smell of wine and cheap perfume

we all have those songs: the ones that, in the crescendo, remind us of who we were, of friends long gone, of a time that you didn't appreciate until it slipped away like the words that race through your brain. all these songs grip my memory, make me reach for a glass of wine. i wish for them to neverend: for those friendships that changed beyond repair to revert to their innocence.

as much as i hate to admit it, and i've always been this way, i'm completely incapable of letting go, moving on, getting over the past. I allow the nostalgia to gather inside my chest till it explodes in the middle of a journey song, and i want nothing but to capture those times that are completely incapable of being captured in words. i've tried so many times, but they just seem to be the experiences that deserve more than words or pictures.

i was looking at pictures from right before i studied abroad yesterday. fall '04. and i remember that feeling: coming off of the summer to end all summers, and looking towards an incredible journey that was to be filled with ups, downs, sideways, broken hearted moments that are inextricably tied into my brain as a dream too good to have ever happened to me. that year was the best year of my life. and has quickly been followed by the worst.

i'm not quite sure i understand why. a year of perfection followed by 2 years of unhappiness. and yet, things seem to be looking up now...but only after hitting the complete rock bottom.

my heart is always filled with this sap, i just want to tap into it and create something that means anything to anyone...

but the sac is just too strong, too closed, unready to open the vessel and release its memories into the wild. i somehow don't want to allow other people to navigate that jungle. the trees are too new, and just barely reach above the ground. mere seedlings.

but if i can only write after the experience is hard-wired, how can it ever be organic?

god i miss keene.

no.

god i miss the incredible freedom that was: college.

you ever lose a moment? a minute? perhaps even a second? have you ever lost and missed an entire month? a month worth saving? a month worth documenting?

I've lost that time. the one time i felt at ease: with me, my friends, alone. i miss them. alana, colleen, melissa, and me...a year ago today. we were the most perfect beings in the history of existence.

and it's gone. and i wonder: will we ever get it back...or must we continue growing, moving forward, forgetting our past in the hopes of some great future all of us are unsure of? whatever it is...it was there. we were there. and we were whole. is it possible to be there again?

naturally organically natural

god. sometimes it's so difficult being a graduate student. woe is me. pity the girl who's getting an MFA...i deserve it, i'm sure.

nah. though it is quite exhausting both emotionally and mentally. i rack my brain searching for words and images, and yet, nothing is ever enough. in conference today, my professor just kept telling me to "trust your own images. your natural ability." i don't really think i have a natural ability. and going off of these drugs has been a lot more trying than i thought.

i'm easily distracted by "rock of love" and friends' blogs and youtube and my roommate's dog and my own blog and my large movie collection with an array of movies boasting accents. this leaves me alone on a wednesday night watching "bend it like beckham" and wishing i were in trafalgar square just one more time: lost with megan on our way to orso with her grandfather's friends--both willing to treat us to fine dining, cigars, and cider.

god...keira knightley was so fucking hot in this movie. so is jonathan rhys meyers. and parminder nagra. it's fairly amazing. i wish i had an accent. i wish soccer was bigger in the U.S. i wish i was good at any sport. but mostly, i wish for more cameras.

i miss filming for third rail mice and the two PSAs. i miss acting. it was such a release of all things i keep too bottled up inside. and i'm good at it. strange. never thought i'd be good at something i enjoy so much. though i know there's no future. i don't really care for making a living at it: i just want to do it for fun. acting is usually something people do for fame, for money, for the prospect of something that will (most likely) never come to fruition. but i do it for another reason entirely: i do not expect anything to come of it, i just enjoy it...body and soul. i love inhabiting this other person: this person inside me, or beside me, that i didn't know within or couldn't imagine i could know. they are all there: around me, inside me...pushing, urging, throbbing.

and writing eases it. but acting releases.

*sigh* i can never make up my mind about anything. when i'm here, i want somewhere else. and when i'm somewhere else, i always want here.

ain't that the way of it.

--Leni

House of Sugar by Rebecca Kraatz

http://www.tuliptreepress.net/sugar/

In my elective class (Expanding the Poetic Toolbox: Saying the Unsayable), we are relating the vernacular of cross-genre art forms to the language utilized in describing poetry. The first genre we have endeavored upon is the graphic novel. And (being the geek that I am), I am in love with the books and study of this field in relationship to poetry. We've read Chicken with Plums and Understanding Comics thus far. This week, I was supposed to read Mother Come Home, but am unable to find ANY place which sells it on time, before Monday's class. However, I have read through the handout of examples the professor has given me, and have fallen in love with Rebecca Kraatz's series, House of Sugar. It's a whimsical little comic strip written in what could be described as poetry format (depending upon what you classify as poetry).

Either way, I am in love with it. The complete ridiculousness of some of the strips (i.e. the one where the hamster goes missing, only to be found singing on the playground) is a refreshing reminder of childhood. We only had a few examples in our packets, but I looked up the rest of them through tulip tree press.

Perhaps I enjoy the comic strip because it reminds me of my own work at times. Or maybe because she's obsessed with the 1940s films and their stars: the nostalgia for the time when the men were rugged, handsome, and secretive; and the woman were refined, stylish, and aloof.

I highly recommend it. It made me want to comic-strip-ify ALL of my poems. Perhaps when I find a scanner, I'll be able to show at least the one I've done thus far.

Enjoy if you get the chance to read them. If not, lata suckaz!

--Leni-kins

i think i have an unnatural obsession with mickey avalon:





he's just...amazing. especially for lines like: "i like a girl who eats and brings it up, a sassy little frassy with bulimia." or "jane wasn't fast she was easy to catch." YES

...amazing. so wrong, and indecent, and yet, so so right.

i am going overseas next summer. not quite sure where yet, but i am going overseas. it's an awfully exciting adventure to be discussing, and yet, (as i mentioned with amber last night)...some of the most exciting things about traveling are the preperation and the reflection.

i mean, the process itself is fun...but this is the problem with travellers: it is not the process they like, but the constant change: that which speaks to the ineffable power within us that begs: move...constant motion.

i have difficulty living in the present, and always have, and probably always will: i am constantly reflecting and looking forward. so a life of travel seems inexplicably correct for a being such as myself.

...grad school has made me quite aware at the lack of the "i" in my writing...the constant connection to things through observation. is this a bad thing? i never know.

my mind's all over the place.

i found the gateway!

so i'm not quite sure when the obsession started (i think sometime back in mid-september or october of last year), but i have fallen in love with the mid-nineties hit, sliders. it's the story of Quinn (a young scientist), his professor, his co-worker (and love interest) Wade, and (by chance), the perfomer, Rembrandt "the crying man" Brown. In its later years, the show got switched off to sci-fi, Jerry O'Connell left, as well as Sabrina Lloyd, and the Johnathan Rhys Davies. Leaving Rembrandt to substitute for the show's voice-over narration. But, having re-watched (and yes, I'll admit it...BOUGHT) seasons 1 & 2 box set, I have re-discovered my undying love for the ridiculous plot lines, neverending unrequited love stories, and the whole concept of parallel universes.

Don't confuse me for one of those conspiracy-theory-reading, abducted-by-aliens, ghosts-are-all around us science fiction nuts. I'm not die hard by any means. But I think the show appeals back to the child in me: the one curious about the fantasies of science. And yes, the words fantasy and science CAN and DO inherently go together. Commonly we discuss the wonders of science, but what about all these elaborate hoaxes people research, the gateways people claim to have seen, the alien spaceships in haiti: what about these things. They all come down to the ideas of: "we are not alone in the universe" or "things could have turned out differently." Whereas we could go about this naturally human desires by creating complete fiction, why not experiment with the idea of science? Why not? Don't we all want to know the scientific facts behind things? We wish for scientific fact to make our fantasies plausible and probable. Plastic surgery is a perfect example. How strange that we can bring in a picture of a celebrity and say: make me look like this, I don't like my own equipment. And that, in a few simple procedures, it will happen (or close to). Years ago, this would've been thought impossible, but now it's a business expanding exponentially by hundreds of percents a year. Soon, we MAY all look the same.

But back to the original point of this entry: Sliders. Mid-nineties. There I was on Wednesday night in my brother's room. I was 10, maybe 11, and I remember watching the premiere of this show. My father sat, while I laid on my stomach, feet in the air, dangling in anticipation for my fantasies to be realized. And they were. It became a ritual: Sliders night with my father. We would watch it together and discuss it together. And it made me happy that possibilities were out there to defy my expectations. And that's what I've come to desire: defy expectations, convential wisdom; I feel the need to seed inspiration into the almost-dead souls of 10 year old girls just like me.

And though the network switched the shows to Fridays, switched networks, changed casts, and eventually was cancelled. I lost touch with my enamor of foreign worlds and creative ideas. They fell to the byways of a life well-spent socially with a beer in hand. But now, re-watching these shows that so spoke to me in some of my darker times as a child, I suddenly am reminded: anything is possible. Even recovery.

here i am in new york city and wondering what the world has to offer. i wonder if this is what was meant by the world at your fingertips. or if this is merely a distraction from the world i once knew. i feel grown. i feel alone. i feel as though everything is moving me apart from all that i knew: and i'm okay with it.

We Tease Cuz We Love

There is one thing that really pisses the fuck out of me about New Hampshire. ...Okay, so there's more than one thing, but one that I can recall at this moment in time.

The street set-ups. Who thinks it's a good idea to have 3 roundabouts in one town? I don't care if they have a lower accident rate than stoplights, NO ONE else in the world utilizes that function. And moreover, why would you put three in a college town? So all the incoming freshman can get doubly pissed about moving in: 1. they have to spend more time with their parents, and 2. that they are moving in to a town that has three fuckin' roundabouts. yay state schools.

Moreover, who decides to start building roundabouts an iota of a second before move-in day? new hampshire. "fuck you incoming customers! we live free or die bitches, so you can suck my big lovely roundabout dick."

But what really got me going was the "two-way" streets with parking spots on either side, leaving about a space of 10 feet of driving space, which of course every SUV in the fucking world has to quadruple turn it before they make it through. it's bad enough that an entire liberal college town which promotes global warming awareness will have the largest population of lexus-SUV-owning assholes with "support the troops" sticker painted across the back. "i support the troops, i support the people involved in the war i protest against, yes,protest every sunday on the green, right by that adorable little gazebo we're all so fond of having ill-fitting country cover bands play reba mcintire, with their mullets waving in the wind, and the goddamn hippies dance with their bare feet and dreadlocks studying law and environmentalism (which i support of course) while smoking some cloves: 'cigarettes are, like, organic so i'm not a hypocrite by throwing them on the ground. it's like mulch for the soil', but they forget (or what they don't see) are the real environmentalists studying communications scamper around at night like squirrels searching for nuts, picking up every last ash or butt till the grass looks peachy clean. which, we also support: the green movement, that is. which is why we've begun selling american spirits loose-y cigarettes right next to the support the troops stickers (with colored assortment, so you can pick just the right one to compliment your lexus SUV's fat fucking ass as it clumsily manuevers its way down a 10 foot wide one-way street, so the tiny compact car behind you can be held up as much as possible, but still have a wonderful fucking piece of irony on your car's fat fucking ass as you smile and give me the thank-you wave."

*sigh* i guess venting produces the grammar-free Leni.

peace in your crease!

Change of School, Change of Blog, Change of Heart

So there have been several people questioning me about the recent inexplicable change of my facebook and myspace accounts informing people that I shall be attending Sarah Lawrence and not the University of Southern California.

These changes are correct. I simply sat down and thought about all the happiness I'd have in NYC, the way I feel about living in that particular area, that particular school..and it all made sense. I'm a bright lights, big city sort of girl and not a tan, bleach-blonde, happy person. I'm dramatic, complicated, and brooding. Some see those as faults...I see them as prospects in making New York City friends.

I'm getting quite restless. The need to move, to change, to go, go, go keeps burning in my mind. I think about England and my times there, yes, but moreso about the areas in the world few people get to travel to. I want those to burn in my brain just as deeply and intensified as the study abroad experience.

If I could just pack up a few friends and jet set off to another continent, I'd be perfectly content. Too bad money has to play a factor in such an endeavor.

Well, not quite like anyone really reads this...so, I'll end it there...abruptly.

Love, love, love,

LeniCat