire street to hear. "We're all insane," I gasped out, "All of us."

My mother just walked on, morose, and my father turned the hat over in his hands, and I laaaaaaaaaaaughed.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: watching roaches climb the walls! man I love that song whatever it is.
Inside my head: "Here's his list of priorities -- see, here at the top, it's Chucky, and then here, here about the middle, there's hats -- selling hats to random people, honestly -- and look, see here? ..."
To be done: meeting of the journalistic minds
Color: blue
Career choice: psychic
Craving: you. unless you're not who I'm talking to.
My happy place: the dodger. book nook. it's comfortable there.
Annoyance: stupid school

Also, I totally ordered my class ring today. That is, we went and talked to our cool jeweler-man, my father cleaned things while I showed my choice off to my mother, we discussed ingravings, investments, and other such rot, and sealed it all with a smile. Platinum, two white diamonds and one blue (and ooooh it's so pretty), and a gorgeous design. Engrave it with "2007," and it looks as much like a class ring as any of that Jostens Voice crap. And no, cool jeweler-man isn't cultivated my expensive tastes to insure that we keep giving him money. what a silly idea!

anyway. it's flippin' beautiful. me gusta mucho.

non-post

2005-08-14T23:00:00.000-04:00

chu:

but it could have been one of those life-altering change-y things!

2005-08-10T19:08:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry.

it's just -- yeah.

Be back in a bit. I'm perfectly okay, but I've got nothing to write with.

the i <3th darth comic adventuret

2005-08-06T21:29:00.000-04:00

omz!

ps that's a link

fridaysonthesquare

2005-08-05T21:24:00.000-04:00

because they make me like harrisonburg.

(where went my write? argh!)

2005-08-05T00:31:00.000-04:00

my mother was gone too long.

Two days. Wow. We're hazardously dependent, here.

high school.

2005-08-02T19:42:00.000-04:00

so tonight my mother and i were attempting to convince my father that he ought to put money into the political system -- as much and as often as possible. He brought up the subject, mind, because he is vehemently opposed, but his colleagues are begging.

"but the system doesn't work!" he said. "but it relies too much on money!" he said. "but such-and-such would be such a better system!" he said.

So we talked it out with him. Not arguing, just being reasonable. Daddy-o kept protesting that he couldn't stomach playing a role that he didn't think should exist, no matter how preferable it was to the alternatives.

I'd like to think I had the clincher in that argument.

"Tom," I said. "I go to high school."

I bring this up because the latest Onion is simply brilliant. It isn't always, but when it is, it is.

sumsumsumthin else

2005-08-02T14:42:00.000-04:00

as if we didn't know how deliriously lazy I am. I don't want to post. I don't want to write.

I forget how long ago it was that I determined I could never, ever make it as a writer -- no drive, you see. But I know that I thought it, then lazily forgot it, and now I ignore it quite simply. Because any sentences or thoughts involving the words, phrases, or general ideas of
"making it"
"success"
"career"
"future"
"options"
"potential"
"fulfilling expectations"
"expect"
"fulfill"
"paying off debts"
"rewarding"
"job"
"money"
"intelligence"
"challenge"
"university"
"research"
"colleagues"
"labor"
"work"
"work ethic"
"effort"
"goddammit, you lazy bitch"
and others along those lines,

are quite simply ignored.

but I wanted to post a vacation picture. except not of the ocean, or of waves, or of people. no, of lyrics. because that totally made my life.

Evening minuetto in a castle by the sea
A jewel more radiant than the moon
Lowered her mask to me
The sublimest creature the gods, full of fire
Would marvel at making their queen
Infusing the air with her fragrant desire
And my heart reeled with grave poetry....

From grace I fell in love with her
Scent and feline lure
And jade woodland eyes that ushered in the impurest
"Erotic, laden fantasies amid this warm Autumn night
She lulled me away from the rich masquerade
And together we clung in the bloodletting moonlight"

I walked around with them all day. I went swimming in them. I flirted with the poolboy in them. I was faeth's canvas, and I wore words. words make me happy. even cradle of filth lyrics.

i guess that would make me the devil's whore, eh?

but in other news, I'm home. And I woke up at noon, spent an hour eating breakfast, ate lunch an hour later, and now am off to read a novel. yes. a novel. just for alex.

a novel that was recently written, does not resemble a poem in any way, and is otherwise nonoffensive.

and then there will be debating upon greens (because my family plus decisions equals comically inept periods of discussion. so I shall laugh, and my mother will change her mind, and I'll clambor on windowsills so we can match my skirt (well, alex's skirt) to the colors of green, because we'll debate pinks and reds and purples before we pick the green, because you have to pick a match -- and I'll suggest we suspend the couch from the ceiling, and my mother will speak of leather, and my father will ask if we could just pick a color, please, and my sister will change her mind, and I'll be accomodating, and my father will be long-suffering, and I'll change my mind, and we'll have to see it in the different light, and we'll buy tons of samples, paint our walls a hodgepodge -- and I'll probably say I like it that way -- and we'll have to match the stained glass, which is forever changing, and we'll call in strangers for their opinion, and ask the neighbors which color they think matches the outside of their house better. Because that's important.

Hey, everybody has a hobby.

If I said I'd call you today, I will. sometime.

Camila the aimless

status quo:
Outside my head: carbon leaf
Inside my head: protestations
To be done: mmmfun.
Color: spring lime candy hospital green!
Career choice: object of foot fetishing. do you know how much they pay those women? and it's not being a whore, really. just whorish.
Craving: that boy at the coffeeshop. Course, I have a thing for barista boys -- because they give me coffee. and giving me coffee, like giving me chocolate, always earns you a bit of my soul.

and he saved my chocolate cake, too. that got him points.
My happy place: couch. it'll be supercool once it's hanging from the ceiling, too.
Annoyance: time. such a bitch.
Fetish: pink!
Fear: you know. you don't like it, either.

2005-07-28T12:37:00.000-04:00

thunderstorm last night.

i have cradle of filth lyrics scrawled across my legs, and my espresso is late.

so is life like.

good espresso

2005-07-27T20:40:00.000-04:00

so it's a good day.

My cousins and I have been watching movies late at night. The johnny depp one about jack the ripper. The joaquin phoenix one about the Marquis de Sade. good stuff. we have The Red Violin and then Interview with a Vampire coming up next.

there's maybe a bit of a theme.

Also, I have discovered that being a kinky bitch is rather hereditary. NOT LIKE THAT, though.

It's fun. It's great hanging out with my family. It's great for me, that is, because I have Turned Off My Stress. For all the people without that luxury, it's rather less fun. If I were being stressed, I would get pissed off about what they do to my mother -- honestly, taking advantage of her being the only rational one in the family is just. plain. low.

we're planning a trip to the philippines, though. take my Lolo back before he dies. It'll be a struggle and it'll be stressful but heaven knows the old geezer has earned it.

Too, I did get into a bit of an argument with my grandfather -- love him as I do, but that talk show host who said that all of Islam was a terrorist organization was wrong, plain and simple!

He's fun to listen to, though. On abortion: "See, daddy, it all comes down to privacy." (that was my uncle dominic)

"The devil's privacy!"

yeah. fun times.

the ocean was cold today. brought back memories of somewhere far away, where there were more rocks and more wetsuits and more beautiful accents.

It's summer now. It's summer, and the heat wraps around like a worn old blanket, heavy with humidity. It's summer, and every motion is a great exertion, and every breath is languid and languishing by definition. In a good way, mind.

it's summer, and I claim the right to bike in a minidress. it's summer, and despite Faeth's protests I am "ruining my milk-white skin." Now it's milk-offwhite.

It's summer, and no thought is off-limits and words are peripheral.

i adore summer. I adore the heat and the laziness and the pressure and the way the world turns just a little more slowly. i like summer enough to ignore the smoking of my family and to shake off bothers like they're sand and salt. small and insiduous, but transient.

last night I had a discussion about the future that, for once, was me being talked to, and not me ranting.

On the car ride back, head out the window in the salt air and the highway-rushing, I was still thinking about it -- in that retreating, startlingly unhappy way I have sometimes. and I was yet again going over the way that I can see possibilities most places I look, far too many far too often, and I see patterns in headlines and tones of voice and half-glimpsed faces -- always not-quite-comprehensible, always there -- but nothing when I look for myself in the future.

and so, because it's summer and unending and these things are allowed, I wondered if I'll die soon. That would be fitting, wouldn't it? a marvelous time to leave, too, before I've the chance to fail. didn't Beth, in little women, talk about her castles in the air, or her lack thereof? I decided I'd rather not die.

but if I do, my clothes go to Alex and my sister, depending on who they fit, my money to Amnesty International. I want my blog saved somewhere, and then taken down. Didn't J. have a post about dead blogs, once? eerie. I'd rather be dead when I'm dead.

do save it, though. I've no delusions of immortality, but we do all have hopes.

That's mostly it. Who wants my books, though?

Morbidity aside, there was a comment on Tastes Like Burning, responding to mine -- 'please do not assume that it's innate that "the world is always improving,"' she said.

I've only a slight response to that, and it is this -- first of all, I should hardly assume such a thing. I'm not necessarily a happy or optimistic person.

Necessarily is the wrong word, but the right ones scare me.

Anyway.

Right now, of course, you can argue for doomsday. In any era, it's been so -- take a narrow enough view, and there's nothing but bad heading nowhere good. Right now, if the world is improving, it's doing so really damn slowly -- I blame the adults, of course.

Seriously, though. I've much more history left to study before I'm near satisfied, more than I'll ever manage, but look back a few hundred years. Look back a few decades, look back a few millenia. By almost any standards, and to this I would argue 'till I die, by almost any standards the world is a better place today than it used to be. Environmentally, I will concede, we have caused naught but damage, and there's no guarantee that will change, but I will bake cookies for anybody who can find another area where humankind has never managed to improve itself.

We move forwards, and we move backwards, and we erase one gain in the pursuit of another, and our morals do battle and our most brilliant minds burn themselves out and lives are cut short and lives are extended and science advances and religion fails and religion advances and science fails and passionate, caring people scream invectives at each other and everything constantly, constantly changes -- and if you step back far enough, we're moving up. We're like a giant beast crawling out of the mud, and we slip, and we injure ourselves, and many suffer for the sake of a few, but I think -- I believe -- we're rising.

and, if we play our cards right, we've only just begun. Imagine! We still have millenia of the painful, slow, conflicted, frustrating, martyr-driven and futile-seeming fight for improvement before us.

I can think of few things more glorious.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: coffeeshop
Inside my head: rolling in the rushes, down by the riverside
To be done: nada zilch nothing. i lie but i do it so prettily!
Color: purplepinkorange
Career choice: i don't.
Craving: nothing decent
My happy place: horizontal and cushiony
Annoyance: hurt arm
Fetish: priests
Fear: bugwords.

mmgrs.

2005-07-25T11:57:00.000-04:00

right. now I can't check my email, either.

If you sent me anything important, don't freak. I just can't see it.

Okay, so that might be reason to freak just a bit.

Camila

p.s. i feel really cut off. attempting to view any blogs, I get: "As requested by this establishment, this site cannot be viewed due to its content."

o.0

yay, vacation!

2005-07-25T11:36:00.000-04:00

I'm at the beach -- more precisely, at an obx coffeeshop that serves burnt espresso and won't let me read any blogs.

but it's a vacation! I'm already working on several sunburns, and despite the fact that our beachhouse is on neither the sound nor the beach -- stupid cousins wanting their stupid pool, who the fuck hangs out at the pool when you have a BEACH, we have gone to the beach and chilled.

and I was reminded once again of how completely a dork I am. One of my cousins brought Cosmopolitan as reading material. Other relations brought romance novels, and other such trash.

Me? The New Yorker. Also, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, which sounds a bit like a trashy novel but isn't at all, really.

but, whatever.

Also, I've been bikeriding. I try to pretend that it isn't because I feel like I ought to be accomplishing something. But yesterday I did almost thirty miles -- by accident, mind you. I intended to have a nice, two-hour, 20-mile ride along the beautifully flat highway 12, but then the motherfreaking runway got in the way --

camila: "holy shit, there's an airplane driving down that road!"

yeah, that made me feel really intelligent. long story.

but this isn't. I would simply like to point out to the world at large that, if you must be an asshole, be a marginally considerate asshole.

For instance, if you want to whistle at me, fine. Go ahead and whistle at me. I'll roll my eyes, unless you're insanely attractive, but it's really not that bad. I'll mostly ignore you.

there were two of those.

If you want to holler at me, fine. You're an idiot. You will automatically drop 5 points on my 11-point Scale of Worthiness as a Human Being, but whatever.

I think there were four of those.

If you want to shout presumably insulting things at me in Spanish, fine. Half the time it's amusing, and the other half of the time you'll get flipped off, but it's really quite okay.

That's more of a problem at home.

but for the love of Mary, DON'T FUCKING HONK.

you think I'm joking. i'm not joking. if you're coming towards me and you honk, you know what, at least I have warning. Because you're all pretty fucking blatant, and I can see from fifty feet away that 'good lord, that asshole is going to honk at me.'

but if you're coming up from fucking behind me, where I can't fucking see you, and you honk RIGHT IN MY FUCKING EAR and I have a JUMPY PERSONALITY and

look, this has to be the tenth time I've ranted about this.

but one of these days, I'm going to CRASH because of one of you motherfuckers, and I'll sue your puny little dick off and THEN you'll be sorry, won't you?

God.

sorry about that gratuitious cursing, too, but that BLOODY WELL PISSES ME OFF.

um. in case you couldn't tell.

right. it's 20 cents a minute for this internet access. have marvelous lives.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: talking
Inside my head: i would probably sell my soul for some decent espresso right now.
To be done: biking back to the car. for some reason, my family decided 12 miles was more than enough, and we really didn't need to do 26. I was all for it.
Color: mocha
Career choice: professional lounger.
Craving: need I say it again? espresso. not-burnt espresso.
My happy place: bed
Annoyance: that counter. it's making me feel guilty.
Fetish: crooked smiles
Fear: nothing particularly.

buy a backbone, ari

2005-07-20T21:44:00.000-04:00

we had a break this evening. it was great. after italian food for dinner, we had "free time" when we had to be with our counselors and walk whereever we were going and everything was closed.

but underground was open, you see -- the vcu student commons-type thing -- and they had a room with pool tables and air hockey tables and ping-pong tables.

so we threw some weezer (and red hot chili peppers and outkast and simon and garfunkel and violent femmes, but mostly weezer) on the ridiculously overpriced jukebox, grabbed pool tables and cues and had at it.

it was great fun. i couldn't play pool to save my life, and I was with one of our counselors, who couldn't play pool to save the entire universe -- and we won once. beautiful it was.

and then we came back and worked some more. in fact, i still have to rework my article.

it's a really fucking boring story, but then it was pretty hard to work with what we were given.

"why did you come to this journalism workshop?"

"i was interested in journalism."

"no, really?"

also, it is summer and I am lazy

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: the kid next to me is asking what I'm doing. so i answered. and i asked him. and even though he's done, he's still working. freaking overachievers. I mean, hell, I want to be better than everybody else -- but these people not only want it, but they're willing to work for it! maniacs!
Inside my head: hello darkness my old friend
To be done: news writing = newswriting
Color: dark red
Career choice: embittered high school journalism teacher (what's the difference between embittered and bitter? does an embittered teacher feel bitterness, while a bitter teacher tastes bitter?)

bitter is a weird-looking word. bitter. bitter. bitter. bitter.
Craving: milanos. and I have them in my dorm. and also I don't feel fat, yay!
My happy place: umummum
Annoyance: something but it's a bit vague
Fetish: bitter sours bitter bitter bitter!
Fear: omg gangrene and infection and then i'll die.

also, i really would rather not be abducticated.

grs.

p.s. ari, whoever you are, hi. also, your paradoxicality is interesting. comment at will.

wasting time

2005-07-18T21:48:00.000-04:00

i keep forgetting that there are people who get freaked out when you not only can pronounce sado-masochistic, but you know what it means.

that was a pretty great conversation, though.

"yeah, you can call me domonoske."

"so does anybody ever call you dom?"

"um. no. though somebody did call me dominatrix, once." (oh, shut up, you.)

other than that, it's terribly terribly boring here. They keep insisting that we work.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: people achieving things, the bitches.
Inside my head: god. now it involves leather.
To be done: more article-writing
Color: black like helen keller.
Career choice: gibbering fool
Craving: nothing decent.
My happy place: beach.
Annoyance: air conditioning
Fetish: god. now it involves leather.
Fear: failure failure failure failure failure!!!! failure failure failure failure failure!!!! failure failure failure failure failure!!!! failure failure failure failure failure!!!! failure failure failure failure failure!!!! success! i'm screwed!

omg hbp!

2005-07-17T12:11:00.000-04:00

finished! whee!

and now I trot off to richmond to study things.

yes. more learning accomplishing-ness.

what's wrong with me?

i shall wear black in mourning.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: virgin radio
Inside my head: draco is redeemable!
To be done: finish packing. blargh.
Color: black.
Career choice: slacker. to make up for this.
Craving: swiss chocolate
My happy place: treeshade
Annoyance: anything involving labor
Fetish: scars
Fear: your mother.

backslash\

2005-07-15T01:01:00.000-04:00

omg elevator story!

But first of all -- well, it was the last night. Screw sleep, screw food, we were going to have a good time. And if certain liberal Green boys decided to just up and abandon me their friends and go out and see plays instead, and especially considering that we were never actually together anyway, and there happened to be a certain tall, fit and very very willing moderate Republican nearby, well. politics be damned. never accuse me of not making the best of things.

So the dance was fun.

At the end, though, when they actually got around to playing some rock songs, and we all started to mosh -- well, what did they expect? -- the RAs climbed into the fray and forcibly pulled people down and apart. That was obnoxious, and, needless to say, left us -- well, mosh-deprived. Full of a great deal of energy, with nowhere to go.

Well. Nowhere good to go.

but anyway, it was 11:55 and time to start heading back. So we all scamper indoors, and an elevator comes to take us down from the roof -- rather a smallish elevator, but it suddenly seems like a really good idea to fit a lot of people in it.

A lot. People were squished in shoulder to shoulder to back to chest, ankle to toe, thigh to ass and hip to hip. It was crazy. And as I came in, I saw an incredibly small but open spot, right by the door -- a spot just big enough for my feet, tinier than usual in 4-inch stilettos, and with just enough room above it for me to fit between people.

The elevator was at least twice as full as it ought to have been.

Did I jump on? Of course I jumped on!

I jumped on, squeezed in, laughed an apology, and barely fit.

The doors closed, as elevator doors do. We were laughing, exhilarated, exuberant, moshless. There was a pause as we furtively glanced around, checking faces.

Then we all started to jump.

It was amazingly fun. There we were, packed into this elevator, and all of us, all of us bouncing up and down --

and then the elevator stopped, and my first thought was, "wow, it moves a lot faster when you jump!"

except, um.

So, what followed would probably make a wicked short story. A great deal of insight into how people behave under stress -- all those who needed to talktalktalk or they'd be FREAKING OUT and all those who just wanted everybody to SHUT THE FUCK UP already.

also, that the girls either didn't freak out or said "guys, i think i'm freaking out," while the guys either didn't freak out or said, "hey, guys, there are people over here who are freaking out so if you'd JUST SHUT UP THAT MEANS YOU I'M FINE NO REALLY."

and then there were all the people who were worried that the cables would snap, that the power would go out, that we'd run out of oxygen. I whipped out my tried-and-true bullshitting skills, informing the worried around me that I Knew For A Fact that not only were elevators exceedingly well-ventilated, but that people used up a lot less air than you'd think. In fact, even if the elevator were completely sealed, it would take at least 2 days before we'd start to be able to feel the lack of oxygen. Or, you know, something like that. (Afterwards, I debated telling a girl I'd been by that no, really, I hadn't known that for a fact -- but as she was going on and on about how much it'd comforted her, I decided to just leave that out.)

There were a few of us, scattered around, doing approximately the same thing -- keeping the people around us from losing it. There were quite a few more doing their very best to lose it. Then there were girls who coped with the stress by "feeling ill" and a few guys who gladly volunteered shoulders for said girls to lean on.

Not that they really needed it. We were all pressed so close together, there was really nowhere to fall -- seriously. We could just about manage to have one person crouch down -- a few people threatened to throw up, for instance, and there was more air down by our feet -- but anything else was out of the question. Like, I could have spun around, but only by cooperating with the folks around me. By the end, I swear I had at least 10 people's sweat coating me -- a few from the dance, but mostly from the elevator.

And speaking of sweat, ew. The door to the elevator was dripping, absolutely dripping with condensation. And being short, even when four inches taller than usual, people's sweat would drip off their faces and onto mine. And also it was muchly humid and hot in there.

So there were a few brilliant conversations with maintenance men --

"may I help you?"
"yes, uh. we're stuck in an elevator."
"all right, I've got you -- how many people are in there?"
"um. lots?" *somebody counts* "24."
silence.
"24 people?"
"yeah."
"You have 24 people in the elevator?"
"yeah."
"WHY?" (that was really, really, really loud, btw.)
pause. somebody whispers: "don't answer that."

*so, um. it's going to, um, be a while. I've got to go get my car keys." (us: wtf? car keys?)
some smartass in the back: "All right, we'll just stay here, then!"

Roles grew up, mostly spontaneously. There was a bit of struggle -- we're at politics camp, for heaven's sake! But, what with there being TWENTY FREAKING FOUR OF US in there, not everybody could be in charge. Instead, there was the kid who manned the buttons. I hollered down the shaft when necessary, one boy talked to RAs on the cell phone, there were a few inshakably calm people who just soothed, and a few people who defused fights when they seemed about to occur. One girl decided it was her godgiven duty to make sure everybody Didn't Talk, Like At All And I Mean You.

then, of course, there was Joe. I had marked him as the Preppy Jokester, but then when he decided his way of coping with stress was to take off his shirt and spin it around to increase circulation, I discovered that he was in fact the Exceedingly Attractive Preppy Jokester. The shirtfan didn't really make the elevator cooler, but it made Joe feel better, and it made us girls around Joe feel -- better. yeah, better. that's the word.

then, of course, another kid got the same idea, but, um, no. Yeah. Couldn't pull it off. So glad I am that I wasn't next to him.

And really, it went quite well. Nobody started hyperventilating. Nobody fainted. Nobody threw up. Nobody cried, snapped, or started a fistfight. There wasn't enough room for a fistfight, but still. Some of us managed to see the humor in it all the way through, and most everybody was amused at some point or another. There wasn't much complaining -- there were the ShutTheFuckUppers, but everybody realized that we were all hot and squished and tired, and didn't whine. I confess, after about 30 minutes when my feet started hurting (and I contemplated asking the people around me to shift so I could maybe get my shoes off, but it would have taken cooperation like billy-o, and so I decided to let it drop) I was a bit grumpy, but I got over it.

Anyway, that's the medium-sized rambly story. There could also be an epic-length story, mentioning attempts at crowd-surfing and also the Drama of the Door, but here it is in a nutshell:

We, some of the brightest high school students in the nation, fit 24 people on an elevator with a maximum capacity of 3000 pounds.

We then started jumping. The elevator stopped.

Overheated and muchly overcrowded, we were in that elevator for one hour and 16 minutes.

At 1:11 in the morning, the D.C. Fire Department showed up.

They took the top off the elevator, and started pulling us out.

They had to take 12 of us out before they had enough space to put down a ladder. BEFORE THEY HAD ENOUGH SPACE FOR A LADDER. 12 of us. Yeah.

It was cool outside, and we were all alive and it was brilliant. Brilliant I say.

So then home, and sleeping.

For instance, today I slept in until 1:30. I then made myself 2 cups of percolated coffee (imagine 8 shots of espresso) and sat outside in the gray afternoon.

I spent the next hour eating mango, wineberries, pineapple, strawberries, blueberries, english muffins, and honey, drinking my coffee and waking up.

Then I came inside and read the newspaper.

I started unpacking, maybe at four in the afternoon, spent some time sprawled around doing absolutely nothing, had dinner with my parents and one of their friends and my sister and one of her friends, came into my room, started this blog post, messed around on the internet (for instance, this? kills me dead. sappho? scooby-doo? hp lovecraft? zork? freaking hilarious. and you have to read the cricket one. thanks, boingboing.) And now I blog.

that, my friends, is a good day.

Last night -- no, night before -- my dad called me out. "Come here and look at the clouds," he said, and because, for all my father's flaws, he is never wrong about these things, I came.

The school was in the way, so I ran around behind it and clamored on top of a green metal box. There was a thunderstorm brewing, remember? and the sky was half-covered in these dark heavy clouds.

but where the sun was setting, there was a bit of a break -- and a whole arc of the sky, shaped like a slice of some ethereal pie-chart, was golden-colored, as sunlight sifted through the clouds. That was incredible in itself, the simple contrast of the dark blue-grey and the glowing gold --

but more importantly was where there was a break in the clouds; except break is the wrong word. Opening. You could see through to the sky, but before that you could see every single nuance of the cloud -- textured and vibrant, solid-looking. It was an invitation in the sky, shaped like a distant, castle-covered mountain, and it spoke the way moonlight paths on oceans speak -- "if you find the right way, you could come here -- if you hurry and turn the right way and think hard enough and quick enough you'll be here, amidst shining turrets, and if you find your way here it won't vanish. it's a world here, a world you'd love to see and touch and taste -- just find a way." The sky sat dull and dark, but then a tiny corner of it shone and showed a palace.

And then the sun set, and it grew dark, and I jumped painfully down and ran back home and caught fireflies (a jump and a squeak and I surprised myself when I caught it, so high off the ground, and giggled as it flew away and then pretended I hadn't.)

so, in short, it's good to be home.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: quiet house
Inside my head: "Important things are boring. Once something starts to matter, it gets all weighed down -- oh! Oh! did you hear that? matter? weighed down? hahahahahaha!" Yeah. That was me. At dinner. Yay for puns!
To be done: sleep. laundry. pack.
Color: beige, in a good way.
Career choice: dreamslayer
Craving: lemons

p.s. borf

2005-07-14T18:20:00.000-04:00

no more borf.

not sure i rather would

2005-07-11T23:04:00.000-04:00

just watched trainspotting and i think splatters of my brain are still on the ceiling.

also, there is an endofcamp post coming as soon as my fingers function. tomorrow, like.

2005-07-08T15:55:00.000-04:00

who's done?

I'm done!

whoooooo's done?
IIIIIIII'm done!!!

wow. wowowow. I even have, like, extra time -- so I can go moviewatching, yay!

no revision, of course, and only rudimentary grammarchecks, but it's long enough and mostly coherant and it has sources and footnotes and it's sooooo preeeeetty and I haven't eaten anything but candy in, like, twenty hours. and I slept five hours out of the past 30.

yay!

progress 4

2005-07-08T13:16:00.000-04:00

so I really want to eat, but I have to put in footnotes, do a quick revision, and shower first. then I'll be fine -- and even able to go off-campus! legally, that is. they don't want us taking the metro, of course, but they'll let us off-campus.

but first i have to footnote revise shower eat. and it's a pity about the having no money bit. but ah well.

the point is, if I really wanted to I could turn it in now. it makes me feel much better about not.

Camila

status quo:
9 1/2 hours 'till due
15 sources
10 pages + bibliography

progress 4

2005-07-08T12:05:00.000-04:00

so I now have 5ish hours of sleepish. Almost five hours, not really sleep, but I'm less racoony. I did manage to stat up until 7, though, and I wouldn't slept if roomie hadn't gotten all motherish on me.

but now I'm not motivated to be working much. and I need revision like billy-o.

ergh.

Camila

status quo:
10 hours 'till due
14 sources
10 pages (w00t!)

progress 3

2005-07-08T05:47:00.000-04:00

I think i can do two more hours straight, but then I'll need a nap.

you know, we're watching a movie tonight as a hall. and then we have to wake up earlyish tomorrow morning. which means camila will be one tired excuse for a human being come graduation.

Camila

status quo:
16 hours 'till due
13 sources
4 1/2 pages

progress 2

2005-07-08T04:10:00.000-04:00

I'm running out of excuses. the only rule, really, is that I won't let myself sleep until I've all ten pages written.

it's a terrible rule.

Camila

status quo:
17 1/2 hours 'till due
13 sources
1 1/2 pages

progress one

2005-07-08T01:03:00.000-04:00

sooo, roomie and i ran out to the lounge and made easymac (cheeseless for me, thanksmuch) and popcorn and drank soda. and there was a cool conversation with irishgirl, and a really really awkward one with the two bimbos down the hall ("so, I was born in California." "really? i was conceived in california. yup. in a basement in california." "wow, you know so precisely?" "yeah. it was the only time my mom slept with a man." silence. "yup, my mom's a lesbian." silence. other bimbo: "so, was she a virgin?" "nope. she lost her virginity by being raped." silence. "yeah, she was twenty-one." silence. "she used to be really hot, too, but now she's ugly." silence. "and kinky, the bitch." siiiiiiilence. me and roomie: "so, let's change the topic...")

and it was fun and random.

"so how many pages do you have?"
Camila holds up 0 fingers.
"and what are you doing right now?"
"writing my paper!"
"you liar, you're hanging out in the lounge! making popcorn! ooh, can I have some?"
"sure! and we're just taking a break."
"a break?"
"yeah."
"when you have 0 pages written?"
"yup!"
"wow..... so, how about that popcorn?"

status quo
19 hours 'till due
12 sources
0 pages

(that sounds like no progress, but I swear i accomplished something. i read!)

RESOLVED that i am insane

2005-07-07T23:24:00.000-04:00

I've been reading this.

instead of working.

Camila

status quo:
22 1/2 hours till due
12 sources
0 pages

2005-07-07T16:54:00.000-04:00

no, security here isn't bad.

It's just... it was hard to get started on my paper. I only found out when I woke up -- and that meaans 11:30 -- and I wanted to stay in my room and read the Guardian straight through, but we went to lunch -- and then we went to the library, where they have a whole room where cnn is always running, and giant closed-captioned screens in the lobby, and I wanted to just stand and watch, but I had to do research, and --

and I did smile when the newscasters mentioned, with slight incredulity, that, in the absence of public transportation, Londoners had been forming "orderly queues" on the sidewalks as they walked home.

All our friends live outside of central london, and London has survived -- more than that, triumphed -- over far far worse than this. The Blitz was only sixty years ago.

Still, I won't lie to you. It was chilling, and depressing, and not to mention that just the thought of being stuck, in the dark, literally and figuratively, in Kings Cross station ranks very high on Camila's List Of Things That Should Never Be Endured.

they stopped the Eye, and the buses, and the Tube. The G-8 makes statements, and londoners form queues on the sidewalks, taking a long walk home. They blew apart a double-decker bus, loaded with commuters and symbolism -- and the other buses carried the wounded to hospitals, as practical as symbolical. Bloggers advised how to get home, the police set up a casualty line, people wandered the streets with their useless mobiles and confusion, joking and sharing information and granting good wishes.

Congratulations on the Olympics, Britain. Sorry about the mess this morning.

I'm not getting angry. I'm digesting the anger, and looking instead at the passersby helping the wounded, and at the sharing of pay phones, and Blair's statements that spoke in support of the "vast and overwhelming majority" of muslims, and ken livingston's comments that these were not attacks inspired by any "perverted faith."

"They seek to divide Londoners. They seek to turn Londoners against each other." It didn't work, it won't work, G8 will not cower and Downing Street will not-- well, pull an America, to be quite honest. No words of revenge are being spoken by the administration, there is no fear-mongering, and -- I don't know. I have a great deal of faith in London.

but I'm having to digest my anger, having to digest it slowly, and I can't even focus on it. I didn't have the time to write this, I still don't have the time to read everything I need to read and do all the thinking I need to do before I'm going to be able to deal with the fact that they planted bombs in the Tube and blew up a bus and -- London, dammit!

camila.

status quo:
28 hours 'till due
12 sources
0 pages

2005-07-07T12:16:00.000-04:00

bastards got london.

2005-07-06T21:34:00.000-04:00

elevator games!!!!

goldfish, candy, pants...

RESOLVED that marijuana be legalized by the federal government

2005-07-06T19:07:00.000-04:00

did final exam. I would say it was easy, but I'm good at tests. so all I'll say is that I didn't have to try.

also, there was a question on Coldplay. A true/false question.

andso there's a paper due in about 48 hours. but it's only ten pages, and my teacher is a liberal, and it's on something well-researched and easily discussed. So there are no problems there.

i'll probably start sometime tomorrow.

Meanwhile,here's some news for you: in the form of an im between me and anamica, becausewe're all dorks here and im each other. even though nanka is only down thehall. whatever.

oh, and for the record: we are most definitely not allowed off-campus.

Nanka: How were the gardens!
Me: gardens?
Nanka: "the library"
Nanka: did you go?
Me: OMFG you didn't HEAR?
Nanka: No one tells me anything.
Nanka: me=outta the loop
Me: okay, so we're heading out.
Nanka: Fascinating!
Me: and we talk about where we're going, and we can't agree, but eventually we decide on the mall.
Me: the national mall, that is.
Me: and we argue about how to get there,
Me: and decide on the metro, because whatever. so we walk to rosslyn station.
Me: which is a longass way, but whatever.
Nanka: enthralling
Me: shuddup. it gets exciting.
Nanka: No, no, really!
Nanka: Do go on.
Me: anyway, we're walking there and he says, "don't look, it's dominique!"
Nanka: *gasp*
Me: and because I'm like that, i turn and look, and of course nobody's there, and glare at him. the bastard.
Nanka: mischevious!
Me: and we're going down the escalator, and he says, "don't turn around, but mr. mcmann is on the elevator with us!"
Me: and that was just stupid so I ignored him.
Nanka: danger ensues!
Me: andwe get to the bottom, and we pass a bunch of people in a group, and robert,who's been calling every third person a 'fucking tourist' (we had about tenconversations about how he's a tourist, too) calls them all fucking tourists.
Nanka: Turn around and tell Kristin that her and I will do it tonight at one!
Me: okay, i did,
Nanka: He likes to say fuck and phag too much.
Me: but I really want to know why I'm not invited to these sex parties. whatever.
Nanka: And I've been around people like that..
Nanka: Sex parties...
Nanka: What sex parties...
Me: yeah, he's does. it's obnoxious. i'm getting annoyed with him in general, to be quite honest.
Me: you and kristin, evidently.
Nanka: Kristin=not sexual
Nanka: at least to Nanka
Me: i told her that. she said "okay."
Me: anyway, you're missing my DRAMA.
Nanka: No, seriously, tell!
Nanka: I'm just having these sidebars..
Me: sidebars?
Me: like, in a newspaper?
Nanka: Yes, like mini conversations.
Nanka: mmmm, mini conversations
Nanka: *drools*
Nanka: So then what?
Me: mini conversations? eh?
Me: oh,so then about fifteen feet down from the group robert curses or something,and he turns to me and says "there's a bunch of jsa people here."
Nanka: With my lover, Pedro.
Me: and I'm all, "shut up, bastard,"
Nanka: haha
Me: pedro? like the mouse? i want a pedrolover!
Nanka: KEEP GOING
Me: and he says "no, i'm not even shitting you." and I just roll my eyes,
Me: but then I notice he's all bugeyed, and he pulls me around behind one of those big square column-like signs,
Nanka: And then Liberati appears! (sp)
Me: and I still think he's kidding, but then that girl -- you know, the loud obnoxious one?
Me: well, that's not very specific.
Nanka: Jameica?
Nanka: Oh, the Supreme Court visit!
Me: veronica,or victoria, or something? she was talking about making the hoya snaxa guysmile, and her nose is too big and she wears too much makeup?
Me: yes! the supreme court visit!
Nanka: Oh.
Me: todd's entire class!
Me: we called them fucking tourists!
Nanka: ha
Me: anyway,the obnoxious girl comes over, and very urgently is talking to us -- sheloves drama, you can just tell -- 'you've got to get out of here, we're herewith our class, they're coming right now"
Me: and the tall skinny black boy comes over to robert and is all "what up, homeboy"
Nanka: ....
Nanka: lies?
Me: and obnoxious girl says, "shut up, they aren't with us! he can't see them!"
Nanka: It's like a movie.
Me: and the boy just looks confused, and obnoxious girl turns to us and whispers "run! seriously, run!"
Me: and i look at robert, and he looks to me, and he's like, "where -- " and I'm like, "the escalator!"
Nanka: Wow.
Me: and so we run for the escalator.
Nanka: That actually kinda sounds like fun.
…
Me: there's more to the story, but it's all false alarms, hysterical laughing, and slow buses.
...
Nanka: I would have liked to see more explosions.
Nanka: And a sportscar.
Nanka: A nice red corvette, I think.
…
Nanka: Now that's a movie.
Me: what is?
Nanka: ...
Nanka: Over there!
Nanka: *runs*
…
Nanka: *writes letter to Spielberg*
Me: eh? but what's the movie?
Nanka: And I'll get all the credit!

if anybody has insights as to illinois' role in the failure of the ERA, drop it on me. I am going to write that paper eventually.

ooh! and i'm broke! it's fun. I have only quarters left. and I'm using them to buy things like chocolate cake.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: Autamata -- Jellyman (Radio Paradise)
Inside my head: thoughts on lies
To be done: meh, i have 48 hours. actually, more like 50. score!
Color: pastel seethrough.
Career choice: pastry chef's girlfriend. because she runs off to france!
Craving: a meal
My happy place: in the shady grass
Annoyance: people who say "faggot"
Fetish: BMWs.
Fear: mr. mcmann

2005-07-06T00:03:00.000-04:00

bookwyrmgirl6: we kicked her out of our room so we could talk to her online.

RESOLVED that America should significantly curtail illegal immigration

2005-07-05T21:53:00.000-04:00

hey, I know that ben!

he was the other ben! like, there was little asian ben who I called Nezzer, short for Nebudchadnezzer, because, like, that name starts with Neb, which is Ben spelled backwards -- anyway, he was the ben who wasn't nezzer! dude!

and we don't have a drag day, but we do talk about guys in dresses probably much more than we should. and look at pictures. but there's a story behind that, and it involves cell phones, so it's not bad or weird or anything.

anyway.

do you want to know what we do here at jsa summer school? here's how my day went:

last night: set alarm for 7.

7: turned off alarm.

8:30: rolled out of bed, groaned, took the quickest shower of my life. breakfast, yadda yadda.

9:15: got on buses.

went to Saudi Arabian embassy. Listened to probably the best speakers yet, in terms of

a) comfort. that was the poshest embassy, like whoa. so much money. persian rugs on the floor, cushy seats, nice lighting, gold plating all over the place... well, here and there, anyway
b) bullshit. Propaganda like whoa.
c) amusement. They had a movie AND a fashion show.
d) good points. Because they did have some. they could stonewall, but when they actually talked they actually talked.
e) quotables. Get this:

"Remember, human rights are in the eyes of the beholder.

came back. ate a very bizarre lunch, because nobody cares if I decide that i need to put garbanzo beans, carrots, and garlic powder on my pasta.

1:30:Went to class, did a review session for, oh, a few hours. It included talk of what people wore to various halloween parties, as well as discussions of the virtues of Coldplay.

then we made notecards. this involved settling in the downstairs lobby, with musics, blankets and pillows, lots and lots of candy and espresso beans, and not much studying at all. but we did make notecards. (U.S. v Curtiss-Wright: President has supreme power over foreign policy decisions (i.e. a private citizen may not represent U.S. overseas))

Then we pretended to study. That involved a lot of sprawling, shrieking, and pointing out of simply ridiculous notes on notecards ("it doesn't mention sexual orientation!" (that was priya) "yeah it does. look at the bottom." (that was anamica) "but -- no. what if they're lesbians?" (that was me.) "lesbians can have buttsex too." (cue long and ridiculously offtopic discussion) turns out anamica just didn't want to have to spell 'orientation')

and then it started raining. so, of course, kristin and kayla and mark and i ran, in the rain, to the Tombs. It was a ten-minute flash thunderstorm, the kind that made the stairs into a waterfall and soaked us to our skin. It was a ten-minute walk. It stopped as we got there, which was freaking hilarious. so then we hyperactively ate dinner, and talked about being toothless.

7: come back. return to the lobby, because that's where we live. Give up all pretense of studying -- did I mention that our finals are tomorrow? -- and instead, mark and kristin do the Penguin Activity Book that robert brought back from when he went to the penguin movie. (he'd already gotten me to sneak offcampus twice, but i refused this time. yeah. stupid me. i missed the penguin movie.) I did the new york times crossword, ate a lot of candy, and threw starbursts at robert when he ran off to actually study. Berk.

and then we came up, i got my grades from congressional workshop -- A, though not a perfect (which my midterm was, thanksmuch)

and now we are hanging out, not studying and not writing our papers. curfew is extended 'till midnight, though nobody observes those things anyway. 'Tis beautiful.

Also, throughout the day I ingested:

4 1/2 mugs of coffee
3 1/3 cups of tea
1 redeye (coffee with a shot of espresso, hell yes)
approximately 2.6 ounces of dark chocolate
rather a lot of chocolate-covered espresso beans

and some food, but whatever. that's the most important bit. At least I am not addicted to caffeine pills... yet. night before the paper's due, I might.

And while I might not get to analyze mrs. dalloway, i do get to write about why the ERA failed -- using illinois as a focus point and comparing to nationwide trends, of course, because a ten-page paper entitled Why The Equal Rights Amendment Failed would be worse than suicidal in scope -- which, personally, I do find interesting.

and that brought me almost to a rant about supposedly feminist boys, but I'm just going to shut up now because grrr.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: grateful dead, St. Stephen
Inside my head: a buzzzzz. though my skin isn't crawling, yet, my mind kinda is...
To be done: study, paper, blah blah blah
Color: brown.

speaking of which, I have a confession. I, um, bought steve madden shoes. again. and these are even taller, and have even pointier heels. they're... they're scary.

but they were half-off, and they matched my new dress (yes, i went shopping in georgetown, shuddup) and they ought to fit alex, too, so it's not that bad, really...

no, really. it's bad. it's very bad.

i can't walk downhill in them. i tried. it's... it's bad.
Career choice: hobo
Craving: mangoes
My happy place: by a fountain
Annoyance: term papers. bah.
Fetish: old-school vespas
Fear: wet stairs

RESOLVED that boys are stupid

2005-07-02T14:58:00.000-04:00

(because it's written in the code of womanhood that when a friend is pmsing, you have a bitching party with chocolate. and this being jsa, there are resolutions as well. like such. also, resolved that hormones suck.)

so I keep having these dreams -- well, keep might be too strong of a word. I had this dream last night, and i very unusually remembered it, and it felt as though I'd had it before -- it, or something like, more than once before.

and it's pretty stupid, because -- well. Apparently, I keep having these dreams that tell me to learn how to be a bartender.

and they're very serious dreams. For instance, in this one -- which I almostnotquite remember -- I almostnotquite remember it like this: i'm in this strange place, not really smoky but more like fuzzy around the edges, and there's an old man talking to me. As he's talking, he's mixing drinks -- and in the dream, of course, I know what they all are, but now I can only remember vague colors and proportions.

he was talking about the Lost Art -- or the art that would soon be lost -- the Art of Mixing Drinks, I suppose. It was all very solemn, and when he looked at me, he looked very very intense. "we need you," he said, and handed me this fucking awesome cocktail. and then, after the first sip, I woke up.

i think that's how it went. it came back in pieces, and after I remembered it all, I remembered another dream -- maybe? -- in a much different kind of place, with a much different kind of person -- urban and urbane -- but they too were saying, far too intensely, something along the lines of "no, you must learn this. the world needs more bartenders."

my subconscious. screw it all.

penguins? anybody seen that? it any good?

Also, I am not a pet. thanksverymuch.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: dandy warhols
Inside my head: cough
To be done: paper. but really procrastination.
Color: purple.
Career choice: well, bartender, I suppose.
Craving: whatever the hell that drink was. it was palely orangish, in a glowy sort of way -- but then everything was glowing. it didn't taste like oranges. any ideas, all you drunkards?
My happy place: leather couches
Annoyance: cough
Fetish: slouching
Fear: malaria

RESOLVED that global warming is the greatest threat to the world today

2005-07-01T12:03:00.000-04:00

O'Connor has abandoned us!

You can tell you're at geek camp when the RAs post signs that say "the battle is on," and all the kids form huddles in the elevators and discuss -- "how long till roe v wade is overturned?" "they'll overreach -- the democrats will win in 2008" "i could have sworn it would be rehnquist first" "if he dies now, we're screwed" "finally, there'll be some justice!" "do you think he'll pick a woman?" "he'll have to" "he'll go for a minority" "please god not gonzalez" "please god gonzalez" "shit we're screwed" and just "shit"
anyway.

I got your letter, alex. I love you muchly. just so you know.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: beeping
Inside my head: people are sick who shouldn't be.
To be done: walking, lunch
Color: white
Career choice: supreme court justice. hah.
Craving: cofffffffffffffee
My happy place: canada. or spain. rachel, we totally should. it'll be less complicated, now -- yay!
Annoyance: ergh.
Fear: please, please...

RESOLVED that the international community militarily guarantee Israel's secure borders in exchange for an independent Palestinian state

2005-06-30T22:54:00.000-04:00

I'm not eating enough, drinking enough, sleeping enough, working enough, reading enough, walking enough, or paying enough attention.

I'm getting sick, of course, but I'd say it's worth it.

and oh, jesse? I can swear. and walk places. and skip all my meals -- like I did today -- and sleep in, and surf the internet, and eat really unhealthy things, and explore the campus, and have sex. theoretically.

so i'm going to go to bed now, because I don't feel like eating or working, and I already drank enough water and was told "everything about this speech was virtually perfect."

and i am so so tempted to ruin bill frist right now.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: voices
Inside my head: drugs. and this has nothing to do with that, but I am not going to want to talk politics for weeks after this is finished. seriously. all i want to do is go for a walk outside and next thing I know I'm glaring up at Luke Skywalker while trying to decide whether informing him that, personally, I don't find fornication all that terrible a thing would be damagingly irrelevant to our mostly-civil discussion on abortion, or totally worth it. I'll be almost sick of arguing. kids were debating negative numbers -- negative numbers! And we've driven the israel-palestine thing into the ground, then dug it up and done it all over again just because.

I also would like to add that the pentagon people are even more boring than the head of the CATO institute. thank you.
Color: brightbright pink
Career choice: rogue revolution-instituter
Craving: god, food. but sleep more.
My happy place: korea
Annoyance: time
Fetish: pinstriped suits
Fear: bill frist

RESOLVED that each state shift to a merit pay system for all public school teachers.

2005-06-29T23:53:00.000-04:00

"Wow. You're really... eccentric." That was one of my hallmates, with apparently a very narrow view of the world. I was having quite a normal conversation with her, thanksverymuch. And I must modestly say that I haven't yet earned the honorable title of 'eccentric.'

"You drink your coffee black? Wow. You're tough." That was some kid who looks eight but is really fifteen, as he was dumping creamer into his coffee. It's funny because -- tough?

"May we fornicate while we're there?" That was robert. There is a context, but I'm not sure it matters...

Anyway. Nobody is hearing the backstory on the Problem Childing, because it's not interesting. I did not get into a shouting match with Rick Santorum. Some lucky bastard did, but it wasn't me. I didn't even curse out my RA. Nor did I wear anything scandalous. I didn't even sneak offcampus -- and I wasn't even rude. mostly. nor did I have sex, or (unlike one of my idiot hallmates) give out my cell number to strange college boys. not that I have a cell number, but whatever. Anyway, the story(ies) is(are) embarassing in how uninteresting it(they) is(are), so nobody is hearing it(them). I was a Problem. now I am Probated. The end.

I'm pretty happy right now. I finished my main debate (see title. I argued negative.) and I lost, but it was close. Also, I got to go around yelling and being all passionate. And I had much more fun than the "No Child Left Behind should be the guiding light in our lives" coological girl I argued with.

There were speakers today, at the white house -- well, the compound anyway. The umpteenth speaker on social security -- i managed to keep my eyes open, but i couldn't for the life of me get them focused -- I watched his whole thing with double vision going on. Then the president's aide, who got the job basically because he dated Jenna -- we managed to be almost polite about that, but there were definitely snickers when he mentioned "knowing the bush daughters in high school" -- and some guy who talks to governors. he was pretty funny.

but then again, so was trent lott, so I wouldn't be trusting any of that.

and there was a thunderstorm tonight! It distracted me, so I couldn't pay attention during the second debate -- more social security, I am so fucking sick of social security! screw all economists everywhere, screw them I say! -- but it was awesome. robert and I went prancing about barefoot in the puddles, and then grabbed some coffee.

Speaking of which, my addiction is growing out of hand. Two mugs with every meal, and espresso beans between, and espresso whenever I can get it. who drinks black coffee with dinner? me. is that pitiful? yes. but I deserve it, and it's good, so goaway.

so now I probably ought to get started on my term paper. or at least, you know, pick a topic. i am, as usual, having trouble getting motivated -- I got a hundred on the midterm, so I am once again disappointed by the difficulty of these so-called intensive courses. lots of work, but that doesn't mean it's challenging. I'll do the whole damn paper in a night if I have to. bloody hell.

anyway, life's pretty good. but someday I will find a place where girl talk does not involve discussions of breast size, and I will live there forever. Because yeah.

i probably ought to write my parents and thank them for the care package.

whatever.

i have chocolate, too. and my punishment faded away under my determined ambivalence. and i have chocolate, and chocolate-covered espresso beans, and there was a thunderstorm. did I mention life is pretty good?

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: shilence. shilence i shay.
Inside my head: morrissey. stripdancing. to "heaven knows i'm miserable now." it's quite peculiar.
To be done: write thank-yous to speakers. eh.
Color: black. I wore all black today and I must say, even with the drowned-rat thing going on, i was looking pretty damn hot. Thank you.
Career choice: monk. shut up about gender issues. i'll be a man if I want to!
Craving: caffeine or sleep
My happy place: american samoa. because now i know where it is!
Annoyance: like, omigod....
Fetish: road bikes. and pinkisthenewblog. shuddup.
Fear: becoming a politician. run away, run away! this town will devour you alive, just like the elevators, and then laugh at your bones, laugh I say!

2005-06-22T23:34:00.000-04:00

I am a Problem Child.

I suppose I should feel very honored, really.

RESOLVED that college education should be free for all U.S. citizens

2005-06-21T23:08:00.000-04:00

so I'm currently surviving off an ungodly stew of coffee, salad, and pretzels with peanut butter. Lowfat chunky peanut butter, because they only sold the highfat chunky peanut butter in larger packages (i get the message. "hey, lardo, if you ain't eatin' the low-fat stuff you might as well just devour the stuff by the bucketload. fatso.")

I try to eat regular meals, i do. But they all end up being salads. I can't help it -- it's like I'm under a spell. I'm not even a particular fan of salads!

I shall tell the epic ode of the laptop when I have time. as in, never.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: zipping
Inside my head: a bunch of yammering idiots
To be done: sleep, study, research, repeat!
Color: pink. whatever.
Career choice: not politics.
Craving: a huuuuuuuge watermelon. No, no, a huge peach cobbler. yeah. peach cobbler.
My happy place: quiet. peaceful. no work.
Annoyance: my sleep deprivation
Fetish: basketball players
Fear: corridors (down corridooooooooooors!)

2005-06-20T08:36:00.000-04:00

okay, so waking up at 6 was way too early. and the line for breakfast was waaaay too long. and hearing kids solemnly intone that we need to eat, because if we study instead of eating we'll make ourselves sick -- no shit, sherlock -- was just sad.

on the other hand, I have coffee -- which is quite good, even though it's starbucks -- and my roommate -- who is a ctyer! -- is playing guitar. and I do like guitar.

plus, there is perpetual internet access, and supposedly the library kicks ass. and guys outnumber girls. these are all things that make camila, to various degrees, happy.

though 6 was still way too early.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: acoustic guitar
Inside my head: time calculations
To be done: faculty introductions, speaker program introduction, first day of class, first congressional workshop
Color: marooon
Career choice:

jsa

2005-06-19T21:52:00.000-04:00

I'm at camp.

No, wait -- a Summer Program. they are very particular about the fact that it is not a camp, because it is Challenging.

they say it with the capital. you can tell.

anyway. everybody here is wound too tight --

d'yall think it'll be contagious?

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: jason mraz, it only gets better
Inside my head: trepidation
To be done: hall meeting, two minutes
Color: black
Career choice:
Craving: chocolate and somebody insane

"well, i guess I'll just have to go on another trip"

2005-06-18T03:06:00.000-04:00

I accomplished like crazy today. like billy-o. you heard me, like billy-o.

Seriously. Not only did I sleep, (and sleep is important) but I also:

a) dressed up like a schoolgirl. this was because I thought I would be doing chores, and doing chores is always more fun when one is dressed as a schoolgirl, a drag queen, or a 20s flapper. you should try it.

b) avoided all my chores

c) had cheesecake for breakfast. and I am happy to report that my chocolate cheesecake is as unholily divine as ever.

d) ordered new glasses. and not just any glasses, but glasses that scream "I am a super-sexy journalism geek!" okay, so maybe they just scream "journalism geek!" but allow me to keep my illusions.

e) bought a paper lantern.

f) hung my paper lantern. It may sound like a modest achievement, but it involved a stool, masking tape, completely disassembling my main light fixture, unwiring and rewiring said light fixture, creative utilization of a nametag, occasional screaming of "why aren't I taller," nails and a tack hammer -- used sideways due to lack of space -- and also bracing off of a crossbeam. all this in a miniskirt. yes, be impressed. also, it makes my room cooler. cooler like billy-o.

g) went to the JMU library to do research and almost had a spontaneous orgasm. Have you seen their online databases? Have you seen them? I mean, I love books -- I adore books -- I have an unhealthy passion for books. but I despise the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature. Despise it. I regularly curse its name, and whenever I see its long, ominous bookshelves I glare furiously and then crawl off to cry.

it wouldn't be so bad if they weren't so terribly, terribly useful.

Anyway, I walked to the library bracing myself to dive back into those tortuous torture devices, because damn it to hell but they are so useful, but I stopped by a computer first because even though most online databases are moreorless crap (unless maybe you're looking up law, but I was looking into rather vaguer topics) maybemaybe I had a chance

and oh -- oh my.

two clicks. one search, a few qualifiers. one useful-sounding abstract, two more clicks, and sweartogod I had the full text of an article exactly on topic and more than recent enough, right in front of me screaming "it's me! it's me, who you've been searching for all your life for the past five seconds!"

that quick. right there. no huge green books, no riffling through back copies, no horrendously extraneous search results, no password checking, no copying, no computer freezes, no long waits, no tall shelves, no links to unavailable content -- it was

oh.

godyes.

i just... I like my research. and it was so beautiful. so, so beautiful. so, so, so...

h) had soup and cheesecake for lunch

i) culled through articles in the Nation and the Post and found useful things all around. More research, yay. did I mention how fruitful all this research was? very fruitful. fruit everywhere. phosphorescent glowing fruit of fruitiness, that's full of fruit it was.

j) successfully made espresso. managed not to get eaten alive by the coffee grinder.

k) had afternoon espresso and cheesecake

l) lounged

m) had home-made pizzone for dinner.

n) accessed the JMU databases from home, got addicted, spent four hours doing far more research than I had to. but, seriously, 50-page article on affirmative action from the Columbia Law Review -- how can you possibly turn that down? it was gorgeous. gorgeous. then acrobat reader crashed and I was highly unhappy for a while, but it passed.

o) had cheesecake for dessert. am having it right now, actually. every time I eat this cheesecake my self-estimation rises.

see? a full fifteen letters of the alphabet. if that's not billy-o, then I don't know what is.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: dark house
Inside my head: alicia keys
To be done: laundry
Color: chocolate-colored
Career choice: professional chocolate cheesecake maker
Craving: fresh pineapple-guava juice
My happy place: under a tree, in the shade
Annoyance: fingernails
Fetish: that gorgeous long-legged college boy who's housesitting next door. God loves me, I swear.

2005-06-17T22:24:00.000-04:00

doing research, found this.

amused am I.

dammit, losing focus again.

have you seen the little piggies

2005-06-15T12:25:00.000-04:00

"in DC, it is currently 90 degrees, with 90% humidity..."

seat behind: Mommy, is that hot? Mommy?
Oh no.
Mommy? Mommy, is that hot?
Yes, dear. Hot. And sticky. Very hot. And very sticky.

my mother: whyyyyyyy?

I laughed out loud, because it meant we were coming home.

my mom and dad had a fight an argument over dinner -- she talked about going back to Berkeley, bright and happy at the thought, and then made the mistake of asking my dad what he was thinking. Being far too honest for his own good, and often cruelly so, he told her, and it wasn't surprising at all when it hurt.

anyway. Sister and I got exasperated at them.

I am going to spend today doing a Great Deal of Nothing. and I will do it well.

Camila

status quo:
Outside my head: Wilco cd
Inside my head: a story
To be done: my room needs to be burnt. burnt, I say, burnt!
Color: deep magenta
Career choice: bartender
Craving: a slap in the face
Annoyance: bug bites