beauty in the breakdown?

so...pumpkinfest is beautiful. the fall in new england is generally beautiful. i long to stay, but must leave.

but not for long. my head is in all sorts. i'm ready to grow up and get a job, and i'm kind of done with everything else.

it's nice to know that you always have your best friends to count on. in spite of the fact that you may not have spoken for a few months.

that's nice.

what's not so nice is doubting everything else.

wanting to die just to forget the memories.

life is tough once you realize it's actual work

sometimes i wonder if i made the right decision about grad school. as i was leaving keene, i finally felt at home. i felt a presence in my life that was helping me work towards the better. and now, i question everything. i love writing. i love poetry. but it's clearly not as much as some of the other people in the program. why do i feel the need to have a degree by the time i'm 25? sure, that'd be great. i'd get to teach. my world of opportunities would open up. ...but maybe i don't want it to. maybe a BA is good for right now. maybe i wouldn't mind doing some hard labor in between the time.

because, in reality, if i had been thinking about my own personal development, i would've deferred from USC for a year rather than jumped into a more convenient, more available program.

i love SLC. it's great. the professors, the students, the feedback.

but maybe, just maybe, i'm not the right person. i'm not the right fit. at least not right now.

i miss being here too much. all my life i've searched for home, and then had to leave it once it was presented to me.

i'm tired of jumping around. here, i have friends, a boyfriend, an atmosphere i'm comfortable in. and, as my dad says, life is about happiness...there is no shame in working.

there isn't. and perhaps...i'm just not ready for this.

i need to think.

when i'm here, everything is right. and i'm tired of being dichotomized between the two. i can't handle it. my emotional state is too fragile right now.

i want this. my friends. my boyfriend. my apartment that feels like i've lived here my whole life.

yes. that and only that.

because that, unfortunately, is what makes me happy. and possibly suburban. but, hey, whatever...there's nothing wrong with being suburban and unsure.

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.