There’s something sugar coated about the Thursday night waiting for Friday morning. Like night renews me as something other than me for one day a week and that day is coming. I feel ripped open. The street corner was far enough to walk, let alone the café. It was a stretching. My arms in square blocked extension. At the crux of me leaving and me coming, I am half singing break up songs, half cradling my heartbeat in my wrists against my sides that were around his neck feeling the double beating; our bodies mirrors, our facing away to go separately, terrifying and freeing. Me overflowing, a buzz between fleeing and clinging, opening my arms to hold tight and comfort and pushing off as if flea bitten, diseased, an externalization of my unsorted stuff in front of me bleeding, before I am willing to hold it and dirty myself with the truth of what needs releasing. But nothing is as beautiful as this aching. Nothing is as alive as not being able to pinpoint but just just just going. Booking flights, telling truths, shutting my mouth on things that make much more impact when said in silence. It’s just that I didn’t believe I would ever become patient. That was what you did when you wanted to mask your loss of steam to be blatant as something done on purpose- That was the sad resentment and lost hope and final defeat of my great grandmother as she admitted she was now feeble and powerless. I always thought vitality was synonymous with argument. I miss her- my great grandmother. I wish she could have seem me do all the things I promised her I’d do, though in those traditional seeming progressions from marriage to parenthood to ownership to pension, we never talked about all that was promised. That women had to become women who looked for a man from a place of their own choosing and not from a place where their worth was measured through what they could make out of a downward spiral of manhood. That manipulation was never something I could pull off and I would have to be honest through being told my pain and my sight was a handicap in a family where blindness was an asset. That no, I wouldn’t just go through the motions. That no, I was going to piss off more people, more often than I would be a plain old success at being marginally disappointing. That I would speak all the things that weren’t spoken. That I would hold myself accountable for my inheritance. And I couldn’t quite get it all together before she had to leave. Before her control and her love and her striving outlived her body. But what I wouldn’t give for a hot cup of Chamomile, some Bella Dona cookies and my sassy-mouthed outlaw of a matriarch grandmother to give me the wisely chosen words of her own admissions of culpability, her own fears, her own human predicament. What I wouldn’t give, to hold her, to be held by her own hurried, practiced patience, showing me we are all flawed. That we get as close as we can. That it’s okay to stay in and eat cookies, to fall into a bed in the clicking silence of feeling momentarily emptied. There’s something sugar coated about the Thursday night waiting for Friday morning.

This World is Becoming An Adult Summer Camp... the little ball of fluff that makes it alright

I just finished my first year of graduate school and I'm feeling pretty lumpy; meaning I want to be a lump in my bed. Sometimes it feels like all I need is a break and some nothingness to let myself go into, just sink in and breathe again. This time, I feel like an empty vessel, squeezed vacant of all of my necessary-ness. To go from busy to nothing when you hate the busy is refreshing, to go from busy to nothing when you love the busy is lumpy causing. I worked as a TA and IA this year within a Community College Level Learning Community, was a full time student, did yoga, went to the gym regularly and made a poor attempt at keeping up with my friends back on the East Coast. Now school's over, work's over and I need several grand I don't have to make it through the summer. I was listening to a speech by Rick Wolff this morning, clenching my fists at his explanation as to why our economy has gone to crud and smiling at his familiar and comical way of speaking. He made it sound so simple. Of course our economy was doomed. We were selling debt. Of course we were going to fall on our faces after our booming financial success from overpaid employers selling debt to underpaid employees. I don't really think of myself as being driven by money, more by love and passion, but I am not all together deluded- I do know that I need money. Then I got to thinking more about what Wolff was saying, about the state of things today, about the war in Iraq that isn't ending and about the way some of us still act like douche-bags when it comes down to it. (as a nation that is) For instance, I keep hearing these commercials advertising an adult summer camp in Las Vegas that are ridiculous in their insinuations of "adult" fun as well as the likening of this escapade to a "summer camp" and its deluded promotion of youth obsession, but today's commercial took the cake. The commercial I heard today was recorded in a false russian accent, the spokeswoman falling in and out of her poor impression and went something like "I come to America with dreams of being camp counselor, but I am told I am too sexy for camp counselor, but not at Las Vegas adult summer camp." She actually said, "My name is Svetlanda!" It was horrific. However, I am hopeful that there is just as much hope and love in the world to balance out the douche-bagery. Recently, I went to an end of the year celebration at an Oakland bar called EASY and on the wall was carved the last lines of my favorite book, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God: She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes!"A friend of mine recently told me that in Korean, Zora means Shell. I recently rescued a kitten from my friend's engine after she rode 15 minutes inside of it and singed her top whiskers. In a time where liberation and fate are dearly needed and appreciated, I named her Zora. I ran out of wet food and fed her dry yesterday and when I went to go to sleep, she attacked my head and feet alternately all night in disapproval. It's seems that she came to me at a perfect time; my little high maintenance inspiration.

BEAST

I feel like a ravaged beast. Perhaps a revenging one. I’m shaking and going mad. My mind needs food and my belly needs words. It is all fucking turned upside down. There is a mime on my rooftop doing summersaults. I met a stranger in circus school on the BART. She had a sweet face and came from Massachusetts. The east coasters can smell each other here. I love her just for existing. Perhaps that’s what this weird ass place does to you. Makes you love out of necessity to cling to something you know. How can I whole city be uphill, I ask. I don’t fucking know but it is. But it is beautiful at the top. It is beautiful in its oddness. In its struggle to compete with the fast pace of others.

I am a beast here. A different beast than the east coast made me.

Sexism: Male Malingering in a Predominantly Female Institution

I will let the readers decide for themselves, based on the situation described below if SHE is out of line or justified in her feelings of helplessness and frustration in regards to what she feels is an attempt at male malingering in a predominantly female institution, due to a certain perception that being one of a minority of males in such an atmosphere, "he" can engage with and discard women at any rate and in any way he sees fit since he has many "options" and does not need to consider the overtly sexist nature of his actions.

Here are the facts:

"HE" and "SHE" (which I make no qualms about admitting to being "I") are in small MFA workshop class together at Mills College. They hang out together outside of school with other peers. They then hang out together, just the two of them. HE kisses HER. They hang out again. HE asks if he may kiss HER again. He does. A female friend of his comes to visit the school and stays with him. He brings her to class. He rushes out of the classroom without introducing the female friend to HER. When SHE asks if he was in a hurry, he replies yes. A week later, they hang out again and this time HE says that he cannot be more than friends with her because his ex is still on his mind. HE tells HER that he has feelings for her and he cannot deal with them right now with the ex still on his radar.

However, SHE realizes certain inconsistencies. Though HE claims to RESPECT HER, the first night he kissed her, he said "We either need to go upstairs or I need to go home." With a churning gut, she looked at the series of events. It seemed pretty clear that this statement was a SEXUAL ULTIMATUM designed to get him laid.

When SHE brought this up, HE ignored the accusation.

When pursued to be honest about his intentions, HE did not want to engage in a conversation.

SHE took this as not only an insult to her as an individual, to what he perceived to be her lack of intelligence, as well as his lack of respect for women and for the feelings he has evoked by his actions BUT also a blatant disregard to the request for a conversation explaining his intentions. Now if a person is not willing to disclose his intentions when someone who HE claimed to RESPECT as well as have DEEPENING FEELINGS FOR asks that he explain because SHE is hurt and confused, what is SHE to conclude other than a lack of TRUTH, RESPECT and a passive claim of the INEQUALITY of females since the effects an individual has on them are not worthy of addressing in a human manner?

My Response would be something like the following:

I am not about to be at a school where I should be being empowered by the social justice aims of the institution and am instead being treated like a "girl" by a "man" who thinks he's going to work the system to his advantage. By your refusal to treat me as an equal and respect my mind and body as well as my educational pursuits, you have made this political.

My Love is Anything But Posh

My Love is Anything But POSH

I am so tired of hearing posh stories of New York City living: the grapefruit and vodkas, the Upper East Side apartments, the private balconies and in-apartment laundry facilities. If these are things you actually expected, that is your problem right there. I will tell you how to properly enjoy this city:

You graduate from college, check.

You move to New York, check.

You dream about getting an important job in the magazine industry, check.

Perhaps you even dream of seeing the inside of Upper East Side Apartments with private balconies and in-apartment laundry facilities.

Then you interview for thirty or so jobs in your first two weeks, get snided by a pale Upper East Sider with a Gucci purse and a black berry, walking perfectly on her Steve Madden Stilettos, trailed by her three children under the age of five cared for by a Jamaican nanny, wonder how far we really have come from the days of black mammies, get hit on by a toothless man in the bushes, get followed by a man in spandex and a gold chain and finally get told to “juice up that pussy” on your jog to the park.

The job you get is in a warehouse that has been converted into an office, no cubicles, no privacy. There are broken windows, an orchid garden above your head, a Bengal cat that screams like a crying baby. There are droves of cigarette sized blonds, coked up and tattooed, the daughter of a man who makes Swarovski crystal bedazzled butt plugs for a living, trying to make it as unpaid models.

The owner who doubles as a photographer is barking like a dog during the photo shoots.

You get ten and twelve hour days, no over head lighting and the privilege of overhearing marriage disputes between the owner and art advisor\assistant editor who has had no formal training in magazine writing, editing or prior experience in the trade field of intimate apparel.

What kinds of outings come of this, you ask? Cheap beers around the corner at what looks like a hick bar that got dropped down in the midst of midtown west. They have a jute box and a table near the window. A co-worker and I are the only two females. For a mixed sex crowd, there’re five for ten shots at the Continental on Saint Marks. Get shitty and have a tremendous headache, all for ten bucks! And watch for Raiden, the owner, in his straw hat. If you’re feeling high class, there’s a beer place on restaurant row, stuck in the middle of all of the fancy places, with tremendous micro brews on tap. However, the proofs vary. Don’t order your regular four to however many rounds, subbing Three Philosophers for your usual buds and think you’re going to mosey out unnoticed. You may need your neighbors’ tables for support, so best to get to know them early on.

You get benefits after six months, but don’t worry, chances are you won’t make it till then.

How about the neighborhood? Is it kitschy? Well if homeless men jerking each other off under a blanket across from the West Side Highway are kitschy… There is a homeless hierarchy. The black man with the white beard and remaining crooked teeth will tell you. His hand wrapped in dirty cloth, he is proud of his position, and replies when asked about it that he was “feitin’. (With a grin) He also sells weed, which people were known to be sometimes smoking under the canopied walkways that overlooked the Hudson, right across from where the plane would come to land one day, after I had been long gone from that office. My former co-worker would watch it plummet. Probably while getting high.

I attempted to be posh, once I left there. I had stared at the starving editorial staff, who were not models, and murmur “fuck posh New York bullshit starving skinny bitches…” while I worked there, but afterwards, I took a poke at it. That is, every so often. My attempts at being posh consisted of going to a reading series and ordering Lychee Martinis. Everyone seemed to be so damn important. I knew no one. I felt high class. Then the reading series ended. So much for that.

After the magazine, came the stint of waitressing. Then came the cave dwelling. I both lived and worked in a basement in Brooklyn, though they were different basements, they were both located in Brooklyn and both similarly blocked out any light that might be possible to make out through the slush and gray of NYC winter.

I had to reconcile the shabbiness of my professional experiences and what better way than to create an even shabbier, to use a friend’s word fierce, sense of social and emotional existence for myself? That is how the dirty, grungy, raunchy underbelly of New York City became my fucking home.

I drank coffee and listened to live music at The Vox Pop on Cortelyou, after Bloody Marys and the best fucking fries at The Farm on Adderley that morning. I met a Jewish beat boxer from Boston at Cornelia’s Café, watched musicians play their guitars upside down and sing like Janis Joplin at the Sidewalk, drank pitchers at the Beer Gardens in Astoria, wandered to Egyptian Café at 2 AM for the $3 hookahs on Steinway and peed in the park after downing a six pack each with a good friend, listening to the grumbling of hundreds of exhausts from souped up cars and motorcycles, re-locating to drag race. I chain smoked Capri Ultra Lights on the tiny ass balcony of my brief apartment in Kew Gardens, where we stuffed up to ten people at a time, laughed while I cried at Helena D. Lewis’ one woman play at The Nuyorican, lingered under a willow tree that leans over the lazy streets in alphabet city. I danced to drums and bluesy voices at Sound Works where paintings and webbing danced to the bluish lights on the ceilings and walls, moving outside to gulp Pabst Blue Ribbon and burn my fingers on kabobs right off the grill, staring at what looks like a silo. I went to BBQ’s under home made canopies draped in grapes, danced at Bembe in Williamsburg, saxophone and keyboard at Mehanata on Ludlow, and got naked, climbed through a trap door and made out in the rain on a rooftop in Bushwick.

This is the New York you need to visit.

They make damn good pizza and they stay open late. But the New York City I miss is anything but posh.

the word "AND"

et
y
and

et
y
and

the English language is so out of place among romantics

middles

When writing about oneself, does oneself recognize the reflection? When talking about others, does one display the truth about themselves?

While reading "Mermaid Chair" by Sue Monk Kidd earlier today on the subway I was struck by a few lines. "...I became anxious, filled with that strange turbulence that rises when you begin to wash up on the island of your own little self and you don't see how you could ever sustain yourself there."

Talking to a friend of mine the other day, who is moving out of her father's house for the first time to the lovely borough of Queens, she asked me if I thought she gave up her only chance at stability when she broke up with her boyfriend of going on three years. Of course I told her that she was better off without that low-life, but rather than my regular feminist responsive of something along the lines of "it was leaving him that opened up the possibility of stability for you," I landed somewhere in the middle. Likening their relationship to a vertical climb, another one of her friends had told her that her ex had "plateau-ed." I reminded her that standing on a shaky plateau with a fat man is a bad idea. (He was rather overweight, and plateaus for self-indulgent people usually mean one thing: Their next move is down.) However, for me, this middle ground feeling was quite unsettling, being that I find comfort in extremes. If I am unhappy I will up and move. I make life-changing decisions over night and carry them out with the confidence of a well-formulated plan.

I said once to someone, you are calm and composed on the outside but there is so much bubbling just under the surface, waiting for an opportunity to escape.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"I just know this type of stuff," I answered lamely. He was like an un-popped popcorn kernel, stuck in his restriction. I knew there was a fluffy, light-colored being in there, waiting for a release. Although, at the same time, a tight little casing is effective in fending off mostly everything and it's warm in small spaces. It's just that from this momentary mid-point, I was able to claim relative sanity and see that becoming lighter so the air can carry you, doesn't take away the casing you came in.